L2 charging for my i3 with Clipper Creek LCS-40p

Hi,

I recently leased (owners choice with flex) my first electric car, BMW i3, and I just love it. Feel like i am driving a space ship

Question i have here is that I recently bought Clipper Creek L2 charger LCS-40p. I tried low cost charging with this today for the first time ...

I noticed that the car did not start charging on its own at the preferred time. However when I opened the car, it then started charging immediately.
Is this behavior expected? Is there a fix for this? is Clipper Creek L2 charger incompatible with BMW i3 for delayed low cost charging?

This is the first time i tried it, so its possible i made an error ... but would like to hear from the experts here ...

Thanks

:roll: Scheduled charging on the i3 is unnecessarily difficult. After five weeks, I'm still baffled. My Prius plug In is super simple. Three choices. scheduled START time, scheduled STOP time, or just plug in and charge immediately. Works every time as scheduled. For the i3, scheduled start time and departure time aren't in synch. Mine seems to start too soon.

Take a look through this forum, there are a lot of posts on this subject mostly from the EU and UK since they got their cars first. Now that NA deliveries are picking up we can expect to hear more on this from the U.S. and Canada. I have the same setup as you, but have another week or so before my smart meter is installed and I can start having issues with the iRemote and charging like you!

It depends somewhat on the SOC in the vehicle and how that compares to the off-peak charging times, and your desired departure time when the charging will actually start. If the SOC is so low that the car can't charge entirely within that window, it could start earlier rather than leaving you with a partial charge. Otherwise, it may wait awhile into that time slot to charge so it's finishing off near your departure time.

The vehicle temperature manages the batteries, and if the thing is just finishing up charging when you leave, that power came from the grid verses the car's batteries, and you'll have more for your trip.

I'm sure I'm missing something on this other than the fact that it's not quite as simple as one would expect.

FWIW, at least on the 'dumb' EVSEs, there's nothing in it that would prevent it supplying power any time the car asks for it. It is the car that triggers the circuit to start the charging cycle, it's not originated by the EVSE...while on, it always is 'ready', unless it detects a power fault.

Scheduled charging is broken in the most recent software releases, at least in the US. There is a great deal of info about this including some detailed descriptions of the expected vs observed behavior in the FB group. I would summarize it for you, but I haven't been following it in detail since I don't use TOU/scheduled charging.

I have the following settings:

Low cost charging from: 10:03 PM to 8 AM
Departure time: 8AM
Typically everyday I have more than 1/2 the battery charge left. So charging with my LCS 40P should take an hour or more.

With these settings, does that mean that my low cost charging will not start somewhere close to 5 or 6AM depending on departure time?

well i can confirm that delayed charging with my LCS-40p clipper creek works flawlessly

As jadnashuanh mentioned, the Low Cost Charging starts based on SOC of the vehicle and the departure times.

I use delayed charging to accommodate my PG&E California EVA metering plan - using the off-peak rate from 11pm to 7am (worst case - weekends are more relaxed). The i3 does a good job of holding off charging until sometime in the middle of the night (I confess to not having gotten up to see when it starts), and is fully charged at 7am the next morning ... except in one case so far: where I totally drained the battery (to the point of using the range extension motor-generator to get home). Then when I plugged the i3 into the ClipperCreek HCS-40P EVSE, charging started immediately, early in the evening. A couple of hours later when the battery was about half charged, however, I unplugged it and then plugged it back in and further charging was delayed until late night. I presumed that with the low charge, and more efficient/complete charging with trickle charging when possible (?), the i3 charge control overruled my 11pm low cost charging start time. Any other explanations?

Incidently, I was surprised to learn the range extender motor-generator actually turned off when I was stopped for a stop light, and then didn't start up again until I was well into the next block - still used the residual battery charge, it appeared to me.

THe car seems to want to get the batteries above some minimum point, so will run the REx or the EVSE, overriding the normal logic. But, once it gets that minimum, it will revert back to 'normal' operations. The REx is designed to keep you going, and also adjusts its speed and therefore power output based on your road speed. You're not using much power at all while stopped...it might have just slowed down enough that it was harder to hear, but more likely, it stopped. The overall goal of the programming is to avoid using the REx at all if batteries are sufficient for the current load, and, if the next s/w update for North America goes as planned, it will run if you've put a route into the car and it recognizes that you'll need to run the REx to get there, it may turn on earlier than otherwise allowed.