HC-2b "under temperature warning"

[faithie999]

I discovered something today.

my train room/workshop is in an outbuilding.  it has heat, but I only bring it up to temperature (58F) when I'm in there, otherwise I set the thermostat at 42F.

the other day I plugged my HC in at the end of the day, and I noticed the next morning it had not charged.

today I brought it into the house, plugged it in (to the Ring charger) and after a few seconds on the "charging page" it errored with "under temperature warning".

I unplugged it and let it warm up to room temp and now it's charging properly.

who knew??

Ken

[Alan]

I certainly didn't know there was such a warning. Makes sense. Battery resistance is real low when they are cold. Very easy to overcharge them under such conditions.

I have battery minders on some equipment stored in the barn over winter. The battery minders have temperature compensation built into them for the same reason.

[trainman605]

Here in Texas as many of you know the temputures dropped to O, I keep my shop heat on where my trains are, just because they don't like cold and neither do I.  It was a propane fired heater, so not using electricity as we were off the grid for 39 hours.

trainman

[Alan]

I can relate to the Texas crisis. During the winter of 2012-2013 we had an ice storm that knocked out our power for 4-1/2 days. Single digit temps the whole time. Thankfully we have a fireplace in the living room that kept us from freezing. Once it was over my wife said "this will never happen again" with an authority in her voice that is usually reserved for a drill sergeant. Today we have this:



Side note - two Christmases ago the power went out for 1/2 day. The whole neighborhood was dark except for our house complete with all the Christmas lights outside blinking away. It felt like we were saying neener-neener to our neighbors.

[G8B4Life]

Late to the discussion again but in my defense I've been too tired to bother logging in and replying.

who knew??

I knew. I'd had that warning a few years ago when I tried to charge my HC when it was too cold. We also briefly discussed the temperature when charging in the old battery thread; the charging temperature range is mentioned in the user manual.

- Tim