EVSE tester

Are there EVSE testers in the market? What should your local friendly electrician have to test both the install and function of any EVSE?

There really are no testers but there are ways to trick one on and meter the voltage but you should be fine as most are tested in advance. Besides, most EVSE units as non-fiction with exception of EV Charge America :lol:

If it powers up it should be good.

Eaton has one and so does AV.

smkettner said:

Eaton has one and so does AV.

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that is what i wondering my local electrician is here installing my evse. he has no test equipment, so we all have to trust that it works!

It looks from your information block that you'll be bringing home the best available tester today. Congratulations on the new family member!
[Edit] What month is it?! As said earlier, however, if the lights come on, you should have few worries about plugging it into the car.

HighDesertDriver said:

It looks from your information block that you'll be bringing home the best available tester today. Congratulations on the new family member!
[Edit] What month is it?! As said earlier, however, if the lights come on, you should have few worries about plugging it into the car.

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I wish I was getting a car today. I have no idea how today's date get there! I'm a jan 2012.

It should work fine. I doubt there is any reason to make an extra effort to test it early.

I'm in the same situation, the reason to verify it works is the warranty on the unit. Many of us have 3rd party EVSE's (I have the Schnieder Electric), it would be nice to have a way to verify it functions properly without an actual car, as we don't have any EV's that use J-1772 in the Boston area / east coast yet... with the exception of a Leaf rented out by Hertz on Demand in NYC for a ludicrous rate (I checked, they wanted ~$230 for a 30 hour rental, ouch)

mitch672 said:

a Leaf rented out by Hertz on Demand in NYC for a ludicrous rate (I checked, they wanted ~$230 for a 30 hour rental, ouch)

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You must be looking at the weekend rate. I got it for 48 hours during the week for $197, higher than a "normal" car, but I thought it was worth it. It's a very early LEAF (VIN < 300), but it performed great!

tps said:

mitch672 said:

a Leaf rented out by Hertz on Demand in NYC for a ludicrous rate (I checked, they wanted ~$230 for a 30 hour rental, ouch)

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You must be looking at the weekend rate. I got it for 48 hours during the week for $197, higher than a "normal" car, but I thought it was worth it. It's a very early LEAF (VIN < 300), but it performed great!

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It was supposed to be today from 4:00PM until tommorow night at 10:00PM, 30 hours, I thought it was way too much, I was expecting maybe $100-$150 at most.

Sounds like you need a "Car In-A-Box!"


IMG_20110322_104928 by DarkStarPDX, on Flickr


IMG_20110322_104917 by DarkStarPDX, on Flickr

DarkStar said:

Sounds like you need a "Car In-A-Box!"


IMG_20110322_104928 by DarkStarPDX, on Flickr


IMG_20110322_104917 by DarkStarPDX, on Flickr

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My Blink installer used the same unit!

DoxyLover said:

DarkStar said:

Sounds like you need a "Car In-A-Box!"

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My Blink installer used the same unit!

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There are some commercial J1772 testers you can purchase for thousands of dollars (not sophisticated - just extremely low volume) that will go through all the states of the J1772 protocol. For a well designed unit, that really seems like overkill. Do you test every function and wash cycle of your new washer before you accept the installation? You could have another LEAF owner drop by and test with their LEAF. To check that it turns on, you could get one of the SAE J1772:2010(tm) Vehicle Inlet Coupler to NEMA 14-50 Adapter from modular EV power for around $250. If you're skilled in electronics and 240V electrical circuits, you can test it with parts, and extreme caution rummaged from your parts bin, but since you're asking, that's probably not something you want to do.

It would be useful for us as an EV comnmunity to have a J1772 test widget that also reads out the voltage and current available from the J1772. If we have such a device at a cost of $200 or less, we can share them for testing chargers installed at home and to test public chargers. It's going to be important in the future to know how much current a J1772 will provide. Some might provide less than 12 amps, we commonly see 12A, 16A, and 32A. 24A might be used when anything bigger than a 30A circuit is unavailable - say avoinding an expensive panel upgrade. 70A is in use today at 14 public charging stations. Yes, I dream of a place where our LEAFs will plug in to J1772 and charge at 32A or even 70A and charge at 50+ LEAF miles/hour of charging. The voltage is also important, but whether it's 120V or 240V will usually be pretty obvious and the LEAF will tell us when we plug it in. Knowing whether the voltage is in spec for 208V or 240V would be nice additional information that a J1772 tester could tell us.

Tesla thread on J1772 testers:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/5961-Charge-Point-Testers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Some of the expensive devices:
http://www.gridtest.com/solutions/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (Rumoured at $3,000)
http://www.tekequip.com/ev-emulator-tool.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (Eeks! 3,450 Euros)
http://ww.walther-werke.de/index.php?id=start&L=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://ww.walther-werke.de/fileadmin/public/Downloads/e-mobility/BA_EV-Tester_Typ1_E.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Couldn't find any web product information for specifications / sales of the Blink "Car-in-a-box" J1772 Emulator.

ElectricVehicle said:

It would be useful for us as an EV comnmunity to have a J1772 test widget that also reads out the voltage and current available from the J1772...

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YES! I have been asking for just such a thing for a while now.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/5961-Charge-Point-Testers?p=74511&viewfull=1#post74511" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Meanwhile I keep hoping someone can at least figure out how to read that from the LEAF CAN data and show it on the SOC meter box...

A few EVSE manufacturers built their own test tools like Ecotality. They had to do this as there was no commercial off the shelf tool on the market. They generally built the test tools for their own EVSE and their own network of installers.

My company Gridtest built an EVSE tester which provides automated functional & safety testing. As well as testing voltage and current, it measures timing between states and GFI trip current. It steps through the J1772 states, 32 test routines in all and gives a Pass/Fail analysis and saves a test report with the serial number.

Obviously this is not designed for the consumer. It's designed for companies who need to install and maintain hundreds of EVSE's. They need to be sure that an EVSE is safe and operational before they leave a site because as you know there is generally no EV present at the installation time.
For public and commercial Charging stations, they need to be inspected & tested every 3-6 months.

I'm sure we'll see more cheaper EVSE testers in the next year that simply check if the EVSE can go into charge mode and do a GFI trip test. I'd call this a Go/No Go tester.
Neal
http://www.gridtest.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Blue Leaf SL Delivered 6/28/2011
4900 Oil free miles

My original question was more so that I could recommend something to my electrician. If EVSE installs become more widespread, then he'll see more of them. Plus as more EVSE brands are introduced new problems may pop up. It would be good to have some simple test equipment that could ferret out issues. the referenced Gridtest or even go/nogo could fit this need.

Diode test, handling ventilation etc would be good to know too.

An electrician would verify the unit has power, if that still does not work then contact the EVSE manufacturer. Most electric cars come with a portable EVSE in the trunk, you can use that one to test the car itself.

we've had some problems with the Gridtest EVSE test system and would be interested in other peoples experience with this product. Please PM your comments.

Here is another relatively cheap option:
http://clippercreek.com/store/product-category/all-products/test-equipment-all-products/

The OpenEVSE project has developed a J-1772 pilot signal monitor, it's not quite a full tester, but it's inexpensive to put one together (under $40-50)

Link: https://code.google.com/p/open-evse/wiki/EVSimMark2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Store link: https://squareup.com/market/nick-sayer/assembled-and-tested" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
You can add the optional LCD display for about $20