Why randomly charging for 10 minutes?

[20221229 3RWD]

See the attached please. I have seen this happen a couple of times purchasing the vehicle in late December 2022.

What is causing the vehicle to charges for 10 minutes periodically through the day?

It’s been plugged in for a week. The weather has been seasonal … 60F most days?

 

[Tam]

See the attached please. I have seen this happen a couple of times purchasing the vehicle in late December 2022.

What is causing the vehicle to charges for 10 minutes periodically through the day?

It’s been plugged in for a week. The weather has been seasonal … 60F most days?

It's called trickle charging or topping off.

Some users love grinding their battery down before charging it back up again, but that is not what Tesla's instructions.

Tesla would try to keep the depth of discharge as shallow as possible if you allow it to do its work (that means to keep it plugged in).

In your case: 100% to 100% rather than 99% to 100% or 98% to 100% or 90% to 100% and so on.

Please read from the manual:

"There is no advantage to waiting until the Battery’s level is low before charging. In fact, the Battery performs best when charged regularly."

 

[GtiMart]

Is Sentry on? If your car is constantly awake it consumes 200-250w continuously. That means after 4-5h it has burned through 1kWh. The car will eventually start charging to get back to your set percentage (100%). If you turn sentry off the car will fall asleep and won't consume nearly as much. It might only charge after a couple of days instead of 4h.

 

[jjrandorin]

Is Sentry on? If your car is constantly awake it consumes 200-250w continuously. That means after 4-5h it has burned through 1kWh. The car will eventually start charging to get back to your set percentage (100%). If you turn sentry off the car will fall asleep and won't consume nearly as much. It might only charge after a couple of days instead of 4h.

This looks like sentry drain to me (or some other reason for the car not sleeping, like multiple 3rd party apps keeping car awake).

 

[ATPMSD]

When Sentry is on the car does not go to sleep. Assuming Sentry is off the car goes to sleep and the low-voltage system is powered by the low-voltage battery, which needs to be topped off from time to time. I am pretty sure that if the car is plugged in the source of power for the top off comes from that source instead of the HV battery, which I believe is what you are seeing. (?)

 

[rrolsbe]

I think the power consumed while in Sentry Mode is from the HV Traction battery. When the car wakes up, it is topping off the HV battery not the low voltage battery. Any time the car is awake, for any reason, it keeps the low voltage battery topped off and maintains a float level voltage.

 

[ATPMSD]

@20221229 3RWD

Is Sentry on or off?

 

[20221229 3RWD]

@20221229 3RWD

Is Sentry on or off?

Off

 

[ATPMSD]

Off

With Sentry off the charging you see seems to be to top off the low voltage battery for the cars vampire drain. Looking at the numbers you are adding about 400 watts every 5-ish hours, that comes to about 80 watts / hour. I have tested my MS and it draws 70 watts / hour with Sentry off. It appears when the car tops off the battery it is using the external power as opposed to the HV battery, which I think is normal.

 

[20221229 3RWD]

Our 2023 Model 3 RWD has been plugged in for a week unused. I checked TeslaFi (excellent API utility by the way) a couple of times and noted about every 4 hours the car consumes about 1 kWh.

How can I tell what process is using the 1 kWh? Living in Kansas, temperature was around 85F in the garage while we were away. Could it be used to cool the battery?

Thoughts/conjecture?

Thank you …

 

[BitJam]

When the car is awake and not asleep it will consume about 250 watts which matches your observation. There are a number of things that will keep the car awake such as sentry mode or even use of the TeslaFi app. Once the car is awake there is a delay (half hour?) before it goes to sleep again.

There are many threads about this here where you can get more information.

 

[20221229 3RWD]

When the car is awake and not asleep it will consume about 250 watts which matches your observation. There are a number of things that will keep the car awake such as sentry mode or even use of the TeslaFi app. Once the car is awake there is a delay (half hour?) before it goes to sleep again.

There are many threads about this here where you can get more information.

Ack, thank you.