Interesting events at home this morning. We get only a handful of days near freezing where I live -- today's low was 33ºF and the almanac for a nearby weather station going back 17 years shows a record low of 30ºF and average low of 40ºF. A nearby flats weather station showed a low of 28ºF, but I think up here it was only freezing, not much below. Definitely frost covering almost everything, especially vegetation (grass, etc.) -- it made our cat curious (somehow he seems fine walking out there!).
Attachments:
- 8:04AM picture of error message "Charge Speed Reduced (Bad Wiring)"
- 8:08AM video showing voltage drop when amps increases
- 8:13AM video showing voltage drop when amps increases
- TeslaFi spreadsheet for 3:09AM to 8:40AM
Some time between ~5AM and 7:10AM I awoke to being extremely cold, because the heater output where I was sleeping wasn't enough to overcome the weather, so I had to find a separate circuit to put another heater on. But, it's the same side leg of the phase, so at that point I went from drawing 1500 watts to 3000 watts on the same leg. During this time, my car was charging.
I post the TeslaFi output for the first long charge started at 3:09AM which later has the pilot current drop. Notice that at 5:09AM, charger_current, battery_current, charger_actual_current all almost, with a voltage drop from ~231 to ~225 at the same time, then at 6:29AM the pilot current drops. This is the charge I originally got an error message, and started taking a picture and a few videos.
Before posting the pictures and videos, I'll describe the new wiring a bit: the electrician put in 1" EMT piping (he wanted to use flex but I said use metal) for a run of about 40 feet from the main panel to the location of the HPWC (High Power Wall Connector) where I would have put 1.5" EMT or IMC/Rigid, and then ran some pretty thick copper THHN-like wires in them that look like something around 2AWG to 4AWG, but I can't tell because I can't read any writing on the skin. It looked crazy hard to pull. I don't know why anybody would use 1" for that. The skin got all chewed up for all 3 wires (2 hot and 1 ground (smaller ground)) -- someone pulling it must have gone over some chew edge and not fed it properly into the tube. I'd like to see if this circuit would pass a high voltage test for broken insulation. Does anybody know how to find an electrician that can do that? I insisted the circuit be wired for enough capacity for 100 amps breaker, so that's what was installed: a 100 amp breaker in the main, and a small subpanel by the HPWC with a 100 amp breaker to serve as a "disconnect".
The HPWC is the latest 24 foot cable type. So, the total circuit length is around 70 feet main service panel to car.
The neighborhood was build around 1960. On the half mile road through some woods up from the main road to our neighborhood there are above-ground wires from PG&E to us. About a month ago, while installing a new drop for a some home around there, PG&E noticed a dangling high voltage wire on a failed switch (the switches were installed a few decades ago and have always caused a lot of problems, lots of power outages). So, the crew stayed overtime (double shift) and proceeded to remove both the switches and the booster transformer that was attached. They told me the booster was an old setup to boost the voltage for our area. We used to get good spot-on voltage in our neighborhood, and I never understood what all the voltage complaining was about from other neighborhoods, until now. Now, our voltage is on the low side. I don't know if that factors in.
When our solar panels were installed, we had the house main service panel replaced and a new subpanel put in where the main service panel used to be and the main service panel moved to where the meter is (what I consider an odd setup: the main service panel where the meter is, but the electrician insisted that's what they require now). I wanted our panel replaced because our Federal Pacific was jambed full of circuits, completely full, and had served its life, and I heard Federal Pacifics are prone to problems (we rarely had any, and only a few minor problems, possibly only 1 related to the panel (a squishy breaker for the dryer causing dryer failures), in the last decade of over half a century of use). At the same time, I had the PG&E service upgraded to 200 amps. PG&E came out with a two man crew, took down the wire coming from the poles, put up a new mast with larger wires in it, and then put back the same wire coming from the poles (that we've had for 55 years). They're in free air, so obviously they can hold a lot of current, but it's just another data point.
Here's my first picture at 8:04AM, showing error message "Charge Speed Reduced (Bad Wiring)" (it is hard wired by an electrician, so not an Extension Cord):
My first video (shorter) at 8:08AM showing voltage drop when amps increases:
Here's my second video (long) at 8:13AM showing voltage drop when amps increases:
My TeslaFi spreadsheet for the charge (edited for formatting and highlighting in Apple Mac's Numbers and output to PDF): see PDF attachment (listed below in Firefox):
