Wattson Anywehere and my Energy Storage System on a sunny day

Wattson Anywhere is a great online tool to watch my ESS - Energy Storage System - from any device

Watching the LiFePO4 DIY ESS Charge all day at home, from work, and back home

When my LiFePO4 DIY ESS battery pack is depleted, at 24V, the programmable voltmeter's low limit relay opens, the contactor opens, and the Grid Tie Inverter mode is shut off (low red led ON); This is what happended here

Immediately, the pack voltage goes back up and settles down around 25.4V

Now in the morning, for testing purposes, I siwthed the ESS to Forced Charge Mode, and all the chargers then are charging the battery pack

Since I can not stay all day next to it, I usually leave Karotz watch it for me and take a look remotely from time to time while away from home

08:20

At work 

10:07

11:31

16:34

it then continues and goes up pretty quickly after 27.5V to 28V where the upper limit voltage is reached and the programmable voltmeter opens its other relay, opening the charger side contactor, and terminating the charge completely

and the total Enegry used to charge fully the pack is 5kWh

Renault ZOE - Battery Charging Remote Inhibition

Remote Battery Inhibition

EV World reports that the financial arm of Renault UK, RCI, can:

"remotely inhibit the battery so that it won't charge should [the] car owner fail to make their monthly rental payments"
It's the first time I've seen in print that Renault has the capability to stop you using your Zoe if you don't pay the battery lease fee, though of course it has long been suspected.

My notes: Well, I think you can just remove the GSM chip, then the car will not be able to communicate with Renault's servers and there will be no battery charging disabling ...  ;-)

But maybe, it is not that simple ...



Source: MyRenaultZoe & EV World

Wattson Energy Monitor is getting a lot better !

Wattson is already a great energy monitor because it shows real time power usage & generation, and this is what people need to see to understand what is going on in their home

Day or Night, you know your usage & generation

But if you wanted to see your energy history, then you had to plug Wattson into your computer, upload the data and launch the Holmes graph software to see your usage & generation figures over the last days, months or years ... Good but a bit tedious and time consuming



Energeno will probably launch soon Wattson Anywhere, a portal where you can see all this online; Their director Mark Elliott mentionned this in his last article and Energeno has a link to one of their team member's Wattson Anywhere Public graph on their Optimmersion product page; Check out the very interesting PDF documentation of this Wattson Family Product here: Optimmersion PDF Documentation


I think that now I can say that I have been beta testing this Wattson Wifi & Wattson Anywhere plateform for the last three months and I love it; You can find my home usage and - BESPSS - micro generation graphs on my public Wattson Anywhere page

This portal is great because it works on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC and more ... You do not need to install any app on your device, just a web browser is needed


iPad screenshot


iPhone screenshot



You can click to zoom in and see the details of the selected period




Via a user / password link I can access the History, Analysis on the Energy Generated, Account / Set up; Here are some more screenshots (Chrome on OS X) of the History tab:

History - Power


History - Energy

Nissan Announces the NEW LEAF S in Japan - 日産、「リーフ」のマイナーチェンジ版を公開

Nissan Announces the NEW LEAF S in Japan

This is a longer version video from Nissan this time:


Many journalists where invited by Nissan for this event

Among others improvements on the battery and motor, inverter and DC-DC converter are now lighter and more compact; The LEAF lost 80kg and its range has gained 15% while the price is going down; This new S version is sold only in Japan for now ...


More compact power electronics

You can now remotly open the Charge Port lid using your remote: good idea

New J1772 locking mechanism; nobody can steal or unplug your charge cable while plugged in ...

日産は電気自動車「リーフ」の改良版を公開しました。各種機能の向上に加え、より多くの販売店での世界No.1 EVへの急速充電を可能にするものです。「リーフ」は世界累計で４万３千台販売されています。改良版は航続距離が２２８キロメートルに伸び、日本市場向けに3つのグレード­が投入される予定です

Source: Nissan News Room

LifePO4 ESS - Control Board Rebuilding Update #4

Status: Finished and working

What does this Control Board Rebuild do ? Well, it is cleaner now, and also independent from the battery pack and the grid tie inverters & charger... and could be placed somewhere else, it is just a matter of cables length extension

Pushing 1220W back into my home grid when all 6 grid inverters are ON

Great News for LEAF owners - LEAF Link - new iPhone app for CARWINGS

A LEAF owner and talented developer has been working on his own app to enhance the CARWINGS app provided by Nissan with the LEAF

A more intuitive and user friendly interface will be the key to its success but also news features like trip planning via your iPhone and then sending the route data to the LEAF GPS system, or charge program modification from your iPhone, etc

It has been submitted to the Apple Store and is waiting for approval now :-)
I can not wait to try it ...


Follow the new LEAF Link App development here on MyNissanLEAF Forum