Hymotion Charging Problem

I have had the Hymotion kit in the Prius now for 16 months, and in general it is working fine.

However, there now appears to be a possible problem with recharging the battery. From using a Kill-A-Watt, I would see 1030 watts or so for recharging. This worked out to about 4 ev miles per hour of charging. Now, I'm seeing 820 watts or so for recharging. This would work out to only 3.2 ev miles per hour of charging.

With a system that has only been installed for 16 months, I am thinking that there is a problem. But maybe I worry too much? I was hoping to hear from some of the experts and long-time Hymotion users. Also, if you are not using a Kill-A-Watt, you might be having a recharging problem and not know about it, just having a suspicion that it is taking longer to recharge.

Also, in just over 16 months, the full recharge for the Hymotion battery has dropped from 4.73 kwh to 4.50 kwh, or an almost 5% drop in a year. I wonder too if this is typical or if there is an additional problem there to worry about.

Thanks for any help with this.

 

Thanks for the help. To answer, nothing has been done to the battery as far as upgrades or replacement since it was installed in 6/2010.

I went back and read the first post of the thread, and was interested in this portion: "

Some extra stats pulled from the battery.
Full cycle counter - 378
.5 cycle counter - 166
.2 cycle counter - 251
"
How did you get that information from the battery?

Is there any reason the recharging rate would change from about 1030 watts to 820 watts? Is there any way to get the charger to work again at the higher rate? I would think too, here in Florida, that now that it is cooler it would be working even better, not worse.

 

There was an additional development this morning. The 12V battery was dead. Now, with some research, I found this previous post by The Force: http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...harging-12v-battery-hymotion-charge-port.html , which said that there was a problem keeping the 12V battery charged. Now I'm wondering if The Force's 12V battery problem was traced to the Hymotion kit or simply a lack of driving time.

 

Thanks for the help.

I too switched to the Optima battery about a year ago. I also found out that it would have been much easier to have switched the battery either before or during the Hymotion conversion.

I too wondered about leaving a light on, but I didn't see anything unusual. In my situation, I recharge on the inside of the trunk, with the hatch open, so I always have the dome switched to off, which I double-checked again after charging the 12V battery.

I actually had thought of a low battery cut out switch, but figured that the Optima had so much more reserve than the original that even with a mistake leaving a light on overnight it would be OK.

So as of now I have no explanation. But I did see the 13 blinks with the Hymotion when the 12V was being recharged.