Restart from turtle

[Jerther]

I'm more concerned with the behavior of square waves being fed into the inductive components of pretty much any modern electronic device (eg. their switching power supplies). Honestly I may be biased because I got really scared once when I fed square waves of low power into a transformer. Parts blew up. Inexpensive parts. No harm done. Lessons learned. But that was a really crude experiment without any filtering. But good quality power devices should be resilient as not all countries have clean, perfect sine wave AC anyways. Might be worth a try. But stay close

That said, I am not offering my stuff to run the test

Me neither

 

[cornbinder89]

As far as I know, the only inductive device before the input gets rectified to DC is the coil on the contactor, fairly sure that sees DC from the low voltage side of things.
Anybody want to try and report back?

 

[Jerther]

Aaahh I think I know what's missing. I meant to say that even when rectified to DC, the square wave stays a square wave but it is called pulsed DC or PDC. It then gets filtered to a smooth flat voltage by various filtering techniques, and if those are not designed to filter out all noise of various frequencies that compose PDC, then that noise could get through to the controlling electronics and cause problems. But then again, very unlikely for well designed equipment.

Anyways, it's getting unecessary technical, sorry

One a last note about this though: some inverters generate "uglier" AC waves than others. Some higher end models generate lots of smaller "steps" to simulate a sine wave. These might work fine, no problem. But the cheaper ones generate like 2 steps AC and these I would certainly not use on anything more elaborate than a light bulb, and barely to hear it sing

 

[mux]

Just to demystify the behavior a bit further: the reason you can't start again is because the battery has set the flag LB_EMPTY (0x55B byte 6 bit 7). Once set, this won't clear until you go over the VLBW threshold (2.0kWh/25GIDs).

However, it should be noted that 'turtle mode' isn't one thing. There are many reasons why the turtle may appear, and not all will result in the same behavior. Only if the turtle is due to low battery charge will it show this behavior.

 

[cornbinder89]

Aaahh I think I know what's missing. I meant to say that even when rectified to DC, the square wave stays a square wave but it is called pulsed DC or PDC. It then gets filtered to a smooth flat voltage by various filtering techniques, and if those are not designed to filter out all noise of various frequencies that compose PDC, then that noise could get through to the controlling electronics and cause problems. But then again, very unlikely for well designed equipment.

Anyways, it's getting unecessary technical, sorry

One a last note about this though: some inverters generate "uglier" AC waves than others. Some higher end models generate lots of smaller "steps" to simulate a sine wave. These might work fine, no problem. But the cheaper ones generate like 2 steps AC and these I would certainly not use on anything more elaborate than a light bulb, and barely to hear it sing

I have run a fair bit of stuff off MSW inverters for long periods of time without problems, Computers and printers, 'fridges and such. Talking years in my truck, inverter and power running 24/7. Some motors don't do well for the reasons mentioned.
The Leaf's charger in the 1st step basically "flips" the part of the wave that drops below "0" so a square wave would be much more like a straight line than a sine wave would be, but the peak voltage would be lower. I don't see it causing a problem in the car as long as the voltage is high enough to be recognized.

 

[Jerther]

It's not that simple, sorry... I can't explain in details why, and it's getting irrelevant. There's a lot of easy to find articles on the internet by more experienced people that will explain these principles better than I could. This reddit answer is pretty straightforward. Apparently, [well designed] Switch Mode Power Supplies are safe to use with modified sine wave, which is most likely what EVSEs have to power themselves. AFAIK the LEAF's charger could very well fall in the SMPS category but I really don't know. Also, its Power Factor Correction (PFC) stage may have issues as some PFCs are known to have issues with modified sine waves.

What's interesting about this is that there are similar questions on this forum, and other platforms, with some theoretical and very careful answers and correlations (like here ), but no definitive proven answer.

It is a topic of its own, and in the end, good quality pure sine wave is safe, and modified sine wave should be used with caution. I would avoid it, and @cornbinder89 is not willing to risk it

 

[timgross]

Plenty of 2000 watt, pure sine-wave 12VDC to 120VAC inverters for sale on the web. I use a 200 amp quick connect/disconnect with 1/0 wire gauge copper. The Leaf 12V system can run up to 2000 watts of power, so running an EVSE at only 12 amps (Nissan Default) is pretty much the max the system can handle due to inverter efficiency loses. If you max out the 2000 watts, the Leaf shut downs completely and it takes a 12V battery power cycle to get it out of it's safe mode.

Can you elaborate on the 200 amp quick connect/disconnect? Is this connecting to the battery? Is there an off-the-shelf connector for this at auto parts store? I have been meaning to create this kind of setup. Thanks.

 

[knightmb]

Can you elaborate on the 200 amp quick connect/disconnect? Is this connecting to the battery? Is there an off-the-shelf connector for this at auto parts store? I have been meaning to create this kind of setup. Thanks.

Seems my memory wasn't as good that many years ago, but I found where I bought them, still selling them. They are 175A quick connects, not 200, but still more than enough for the Leaf 12V system. You also need a special crimping tool, but any 1/0 gauge battery terminal crimper will work also. I connected the wires to the battery terminals, that then connect to the battery (in my setup), which feeds into the Anderson connectors that you see kind of floating up. Because the wire can not rotate due to thickness, I crimped everything in "place" so the connectors were facing the right direction.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KW2W9TW/

 

[cornbinder89]

They are commonly called "Anderson connectors" and any forklift place, Grainger and many othere suppliers. IIRC they come in 50, 175, and 300 amp "sizes". I worked with all three back in the day when working on industrial equipment.
They also have accessories, like a handle and blanking plug for when not connected. Fairly common on the internet also.

 

[timgross]

Thanks, that helps. I believe the inverter is not actually connected in the picture you show. Is that correct?
It seems you always leave one end of the Anderson connector attached to your battery then you plug in the inverter when needed. It that correct?

 

[knightmb]

Thanks, that helps. I believe the inverter is not actually connected in the picture you show. Is that correct?
It seems you always leave one end of the Anderson connector attached to your battery then you plug in the inverter when needed. It that correct?

In the picture yes, in the video, you'll see that they are connected for the system test I was doing.

 

[timgross]

Thanks. I got it now. I plan to do this more as a home electricity backup in case PG&E has an outage so I can run my essential appliances. But the ability to take the show on the road is an added bonus.