Right on time, at 7am, Mike and Chris from Sunwest Electrical came this morning to install my Blink EVSE.
Also, an Ecotality mgr, Bill came by to document the install and check out how things went as this Blink is evidently the first residential install. The upshot is, the Sunwest guys were great, very professional and efficient and I cannot emphasize enough how thorough they were with getting me to Level-2. In fact, when they we were all done, I let a couple of them take turns behind the wheel to see how much fun the LEAF is to tool around in.
First the easy part; my install has to be one of the easiest-- From the photo, everything was there already except the Blink itself. They changed out the socket to a different NEMA type and fixed a ground wire connection that I had not properly tied, bolted the unit to the wall (and torqued the screws!) and that was it. The unit was then put on a tester and run through a variety of modes before we did the acid test and hooked up the LEAF. All went fine.
Now the hard part; the Blink has a network connection for detailed monitoring of EVP members energy consumption etc. That requires either a LAN connection, WiFi or if all else fails, they can activate a CDMA service (which they pay for). They brought their own Cisco wireless router which we connected via Cat-5 cable to my Airport Extreme (this Airport was setup as a repeater). No dice. They must have messed with settings for an hour before finally disconnecting the Cisco and selecting my router as the internet connection. That seemed to work fine but it seems the network settings aren't saved through power cycles, not good if you need to clear a fault by power cycling and then have to go through the whole config process all over again. I suspect this is all a matter of a SW upgrade and this issue will be gone. Sure hope so.
Lastly, I got an error code within minutes of doing the "what happens if I try this?" operation.
Charging continues even with the error code which is a good thing. In fact, it seems none of the network stuff gets in the way of the basic charging functions so I'm optimistic that as far as my needs go, this will work fine. However, I anticipate Ecotality will be working on connectivity/control issues with for awhile still.
Installers, Mike and Chris bright and early at 7am:
The last photo shows the error code I got when I hit "Stop Charging" while the unit was connected but not in fact charging since my LEAF was in "Charging Timer Mode". It was only cleared after power cycling the Blink.
Also, an Ecotality mgr, Bill came by to document the install and check out how things went as this Blink is evidently the first residential install. The upshot is, the Sunwest guys were great, very professional and efficient and I cannot emphasize enough how thorough they were with getting me to Level-2. In fact, when they we were all done, I let a couple of them take turns behind the wheel to see how much fun the LEAF is to tool around in.
First the easy part; my install has to be one of the easiest-- From the photo, everything was there already except the Blink itself. They changed out the socket to a different NEMA type and fixed a ground wire connection that I had not properly tied, bolted the unit to the wall (and torqued the screws!) and that was it. The unit was then put on a tester and run through a variety of modes before we did the acid test and hooked up the LEAF. All went fine.
Now the hard part; the Blink has a network connection for detailed monitoring of EVP members energy consumption etc. That requires either a LAN connection, WiFi or if all else fails, they can activate a CDMA service (which they pay for). They brought their own Cisco wireless router which we connected via Cat-5 cable to my Airport Extreme (this Airport was setup as a repeater). No dice. They must have messed with settings for an hour before finally disconnecting the Cisco and selecting my router as the internet connection. That seemed to work fine but it seems the network settings aren't saved through power cycles, not good if you need to clear a fault by power cycling and then have to go through the whole config process all over again. I suspect this is all a matter of a SW upgrade and this issue will be gone. Sure hope so.
Lastly, I got an error code within minutes of doing the "what happens if I try this?" operation.
Charging continues even with the error code which is a good thing. In fact, it seems none of the network stuff gets in the way of the basic charging functions so I'm optimistic that as far as my needs go, this will work fine. However, I anticipate Ecotality will be working on connectivity/control issues with for awhile still.
Installers, Mike and Chris bright and early at 7am:
The last photo shows the error code I got when I hit "Stop Charging" while the unit was connected but not in fact charging since my LEAF was in "Charging Timer Mode". It was only cleared after power cycling the Blink.