Charger Faults on 2 Different L2 Chargers

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JRudy

Member
Joined
Jan 8, 2017
Messages
8
I just bought an off lease 2015 Leaf S with 18,500 miles on it. Love the car except for a problem with L2 charging that developed.

I put a plug in my garage and bought an Ebusbar BEV-H02A10 charger cable. Worked well for the first few days. Then it started to fault half way through the charge cycle. Sent the Ebusbar back and got a Dostart charger in exchange. It also faults half way through. What gives? The service to the garage can only handle 3.8KV (16 amp) charge.

Is this the charger cable, the electricity going to the garage or the car's internal charger?

Any thoughts would be welcome.
 
There have been issues with the onboard chargers, but they usually result in failure to start charging. Usually problems like yours are due to an issue with the building's wiring. Have you tried an L-2 station away from home?
 
I have the Ebusbar and have yet to have an issue with it, going on 1 year. I'd also suspect something with your wiring, any chance on trying it at a friends that has the correct outlet? If your factory EVSE works without an issue I don't think it would be your cars charger. As Leftie said, trying any L2 away from home would also be a good test.
 
Thanks JJeff and LefteBiker for the responses to this charge issue. I have wondered about the wiring as well. No problems with the 110 charger that came with the car and no problems with the charger at work (so far but I have only charged a few times there). Last night it got to 96% and then faulted!

I looked at Leaf Spy Pro in the charging screen and the Green graph is all over the place in terms of KW/hr. It varies between 3.5 and 3.1 KW.

"C:\Users\T450s\Pictures\2016\Leaf Life\Screenshot_2017-01-08-22-09-24.jpg"
 
all of my previous issue with charging have ended up being related to a 12v battery that was not fully charged and healthy. If you have a battery tender or charger for a typical 12v car battery, charge it. if you have leafspy, clear any and all DTC codes once the 12v is fully happy. go from there... just so you can remove the 12v battery from the equation.
 
DuncanCunnngham thanks for this insight. I have been following the threads that suggest 12v battery issues and the spurious problems the 12v battery can cause.

My LeafSpyPro has not showed me any DTC codes to date. I do notice sometimes the battery voltage is down to 11. 5v but upon plugging the charger in and/or resetting it goes up to 14.5v. I mounted a 2-way ham radio in the car which has a built in voltmeter and confirm that leafspy is accurate. (All faulting problems predated the radio install).

What DTC codes have you seen with low 12v battery?
 
i don't recall the codes now.. I did a post about them but once my 12v battery was on a charger for a good long night, all the codes i was worried about disappeared and never came back, until the 12v battery was weak again. The Leaf i have, the 2012 is not very good at keeping the 12v happy. Newer models are better but still some problems for some owners. The battery I was having trouble with reported good voltage numbers too so don't go off those. just get a good 12v charger on it. I used a battery tender and it 'fixed' all my issues in one night. I now run the battery tender every weekend to top it up, I don't need my car failing on me at a charging station out in the wild.
 
Thought I'd offer my 2 cents so you don't stray too far off course.
1) I don't think your problem has anything to do with the 12v battery
2) The fact that you can charge @work tells me it's not the car
3) If you can't get the EVSE's you mentioned to work elsewhere, then it's probably not your house wiring

I had a similar problem with a (backup) EVSE I bought last year...and it was basically poor design/faulty parts. In other words, stick with the "good" stuff. Once I went back to my (primary) EVSE, all the mid-cycle charge failures stopped.
Good luck getting things sorted out.
 
My apologies, I didn't read the last post about the work charger working and the 120v charger too.

Is the wall outlet on its own circuit and at least 20amps? I know it should be OK if it breaker hasn't tripped, but just checking. Are all the wires connected well?
 
The garage power is about 100 feet from the breaker in the house which is a 30 amp circuit. Its a 3 wire burried cable with 2 hots and one bare copper neutral. The Dostar charger faults with the codes indicating "Abnormal Current (SCP)" whatever that means. I know by looking at the leaf spy charge screen that the power into the charger is fluctuating...some wierd readings like when I open the car door it takes a .3 kw dip.

It does sound like the power in my garage is not stable so will check that out.
 
I don't think it's the 12 volt battery either, but that may be low on charge as a separate issue. I suggest you charge it fully using either a car battery charger or a maintainer.
 
JRudy said:
The garage power is about 100 feet from the breaker in the house which is a 30 amp circuit. Its a 3 wire burried cable with 2 hots and one bare copper neutral. The Dostar charger faults with the codes indicating "Abnormal Current (SCP)" whatever that means. I know by looking at the leaf spy charge screen that the power into the charger is fluctuating...some wierd readings like when I open the car door it takes a .3 kw dip.

It does sound like the power in my garage is not stable so will check that out.

Does that 30 amp circuit feed a sub panel in the garage or just your 240 volt EVSE receptacle?

I think it would be worth checking the voltage in the garage during charging to see if it's anywhere near "too low" which these EVSEs may not be able to handle properly. Then maybe check it every hour or so to see if there is any changes.

If you aren't getting DTCs it seems unlikely that the 12 volt battery or car are to blame and more likely that it's these EVSEs. Now to determine if it's the EVSE or the wiring that is the root problem.

Congrats on the new LEAF BTW! I presume your LEAF has the 3 kW on board charger and not the 6?
 
Queen Bee thanks for the thoughts. I really love the leaf and think I can get this charge problem sorted out.

The charger plug is on the garage wiring taken off at the entry point, of the 240, to the garage. In a sub breaker panel the 240 is split for the lights and 120v plugs. There is nothing running in the garage tho so during night time charge the Leaf is the only thing connected.

I just got a full charge last night, no faults but I ran leaf spy during the whole cycle. The blue charge KW graph fluctuates regularly. I could post a screen shot if I can figure out how to insert an image into this forum. Any way to do that?
 
If you have a volt meter (even a $5 Harbor Freight cheapie) Measure the voltage at the main panel while charging. You could have a bad breaker or the buss bar could be bad for one side. Measure from the neutral and you should have 120V at each breaker terminal. They should be about the same voltage.
 
GlennD thanks for the response. I have a fairly good meter and it registers 115.7 volts from each side to neutral. It is shifting around while charging by about .5 volts each side and there is a .3-.5 volt differential between each hot side to neutral. Would that cause a fault in the charger cable/vehicle charge controller?
 
JRudy said:
Queen Bee thanks for the thoughts. I really love the leaf and think I can get this charge problem sorted out.

The charger plug is on the garage wiring taken off at the entry point, of the 240, to the garage. In a sub breaker panel the 240 is split for the lights and 120v plugs. There is nothing running in the garage tho so during night time charge the Leaf is the only thing connected.

I just got a full charge last night, no faults but I ran leaf spy during the whole cycle. The blue charge KW graph fluctuates regularly. I could post a screen shot if I can figure out how to insert an image into this forum. Any way to do that?

You'll have to upload it somewhere else and provide a link here. I really wouldn't expect that to be happening.

So one thing to note while I'm sure many sub panels are wired this way it's incorrect to wire the sub panel with only three wires. You should have four wires two hots, a neutral, and a ground. Then in the sub panel the neutrals and grounds are not bonded together. I'm not proposing you fix this but the issue is that if the ground wire were to get disconnected then any metal bonded to the ground could become energized and pose a shock hazard.

JRudy said:
GlennD thanks for the response. I have a fairly good meter and it registers 115.7 volts from each side to neutral. It is shifting around while charging by about .5 volts each side and there is a .3-.5 volt differential between each hot side to neutral. Would that cause a fault in the charger cable/vehicle charge controller?

115 volts at the garage sub panel? If that's the case that's pretty decent and thus isn't likely the problem.
 
QueenBee said:
JRudy said:
The garage power is about 100 feet from the breaker in the house which is a 30 amp circuit. Its a 3 wire burried cable with 2 hots and one bare copper neutral. The Dostar charger faults with the codes indicating "Abnormal Current (SCP)" whatever that means. I know by looking at the leaf spy charge screen that the power into the charger is fluctuating...some wierd readings like when I open the car door it takes a .3 kw dip.

It does sound like the power in my garage is not stable so will check that out.

Does that 30 amp circuit feed a sub panel in the garage or just your 240 volt EVSE receptacle?

I think it would be worth checking the voltage in the garage during charging to see if it's anywhere near "too low" which these EVSEs may not be able to handle properly. Then maybe check it every hour or so to see if there is any changes.

If you aren't getting DTCs it seems unlikely that the 12 volt battery or car are to blame and more likely that it's these EVSEs. Now to determine if it's the EVSE or the wiring that is the root problem.

Congrats on the new LEAF BTW! I presume your LEAF has the 3 kW on board charger and not the 6?

"3 wire buried cable with 2 hots and one bare copper neutral"?
Sounds like an SE cable with concentric neutral or just a 2 wire cable and using the bonding conductor as a neutral.
The cable feeding the garage should have 3 insulated conductors and a bare "ground" wire.
Check the voltage not only between hots, and hots to neutral, but also neutral to ground and hots to ground. (under load)
 
The garage is a fuse disconnect subpanel. It has 30 amp fuses in it. I have the charge plug taken off the non fused side, counting on the breaker in the house to trip if there is a problem.

This link will give the screenshot of the LeafSpy Pro charge grid:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8A7X5zpHRaOU0hyLUpfTkwxdnc

This charge cycle did not fault but went from 60ish percent all the way to full charge (100% on the dash) 97% SOC.
 
JRudy said:
The garage is a fuse disconnect subpanel. It has 30 amp fuses in it. I have the charge plug taken off the non fused side, counting on the breaker in the house to trip if there is a problem.

This link will give the screenshot of the LeafSpy Pro charge grid:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8A7X5zpHRaOU0hyLUpfTkwxdnc

This charge cycle did not fault but went from 60ish percent all the way to full charge (100% on the dash) 97% SOC.

So that charge graph looks good, the breaks in charging at the end are when the pack is balancing itself. As you can see at 2.5 hours the SOC doesn't increase much.

Unrelated but are all the garage lighting and receptacle circuits using #10 wire? Just for good measure you probably want to replace the 30 amp fuses with 15 amps fuses.

So I'd measure the voltage at the garage sub panel with charging and without.
 
So what do you make of the blue line on the charging graph that is the Charge KW and rapidly shifts from about 3.5 to 3.7 kw? If you zoom in (can't see that on this picture) you see a sometime regular change and sometimes irregular spacing to that shift? Is that leveling going on as well?
 
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