ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Energica => Topic started by: weck on November 21, 2023, 12:17:40 AM
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Living in the frozen white north (Wisconsin), we regularly see stretches where it does not get above 0 C / 32 F. I'd like to use the LPR function when I put the bike away for the season, however this is air cooled battery with no conditioning, so charging below freezing is no good.
Does anyone know if the LPR function takes temperature into account? Or am I better off just charging it to 100% and checking on it every 30 days (per the manual)?
Almost considering if I can maybe use a smart plug on the charger (at 120v) and only turn on the power if it gets to 40 degrees or warmer...
Has anyone else dealt with sub freezing storage and charging?
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Generally it is best to avoid charging to 100% unless you are going for a ride real soon. You would want to store it at 50% or so. I would read the manual for that particular motorcycle there is likely a half page or so pertaining to this I can say Makita power tool batteries don't seem to mind being stored sub freezing and even fully charged though they likely set the bms different than a motorcycle for what voltage and cell type are in them. For me and my ktm I have the choice of bringing in the battery to a warmer spot but have done drop cloth over the motorcycle and heat source a couple of times when I wanted to use it in the colder seasons.
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That's really not what he's asking.
Now, without consulting someone official like Chris, I *suspect* you'll be fine. The LPR function wakes up and checks on the bike's voltage and, if needed, charges it a little. And if you use a level 1 EVSE we're talking a couple amps. The batteries do not like to operate in sub freezing weather, but you're basically just talking trickle charge if it needs to adjust itself at all.
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I agree with MVetter. It is far better to keep it in the LPR mode than leaving it without. The main purpose of the LPR mode is to keep the cells balanced. Also I didn't find a value in the manual that warns you from store in deep temperatures.
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the manual is a little schizophrenic in this area...
It recommends LPR, but if you cannot, recommends charging to 100% at least once a month (I'm in the don't store it there camp like others mentioned), but then also recommends against charging below freezing.
I did email out to CA and the response I got was they are pretty sure the BMS will not allow charging below 10c/14f, so I'm probably A-OK just leaving it on LPR all winter.
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the manual is a little schizophrenic in this area...
It recommends LPR, but if you cannot, recommends charging to 100% at least once a month (I'm in the don't store it there camp like others mentioned), but then also recommends against charging below freezing.
I did email out to CA and the response I got was they are pretty sure the BMS will not allow charging below 10c/14f, so I'm probably A-OK just leaving it on LPR all winter.
Ummm...10C isn't 14F....10C is actually 50F.
Smithy.
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I did email out to CA and the response I got was they are pretty sure the BMS will not allow charging below 10c/14f, so I'm probably A-OK just leaving it on LPR all winter.
Given the poor temperature calibration Energica bikes exhibit it would be foolish IMO to invoke LPR mode if one knows temperatures will dip below freezing. Anode plating results at any charge rate which permanently depletes lithium available.
Fashion a thermostat that activates above freezing that enables the charger to operate in conjunction to LPR mode would be the better approach, IMO.
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If I lived in a place that freezes, I'd bring the bike into the house. Think about it; no gas/oil fumes, no reason not to. I've already done it when I got my bike and it was too hot outside to want to work on it.
Actually if I lived in a place that freezes I'd put the bike in a U-haul, with my other stuff and get the hell out of there, but still...
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Actually if I lived in a place that freezes I'd put the bike in a U-haul, with my other stuff and get the hell out of there, but still...
Not to threadjack, but this. So much this ^^^
My Dad keeps talking about his paid off house that will be mine some day...In Akron Ohio. I keep telling him to mortgage the shit out of it and go with hookers and blow till he goes out with a smile. Use that money to have the time of his life for as much of his lifetime there is because......
When he kicks it I'm selling it for a nickel and keeping my happy ass on the west coast. Unless climate change goes waaaaayyy sideways,, I will die without ever having shoveled another driveway, so help me god!!
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Charging or not, if the batteries get cold and freeze that will probably F them up pretty good. THink expanding water, plates cracking, stuff like that happening to them.
Get a U haul or a small shed, put a little space heater in it to keep the temp at 40 degrees and keep bike in there and then charge if you must. Just an idea.
Aaron
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the manual is a little schizophrenic in this area...
It recommends LPR, but if you cannot, recommends charging to 100% at least once a month (I'm in the don't store it there camp like others mentioned), but then also recommends against charging below freezing.
I did email out to CA and the response I got was they are pretty sure the BMS will not allow charging below 10c/14f, so I'm probably A-OK just leaving it on LPR all winter.
Ummm...10C isn't 14F....10C is actually 50F.
Smithy.
-10C ... dropped the dash
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Charging or not, if the batteries get cold and freeze that will probably F them up pretty good. THink expanding water, plates cracking, stuff like that happening to them.
Get a U haul or a small shed, put a little space heater in it to keep the temp at 40 degrees and keep bike in there and then charge if you must. Just an idea.
Aaron
Manual says the bike can be operated down to -20C/-4F (which I sure as hell ain't gonna do). This is in line with other LiIon rules of thumb, can discharge down to 0F but not charge below freezing.
Regardless, the garage, even unheated, will rarely get that cold unless we have a severe multi day cold snap (-10F lows and never getting above 0, rare to get more than 3-4 days like that in a winter here but it does happen...)
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I did email out to CA and the response I got was they are pretty sure the BMS will not allow charging below 10c/14f, so I'm probably A-OK just leaving it on LPR all winter.
Given the poor temperature calibration Energica bikes exhibit it would be foolish IMO to invoke LPR mode if one knows temperatures will dip below freezing. Anode plating results at any charge rate which permanently depletes lithium available.
Fashion a thermostat that activates above freezing that enables the charger to operate in conjunction to LPR mode would be the better approach, IMO.
Yeah, this is what I am still worried about as everything says charging LiIon below freezing is bad.
Anyway, ordered an Amazon Echo dot on black friday for a whopping $22. and have a couple spare smart plugs lying around already. 5 minutes to create a routine and bob's your uncle.
The newer dots have a temperature sensor in them which makes for a very easy and cheap plug/play solution, and it plays music!
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My garage is unheated and it gets below freezing in the winter around here all the time.
I put the bike on a rear stand, and turn the bike on to run mode, kickstand up, and let it sit and get the electrons flowing warming the battery a bit.
At the same time, I use a hair dryer positioned to blow against the battery for about an hour before charging and it does the job well enough to start the charging process.
I start the charge at 5 amps for a half hour to further warm the battery, then go to the full 15Amp level 2.
Works.
I ride with full body heated gear. If you can snowmobile in the winter and deal with the cold, why not enjoy motorcycling! :)
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You can monitor the battery temps from the engineering screen.
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My garage is unheated and it gets below freezing in the winter around here all the time.
I put the bike on a rear stand, and turn the bike on to run mode, kickstand up, and let it sit and get the electrons flowing warming the battery a bit.
At the same time, I use a hair dryer positioned to blow against the battery for about an hour before charging and it does the job well enough to start the charging process.
I start the charge at 5 amps for a half hour to further warm the battery, then go to the full 15Amp level 2.
Works.
I ride with full body heated gear. If you can snowmobile in the winter and deal with the cold, why not enjoy motorcycling! :)
@Pard
What Firmware and what year is your bike, you have the latest model? You are getting 57Ah on a ice cold battery, I am only getting 50Ah on a semi-cold battery and 55Ah on a warm battery.
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2023 Rebelle RS version 42 (not going to risk a firmware update yet)
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Then they apparently increased the capacity with the latest battery. Thanks
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Im getting my bike out of the shop today from some work being done on it. God I hope they didn't give me a courtesy update to the firmware. Was having no problems before. Not that there is anything wrong with the new, I honestly dunno but why fix what ain't broke......Let's see
Aaron
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My garage is unheated and it gets below freezing in the winter around here all the time.
I put the bike on a rear stand, and turn the bike on to run mode, kickstand up, and let it sit and get the electrons flowing warming the battery a bit.
At the same time, I use a hair dryer positioned to blow against the battery for about an hour before charging and it does the job well enough to start the charging process.
I start the charge at 5 amps for a half hour to further warm the battery, then go to the full 15Amp level 2.
Works.
I ride with full body heated gear. If you can snowmobile in the winter and deal with the cold, why not enjoy motorcycling! :)
Does your bike refuse to charge until it is warm enough, or are you proactively waiting to start the charge until it's warmed up?
I have an Experia, and as far as I know, it does not have the engineering screen. I could probably get to battery temp via the OBD port if I wanted to however.
Anyway, after a couple of days with lows down to 14F overnight, its a balmy 42F out there now, so I pulled the bike out of the garage to warm up in the sun a little before heading to a client meeting this afternoon. First time I've seen the battery indicator blue on this bike. I may turn it on and let it set for a little bit to get the electrons flowing... thanks for the insight on that.
Once winter sets in proper, we get a lot of salt residue on the roads, so it's going to be put away for good pretty soon unit the spring rains wash all that crap away.
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Proactive. I preheat it when I know the battery is not supposed to be able to charge. I have never actually tested to see if the bike will not charge. Makes sense to me to heat it up a bit regardless to help the charging process proceed more efficiently.
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A few things to keep in mind.
The temperature is being measured internally too, not just at the surface.
The battery has a fairly large thermal mass so it will take a bit to get both cold, and warm again.
Being in the sun will help it.
Does energica have heaters in their batteries like some of the cars do or not?
Aaron
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I have never seen any reference to Energica batteries having internal warmers. They are designed for warm weather use, so am sure that never was even a consideration.
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Just keep in in LPR. But it will not charge when it is too cold, as the BMS will automatically prevent the charging until it is warm enough to safely charge.
Just don't expect any charge when below 40°F or (below around 4°C).
As long as it gets above those temps once in a while, all should l be fine in the LPR mode all winter long.
-Don- Reno, NV
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Cannot confirm that.
LPR'ed by bike standing in open carport two weeks ago at 81 %SOC when the weather turned nasty with subzero temperatures at night and not much above zero during the day.
Checked after a week, SOC was down to 77 % with blue battery symbol. When I came home yesterday ( 2 °C) I heard the charger fan running. According to my counter, approx. 1 kWh were sucked in the end.
So, I doubt that the charging depends on the temperature. If it should get below -10 °C, I will unplug the bike to be safe.
BTW I looked for some trace heating pads to put on the bike. In the end you just need a few Watt to keep the battery above 0 °C, like with water ducting.
Apparently there are heating pads available for relatively small money which are used for gardening or for fish tanks with about 60 W power. Connected to a time switch that should do the trick.
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I ride year round (hooray for battery-heated gear!) so I'll tell you what I do and you can decide if it would work for you:
1) Pet store chains use rectangular pieces of bubble foil insulation as packing material and the stores just throw it away. Go to one and ask the manager if they can hold on to about 20 pieces for you to come pick up and they'll give it to you for free. Use this and a bunch of duct tape to build a shell that fits over your bike when parked.
2) Buy an electric throw blanket. They're around $30 on Amazon.
3) Buy a thermocouple-controlled outlet. The Inkbird ITC-308 is $35 on Amazon
4) Place temperature probe of thermocouple close to battery. Set thermocouple to turn on at 35 degrees.
5) Plug electric throw into "heating" plug on thermocouple. Drape electric throw over battery. Feel free to toss another blanket or two over the bike.
6) Cover bike with insulated shell
7) Charge as normal
A little paranoia won't hurt. When it's really cold, check the temperature display on the thermocouple every so often to make sure that the blanket is able to keep the battery above freezing
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Love it! @hotsauce my kind of enthusiast!
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Cannot confirm that.
LPR'ed by bike standing in open carport two weeks ago at 81 %SOC when the weather turned nasty with subzero temperatures at night and not much above zero during the day.
Checked after a week, SOC was down to 77 % with blue battery symbol. When I came home yesterday ( 2 °C) I heard the charger fan running.
It is possible that the charging will not shut down until 0° C. But I do know many lith batteries shut down a little above this temp to be safe. Since you were at 2° C, the BMS may have still accepted the charge.
But of course, disconnecting is fine. I would also want to disconnect before it got to 0°C if the BMS is still allowing it to charge. Always better to be safe than sorry.
-Don- Reno, NV
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@hotsauce excellent suggestion.
I do something similar with my plants outside when it gets frosty and the ones who can't take the frost need help.
Those little christmas tree lights, the incandescent ones, are a few watts each bulb, I will wrap the strand of lights around the tree, then wrap a blanket, or in my case I use burlap bags since I get 100's of them with my mail order coffee business, around the lights and the tree. This keeps the lights in place and helps keep the heat in.
If one would take a strand of lights wrap it around the battery a few times, and shit, you would wrap it with a few trash bags taped or bungee'd together it would probably put out just enough heat to keep the battery happy and chargeable. Just another cheap way to heat things that need heating.
In a garage the blanket would work, and hopefully rats / mice don't make a home of it and chew the wires and start a fire. The plastic bags are good outside so that moisture / rain don't soak them and wreck them like it would with cloth covers.
Another idea, cover the bike with a blanked as you said, or a plastic sheet, and put a 40 watt or a 60 watt light bulb under it inside the blanket. IF you are worried about fire, put it inside an empty coffee can. the heat from the bulb will keep the bike warm. We do this when motors meg out too low to help dry the windings out a bit, we'll throw a bulb in the rotor hole,cover the ends and let it stew for a few days, re megger it and then put it back together and run.
aaron
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You guys are pretty hardcore. I just pay a premium to live in a very temperate climate. But since we're on the subject of charging issues. I have seen many members talk about the cell balance. Like they know how many millivolts discrepancy the individual cells have.
Can that information be gotten on an Experia without special tools?
Also, now that I've said how pleasant the year round weather is here....this morning's commute through a brief biblical level, end-of-days stormagedden was fine. The Experia handled riding in a downpour, meeting the bow waves of passing trucks, and riding through significant amounts of standing water at significant speeds with no problems.
The more I ride this bike the more I love it.
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You guys are pretty hardcore. I just pay a premium to live in a very temperate climate. But since we're on the subject of charging issues. I have seen many members talk about the cell balance. Like they know how many millivolts discrepancy the individual cells have.
Can that information be gotten on an Experia without special tools?
Also, now that I've said how pleasant the year round weather is here....this morning's commute through a brief biblical level, end-of-days stormagedden was fine. The Experia handled riding in a downpour, meeting the bow waves of passing trucks, and riding through significant amounts of standing water at significant speeds with no problems.
The more I ride this bike the more I love it.
I use a bluetooth obd reader and the Hans C. app on my phone to get the balance level in mv's. Not really a "special" tool, just something I picked up on amazon for a few dollars.
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4 F overnight, sunny in the teens today.
Turn on the Rebelle which was at around 70% SOC per main display as of 2 days ago, and now it reads 39% with a message to run the battery down to zero and charge to 100% to align the BMS.
Engineering screen shows 64% SOC with 3.9V on the cells.
First time I ever saw the two SOC indicator sources diverge like that.
Must be due to the cold.
Heating up the battery in the sun and with a hair dryer blowing on it to get it above freezing, then will charge it.
EDIT:
Main display jumped to 43% within minutes of heating up the bike, no charge applied yet, just heat...
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Not sure what the temp display indicates by the split number.
Not sure what the SOC indications are read from.
As the battery is being warmed, the TCAH/TCSOC which writes to the the main display SOC indicator, is increasing and getting closer to the BMS SOC value.
Seems the very cold temps are the cause of the wide divergence and that divergence triggers the message to drain and charge to 100%.
After warming up the battery into the green, that divergence and message disappeared.
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Hey guys, let me give you some insight here on that. @Pard
Ive seen the same thing on the track with my bike and you have to be careful about what you see, what you do, as it can raise hell with you if not.
Picture a battery case thats several batteries deep..... gotit...
Now, batteries run off a chemical reaction, the colder it is, the slower they go, and the less voltage will be at terminals. Lithium batteries have an added 'issue' of around freezing they want to not really do much at all, they want to about stop producing.
Key take away, lower temp, lower cell voltage.
Now, you let your bike set outside all night, wake up the next morning, it's 26 fucking degrees out !! your bike is covered with frost !! Your battery percentage is wonky... why? You have it up when you put her to bed last night.
The battery case is made of ALUMINUM, which can get just as cold as the outside temperature.
Remember now, the batteries are several DEEP.
So what is happening is, the outer batteries, which are next to the walls of the case are around 28 degrees, they are about ambient temperature.. while the INNER batteries in the core may still be sitting at 60 degrees or so, because they ARE inside and protected thru several layers of other batteries for the heat to get out.
Your BMS may not be measuring the TEMPERATURE of each battery to do it's calculations of state of charge, so it may see only one or two temps, not 162 temps, or however many batteries you have. It sees the 60 degree battery at 3.6 volts and the 28 degree battery at 3.42 volts NOT knowing the HUGE temperature difference between them, and goes holy shit, this thing is whacked !! You get gross out of balance errors etc etc, and it may want you to charge it or do other crazy things to try to 'fix' the situation. That complete re alignment is the BMS saying, under normal circumstances it should have NEVER gotten this bad, something must have changed, let's do a FULL realignment and start from zero to set a new baseline. Again it does NOT know your have temperature spans of 40 degrees across your battery pack! Please do NOT do this until you have balanced the battery TEMPERATURE FIRST.
charging / discharging a battery pack with wonky temp excursions can cause problems, because when the batteries now warm back up, the voltage climbs and viola, now they are OVER charged and it wants to burn off the excess.
What I normally do on my bike is Ill run an easy run on the track to get some current flow thru the batteries, that warms them all up and gets the temperaturs a bit closer to each other, PLUS gets it out of the basement shutdown zone. See a 40 degree difference at say 120 degrees to 80 degrees is not that huge a deal, they are way up in the operating / production range, that same diff down around freezing is HUGE because you are near the shutdown zone and it has a far more profound affect.
If you Do decide to charge it you may see oddball things as the batteries charge and it tries to 'fix' what really is not a problem and you may see wild swings in charge current from like 0 amp to 24 amps !! as it's trying to 'fix' the voltages. Have to remember, even though the voltage was a bit low, that battery WAS still charged, so putting more in it's going to shoot up fast, hence the wild amp swings.
Freezing temps do shitty things to batteries, especially lithium. Before you go doing any panic mode actions or crazy charging schemes, get the batteries warmed up a bit and most importantly EVENLY warmed up so ALL the cells are as close as possible to same temp.
Having a small heater blowing on the bike can help a LOT. Even though you may still have a bit of a temp excursion across the entire battery, having it at 50 degrees .vs. 30 degrees means a TON.... because freezing means so much to shutting that battery down.
Don't panic, warm the bike up, warm the battery up, . remember even if it sat overnight in your garage, the temp still may have swung 40 degrees, those inner batteries may NOT have felt that cold yet! Take her for a spin around the block. Ride it 5 or 6 miles at an easy speed. (easy in my case means NOT trying to go from 0 to 100 in 5 seconds :D Get the temps evened out a bit then do your charge if needed.
Aaron
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Aaron, excellent analysis.
Thank you.
Indeed, when the battery was brought up to normal operating tempertures, throughout the pack, the numbers aligned.
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If anyone is interested to know, how regularly the bike checks itself, I have a smart plug installed while on LPR modus (bad weather spell here now).
In the end it’s nearly on daily basis.
The bike draws sometimes about 0.1 kWh, sometimes 0.0.
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Interesting! Thanks @jotjotde
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jojo, I have someting similar installed but it's on the entire house. I have it to the point where it can pretty much tell me exactly WHAT turned on and for how long. It's really amazing the info you can get from those things. I have had one tell me of impending failures on a refrigerator, which saved me I can't say how many hundreds of dollars in lost food if I didn't catch it. It's also very educational to see exactly how much something really does consume and use and how often! and to see how something as simple as changing a gasket on a fridge door can cut the electrical use down to half.
So, looking at your graph, it does what? comes on for a minute or so, does a quick top off on the battery and then shuts back off? If so, IMO that's probably topping off that little bit it drew off keeping the 12 volt monitoring stuff alive.
Aaron
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The device is just a 6 Euro device I got at aliexpress operating on the free-of-charge Tuya app and I originally wanted it to control my outdoor lighting which it does surprisingly well.
Besides the data shown it does not record much more.
We are just a 2 person household, so I did not install anything more sophisticated yet.
The bike seems to have switched to a 2-day check interval now. Three days ago SOC was down to 76%, so I agree that it’s just a few minutes checking and topping off a bit
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@jotjotde Good information. Thanks for sharing. It's the first winter that I have my SS9+RS constantly hooked up the the charger running LPR. So far, it's keeping the 80% SOC perfectly.
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alsmot 8 months in unheated metal garage - not plugged - lost 1% of SoC
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alsmot 8 months in unheated metal garage - not plugged - lost 1% of SoC
That is astonishing. I would have thought the SOC loss would be higher.
Here's an update of LPR over 26 days so far. My Ribelle stands outside in a carport. We had mostly cold to subfreezing temperatures.
When I put her in LPR mode at 30 % SOC, the bike charged 9.23 kWh (to assumed 80 % SOC).
The bike woke up every 1-2 days, I could not see a regular pattern. Power consumption was between 0.0 and maximum 0.56 kWh. Total consumption over this period was 1.51 kWh.
When I checked yesterday, SOC was 76 %.
Drove the bike down to 20 % and recharged to 80 % consuming 11.27 kWh.
So roughly, the bike lost (consumed) power worth of 10-12 % SOC over 26 days, probably that much because of the regular checks.
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probably even not 1% - bcoz I left it on 1st JUNE 2024 (temperature was about 25*C then) and last time was about 0-5*C
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That seems awful high.
When I broke my foot earlier last year I was down for a few months, and didn't put the bike in LPR I just left it there really, and when I came back months later it was like 86 percent. I don't remember where I put it in at, but typically my Ribelle Id max charge about 96 percent, hitting 100 once a month for balance. It may turn itself on and off a few times to check on it's self but that's only for a little bit and the electronics on it don't draw that much power at all. To be losing kilowatts, hmm, don't think the batteries even self discharge that much. Interesting.
Was there a temp diff between when you put it in .vs. take it out.
If you start it at like 90 percent and it's at say 90 degrees, then check it two weeks later and it's 40 degrees, it's going to show a pretty big drop because of the temp difference, especially if the battery has not balanced out temp wise.
id see this at the track. id be racing and put her to bed with like 90 percent charge, and the batt temp is probably 100 degrees because I ran the hell out of it. then next morning it's 38 degrees out and the soc is like 74 percent and it wants a balance charge. Id be like OOF, because i KNOW the damned thing did not lose 15 percent overnight. Once I ran a session or two and got the temps evened out it settled out and behaved again.
Id make a point of NOT trying to charge it or balance it if it was in that much of a thermal transient, that will really throw a wrench into things and you can seriously whack out your battery balance if you do try to balance it with a big gradient across them.
Aaron