I am considering buying a 2020/2021 fiat 500 electric. I have tried searching all over, but I can not find any info if it is possible to limit the charging speed. In Norway there are tariffs that make it more expensive to charge fast at home, and my car will be parked at home long enough anyway that I never need the max charging speed. My wall charger is not smart in any way, so I can not limit it on that end. I have a Tesla already and in the app I can limit it to 10A. Is this possible in the Fiat app or in the menu of the car somehow?
Technical Is it possible to limit charging speed?
- Thread starter Nimrad
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Technical Is it possible to limit charging speed?
Assuming this is a dc charger then you can alter the charge speed in the car on a scale of 1-5. I can remember what the equates to but with experimentation you’ll get there. Great little cars.
Thanks, I saw this menu in a YouTube video just a few minutes ago. Home Charging will be AC charging. So this scale does not limit AC Charging speed? I also tried to search the user manual, but I can't find any information about this menu setting.
Update. I seem to have found an answer it seems that I was super happy about. There was a post in the Fiat 500 Forum:
That limits AC charging, not DC. I can’t find it in the manual at the moment but you set it on the central screen in the ‘EV Pages’.
Btw in the UK at least all granny chargers should be limited to 10A anyway.
My charger is 7 kW / 32A max. Has its own fuse, ground fault circuit breaker etc. Should be good. But if I charge faster than 4kW I have to pay about 200 NOK (about 20GBP) more each month, so I would like to restrict it below 4kW. Seems like it should be possible. My alternative would be to buy a new home charger that lets me do this, but seems like the Fiat can do this
(I'm upgrading from a Seat Mii that can not limit the speed)
I meant more that if you use the granny charger you wouldn’t need to care about that setting (you should check it regularly as some have reported the car resetting it without warning).
Granny charger was a new word to me, we call it emergency charger in Norway. The granny charger won't be used regularly. In Norway it's actually illegal to charge with that on a regular basis, hence the word "emergency charger".
Oh I see. Why’s that?
It's considered a fire hazard to draw that much power continuously over long periods of time, I guess. I'm no electrician, but it's a fairly new law that has come as Norway has a very high EV share.
IanML
Member
4 kW at 240V equates to 16A. The charge rates (scale 1-5) are not declared in terms of kW or A, so you would have to make some measurement. That would probably require you to apply something like a clamp meter to either the live or neutral cable of your domestic supply whilst starting/stopping the charge to see the difference in current, and repeat to find the appropriate level. Or, as Norway seems to be quite progressive, you might have a load meter indication on your supply?
Another approach could be to fit a 16A circuit breaker in the supply to your wall box, note which setting opens the breaker, and use one below that.
Another approach could be to fit a 16A circuit breaker in the supply to your wall box, note which setting opens the breaker, and use one below that.
Norway has for the last few years required smart load meters(I don't know the proper english word for it), so I have live data of the total draw from my house that I can read from my computer. So I can quite easily measure how much the different scales will draw. I just needed to confirm that the limits were actually applied to regular AC Charging and not only fast DC charging.
IanML
Member
Page 299 of the Handbook states:
For home charging, you can also set five
different power consumption levels
according to your needs. To adjust
the power level, select one of the five
values from "1" (lowest current) to "5"
(maximum current) on this page. The
estimated time displayed on the screen
will be updated accordingly.
I interpret "home charging" to be ac charging but not dc fast charging. You may be able to judge the effect of setting the various levels by the effect on the estimated time displayed, though it will not be entirely proportionate, because of converter losses, etc.
If you do establish the relationship between levels and current drawn, please do post it here for us all to benefit.
For home charging, you can also set five
different power consumption levels
according to your needs. To adjust
the power level, select one of the five
values from "1" (lowest current) to "5"
(maximum current) on this page. The
estimated time displayed on the screen
will be updated accordingly.
I interpret "home charging" to be ac charging but not dc fast charging. You may be able to judge the effect of setting the various levels by the effect on the estimated time displayed, though it will not be entirely proportionate, because of converter losses, etc.
If you do establish the relationship between levels and current drawn, please do post it here for us all to benefit.
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See post #4
Only if the wall charger isn't tethered. More effective to just de-rate using the EV settings in the car. There's a typo in post 2 - this should be AC charging at home.
Mixed messages - the OP has a wall charger hence their question, you're discussing something else. Something, the OP isn't permitted to use as a normal charging method in his country.
