ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: yhafting on March 13, 2016, 09:20:43 PM
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During the winter i experienced trouble when putting in the standard (1.3 kW) charging cable in my outlet. The 2015 SR tripped the circuit breaker at home (13Amp, 220V) several times while the temperature outside was a few degrees below zero Celcius outside. Now i keep my SR in a shed next to my apartment, so i expect it to be slightly warmer than outdoors, however I have no measure of the exact temperature when i experienced this.
Thankfully i was able to have it charging when the temperature got a bit higher, and today after riding the bike, there was no problem charging it afterwards.
I wonder a bit whether this is normal or not. I know Zero states that one should put the charger in while the temperature is above zero Celcius, but as the charging status drops around 1% while idling per day during the cold season (while plugged in), i am pondering whether i will need to heat it during the next winter storage or whether the battery management is not as healthy as it should be.
It seems i will need to replug the charging cable a couple of times during the winter, to avoid loosing all charge on the batteries.
The thing is- that i cannot predict when i will have more than 0 degrees celcius, and when it will be freezing during winter (although i likely will have both, i may have more than two months continous sub zero).
So far, i have not seen that the bike starts charging again after idling.
- Have anyone seen it starting up again (say if the charging level drops below some percentage- ive never had it below 50% yet)?
- - Will it blow my apartments fuse if that occurs at sub 0 degrees celcius..?
- Is it normal that the bike trips the circuit breaker at cold temperatures?
Thoughts appreciated :-)
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I kept my 2015 SR plugged in all Winter, below zero degrees or 10 degrees. No tripped breakers, battery stayed topped off. Charger doesn't into a maintenance mode after the battery is full, it kicks on every 12 hours I believe and levels out the cells, then goes back into hibernation.
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That is interesting.
Clearly my SR does not keep the battery topped off every 12 hours. (I had the battery status down well below 80% this winter. The android app reported also around 55% once, but i'm not sure that it got data from the bike at that time, as the bike said some 70 or 80% at that time.
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I have 120V at 15a service and I have never popped a breaker. I leave my bike plugged in at all times when I'm not riding it. Even when temperatures are below freezing. Last winter I didn't ride much and never saw the battery percentage below 99%. I keep my bike in an unheated (except radiated heat from cars after driving) drafty detached garage.
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I have pop the breaker while charging my 2014 zero SR. I don't recall the exact circumstances. Recently I tripped the GFCI circuit but after resetting it it worked perfectly.
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When it was well below zero for a longer period of time my 2015 SR had the same problem - battery level dropped - first to 90% and later to 80% - the charger was plugged in all the time. When the temperature went up, it was charged back to 100%. No problem with popped breaker (220V 16A).
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Is this the panel box breaker? Like a 20 Amp flip breaker? Or a ground fault type breaker at the outlet? I'm not familiar with what type of electrical service codes you have there, but the Zero onboard chargers can be overly sensitive to GFCI circuits. An easy bypass is to break the ground pin off with your thumb and it will work fine, or for any girl riders on the forum you can use a pair of pliers. Or to use a grounded plug to non gounded outlet adapter.
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Is this the panel box breaker? Like a 20 Amp flip breaker? Or a ground fault type breaker at the outlet? I'm not familiar with what type of electrical service codes you have there, but the Zero onboard chargers can be overly sensitive to GFCI circuits. An easy bypass is to break the ground pin off with your thumb and it will work fine, or for any girl riders on the forum you can use a pair of pliers. Or to use a grounded plug to non gounded outlet adapter.
Thanks for the tip!
It was not the ground fault breaker that tripped, only a standard 2-pole 13A automatic circuit breaker (easily flipped). I have not had this problem when the bike has been used (and its temperature increased somewhat). I turned of just about everything else on the same circuit when the problem occured.
It could be that the behavior Olle described goes for my bike, only with an offset slightly above 0 Celsius. It does seem that the bike charges in a healthy fashion when the bike has been used (it did not trip the breaker today either, but it was around 5 to 10C). The internal temperature indicator (shown on the dashboard) is off by several degrees anyway (10-15 C or so when the temperature is around 0 C).