Battery barely charged after being pluged in for 24 hours

[bluerobotkid]

Hello fellow spark owners -
I went over to the bay area ( from the Sacramento region) and left the SparK plugged in in the driveway (Outside daytime high temp 101). (9 PM temp - 95+). With the charger set at standard 8 Amps - the cars range after a 24 hour charge only went from 35 mi to 48. (Only 13 miles range in a 24 hour period.) I usually charge on the 12 Amp setting and the car does okay charging for 12-14 hours each day.

It seems in the higher temperature days we are having here in Sacramento - a level 2 charger is almost a requirement.

I don't understand why Chevy did not make the 12 Amp range standard - as charging on 8 Amps in 100 deg weather is a no go.

Any feedback would be great.

 

[cwerdna]

^^^
Because they wanted to reduce the chance of fire due to dodgy outlets, wiring and possibly even dangerous panels (e.g. Zinsco and Federal Pacific).

AFAIK, the L1 EVSE on early Chevy Volts had a button/or switch to switch 8 and 12 amp charging. On later years, they removed that and made the car default to 8 amps, making you consciously navigate the menus on the car to switch to 12. I'd presume the hope is that someone who does that knows the circuit, outlet and extension cord (if used, yeah yeah, you're not supposed to) are safe for 12 amps & 120 volts.

 

[fengshui]

It also protects against breaker trips on circuits with other usage. 12 Amps is the max continuous current for a 15 Amp circuit. If you're plugging into a friend's garage where there may be a fridge or other device on the same circuit, defaulting to 8 makes it a lot less likely to trip overnight, and not have a full charge in the morning.

 

[sTeeve]

I think you almost answered your own question. The amount of power required to cool the battery pack must be somewhere between 0.96kW and 0kW; add to that the expectation that the battery is to be charged, and 0.96kW is not enough to fulfill your expectations. (120V x 8A = 0.96kW). 13 miles of range is laughable but not unexpected, given the ambient temps described.

A fair comparison would be to duplicate these conditions except use 12A and see how much range you add.

My Leaf is not dissimilar: on a road trip in 2013 on a hot summer afternoon, we parked at a Walgreen's and plugged-in to a SEMAConnect EVSE. I did not have the capability of monitoring the output of the EVSE, but I did notice that the power going in to the battery was significantly reduced when I activated the Leaf's AC (thinking I would cool the car on a hot day so that it would be tolerable when we re-entered the vehicle). I noticed this about 15 min after I had activated the AC; range wasn't climbing the way I thought it should.

-Bob K.