More than one person has asked how we ended up being completely unable to charge Tessie at a roadhouse that had 32A 3ph, 15A and 10A outlets available, especially given my earlier post:
We have 13 ways of harvesting electrons - are we overprepared? I hate the idea of getting stuck!
DC: Supercharger, Chademo
AC 3ph: 32A, HPWC, Type 2, 20A, 10A
AC 1ph: 32A, J1772, twin 15A, twin 10A, single 15A, single 10A
Well that's a long story (if you are not really into charging solutions please read no further) and still a bit of a mystery ...
Apart from superchargers / HPWC's (no hardware reqd), Chademo (Tesla adapter), and J1772 (separate adapter) our setup was based on the Maxicharger EVSE and its interchangeable tails:
It's a really neat system where you just pick in the tail you want, and it automatically regulates the car's maximum charging current to suit the outlet you are charging from - very safe, and you don't have to be a tech head to use it. Apparently Maxicharger have previously never had one return from a customer anywhere in the world, and we carried TWO Maxicharger units to be 100% sure - after all we could leave one behind, run over one or whatever. Did we need my UMC? Not really I thought, as it will only do 10 A (which I have a tail for anyway) and why get the UMC 3 phase adapter kit when we have 2 Maxichargers? So the UMC stayed at home to save space!
So what happened?
- On single phase 10A, 15A and 32A (including 15+15) never a problem. Sometimes at a caravan park on the end of a run the voltage could get down to 185V - the lowest a Tesla can take, and the Maxicharger was still 100% reliable, and we did a LOT of single phase charging.
- On 3 phase 20 A and Type 2 - no problems (although not many sites admittedly).
- On 3 phase 32A - no problems (apart from sometimes multiple attempts to click in) for the first handful of times we used it until Maxichargers stopped functioning on 32 A 3ph, the first in Cairns (on the east coast grid), the second in Derby (on locally generated town power), and the third at Nanutarra (with its own roadhouse generator set).
The fact that we had a third unit was due to Tim at Evnomics sending a third to Darwin to give us a back up, and a fourth to Perth (which I will get tomorrow), all without having (yet) seen the returned units, and without this being covered by the supplier (who is still waiting to see the units in France). Good on you Tim - great support !
Diagnosis? Probably not going to be fully resolved till everything gets inspected in France ...
- Power source ? Not really because the units failed on grid power, local power and site power.
- Anything we were doing on single phase including 15 + 15 ? Not really because the first unit to fail was in my 3 phase carry case and had not been used on single phase. Also we experienced 100% reliability on single phase.
- Excessive voltages? We thought so at first, so after the second failure we refused to charge on any 3 phase over 240V (and some were running at 253V - close to the max allowable). However at Nanutarra the voltage was 240 exactly and we had the 3rd failure there.
- Problem with Tessie? Untinkable! Actually she has charged fine quite a few times on 3 phase (HPWC and borrowed UMC) since Nanutarra.
- The "killer tail" theory. The only common thing between all 3 events is this 3 phase 32 A tail. I've now marked it unmistakably as you can see, and Tim is sending another (thanks again Tim).
I really don't want to put anybody off the Maxicharger here. It is a simple and flexible and reliable way to take your Tesla just about anywhere. I am certainly intending to stick with it. I have not seen anything on the market that does this job as well. Just bad timing on an isolated issue in my thinking. You will certainly not find a system with better local support!
I'll keep you posted on the final outcome.
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