Henke
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- Jun 27, 2021
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- Taycan 4S
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- #16
Thanks for the detailed reply. From what you are saying, I think I have understood the process correctly. The car was at 70% SOC on Wednesday morning when I set the following:Can you share a screenshot of both your timer and your profile as this will help to explain why it didn't work as planned?
Can you also confirm that only 1 profile and 1 timer were active at the time - if not then that's another possible explanation.
Timers and Profiles only work in conjunction with AC charging. For DC charging all Timers and Profiles are ignored.
Timers do not have a 'minimum' value but a 'target'. Profiles have a 'minimum'.
A timer (Departure Timer to give it its proper name) is intended to ensure that a charging session ends by a given time (not when it starts and ends) and can be repeated across multiple days (regardless of whether the car is connected to your EVSE or not). Additionally the timer will allow you to set a target charge to aim for by the end of the set time. Precool / heat is another option to set but hopefully that is self-explanatory.
Once the timer is set (and no other timers are active) then the car will calculate how long it will take to reach your departure time using power information from the EVSE that you are charging from and the battery's current state of charge (SOC). Whatever happens the charging session will end by the set departure time set in the timer.
In this example I have a daily timer set to charge to a target of 85% and to reach a target charge by 07:00. No preheat/cool set. This works 100% of the time on the basis that the car's starting SOC is around 15% - 20%.
Now introduce a profile into the mix. Profiles are location based but by default you are provided with a profile called 'General' which can be used generically at any location.
Within the profile you set the minimum SOC that you want your car to have as soon as it is connected to your EVSE. If you set it to 25% and your car has 26% or greater battery charge then nothing will happen at this point and no charging session will commence. If your SOC is 15% then the charging process will commence immediately until the battery SOC reaches 25% at which point the charging session will pause pending another event such as an active Timer. If no event has been programmed and the car is still connected to the EVSE (which is active) then after 30 mins the charging session will start again but will continue until 100% is reached.
The profile also has 'Optimised Charging' (for use in conjunction with a Home Energy Manager to balance power at home and combine Solar power where available) and 'Preferred Charging Times'.
Preferred Charging Times enable you to create a charging window where you can take advantage of cheap rate electricity e.g. if you have cheap power between midnight and 07:00 then enable this option to ensure the charging session waits for this window before starting. Note however that Timers override Profiles and so depending on the battery SOC it may be that the session starts earlier than programmed to ensure your Target Charge set in the Timer can be achieved.
The following profile is set for my Home address and will automatically be selected when the car is within a given radius (2 miles I think) from my home (I have other locations and so this is a useful feature if you want different Preferred Charging Times and / or a higher or lower Minimum SOC set).
So, the charging session will start immediately if my battery SOC is <= 25% regardless of the preferred charging times set and will then pause waiting on the next timer event. As my Timer is also active then the profile will remain paused until midnight 00:00 and then commence the charging process right through until 07:00 (again as determined by the Timer). The overall charging session will therefore take place between 00:00 - 07:00 and a hard stop at 07:00.
Hopefully this helps?
1. general profile with minimum of 85%
2. timer to allow departure with an SOC of 90% at 9pm on Thursday with precool/heat of 68 (yesterday)
My expectation was that the car would start charging to 85% immediately and then stop charging. It would then start again in enough time to charge the remaining 5%. I probably wouldn't set it like this ordinarily but I did so in this case to test operation.
I believe I had only general and the above timer selected. The charger is an AC charger, it only charges at about 1.5kWh. Another point of note is the timer did work fairly well. It started yesterday morning but then I did get fairly regular pings to say it would not reach the target charge. When I got to the car slightly before departure time, it was still charging and had reached about 88-89%.