I think if One is charging everyday, while plugged in it will keep the battery @ ~50°F and not count it towards battery conditioning. If One is driving around all the time while it's unplugged, I could see how the battery wouldn't get cold enough to trigger battery conditioning usage on the energy usage screen.
DC to DC is rated at 1600 watts so you are way below maxing out... and regarding that at full power 1000 watts is enough to keep you warm is far away from reality... It will definitely use less energy because your setup cannot exceed 1000 watts. Mild winters above 27°F would keep you somewhat warm.... I'm not here to judge you.... there is definitely less energy used at the setup you are running but it will never get desired temperature while driving or using outside air to heat.... It is definitely interesting what you doing.
Morning EV-E , As I have mentioned previously the desired temp on the coldest days is just to keep you warm enough to make it to your next destination and as a Main heater for the rest of winter. This setup is nothing more than a range Extender ..it isn't supposed to keep you all toasty warm like the main heater (on the coldest days). It is to make sure you won't freeze to death while making it that extra 30 miles to a charger that is working. Easily keeps interior 50-60 with recirc on (which is something people keep "forgetting") in below zero temps and upto 80 degrees inside cabin on the warmer summer days
morning Phuber.. Oh absolutely. My Bolt is also garaged. I always do preheat before I leave for the day
I'm working on diesel coolant heater 28k btu as we speak...but my setup will be in the spare tire place...it is marine design continuous duty with four stages of heating outputs it happen to have 2 of them laying around in my shop..my setup will be out most people that think to spend on another way to get heat without use of HV battery....it will pull around 100-140 watts from 12V battery .... and around 0.8-2 or less gallon a week in bio diesel depending on how much driving I do ..... Regarding warranty I will only loose heating loop that is not very big deal but rest of the warranty on everything else will be intact. I will be also looking at way to get heat to HV battery in the winter. Your approach is quite amazing. I'm also tired from loosing on average 4-5 kWh to just keep heat in the winter. And there are some setups under the hood already being done.....I'm also considering room under the front fender if there is enough room to get my setup like what they do on BMW X5 with cold weather package ( they staff webasto coolant heater there) . Bolt already has cabin coolant loops and using bio diesel coolant heater is quite good.
What is the efficiency of this system? Like BTU or kWh per volume or mass of fuel.
(EV_E yeah that was for you lol) I just can't bring myself to add diesel to a EV. But yeah nice project and you'll absolutely regain range you normally would have lost running the car's heater.
Being able to dump the AC unit's condenser heat back into the cabin would be great. Unfortunately it turns out according to the SM that turning on defog won't actually necessarily kick on the AC - it will disable recirc. So it may not even be possible to do the "run AC and heat at the same time" trick you can in some cars to dehumidify. Which reduces the potential benefits of connecting the motor and AC condensor coolant loop thermally to the cabin heat loop.
Not surprising. Even an unmodified Bolt will have average heater power below 1 kW to maintain 72F in those conditions as long as you don't hit the defog button - which it turns out won't actually run the AC, but will (without telling the user) fully disable recirc according to the service manual. But obviously the moment you disable recirc, your heater efficiency is gonna die.
In nearly every shot he's provided, he's got defrost/defog on for when he's running the Bolt's systems. Per the service manual, this kills recirc, so basically - he's saying that he's getting vastly improved performance over a Bolt that has been intentionally put into an inefficient mode. All of his published results in ambient temperatures of 20f that are "great" are completely unimpressive to someone whose Bolt does the same thing every day.
To produce 3500 watts of heat it will use 0.40 liter per hour...to produce 5000 watts of heat it will use 0.65 liter per hour.... 9500 watts will use 1.2 liter per hour....pump is capable delivering 1400 liter per hour and it is variable speed....at 1500 watts it will use 0.18 liter per hour... so it is very efficient and capable to deliver 12000 watts at full demand.
I have wondered - might propane be simpler for this application? (no need for a pump for example). Biggest issue with any combustion approach is you need to add some exhaust plumbing, and also potentially air intake plumbing.
Um, your recirc is off in your picture.
Umm Yes it is ...my last 2 runs were with the PTC heater and it was too FEAKING HOT
So because it was too hot, you went and crippled the Bolt's HVAC system by turning off recirc.
If I did the math right, we are talking about 85% efficiency.
