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[Crissa]

I suppose it's just a difference of what ambient temperature you expect to be charging at.  Zero assumes overnight charging, so you'd usually want to retain the waste heat for the battery array then.  But in the SR/F the assumed day charging, so they put fins on the battery.

-Crissa

[MVetter]

Explain how Zero's method is superior.

[Crissa]

Explain the reality you live where battery charging is not optimal at a temperature higher than the nominal average overnight temperature for when most of their customers live.

-Crissa

[MVetter]

You NEVER want to dump waste heat onto “a side” of the battery. Ever. If you’re going to heat the battery, do it evenly. Never bake a side. Detrimental to the battery health.

Even Zero engineers refer to the Calex as a “thermal nightmare”. This is battery 101.

[Crissa]

...Which is of course, perpendicular to the point I made.

Fun.

-Crissa

[MVetter]

No. You do not want to retain waste heat on the battery. You are talking nonsense.

[Crissa]

I still notice you've not answered my original point.

Why do you suppose that you're having this one sided argument?  Go to the beach or something.  They're open today.

-Crissa

[Froginhoo]

You mean... like Zero does it with the Calex directly mounted to the battery as a heat sink on all S/DS model bikes?

The bellypan we designed specifically had the hot side of the chargers facing AWAY from the battery. The pan was the heat sink.

Sorry MVetter, didn’t mean to offend someone. How many waste heat does Zeros Calex charger produce? The 1,3kW charger on my 2016 SR may had ~90W. A 3kW probably around 250W. Not nice but necessary. 750W on the other hand is a number. I‘m shure you put a lot of thoughts into it and measured the heat transported to the battery. Heat can move not only by convection but also by conduction and radiation. Meaning to say it‘ll find it’s way to heat up the battery. It’s (quite a lot) additional heat besides heat from charging, air temperature, solar radiation and heat that is already inside the battery from riding (hard).
I know that installation space is something that one doesn’t find easily on a motorcycle and no one else figured how to mount 9,9 kW on a zero for now. But in the end it is heat that one may wouldn’t want to have underneath the battery.
To make things clear: This is theory! The bike won‘t burn up and I doubt you could even specify the degradation of the battery by giving it „this bit of extra heat“. But it’s physics and the battery won’t like it very much.

[MVetter]

I don’t think you have any idea just how hot the calex gets while it bakes the bottom cells for 10+ hours at a time. If you don’t believe me, PLEASE use a FLIR camera. It will be enlightening.

I don’t deal in theories about this. I have measured data.

[TheRan]

Time is an important factor. If the efficiency is the same then the total waste heat energy output will be the same whether you're charging to 100% in 1 hour or 10. The difference is the Diginow puts some (most?) of that heat into the belly pan where it can be more easily radiated to the surrounding air.

[rogerpiano]

I eventually bought a Mennekes-C13 cable and it works great.

The only problem is that, obviously, the motorcycle side cable can be extracted by any attacker and this worries me a little.

However, I am studying a way to prevent this from happening and I have some ideas to improve

[Crissa]

Why would they want to steal a specialized cable?

If they're willing to attack the bike, what would a lock do to prevent it?

-Crissa

[TheRan]

Doesn't the Mennekes connector lock into the station until the charge has been paid for? I've only used a free station so far so of course I could just pull it out after pressing the end button.

I would guess he's more worried about getting back to the bike and it's not as charged as he was expecting. If what I said above is true then someone unplugging it so they can charge instead won't happen. If someone is going to unplug it just to be an arsehole then they're probably the type to kick the connector if it was a locking one, or spit on your seat, or let down your tyres, or one of the many other ways in which bikes are vulnerable to vandalism.

[hotrob]

How many waste heat does Zeros Calex charger produce? The 1,3kW charger on my 2016 SR may had ~90W. A 3kW probably around 250W.

I've recently bought a Zero SR with a charge tank, and I downloaded the MBB logfile so that I could see the difference it made to battery temperature when using the charge tank.  It seems that using the standard 1.3kW on board charger heats the battery up more than the 6kW charge tank charger for a simllar (or greater) amount of charge.  So it seems to be better for the battery to use the faster charge tank charger.  There's a gap between the top of the battery pack and the charge tank, so even when the cooling fan is going full pelt it doesn't seem to add much heat to the battery pack, unlike the 1.3kW charger which is mounted under the battery pack and which conducts heat directly to the battery pack.  Maybe I'll use the 1.3kW charger in the colder winter months, although if it's too cold I won't be riding the bike anyway!

[rogerpiano]

Before buying the Mennekes-C13 cable I did a lot of regulatory research.

From the point of view of safety I should be in compliance with the law because I load in the so-called "Simplified Mode 3", while I have not yet understood whether there is an obligation to have the cable blocked on both sides. In fact, leaving a detachable cable in a public place leaves me a little perplexed, but maybe I worry too much.

As for the vandals, I hope that even a cable tie or something similar can perhaps dissuade them from the irresistible temptation to unplug a cable