Mick787 said:
Hi, this may sound a stupid question, but following the installation of a non tethered Rolec 7.2Kw 32A charging unit, is there a way to verify how quickly the car is actually charging?
Unfortunately, the i3 has no display that indicates any current charging information other than the estimated completion time. In general, the i3 doesn't display a lot of information in general that I would like to know about.
Mick787 said:
What have other owners set their car charging rate to with such a charging unit and why?
If your charging circuit has a 40 A or greater circuit breaker, there's no reason to set the charging rate to less than Max.
If your charging circuit's circuit breaker is less than 40 A, your Rolec should be configured to deliver a maximum current that won't trip your charging circuit's circuit breaker. If your Rolec cannot be configured to deliver less than its 32 A maximum current and your charging circuit's circuit breaker would trip at 32 A, you'd need to set your i3's charging power to Reduced.
Mick787 said:
We have set ours to Reduced because we don't want to risk cooking the batteries.
There's no risk of overheating your battery pack at 32 A because the battery pack's cooling system would prevent the pack from overheating. Your battery pack could be charged at 50 kW (400 V @ 125 A) without damage.
Charging at Reduced power would increase your electricity consumption (i.e., reduce charging efficiency) because of high voltage systems that consume power while charging. Charging at Reduced power increases charging time and thus the amount of energy consumed by the high voltage systems that consume power while charging.
Mick787 said:
We set the car's timer to deliver the charge during the cheap tariff time which is during the early hours of the morning.
I hope that this is working correctly for you. The i3's low-cost charging implementation has been very buggy and has not worked well in many system software versions.
Because this implementation prioritizes achieving a full charge above limiting the charging period to within the cheap tariff time period, many i3 drivers are surprised when charging starts before the cheap tariff time period begins. Charging at Reduced power could cause charging to start before the cheap tariff time period begins.