How Often Do You Use the Delayed Charge Feature?

[dcs01]

I use the Delayed Charging feature every night when plugging in at home (240v) to take advantage of the Southern California Edison low rates for ultra off peak charging for EV's. At work I charge immediately on 110v and charge until I leave work. Work charging is free.

SoCal Edison has a great program specifically targeted at Electric Vehicles and they even install a new meter on your house, at no charge, if you own an EV. The new meter provides lower rates for TOU charging in the evening and at night.

Of course I have photovoltaic solar panels on my house...so I don't pay for any of the electricity I use. The TOU meter just allows me to sell electricity to SCE at peak rates during the day and buy it back in the evening and night at off peak and super off peak rates. It all washes out to a net '0' electricity bill.

[scottf200]

Same rate 24x7 here in Houston. So, never needs to be an option for us.
The argument of being a bad person by charging at any time of day is silly because you are suppose to plug in the car whenever possible to keep it happy, and when I am making trips from the house, every mile on battery is one less mile on gas, so I am always charging.

Just to be clear to all readers, you can plug in to maintain your battery temp without 'charging'. That is what I do. I plug in whenever my car is home but I still schedule it to charge the battery starting at midnight.

[Frankman]

Just to be clear to all readers, you can plug in to maintain your battery temp without 'charging'. That is what I do. I plug in whenever my car is home but I still schedule it to charge the battery starting at midnight.

I used to do this as well until I saw my Volt's green dash LED glowing solid green during the Peak electricity rate period. I have set the charging to charge Off Peak only and that is what it normally does. But now I'm wondering is the solid green LED just meant that the battery was being conditioned rather than charged. Do you know if the green LED would be solid on if electricity was only being drawn to condition the battery? I live in a very temperuate climate and when I observed this charging during Peak period the temp in my garage was not more than 80 degrees and the car was just driven in electric mode.

[scottf200]

I used to do this as well until I saw my Volt's green dash LED glowing solid green during the Peak electricity rate period. I have set the charging to charge Off Peak only and that is what it normally does. But now I'm wondering is the solid green LED just meant that the battery was being conditioned rather than charged. Do you know if the green LED would be solid on if electricity was only being drawn to condition the battery? I live in a very temperuate climate and when I observed this charging during Peak period the temp in my garage was not more than 80 degrees and the car was just driven in electric mode.

I think unless you set a delayed charging time (ie. 6am) AND/OR a charging schdule that the car will automatically charge when you plug it in. See green and red below.

The vehicle has a Charging Status Indicator (CSI) at the center of the instrument panel near the windshield. When the vehicle is plugged in and the vehicle power is off, the CSI indicates the following:

• Solid Green – Vehicle is plugged in. Battery is not fully charged. Battery is charging.
• Long Flashing Green – Vehicle is plugged in. Battery is not fully charged. Battery charging is delayed.
• Short Flashing Green – Vehicle is plugged in. Battery is fully charged.
• Solid Yellow – Vehicle is plugged in. It is normal for the CSI to turn yellow for a few seconds after plugging in a compatible charge cord. Otherwise, charging system has detected a fault and will not charge the battery. See “Charge Cord Status Indicators” later in this section.

The system may be thermally conditioning the battery during any of the states above, requiring electrical energy to be transferred to the vehicle.

If the vehicle is plugged in and vehicle power is on, the CSI will be on solid green. The same is true during a remote start if the vehicle is plugged in.

If the vehicle is plugged in and the CSI is off, a charging fault has been detected. See “Charge Cord Status Indicators” later in this section.

[Frankman]

It is set for a delayed charging time of 12 AM to 5 AM but the solid green LED has illuminated when plugged in at other times on occasion. I assumed that this was some sort of logic error on the Volt but after I read your post I was thinking that maybe the battery was being conditioned and the Volt was drawing electricity to do that, and the green LED illuminated for that reason.

[ChrisC]

I experienced some strange behavior today from my Volt. It sound similar to what was reported above so this seems like a good place to post it.

This morning I participated in a July 4th parade (bunch of EVs) out in the suburbs, and was in gas mode by the time I got back home around noon (battery empty). I plugged the car in when I got home, but didn't expect it to start pulling electricity until much later since I have delayed charging set up, AND I have a time-of-use rate plan that encourages overnight charging. But it started charging right away!

Which was actually fine with me, since I wanted it to get a little charge in case I had to run some short errands later. But it didn't make sense considering how I have my charging preferences set up.

I checked the car at 2pm to see if it was still charging, and it had just stopped. This was also actually desired behavior, because my rate plan has peak costs from 2pm to 7pm. But it still didn't make much sense that it had been charging in the first place, since the cheapest rate is overnight.

The OnStar phone app said it would resume charging at 7pm; I checked on it and indeed it did resume at 7pm. AGAIN, though, it seemed Not Quite Right per my preferences. Since I have the "Delayed - Rate & Departure" charging mode set up, I didn't expect it to start pulling electricity until much later in the evening. But I decided to let it continue just so I could observe.

A little later, say at 8pm, it has stopped charging again! At this point it had 24% SOC indicated. Was it just doing battery conditioning? Maybe, but it was definitely charging up the battery too (add % SOC).

SOOOOO, all that said, here is how I think the logic works. The Volt sees that my ultra cheap rate (called "super off peak") is only available from 11pm to 7am, which is not long enough to give me a full charge (I'm charging at 110V, Level 1, 12 Amps). So it knows that it's going to need to pull some power at the slightly more expensive rate (called "off peak"), which was available both before 2pm today and after 7pm. Instead of waiting until later tonight to pull in that initial charge, it pulled it right away, at the "off peak" rate, but just enough to get the battery partially filled up enough so that it would be able to cover the rest during the "super off peak" period tonight 11pm-7am. In other words, it calculated that it would be able to do 76% during the cheap overnight session (that's about right) and so it went ahead and pulled in 24% during the next cheapest rate period, as soon as it could, to cover the rest.

I like this behavior because it gave me a little bit of a charge right away, instead of waiting until overnight, so I'd have it in case I needed to run an errand. Recall that I was at 0% SOC indicated when I plugged in. I think it was taking that depleted battery into account when it started pulling power right away.

Another explanation would simply be that when it's early in the day (noon in this case), if you show up completely depleted it goes ahead and pulls some charge right away. But stops as soon as it A) encounters the expensive rate period, or B) reaches some minimum SOC threshold, 24% in my case.

Has anybody else experienced something like this? It's pretty rare for me to come home completely depleted, and virtually unheard of that early in the day, so I have no experience with this side of Volt operations.

As an aside to anyone who recognizes my username from the FAQ links that several people here are providing in their sigs, yes I am the author of the FAQ and yes I will be more active at this forum over the next couple weeks I just finished some personal business and will now do a round of catchup here.

[Frankman]

ChrisC, see my post regarding your experience with off peak charging using a L1 charger - http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread....9564#post59564. What you reported is consistent with what I experienced.

But the problem posted in this thread is not the same because I'm now using a L2 charger so a full battery charge can complete within the 5 hour Super Off peak window.

[ChrisC]

Thanks Frankman! I'll post over in that thread as well, and add some comments there.

[larry4pyro]

I have a solar array that keeps in the Tier 1 range, so it really doesn't matter when I charge. However, since I have a 240 volt charger I usually charge after midnight just to help out in balancing the load on the grid. One caution I would give is don't forget to turn off the delayed charging when you use a public charging station. I connected to a Blink charger yesterday only to come back 2 hours laters to find out nothing happened. Duh.

[Johnathan Vail]

I used to use the delay but there's no tiered metering in NH and more often than not I wanted to charge right away to go back out so I now charge immediately.