Charging and amount of power used

[Grumpy-b]

Hi all
I need to quickly get a good idea of the distance that one can travel and the subsequent percentage charge left to help plan a longer journey at the end of the month. I dont have a great spread of distances I cover so if any of you with a decent range on your Blingo (About 40miles to say 25%) could log your start % finish % and miles covered, and either put them here or PM me . I will get them in a spreadsheet and graphed. I do have some data but its in the 20mile and 60 to 70% range or 40 miles and 20 to 30% range. I will make this available to others as well,
On the charge side if any of you have times that it takes to go from a start % to a finish % that would be good, partial charges are especially good.

If you have batteries that are not delivering reasonable miles by all means let me have your data, but do tell me your packs are failing. I will log these separately.

Thanks
Grumpy-b

[ChrisB]

Must admit I dont keep those sort of detailed records.
I find I regularly get 34miles to about 47% or there abouts, but it does really depend on weather conditions and road type, hills etc.
As for recharge times its about 14% per hour, this however doesnt take into account any equilisation timings, and this can seem to make quite a difference to the charge, i.e if you carry out a partial charge from 50% to 75% and then discharge back to 50% and measure the distance it seems to work out a lot less than if you started at 100% and then discharged to 75% and then measured the distance to 50% from there. If you get what I mean.

Also if you carry out several partial charges in succession this instigates a equilisation charge which if not allowed to carry out will then start to add extra hours of charging to the next charge cycle, I discovered this after doing a set of short hops in a day and getting a charge at each one for an hour or so, once home it then took something like 15hrs to complete a charge cycle fully OK so most of the time it was only charging at 5 amps but it did take an age.

What sort of distance are you needing to cover ?

ChrisB

[Grumpy-b]

We are doing a two charge run from North of Colchester, just over halfway to norwich, for about a 3 hr charge, then on to Norwich for another 2 to 3 hr charge to ultimately end up in Holt. Here we have a holiday let with its own on site parking and permission to charge up. No mean feat in North Norfolk where parking is often way away from the houses. Planning stops where we can do something or feed ourselves. Looking good so far. Then each day we will go to various North Norfolk attractions either on a charge or top up. Still planning these stops. Then of course a week later doing the reverse trip.
What I am trying to do is to hone my length of time between partial charges, and to what percentages of charge. With a 5 year old child it makes a lot of difference between being human and being a crazy beast if he is not fed on time.
Apart from this its useful to work out a chart of range from any mileage and % of charge, and some idea of time to charge to a given percentage.

Its great driving electric!! New challenges, every day.

Grumpy-b

[ChrisB]

Must admit I think your taking it to the extreme

For me that sort of trip it would be time to dig out the oil burner, the Berlingo isnt really designed for those runs really I feel.

Its a 50miler and a 7hr recharge vehicle really

But good luck


ChrisB

[timpootle]

Info from 2007. Haven't got anything newer. 11 entries.

http://timpootle.livejournal.com/tag/datapoint

E.G.

Range:47.9 miles
Light on: 8%
Plugged in at: 5%
Full charge: 19.29 kWh

[Grumpy-b]

Ever since we have had the vehicles we have done quite a lot of travelling with partial recharging. 72 mile round trip foir work being a not irregular trip. With one or two top ups.
With the longer trips and hills and dual carriageways we have never really been able to do much more than 40 miles. Best so far was 42and a bit. Thats taking it down to 20% I dont tend to go much lower than that. My wife has taken the multispace down to 15% a few times, but its a bit more hungry being heavier.

Its a great opportunity to get more places taking on board the need for charging facilities, lots of positive responses so far.

Grumpy-b

[Grumpy-b]

Well the holiday went ahead. Home to Holt north norfolk. 79 miles. Set off at just after 8am.Stop one at a place called Thornham walks, near to Eye/Diss. Two adults and a 5 year old, so distraction is important as is food. They knindly allowed us to charge from the shed where they keep their mobility scooters. As the name suggests they have a load of walking routes around the parkland and two small eating venues. The 29 miles (49%) was followed by just over two hours charging, then at 90+% off to Norwich. Lunch and 26 miles (41%)and three hours later we set off again at just over 90%. 24 miles later we got to holt with 40% left, just after 4pm.
The cottage was picked because it had its own parking and we had to put the charge lead either out the front door or through the bedroom window. So it worked Ok. In the week we either did stuff within our range, or pre arranged a charge.One other charge location was a place called Bewilderwood, agreat place for kids to climb and explore nr Wroxham, here they let us plug into a power point in a shed. Our other point of charge was Blickling hall a national trust property, who have 13amp sockets at their Disabled parking , which they alowed us to use. The home trip was almost a reverse of day one, except we had a battery failure on Thursday, that now can put the light on at about 30miles at the 50% point. So after getting to Norwich the other two got the train, and I charged each time to 100%. Also needed serious power saving driving through country lanes, but finally got home just after 5pm.Everyone has been really helpful, and if we hadnt had another cell go wobbly then it would have been fairly stress free. It took a lot of preparation before though.
Overall week just over 350 miles, a normal week for us is about 250 miles.
What did we learn.
Slow charging is a pain. You have to have some distraction and food/ drink, especially if small people are involved. People still consider electric vehicles as a novelty so they are more than happy to help. The biggest excuses for not allowing us to charge from venues were health and safety, we cant have people using power cables , someone might trip over them. Very few places have outside power points, and very few rural campsites have power hook ups.
Overall I would consider doing it again, if it wasnt for the SAFT cells that are starting to show their age. I changed one cell before we left, and others in the weeks before, my Van has now got two duff cells and also others in the last few weeks.
If it wasnt for the cost I would go lithium, and so the search is on for a set of Lithium cells for both vehicles.
I recently had a quote from Valence, and they kindly offered me two sets at the amazing deal of $56,000, taxes and VAT excluded. The joke is they are still probably cheaper than SAFT cells.
Grumpy-b, Mrs Grumpy-b, and Junior Grumpy-b

[ChrisB]

Well done Grumps a true EV'er

Sorry to hear you lost a cell, thats the trouble now, the poor old Bingo cells are tapping on a bit and with all the will in the world they aint going to last forever

I'm hoping mine last long enough to see the leaf drop in price .........considerably

ChrisB

[timpootle]

...I recently had a quote from Valence, and they kindly offered me two sets at the amazing deal of $56,000, taxes and VAT excluded. The joke is they are still probably cheaper than SAFT cells.

What capacity was that for, Grumpy? A good deal for 800Ah/162v, bad deal for 100Ah/162v.

[Grumpy-b]

They are just over 100amp. When I pointed out I could buy two new Nissans for the same price once I had paid taxes etc, they didnt bite. They only see their market as being a commercial user oem one. And as such they probably make a better overall deal as they have a lot of technical advantages, not least seems to be their life expectancy, and they dont go up in smoke if penetrated. So I guess thats their market.
I am still looking at the Valence idea, as I may have access to some batteries, I already have six as a sample waiting for me to collect them. Again these were from a now defunct commercial enterprise. (Supposedly)
But $28000 per vehicle at new cost is just crazy. Whenn pushed they did offer me some old stock old verions at a lower price, but they were still in the US and so would still have been excessive to get to the UK.

Now what I want is a set of cells from Nissan, supposedly they are making them cheaply, and even in the UK , well sunderland.

Grumpy-b