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220V charging (technical) question
- Thread starter jordanthompson
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NigelM
Recovering Member
Plug the UMC into the wall, but not the car. You should get the single green light (top middle of the UMC). Press the "test" button and you should see nothing change. Press and hold the "reset' button you should see the red light above the "test" button blinking. The top middle main green light shouldn't change at all if the unit is working correctly.
I plugged in the cord as you suggested.
The charge status light blinks green a few times, then glows steadily green.
OK - cool my cord behaves exactly as you described... maybe its the car?
The charge status light blinks green a few times, then glows steadily green.
OK - cool my cord behaves exactly as you described... maybe its the car?
NigelM
Recovering Member
Sounds like the UMC is healthy, but you can only confirm 100% by trying on a different circuit. I'd take the next step of plugging in somewhere else at 220v.
Do you have a J1772 adapter? There's a chargepoint at Kohl's on Palm Bay Rd in West Melbourne or one at the Comfort Suites in Palm Bay.
Other than that it sounds like you're going to have to wait on Tesla looking at your logs/car.
Do you have a J1772 adapter? There's a chargepoint at Kohl's on Palm Bay Rd in West Melbourne or one at the Comfort Suites in Palm Bay.
Other than that it sounds like you're going to have to wait on Tesla looking at your logs/car.
I do have the adapter and have been looking for an excuse to go to Khols (my wife shops there occasionally) Only problem is that connector is right in front of the front door and probably always has a non-ev parked in it (at least the one or two times I went there was.)
NigelM
Recovering Member
This becomes a ticketable offence in Florida from July 1st!
BTW the charging cord is usually 18' (and sometimes 25') so the chances are good that you can park one space to the side and still have the cable reach your car.
W.Petefish
Active Member
Symptoms include all of what you have described. The only way to change the fuse is via TM Service. (Trust me, don't even try it. I've seen it done and it deals with shutting the car completely down.)
A way to check that is if someone around has a HPC. (Nigel??)
Nigel's way to test the cord is how you test the GFCI on the cable. It appears, from what you've said, to be functioning normally.
I recently had an electrician install a NEMA 15-50 to use the UMC I bought 2 years ago when I got the Roadster (I've been using the 120V charger the last 2 years). When I plugged in the UMC, the car charged for about 10 minutes and then stopped for a minute or 2 before resuming. It did this for about an hour which the Tesla ranger was here (I wanted someone here the first time I plugged in). They took the UMC with them and tested it but it looks fine in their outlet. They pulled the logs and say that my voltage is fluctuating too much. I am literally 5 feet away from the electrical box in the garage. So I am not sure what my options are at this point. An electrical engineer friend is going to measure the voltage this week to see if he sees anything. He mentioned I may need a voltage stabilizer but those run close to $1k if you want to do 50 amps. Any ideas? Is there something other than the voltage I should be measuring?
Maybe you have a bad breaker or two (the circuit and/or the main), or the connection to the bus in the panel is bad ... beyond that, I'd think the electric company could check the lines to the house (they replaced mine for free when I was having some odd intermittent issues that turned out to be a bad breaker / bad connection in the panel). Would be interesting to know just how much it varies.
May also be worthwhile to reduce the amperage to see how much you can draw before it starts tripping.
It's the responsibility of your electric service provider to provide you with clean power. If you voltage is fluctuating you should call them and they are required to provide the correction. I had a similar problem to find that there was a co-gen plant nearby that was throwing spikes into the system. The co-gen operators had to make repairs to correct the voltage spikes they were causing.
W.Petefish
Active Member
Line power conditioners with power factor correction that run at the 16.8-20KVA range will run you approx. $11000. (trust me, I just got a quote for one.) While a buck boost transformer will run you around $990. (note: this will make the power exactly 240v, but during heavy loading will make it even lower.)
Maybe I need to press legal issues with my utility too as well as request a legalese report from TM service as evidence. (Boy, our commercial contract lawyer will love this.)
Edit: This is why I asked TM to send an advisory to have your primary charging location's incoming power analyzed by a licensed electrician.
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The breaker never tripped. I did change the amperage down several times (I can't remember the exact amounts) but that didn't seem to have any impact.
I'll report back after my friend is able to measure the voltage.
In my previous house I was getting voltage fluctuations upstairs. The breakers were making poor contact with the rail, resulting in some arcing. So your electrical panel could in fact be at fault, even if nothing is tripping.
What Doug said. I didn't mean to say the breaker tripping - meant when the Roadster shut down charging. The breaker issues I had, like Doug, we're poor contact/arcing. Caused very visible fluctuations in lighting output. Melted the insulation on the 100 amp feed wire :scared:
More of the same what cinergi and Doug_G have said. We had to replace our main breaker a few years ago (200A). The refrigerator would come on and the whole house would almost go dark. We never tripped the breaker.
That said, more information would be helpful. You need to charge from another source using your UMC to rule that out. Then charge from a J1772 charger to rule out problems with your car.
During certain times of the day my Roadster will drop the voltage by 10v when it starts charging at 70A.
That said, more information would be helpful. You need to charge from another source using your UMC to rule that out. Then charge from a J1772 charger to rule out problems with your car.
During certain times of the day my Roadster will drop the voltage by 10v when it starts charging at 70A.
W.Petefish
Active Member
Spikes are an inherent problem. I have seen spikes as high as 257v. (maybe higher) I know that the roadster will trip a fault at that voltage when plugged into the HPC and charging at 70A.
The saga continues...
I stopped by the Chevy dealer (they were on the way home and they had a J1772 charger). They were very helpful, but I am not sure I really learned anything:
According to my touch screen, their J1772 charger only went up to 15A, and although this is twice the energy I can put into my car at 110V, it is no where near the 40+A the 220V line can deliver. It did seem to charge fine, though, which leads me to believe there may be something wrong with the 220V charge cable or the house line... unless there is something going on with the car charger: I have had issues with the 120V charger where the touch screen thinks I am using an extension cord (this morning I noticed the voltage on the touch screen was reported as less than 100V.) The outlet I plug the 110V charge line into is literally 15 feet from my breaker box, so I find it hard to believe there is that much line drop. So maybe there is a problem with the car.... I am SOOoooo confused!
Tesla is coming by tomorrow for some other issues as well as this, so hopefully I will have more (positive news) to report later.
Jordan
I stopped by the Chevy dealer (they were on the way home and they had a J1772 charger). They were very helpful, but I am not sure I really learned anything:
According to my touch screen, their J1772 charger only went up to 15A, and although this is twice the energy I can put into my car at 110V, it is no where near the 40+A the 220V line can deliver. It did seem to charge fine, though, which leads me to believe there may be something wrong with the 220V charge cable or the house line... unless there is something going on with the car charger: I have had issues with the 120V charger where the touch screen thinks I am using an extension cord (this morning I noticed the voltage on the touch screen was reported as less than 100V.) The outlet I plug the 110V charge line into is literally 15 feet from my breaker box, so I find it hard to believe there is that much line drop. So maybe there is a problem with the car.... I am SOOoooo confused!
Tesla is coming by tomorrow for some other issues as well as this, so hopefully I will have more (positive news) to report later.
Jordan
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NigelM
Recovering Member
What you need to do is try a 220v J1772 and also try your UMC in a 220v socket. Hopefully the Ranger will find nothing wrong with the car.
OK... KC from Dania Beach came by. He had another cable to try. Turns out the logs and Albert (the new area service manager from Dania Beach) were absolutely correct (who am I to question such lofty sources!) Turns out the cable was bad! On the other hand, Albert really worked with me to fix the problem and my roadster is a very happy camper charging at 220V. I have seen it drop to 119V, but mostly it stays at 220V. Now, instead of 60 hours it should be under 5 to charge completely. I actually took a bunch of times and distances as it was charging at 120V and put it into a spreadsheet, and lo and behold, Tesla is correct again: 120V/15A takes 60 hours to charge 0-240 miles! I'm doing some more time-stamps to estimate the 220V time to charge and will post them later.
For what its worth, the visit was nothing less than amazing: KC changed my wiper blade (no longer have the cool-looking aeroblade - the Tesla "Wiper Blade Engineer" recommended these new blades), the batteries in the key fobs, topped off the coolant(s), did a battery check, adjusted the suspension (my wife was complaining it was a little harsh) from 5-3 (can't imagine what 10 is like!) He was very patient and explained everything he was doing as he went along. He updated the firmware, checked the window wind-noise update (turns out I had it, but it was not documented), and installed the anti-fogging strips for the headlights (still working the fog out of them). When he was done, he took me out for a test run to make sure it accelerated and braked as expected. The main thing I they did was get me charging at 220V. These guys really want to make a good impression, and for me, the certainly did! They need to come back to install the A/C fan shroud and I am having a minor issue with the front left splash guard, so they are going to replace it too.
I cannot express how comfortable KC and Albert have made me feel with my new car. My wife and are still concerned with the warranty running out at the end of the year, but with this kind of service and attention, I really do feel a whole lot better. I remember Saturn trying to be a different kind of car company, but I think Tesla is really succeeding!
For what its worth, the visit was nothing less than amazing: KC changed my wiper blade (no longer have the cool-looking aeroblade - the Tesla "Wiper Blade Engineer" recommended these new blades), the batteries in the key fobs, topped off the coolant(s), did a battery check, adjusted the suspension (my wife was complaining it was a little harsh) from 5-3 (can't imagine what 10 is like!) He was very patient and explained everything he was doing as he went along. He updated the firmware, checked the window wind-noise update (turns out I had it, but it was not documented), and installed the anti-fogging strips for the headlights (still working the fog out of them). When he was done, he took me out for a test run to make sure it accelerated and braked as expected. The main thing I they did was get me charging at 220V. These guys really want to make a good impression, and for me, the certainly did! They need to come back to install the A/C fan shroud and I am having a minor issue with the front left splash guard, so they are going to replace it too.
I cannot express how comfortable KC and Albert have made me feel with my new car. My wife and are still concerned with the warranty running out at the end of the year, but with this kind of service and attention, I really do feel a whole lot better. I remember Saturn trying to be a different kind of car company, but I think Tesla is really succeeding!
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