Recent content by MikeDabrowski2017

Been a big DIY guy most of my life been playing with solar many years and finally am in a good place. http://old.99mpg.com/blog/pluggingintothesun/ Retired so I have lots of tinker time. 50 kwh lithium pack as my home solar storage 8500 watt outback radian inverter Had a 48v 1000 AH lead acid...

A better path may be to use a solar string inverter they are used for series strings of panels they usually work in the 200 - 600 volt dc input and can therefore run directly from the HV battery and come in many output and wattage configurations. ;)

I am retired with minimal tax but wanted to take advantage of the tax credits After looking at all my options i decided that the best way to use the credit was to cash in the savings bonds that have been collecting taxable interest for most of my life. The plan worked out well, i got the full...

We just got a break in some pretty cold weather here in new England. From my observations during the coldest periods, the battery temperature seems to be maintained at a similar energy regardless of being plugged in or not. I don't drive the car every day and I leave the car plugged in to my...

Lots of cold weather data since last post has confirmed that the conditioning period is a variable that gets more frequent when it gets colder and the energy used per cycle increases in proportion to how cold it was. After the cold weather for the last couple of weeks my hilltop reserve range...

Guess we will have to see how it all unfolds.

https://youtu.be/fSkTpKa5gbo Future of batteries

If we want to save the future by reducing energy consumption we will need to build cars that live for a long time https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car An EV is so simple in comparison to an ICE that with little added cost in stainless...

I just sold my 2000 Honda insight after 17 years of ownership Brake lines, gas lines, steel suspension components, rusted bolts, and mice attacks But like electric cars the batteries are the weak link. Honda never offered a lithium pack to replace the very custom Nimh stock pack. So the old...

Have been watching the battery temperature conditioning via the juicebox data logging. Some observations: The energy used for each warm up cycle is ambient temperature dependant When it was 30f it took about .8kwh per heater cycle When in the 20f range I saw as much as 1.37 kwh The frequency...

Happy to see I’m not alone in feeling that the huge 60kwh battery in the Bolt may make a great place to dump excess solar production. We are going through a spell of weather that Is mostly cloudy so my 7500w solar array is struggling to keep my 48kwh lead acid storagebank filled Each day so EV...

The % of energy used for conditioning is a true % of energy used up to that point relative to total energy used to that point. I unplugged the evse with the battery full to the hilltop reserve but not finished the conditioning the circle graph indicated100% energy was battery conditioning and...

Ok have some data points At ambient of ~ 20 degrees f Conditioning used ~ 1kwh/ 6 hours of sitting http://99mpg.com/blog/finally-i-have-an-electric-car-chevy-bolt/ I expect it works the same when not plugged in Not as bad as I had anticipated. The in car energy graph showed no battery...

Well it looks like we will learn about cold battery conditioning first hand Friday night is supposed to get down to 13 f and Saturday night to 19 f This morning it was 29 and I saw no battery conditioning ? My evse datalogs each charge so it should clearly show if it needs conditioning and...

Stray sunlight did effect the system The CDS cells are not linear and absorb light from a wide acceptance angle, both of which make them a poor choice for this detection Have some directional photo transistors on order which should work much better.