Conditioning charge

Davn

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Well not sure if I've actually done a conditioning charge or not?
Came back from a holiday trip with 13% charge remaining, put it on the granny charger for 24hrs to 100%
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As long as it was left charging when it reached the 100% then I would say yes.

Mine recently took about 30 minutes to balance after it reached 100%

I do mine monthly (not strictly necessary)

Make sure you reset your GOM for an up to date figure.

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Unfortunately the app only shows the received power to 1 decimal place so any power below 100W is not shown. It is better to wait until the app shows charging has stopped ie it has the Start Charging button displayed. Or wait until the green port lights go out.

The driver's display has 2 decimal places so can give a more accurate reading but even then at 0.00kW the port lights are still green and the driver's display is still animated and shows 'AC Charging rather than 'Charging Complete'. See attached photo:

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Well not sure if I've actually done a conditioning charge or not?
Came back from a holiday trip with 13% charge remaining, put it on the granny charger for 24hrs to 100%
If your goal was to recalculate battery capacity and SoH then probably not as it’s recommended to go below 10% to start the process?
 
When carrying out a balance charge at either 80% or 100% (Long Range), the car typically takes anywhere between five and thirty minutes, but I have seen it take over two hours.
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What are the symptoms if you never ever do it ?
My useage has fallen through the floor since buying the car - 1 x 500+ mile round trip in March just after I picked it up and another 1,500+ in August planned , but other than that 10-50 miles a week max - so glad I went for the LR ? !!
I never intentionally 'balanced' my previous EV, Kia Soul, 30,kwh, which I owned for 4 years and 45k miles. I think it's the same battery chemistry and by the time I traded it in it was still 100% soh and all cells looking good .

With MG at home I use Octopus IG OCPP charging via a Wallbox charger or solar via domestic battery.
Solar via battery wouldn't complete a 10-100% + charge in one cycle ( or 2, 3, or 4 I suspect and certainly not mid-winter) and Octopus IG would but will stop at 100% I believe and not complete the balance cycle (?).
Due to v. low useage I believe I need to use Octopus at least once a month to maintain IG rates which are useful for other stuff ( domestic battery / ashp / winter ) and would like to benefit from all the free solar fairy dust at the moment.

So - when to fit in a balance cycle if one is really required?
 
I attempted to do one of these balance charges yesterday after reading about it on this site.

Low enough?
The starting charge was 11% so does that mean it was not low enough?

Cut-offs
Also, the charger cut off once and the car cut itself off as well (I had set up a no-charge rule during the peak period, but it wasn't full then).

The charge just seemed to cut off when it got to 100%. I tried to restart the charge but it went on full for a few seconds and then stopped.

Failed attempt?
So does that mean that I have still never managed to do a balancing job?

How could I check this? The ISmart app seems to give very little information.

Perhaps I can try again next month after returning from holiday.
 
With the SE SR then starting SoC below 10% is better, 5% better still ... the LFP battery has a very flat voltage curve, with a sharp rise at very high SoC and a sharp drop at very low SoC. The recommendation is to reach the low SoC, leave the car for an hour, then charge on a home EVSE (e.g. 7kW wall box) and let it reach 100% SoC and balance. This allows the BMS to recalibrate the charge/discharge curve for the current state of the battery pack.

If the full charge and balance failed, make sure that there are no schedules set in the car or the iSmart app or the EVSE. If you're on a time of day reduced tariff, turn off any restrictions whilst doing this charge ... yes it may cost you a wee bit more to charge, but we're talking a few quid only.
 
It is not clear if all EVSEs cope well with balancing as the act can involve very low and variable power levels. I do not yet have a 7kW charger so use the granny charger which does well. If you want to be sure the car is balancing you must monitor the power after 100% and see it go up and down for some time after that.
 
With the SE SR then starting SoC below 10% is better, 5% better still ... the LFP battery has a very flat voltage curve, with a sharp rise at very high SoC and a sharp drop at very low SoC. The recommendation is to reach the low SoC, leave the car for an hour, then charge on a home EVSE (e.g. 7kW wall box) and let it reach 100% SoC and balance. This allows the BMS to recalibrate the charge/discharge curve for the current state of the battery pack.

If the full charge and balance failed, make sure that there are no schedules set in the car or the iSmart app or the EVSE. If you're on a time of day reduced tariff, turn off any restrictions whilst doing this charge ... yes it may cost you a wee bit more to charge, but we're talking a few quid only.
Thanks, I did restart it when I realised the battery wasn't full by 4pm after all - I thought I had timed it really cleverly to be finished by 4pm but I forgot that it would be ending at 4pm because of the settings I had included.

I think I wasn't taking account of charging losses - 7.3kW on my Givenergy app seemed to be about 6.4kW according to ISmart when I checked at one point.

Overall, then, after restarting a second time we did end up paying peak rate power in order to achieve a balancing that perhaps didn't work. :rolleyes:

@Martinonline 's comment about the EVSE capability is a point to consider - perhaps I will contact Givenergy about this.

Question: Could you switch to the granny charger for the last bit of the charge after doing most of the job with the EVSE? Or would that undermine the process?
 
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It doesn’t matter when you start the charge or what speed the charge is, granny, fast, rapid, as all charge rates will will slow to the same speed towards the end of charging and once you hit the 100% will go into balance mode Leave it charging until the charge stops and the battery management system will have checked accordingly across the cells moving electrons from higher voltage cell groups to lower ones until all are within the 4.1V parameters. Don’t worry about it the BMS sorts it out, I have Bluetooth connectivity with the battery packs I build so can custom set up and monitor the BMS from my phone, most systems will be allowing the lithium cells to balance a bit passively too.
 
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For the 10-100% routine it is suggested to ensure that this happens in one shot. I think @Coulomb gave an explanation elsewhere as to why.

Note: the onboard charger is rated to 6.6kW, so seeing 6.4kW in the app is quite normal ... I see that on mine, and 7.2kW in my Wallbox app.
 
If it shuts off quickly once at 100% it is balanced with in parameters already, regularly charging to 100% will help reduce the time needed to balance at the top end although it is managed through discharge and charge also not just at the top.
 
It is not clear if all EVSEs cope well with balancing as the act can involve very low and variable power levels. I do not yet have a 7kW charger so use the granny charger which does well. If you want to be sure the car is balancing you must monitor the power after 100% and see it go up and down for some time after that.
I've used the granny charger for 18mths and 26k miles with no issue
 
For the 10-100% routine it is suggested to ensure that this happens in one shot. I think @Coulomb gave an explanation elsewhere as to why.
Actually, I really don't know about that now, whether I said one way or the other previously. I suppose it depends on exactly how the BMS firmware is written, but now I'm thinking that most likely, interruptions to the charge should make little if any difference.

Thinking specifically about the LFP chemistry, which at present means the Standard Range models for MGs. When the BMS sees low battery voltage, it can make whatever correction to its estimates that it sees fit, and similarly at the top end. It doesn't have much to do while in the middle State of Charge regions.

For the NMC batteries, it could be adjusting its estimates all the time, but it probably restricts itself to regular adjustments, say once per day.

For both chemistries, it has to take into account temperature and charge/discharge history, so maybe it sets a flag at a certain time, and if it happens to be charging or discharging at that time, or in the last hour or two, then set another reminder for an hour or two later to check again. I wonder what happens with taxis and the like, which might rarely have several hours when not charging or discharging. Presumably it just does its job in the rare quiet periods, and that's probably enough to estimate the state of health well enough.

None of this seems to be particularly sensitive to interruptions, it seems to me now. But this is just my speculation; I'd be happy to hear from anyone who knows more.

The above was all about estimating state of health, i.e. the battery's present total capacity. Estimating state of charge (instantaneous capacity remaining right now) is probably different.
 

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