Home Level 2 Charger Issues

[Edgardk]

Crap, one more question that we should all answer with this issue and I will add to the tracker. Who has a whole home generator or solar panels? The engineer asked me this question when he was at the house. Many of us in Illinois have whole home generators. Can you guys let me know? I have a whole home generator and can not charge (obviously).

I do have a 17 Kw generator but not connected to the Charger. It automatically turns on every Saturday and didn’t affect the charging of the car while on. Also once I turned the whole house circuits off except for the charger and nothing happened. i‘m 100% sure it is not power related at least in my case. What is consistent with me for the last five weeks is:
1-When I am home, plugged in, the car always says I’m charging “at home” but sometimes it is under my address some other times the neighbor address . During the week I always get conflicting messages once in the driveway. I can charge on 110v but 240v.
2-on weekend, I have no problem charging with 240v, even when the generator is warming up. I do not get any conflicting messages on weekends. Also I set some Preferred departure times. 5:50 on weekdays and 8:50 on Sunday. I leave the charger connected when home, 120v on weekdays and 240v on weekends, the car will be ready for me on Sunday mornings but not Monday morning while connected to 240v. the departure time will work every morning the rest of the week while on 120v. Also whenever I connect to L2 charger away from home it add the location even couple of blocks away from my home, but I couldn’t separate my home from my neighbors home.

To my Illinois neighbors, there is nothing wrong with the power, unless ComEd uses dirty electricity on weekdays only.

My dealer is aware of all this and mentioned that Ford is working on a fix.

i hope these info can be forward to Ford engineers. Or hopefully one of Ford engineers is reading this thread.

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[louibluey]

There are probably better EVSE technical notes, but this one is good: SAE J1772

The pilot signal does nothing more than to tell the charger in the car how many AC amps that particular EVSE can provide to the car, given the EVSE wire feed and breaker size. One of the few ways the pilot signal (Control Pilot (Current limit)) could be involved/corrupted is if something in Ford's electronics is loading it down improperly and/or not reading it correctly. Seems less likely. The Proximity Pilot (plug present) signal could be checked too. OTOH, a Ford EVSE electronics interface problem (possibly complicated by high 240Vac and/or harmonics) would be consistent with so many saying the same charge stations had no problem with other EVs.

This thread reads like a technical mystery novel! I can't wait for the next chapter

 

[CHeil402]

To my Illinois neighbors, there is nothing wrong with the power, unless ComEd uses dirty electricity on weekdays only.

Who knows at this point. It could be a nearby industrial plant that 'dirties' the power with a bunch of motors that only operate during the week.

 

[CHeil402]

This thread reads like a technical mystery novel! I can't wait for the next chapter

You never know what it might end up being. I'm on the edge of my seat personally. Here's an old TV that took down an entire town's internet:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/...rought-down-one-village-s-broadband-1.4362309

 

[Maquis]

The pilot signal does nothing more than to tell the charger in the car how many AC amps that particular EVSE can provide to the car, given the EVSE wire feed and breaker size.

It's a little more involved than that (see post 489).

And while the EVSE charge setting SHOULD correspond to the electrical circuit it's installed on, most EVSEs can be set to a range of values - it's that setting that gets communicated to the car regardless of the wiring to the EVSE.

 

[jparduhn70]

How about the opposite (if you have a whole home battery)? If you cut the utility from the house and only run on solar, does it work?

I can't test that scenario. As a ComEd net metering customer, the solar panels are connected into the home's feed at the supply side of the meter, so when they're generating power, they're supplying the home and ComEd gets an accounting from the system to credit or debit my account. If I lose power, the panels don't function to prevent voltage from being fed back to ComEd, and I don't have a battery storage system for outages either.

 

[jparduhn70]

It's a little more involved than that (see post 489).

And while the EVSE charge setting SHOULD correspond to the electrical circuit it's installed on, most EVSEs can be set to a range of values - it's that setting that gets communicated to the car regardless of the wiring to the EVSE.

The only thing I can set on the ChargePoint EVSE is the amperage of the breaker installed in the panel. When I talked to their support, they said that the EVSE is just a communications device with the vehicle and will pass whatever voltage it's getting on to the car once there's a successful handshake.

 

[louibluey]

It's a little more involved than that (see post 489).

And while the EVSE charge setting SHOULD correspond to the electrical circuit it's installed on, most EVSEs can be set to a range of values - it's that setting that gets communicated to the car regardless of the wiring to the EVSE.

Good point (the setting). Until my new chargepoint flex (11 kW, 48A, hardwired (#6 THHN-MC), no issues with MME (or, Ioniq electric before) so far), my previous EVSE were fixed current (16A ClipperCreek LCS-20, 32A chargepoint) and had to be appropriately wired (no settings). The ability to set the pilot signal is interesting. I guess it lets chargepoint just make one model. I also vaguely remember people mentioning a rotary switch selector for lower settings on a past Siemens or Bosch unit (in case you had to go lower than the max rating).

 

[jparduhn70]

There's definitely something going on with charge scheduling settings in FordPass. I plugged the car into 120V about 30 minutes ago since it's cold outside. I literally just got a message in the app that the car is not going to reach the desired charge percentage by my departure time. Of course I have no locations set in the app, nor do I have any departure times scheduled. There are no departure times on the Sync interface in the car, either.

 

[Maquis]

The only thing I can set on the ChargePoint EVSE is the amperage of the breaker installed in the panel. When I talked to their support, they said that the EVSE is just a communications device with the vehicle and will pass whatever voltage it's getting on to the car once there's a successful handshake.

That's correct. But, if one were to set the EVSE amperage to a value that does not match the breaker, the EVSE setting gets passed to the car, not the breaker size.

For example, if you had a 30A circuit & breaker, the EVSE should be set to charge at 24A(Some EVSEs will show the setting at the charge rate, some as the circuit size). If you set the EVSE to 40A, the car will try to charge at 40A and trip the breaker.

 

[jparduhn70]

That's correct. But, if one were to set the EVSE amperage to a value that does not match the breaker, the EVSE setting gets passed to the car, not the breaker size.

For example, if you had a 30A circuit & breaker, the EVSE should be set to charge at 24A(Some EVSEs will show the setting at the charge rate, some as the circuit size). If you set the EVSE to 40A, the car will try to charge at 40A and trip the breaker.

Okay, I see what you were getting at. In my case, I tell the CP app that my breaker is 50A. It should only pass 40A to the car according to the 80% rule, right?

 

[Maquis]

Okay, I see what you were getting at. In my case, I tell the CP app that my breaker is 50A. It should only pass 40A to the car according to the 80% rule, right?

Exactly!

 

[Rumin8Raps]

Just saw that Ford is actually starting OTA updates on the Mach E today and will be rolling it out to all cars within the next 3-4 weeks. Hoping that this can be what we need to make the fix ??

 

[Shayne]

It’s just strange. I would think they could fix this with software versus replacing the BCM. But what you just showed is exactly what the Ford engineer and Mach-E team was seeing but they couldn’t explain why the same measurement on the 120V, the BCM was allowing the MME to charge. To my limited electrical engineering knowledge a software update to the module could change/reduce the expected value threshold to allow the charge.

It is kind of weird that the BCM just does not work in a certain state. Have not read all but the majority of cases from what I have are from one state? One batch of BCM all released to that state are faulty? I assume for 40 amp the pulse wave just gets wider.

Just saw that Ford is actually starting OTA updates on the Mach E today and will be rolling it out to all cars within the next 3-4 weeks. Hoping that this can be what we need to make the fix ??

And there is always hope ?. They have a cliff at 80% DCFC but then default to cram you to 100% L2. Would like that L2 default to be 90% as per owner manual. Mine has been running on defaults for a month and a half now as the schedule just does not work. It too may be geographical? If the default was 90% I would have a semi-workaround but at 100% there is just not enough room above for for workarounds. There is a button that says charge to 100% (anytime you want) but there is no button to charge to 90% and the default is 100. A change in default would be good if they could still maintain the 100% toggle (when not default). A working schedule would be better. For any others with the same future and/or current problem the 90% default won't hurt if all could still get it up to 100%. Only thing and don't get me wrong it runs gr8.

 

[louibluey]

It's a little more involved than that ...

Been a while since I looked at the J1772 signals. I was just googling to find a chart for the post that asked about the duty cycle for 40A, and then I saw this slide about the various peak waveform voltages showing "state". I do not remember where someone mentioned a low voltage, but here it looks like there are several normal "pilot high" voltages below 12V. "The EV adds resistance (pilot to ground) to -cause- the voltage to vary, and the EVSE reacts to the voltage as measured by the EVSE, and then changes state accordingly ... The answer may be here; in some of these fail to charge scenarios, MME might not be making the correct changes in load resistance.

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