Crackling when plugging car in to charge

[Billbrown1982]

I've got an EV Charge King Cable, not tried it with the standard one yet (because I keep forgetting, although I will do now as it seems to have gotten worse) but very often when plugging the cable in to my car, it makes a slight crackling sound, it reminds me very much of when you plug a 3 pin plug into an old style PC monitor, you nearly always get that crackle.

The weird thing is.....the charger isn't set to discharge power, so it shouldn't be getting anything to short it at that stage and also, I thought the whole idea of the plug/socket was to not allow that to happen?

Its never been particularly bad, except today when I purposely did it slowly and tried to record it on my phone ( and failed) but I didn't realise at the time it had actually tripped the breaker on my EO Charge Mini. I just had to flick it back on because I noticed the car didn't start charging at half 12 when it should have.

Anyone else had this behaviour? I'm wondering who the prime suspect is...obviously I can work my way through using process of elimination but these things take time...and kind of rely on me to remember lol

 

[M3noob]

I've got an EV Charge King Cable, not tried it with the standard one yet (because I keep forgetting, although I will do now as it seems to have gotten worse) but very often when plugging the cable in to my car, it makes a slight crackling sound, it reminds me very much of when you plug a 3 pin plug into an old style PC monitor, you nearly always get that crackle.

The weird thing is.....the charger isn't set to discharge power, so it shouldn't be getting anything to short it at that stage and also, I thought the whole idea of the plug/socket was to not allow that to happen?

Its never been particularly bad, except today when I purposely did it slowly and tried to record it on my phone ( and failed) but I didn't realise at the time it had actually tripped the breaker on my EO Charge Mini. I just had to flick it back on because I noticed the car didn't start charging at half 12 when it should have.

Anyone else had this behaviour? I'm wondering who the prime suspect is...obviously I can work my way through using process of elimination but these things take time...and kind of rely on me to remember lol

I find that making check lists (and using them) to be helpful in executing interminable sequences. This was rather drummed into me by a flight instructor wielding a miniature cricket bat (or rather the threat thereof). TCGUMP

 

[qwickshot]

It could be the cable or the charger or the car.

The cracking noise is the electricity arcing and it shouldn’t be doing that. The charge cable should be dead until the handshake has completed. The signal pins that do the handshake are low voltage and shouldn’t arc.

I assume the charging pins are in good condition on both the cable and car? Does it arc at both ends? E.g. charger first and then arcs when plugging into the car or car first and then arcs when going into the charger?

If swapping the cable fixes it, it’s a dodgy cable.

If using a different charger (same cable) fixes it, it’s a dodgy charger. I’d use another home charger that is set to charge as soon as you plug in to try and replicate the issue.

If neither a different charger or cable fixes it, I’d suggest it’s the car.

 

[pgkevet]

It could be the cable or the charger or the car.

..Or the user with glass fibre underwear and a silk frock...

 

[rotor2k]

Could it be that the EO Charge Mini is faulty and is live when it shouldn't be? The cable shouldn't have any current on it until the car has a successful handshake with the EVSE (the "charger"). Crackling implies arcing which implies current which should 100% not be there.

 

[Adopado]

I've got an EV Charge King Cable, not tried it with the standard one yet

I think you already know what you've to do next then!

 

[Casss]

I might try the other cable but beyond that I’d be hands off and would be contacting support for the charger, or the cable provider personally.

 

[Rooster6655]

Use official cable firstly

 

[Irata]

If the sound is arching then it sounds like a charge point fault to me, because it should not be supplying power. Also, why did the breaker trip. If the EV charge King cable has somehow fooled the charge point, that in itself sounds a design issue with the cable, unlikely though.

I was gonna say, turn the circuit off and on again to reboot the charge point (like many others nowadays, this charge point has a Raspberry Pi zero w inside). But the breaker did that already. Maybe it got itself into a confused state. How's it been since?

I have the same charge point, but touch wood no issues yet.

 

[Billbrown1982]

Thanks for replies. Yeah will be trying the checklist approach. Because it doesn't always do it, this is going to take some time. Prime example got home last night, was after half midnight to charger was live, and plugged in using ev chargeking cable with no problems.

I "normally" get home before this time though when the charger is not live and it has definitely crackled at me. But not started charging until half 12....whole things rather odd.

Will keep running tests. If I can't find an answer, when i'm next off work for the day I'll try a few different methods during the day.

 

[MrBadger]

Before plugging the car in touch the rear side window. If you can feel any pain with your hand, come back here and we can help diagnose further...

 

[rotor2k]

Before plugging the car in touch the rear side window. If you can feel any pain with your hand, come back here and we can help diagnose further...

Terrifying!

 

[Billbrown1982]

Well little update, after a process of elimination, 2 different cables and spending an embarrassingly long amount of time in a Tesco car park, plugging and unplugging the charger trying to get it to crackle...I've decided its my home charger that is the problem. Great.

On the plus side, its barely still under warranty.

On the down side....I kind of feel like this is going to be a hassle to get sorted. We shall see!

 

[Billbrown1982]

Although...now I think about it.

I thought the pins on the chargers were designed that they couldn't draw power until fully inserted? Like one pin is shorter than the others so you have to push it onto the actual power pins first and then onto the activation pin if you like.

When i'm getting the crackling, the charger is barely in the port. Not even 1/4 of the way. So that shouldn't be possible right?

Maybe it IS the port on the car afterall....

Had a knightmare tonight getting the car to charge. I think the short freaked everything out, had to reset my charger 3 times, do a hard reboot of the car and then unplug everything and start from scratch to get it to charge. Lost an hours worth of cheap rate lol. Got to charge at peak now and thats just so wrong.

 

[kelvin 660]

When i'm getting the crackling, the charger is barely in the port. Not even 1/4 of the way. So that shouldn't be possible right?

Sounds to me, for safety, you should turn of the wall charger before pluging into the car and then turn it ON.
And when charged turn OFF the wall charger before removing it from the car...

 

[rotor2k]

Although...now I think about it.

I thought the pins on the chargers were designed that they couldn't draw power until fully inserted? Like one pin is shorter than the others so you have to push it onto the actual power pins first and then onto the activation pin if you like.

When i'm getting the crackling, the charger is barely in the port. Not even 1/4 of the way. So that shouldn't be possible right?

Maybe it IS the port on the car afterall....

Had a knightmare tonight getting the car to charge. I think the short freaked everything out, had to reset my charger 3 times, do a hard reboot of the car and then unplug everything and start from scratch to get it to charge. Lost an hours worth of cheap rate lol. Got to charge at peak now and thats just so wrong.

The "charger" (it's technically not a charger) should *never* be live except when plugged in and after a successful handshake (you should be able to stick your tongue in any of the holes of the plug and not die). It should only send power to the car once the correct handshake on the control line has been performed. Of course this handshake would only occur once the plug was firmly in place. So if you are getting arcing (which requires a high current), the logical conclusion is you have (high) current on the lines that should not have any current at all. I suppose it *could* be the Tesla is sending high current back up pins that are unidirectional (i.e. that only ever receive current, not emit it) but that seems very unlikely. And it could be there is something loose inside the Tesla connector housing, but again, there shouldn't be any current at that point.

On my Rolec charger there is a loud thunk/clack when the pins are energised (multiple seconds *after* the plug is firmly plugged in).

From: Combined Charging System - Wikipedia

• Basic signaling (BS) is done using a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal which is transferred over the control pilot (CP) contact according to IEC 61851-1. This communication is used for safety-related functions, indicating for example if the connector is plugged in, before contacts are made live (or energized) and if both charging station and electric vehicle are ready for charging. AC charging is possible using the PWM signal only. In this case the charging station uses the duty cycle of the PWM to inform the onboard charger of the maximum available current at the charging station (A pulse width of 5% indicates that HLC shall be used).

 

[pgkevet]

What are the chances that the wall charger is responsible for a static charge in the cable at home? Gripping it with bare feet might be an unpleasant way of proving that possibility or earthing it.

 

[GRiLLA]

It you drive past a lot of balloons it could be static.

If mains was arcing you would smell and see the discolouration somewhere, seems highly unlikely but I'm not sure that @rotor2k 's tongue test is the best way to prove it. I would call up EO and see what they think, they were very good for me when I had issues when the Model 3 was new (including their CEO coming to see what was happening).

 

[Billbrown1982]

Yeah cheers guys, will be ringing EO shortly. I suppose my bigger concern is getting them out and finding nothing wrong, thereby costing me money because it turns out to be the car, or visa versa.

Its also happening when the charger is not scheduled to start charging yet. So i'll plug it in, crackle crackle but then it won't start charging until half 12 as normal. Well except last night when something must have freaked out because I had to reboot everything and unplug/replug multiple times to get the car to charge. Even had the dreaded "Unable to AC charge" warning for a bit, which had me panicking as I didn't have enough in it to get to work today.

 

[Bantam]

I thought this thread was going to be about what pork based snack do you eat while charging... how disappointing (@Billbrown1982 hope you get it sorted with EO)