gsleaf said:
Has anyone here had the Ecotality Blink EVSE installed as part of the EV Project? How did that work? Are you happy with the work they did and the Blink EVSE?
The LEAF I bought last year was an orphan reserved by someone who also had gone through the ProjectEV application process. Effectively, the car came with a subsidized QC port and kind of a "pre-approval" for a Blink home EVSE. "Free was a very good price", or so I imagined, so I went ahead with the Blink install.
The installing electrician did an OK job, I guess, but elected to cut off the power plug connector that the Blink unit came with and wire it straight to my main breaker panel, which was about two feet away. The garage is unfinished, so they took the simple route of just stapling flex-conduit over the tops of the bare studs rather than drilling & routing through a couple of them. Not being much for cosmetics, that was OK with me, but I wish I'd asked them to install a mating power outlet connector so the Blink's original plug could be retained.
Over the first four months of use or so, the Blink EVSE was pretty much the sorriest P.O.S. I'd ever had the displeasure of using, thanks to a combination of poorly engineered hardware, a bad SD memory component, and bad operating firmware. At various times, the Blink would fail to notice its attachment or detachment from the LEAF, skip charging, reboot, and other antics. A repair tech eventually made a house call and changed out the Blink's SD memory card (I have to excuse Blink on that aspect of their troubles, as I understand the duff memory cards were pretty convincing counterfeits that found their way into legitimate component distributors' inventories). The tech also installed a pair of over-the-mains Ethernet modems to compensate for the inability of the Blink's wireless network feature to communicate with my network hub less than ten feet away (well, through a wall, but still, a laptop had no trouble at quadruple the distance).
Shortly after that, Blink HQ pushed out replacement firmware (remote firmware upgradeability was something that the Blink designers got right, I have to concede), and since then, the unit has performed much better. A few times, it's successfully supported my LEAF's timed-for-the-wee-smalls charging sessions for a solid week. But on the average, it fails to charge the car about one day out of every three or four. I can make three commutes on one 80% charge, so this works out mostly OK. Plus, I can now use my recently-obtained smart phone from the bedside to call up a replica of the Blink's display upon awakening. If it's one of those "A Power Fault has occurred.... please caress my touch screen" mornings, I can stagger out and at least get a little charging manually started while I shower.
Which brings up a (off-topic?) gripe about public charging infrastructure: Why make us get a card/account for each source? Such a hassle. Why not just make it like gas pumps are now, where all we need to do is swipe a credit card?
