Help Charging at my Apartment Complex

[Virus]

Hello All,

Currently for the past few months I moved into my apartment complex and they already had pre installed Siemens Versicharge Stations in their garage however anytime I would regularly charge it will just work at times or just cuts off completely needing for Maintenance to reset the breaker.

The VersiCharge says 208V/ 240V 30A

I’ve tried using the 80% charging limit rule on my MYP & Set on 24A which was working for some time but now cuts off as well.

Any clue what it could be? Or a better setting to set my car to? To avoid the whole station from cutting off.

 

[Empiro]

If the breaker trips and needs to be reset then it likely means that the apartment didn't properly wire things up. Maybe the chargers are sharing a breaker and they shouldn't be, or there's something else on the circuit.

You can try to further lower your own charging current (to 16A for example) and see if it helps. However, it should really be up to the apartment to fix things on their end.

 

[240vPlug]

The apartment complex need to correct the problem. Could be overloaded circuit, faulty wiring, either way if it’s done properly should not be tripping. As already suggested you could try lowering to 16 amp but that may or may not work.

 

[Sophias_dad]

30 amps is the MAX that charger will handle, it doesn't mean they actually installed the wire and breaker to be able to supply 30 amps. (I'm only assuming its similar to other L2 chargers, so I could be wrong). Ask the maintenance folks what breaker it has, and then charge at 80% or less of that breaker value.

 

[Virus]

The apartment complex need to correct the problem. Could be overloaded circuit, faulty wiring, either way if it’s done properly should not be tripping. As already suggested you could try lowering to 16 amp but that may or may not work.

16 amps works, just taking forever to charge

 

[240vPlug]

16 amps works, just taking forever to charge

Yes 16amp is on the slower side for charging. Still if the charger is installed correctly you should not have to manually adjust the charge rate. The charger should be provisioned to charge at a maximum of 80% the circuit rating.

 

[davewill]

16 amps works, just taking forever to charge

It's faster than zero when the breaker trips. You're lucky the Tesla allows you to dial the charge rate down. If you had a different vehicle, you'd just have to give up.

These units are either misconfigured or on the wrong breaker. I'm guessing up to now it's been PHEVs or older EVs that can only charge at lower rates using them and no one has realized there's a problem.

 

[Virus]

UPDATE
So the 16A was charging for around 8 hours but still didn’t even reach 80% before it cut off the station fully.

 

[jcanoe]

UPDATE
So the 16A was charging for around 8 hours but still didn’t even reach 80% before it cut off the station fully.

The apartment management needs to have a licensed electrician determine whether the circuit breaker, wiring and connections are correct. They should be able to determine of the circuit breaker is bad by just replacing it (a simple, inexpensive fix). The electrician should check the wire connections are properly torqued. If after replacing the circuit breaker and checking the wire and wire connections the charging station still continued to shut down while charging then there is likely a problem with the charging station.

 

[ucmndd]

There is nothing else for you to do here other than report the issue to management to get it addressed correctly.

 

[240vPlug]

Yeah something is not right. Could be an unsafe situation! Report this to management/maintenance right away.

 

[Empiro]

My guess based on what has been described is that if it's really the case the overcurrent breaker is tripping, it's likely that the apartment cheaped out. Instead of running new wires out to the charger, the apartment used existing circuits and just added the charger to it, or there's multiple chargers, and they didn't run separate wires or use power-share-capable chargers.

 

[Virus]

My guess based on what has been described is that if it's really the case the overcurrent breaker is tripping, it's likely that the apartment cheaped out. Instead of running new wires out to the charger, the apartment used existing circuits and just added the charger to it, or there's multiple chargers, and they didn't run separate wires or use power-share-capable chargers.

Yeah i think they cheaped out on it too. I’m the only Tesla in the complex and they have 5 stations in total and all of those go out each seperately once they die off after trying on each one

 

[240vPlug]

My guess based on what has been described is that if it's really the case the overcurrent breaker is tripping, it's likely that the apartment cheaped out. Instead of running new wires out to the charger, the apartment used existing circuits and just added the charger to it, or there's multiple chargers, and they didn't run separate wires or use power-share-capable chargers.

More likely the electrician didn't know what they were doing if an electrician did it. An apartment complex will not want to have the possible liability to save a few dollars. They would either not do it or pony up the money to do it properly. My best guess is that the electrician was the lowest bidder and either didn't know anything about EVSE or took shortcuts. I would bet the apartment management has no idea which is why you should contact them to make them aware of it. That could be a dangerous situation!

I love to speculate