Home Level 2 Charger Issues

[CHeil402]

I will bring my charger and car to my shop on Monday and try it there to see if it is something with our grid here at home. Maybe the Mach E is to sensitive to something.

Do you feel comfortable measuring frequency? That's the only other variable I can think of if the MME is super sensitive.

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[jparduhn70]

I am guessing it’s something with the voltage and amps that the car is seeing. I am going to call a closer dealer to me and see if I can swing over for them to let me try charging. I made a service appointment for Monday at a different Ford dealer that is closer to my house.

You're probably right. I keep wondering if there needs to be some line conditioning or something to regulate the voltage/amperage on the home circuit for the car to be happy, but I thought the whole idea of an EVSE was to provide that functionality. New things to learn. In the meantime, I'm going to have to pay a dealer visit to determine next steps.

 

[Garbone]

Maybe the phases are out of balance from your transformer. Are both sides the exact voltage to ground. Maybe one is 120v and the other 122v or some such. I work on DC power plants and sometime we would see a loss of one phase but usually it would go out completely.

Another thing you could try, and I think it is unlikely to work, shut off every other breaker in the house but the charger. If it starts working there could be something in the house futzing with the MachE brain sending a spurious signal down the power cabling. Add a circuit at a time until it fails if so.

 

[tkompass]

So I have 128.5 volts from each leg to neutral or ground. 258 volts across the feeds. Seems to be locked at 60hz. Voltage is high here. Does not seem to bother the Tesla but Ford wont charge. If I cant charge at home then this is a problem.

 

[tkompass]

Maybe the phases are out of balance from your transformer. Are both sides the exact voltage to ground. Maybe one is 120v and the other 122v or some such. I work on DC power plants and sometime we would see a loss of one phase but usually it would go out completely.

Another thing you could try, and I think it is unlikely to work, shut off every other breaker in the house but the charger. If it starts working there could be something in the house futzing with the MachE brain sending a spurious signal down the power cabling. Add a circuit at a time until it fails if so.

That is what I was going to try next.

 

[Edgardk]

I wonder if this is a coincidence that we all have nearly the same build dates. I was also wondering if it had something to do with the location of the car but I also had tried a Master Reset and removing my PAAK and entire Ford Pass data so the car was basically fresh but it still didn’t charge. Honestly if there was a way for a Ford engineer to monitor the car remotely to see what the on board diagnostics were seeing when we plugged into the house, that would be great. I am getting nervous that there is a deeper issue with the car relating to our early build dates. I would have figured just getting this car that the build date would be after 1/9. If any of us are able to get our cars looked at by Ford engineers, we maybe want to share each other’s VIN to help them narrow down the overall issue. Thoughts?

You're probably right. I keep wondering if there needs to be some line conditioning or something to regulate the voltage/amperage on the home circuit for the car to be happy, but I thought the whole idea of an EVSE was to provide that functionality. New things to learn. In the meantime, I'm going to have to pay a dealer visit to determine next steps.

In my case the MME was charging fine using the ChargePoint home. Then it stopped.

Maybe the phases are out of balance from your transformer. Are both sides the exact voltage to ground. Maybe one is 120v and the other 122v or some such. I work on DC power plants and sometime we would see a loss of one phase but usually it would go out completely.

Another thing you could try, and I think it is unlikely to work, shut off every other breaker in the house but the charger. If it starts working there could be something in the house futzing with the MachE brain sending a spurious signal down the power cabling. Add a circuit at a time until it fails if so.

I tried everything. I mean everything. Nothing seems to get it to work.

 

[Garbone]

In my case the MME was charging fine using the ChargePoint home. Then it stopped.

I tried everything. I mean everything. Nothing seems to get it to work.

Do you live within a mile of a radio tower?

 

[dbsb3233]

I drove back to the dealer last night after they were closed and plugged in their charger which is outside hardwired and the car charged just fine. Also stopped by the mall and tried another charger and it worked just fine. Build date 1-23-21. Just picked up the car on Thursday night.

Great job of cross-checking. But wow, totally conflicting results. That's gonna be a tough one to figure out.

 

[Edgardk]

Do you live within a mile of a radio tower?

Yes

 

[CHeil402]

So I have 128.5 volts from each leg to neutral or ground. 258 volts across the feeds. Seems to be locked at 60hz. Voltage is high here. Does not seem to bother the Tesla but Ford wont charge. If I cant charge at home then this is a problem.

That 258 V seems quite high which might explain why it works on a 120 V outlet but not a 240 V outlet. I don't know what the specs are for the Ford onboard charger, but a quick search for others limit between 110 - 260 Vac. Maybe there was a voltage sag when it did work? Most likely to occur when there is large power demand compared to overnight when it's likely at its highest.

 

[tkompass]

That 258 V seems quite high which might explain why it works on a 120 V outlet but not a 240 V outlet. I don't know what the specs are for the Ford onboard charger, but a quick search for others limit between 110 - 260 Vac. Maybe there was a voltage sag when it did work? Most likely to occur when there is large power demand compared to overnight when it's likely at its highest.

I've never got it to work at 240v with either the Ford charger or the Juice Box here or at my next door neighbors house. But his Tesla will charge just fine here or at his house with my 2 chargers.

 

[generaltso]

That 258 V seems quite high

It would be interesting to see if others with this problem have relatively high voltage.

 

[CHeil402]

I've never got it to work at 240v with either the Ford charger or the Juice Box here or at my next door neighbors house. But his Tesla will charge just fine here or at his house with my 2 chargers.

That would make sense. If the MME's onboard charger is set to cut off around 260 VAC it would likely not work at your house or your neighbor's as they're likely to have the same voltage as you. But perhaps the Tesla's onboard charger had a higher cutoff, hence why it worked at your house and his. The Ford Mobile Charger and Juice Box are just EVSE that provide the power to your car... the actual AC to DC converter is in the car.

Maybe talk to your power company. Anything above 127 V for a 120 V outlet is considered "extreme".

https://ve3oat.ca/toomuchvoltage.html

 

[CHeil402]

It would be interesting to see if others with this problem have relatively high voltage.

I think that would certainly be something to check... and conversely if you found a charger (like at the dealer) that did work to see if it was lower.

 

[tkompass]

I think that would certainly be something to check... and conversely if you found a charger (like at the dealer) that did work to see if it was lower.

I will be taking my chargers and car to my shop where I have a 240 outlet and seeing if it charges there. I will also take measurements. This will be on Monday.

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