Charging and Changing Amps

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Sheimwolf

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Joined
Jan 22, 2015
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Hey everyone, probably a newbie question but I don't see this anywhere. By default my car was set to charge at 10 Amps until I realized I could change this in Car Net and I adjusted to 30+ amps. The question I have now is do I always need to change this depending on the charger (like at home with a standard plug) or will it auto detect from the 30 amp selection. I'm used to the Tesla that just recognizes the amps so this is new to me.

Thanks!
 
Mine has always been set to 30+A and I've successfully charged on 110V and 220V (ie: the full range of charge speeds). The car/charger seem smart enough to handle this. I suspect the setting is just if you want to charge slower on a fast charger (for some odd reason).
 
Awesome thanks! I assumed that was the case but I wanted to hear someone else's experience

Thanks again
 
I believe this is in case you keep tripping the electrical circuit breaker, let's say your dryer is on the same circuit for example, car charging and dryer starts, and the breaker trips. You can use this to "dial down" the amps the car draws to solve this issue (if you have it).
 
One place that you might want to limit charge draw, is surprisingly, on 110V. Now most outlets are fused at either 15 or 20 amps, but long term draw should be limited to 12 amps.

In the case of the Volt, GM discovered that a lot of outlets can't actually cope at 12 amps, and would overheat. So they lowered the default to 8 amps on 110, with a menu option for the rated 12 (that you had to activate every time you charged)

Looking at the SAE spec, there is a signal from the charger that tells the car how much current it can supply, so for level 2 charging there is likely no reason to not have the default at 32.
One thing I did notice, is that there is no obvious way on the golf to tell how much power the charger is actually providing, or what voltage line its hooked to. (208 vs 240, 16 vs 30 amps, etc). Yes it gives a time to finish charging, but no way of telling how fast a charger you found.

There are a bunch of 16 amp level 2's out there from the days when 3kw onboard chargers were the norm. I would like to know if I encounter one of these, I might pick another. (and the same with level 3 chargers, they have a factor of 8 in their range of power outputs, anywhere from 12.5kw to 100kw)

I suppose sometime when Sue isn't around to watch, I will wire up a sensor behind the socket, and have it send bluetooth to my phone. (or do it on the day I fit a light to the flap, a mod she would be comfortable with). I wonder if it is something you can find via the ODB port.
 
If it helps, I installed a Juicebox 40A Level 2 charging unit at the house. At the same time I was wiring that into the house power, I also installed an Efergy monitoring unit (https://engage.efergy.com). I can happily report that when the car is charging on the Juicebox, my Efergy indeed reports that the power consumption has jumped by 7.0–7.2 kW. Its also nice to be able to "see" with Efergy's online web-app or the iPhone app when the car is drawing power.

For example, I also have a charging schedule to ensure the car is charged before I leave for work in the morning. And indeed, even if the car had charged the even before, I do see a 7.2 kW spike at about 6:30 AM (1 hour before my scheduled departure time). It is also somewhat interesting to see the power-consumption envelope for this charge. It shoots up to 7.1 kW for about 10 minutes, then tapers the consumption down over the next 20 minutes until it is fully topped up. This is consistent with things I've read elsewhere that the last few kWHs in the batteries must be more slowly charged.
 
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