I have an EVLink EV2430 wall charger. I got it about 10 years ago to charge a Nissan Leaf. I now have a Model Y which I purchased one month ago. The charger has a dryer plug 14-30P with nothing connected to the ground prong. It works flawlessly when plugged into my dryer outlet. A little inconvenient because I have to put the cord out the window and across a porch to the car that is backed up to the front of the house. i had an electrician put an 14-30R outlet in my garage. The wire is 10AWG with about a 130 foot run. It has no ground wire. The electrician said that was legal as it is connected directly to the main panel. The car charged fine twice but with a voltage drop of 8 volts compared to the dryer outlet (243V 30amp). Now the wall charger trips within a few minutes every time I try to charge. Even if I restrict the amperage to 15amps it will still trip. With the restricted amperage the car is saying the voltage is 243. Both circuits have an 30 amp breaker on them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.
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Problem with Charger
- Thread starter Stumped
- Start date
Why do you keep saying no ground? A 14-30 receptacle isn't legal unless it is connected to four wires. Two hots, one neutral and one ground.
EVSEs will ignore the neutral, but they typically will test to see if the ground wire is connected by leaking a little bit of current to it to ensure there is a ground connected. So maybe you are saying it has no neutral?
Now the tripping: Presumably you are saying that the 30A breaker is tripping? If so, then the system is drawing too much power, and I would suspect that the new 14-30 receptacle doesn't have its wires tightened correctly either at the receptacle or at the new 30A breaker.
Incidentally, the electrician should be shot if he installed a brand new 14-30 receptacle with only three wires. That is not cool.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, that EV charger was originally built to be hard wired? ie. it would be easy to take off the cover and hard wire the input wire - there is no reason to stick with a 14-30 plug and receptacle. I could be wrong - it is an old unit, so hard to find good info on it.
And thinking about it again, moving that unit from one place to another might have jostled the 14-30 pigtail input wire/plug such that the lugs inside aren't gripping it tightly anymore. I would definitely take the cover off the unit and tighten/inspect the 14-30 input wire and the J1772 output wires to make sure they are tightened correctly.
Then I would ditch the incorrectly wired 14-30 and just hardwire the unit to the junction box where the new garage 14-30 receptacle used to be.
Then I would ditch the incorrectly wired 14-30 and just hardwire the unit to the junction box where the new garage 14-30 receptacle used to be.
I really appreciate all of the comments. The plug originally was a 10-30 but because the dryer outlet in the house is a 14-30 I changed the plug. The EVSE only has 3 wires going to it. Excuse my ignorance …. It has two hots and another. I thought it was called a neutral. Some people have called it a ground. Anyway the diagram for wiring the unit only shows 3 wires and yes it is supposed to be hard wired. I live in Georgia and the owner added the garage after the fact and the electrical wiring is terrible. The wire being used is not from the garage panel but from the house. Building is a little lax around here. I am afraid I will have to run all new wiring to the garage and redo the panel. For the time being I will tighten all of the connections and see if that helps. I have read that these EVSEs have ground fault built into them and was wondering if the unit is sensing something that is causing it to trip. As to the voltage drop, the car shows the draw and unless I reduce it, it show a 30amp draw at 233Vollts
OK, now I understand what he did. A 10-30 has two hots and a neutral, no ground. So he used the neutral as a ground. As he says, since it is connected to the main panel, that should work for an EV charger. Still, the best thing to do would to be to get rid of the 14-30 and directly wire everything together.
At any rate, yes, if it is the charger tripping, yes, chargers have built in GFCIs, and this means the old wire to the main panel is probably compromised in some way.
I understand that this is not a forum on how to do electrical work. I am completely baffled about something. As I said, the car charged twice with no problem except for an 8 volt drop,. After that it has not worked. When plugged in, the EVSE powers up and the car recognizes the voltage but within a few minutes or less, the EVSE’s relay trips. I decided to open up the receptacle and make sure the connections were tight. A 14-30R has 4 holes, Two vertical, one L shaped and one round, The EVSE’s plug has 4 corresponding prongs. Going back to when a friend of mine with vast electrical knowledge and experience wired the plug 10-30P there were only three prongs, two straight and one L shaped. The L shaped was the none hot wire. When I changed the plug to a 14-30P to match the dryer outlet in my present home, I continued with having the non hot wire attached to the L shaped prong. The electrician that put the receptacle in my garage hooked the non hot wire from the panel to the round hole. This seems to me that it is the reason the EVSE doesn’t work. Without a route back to the panel, how does the car recognize the voltage in the first place? How did it charge twice successfully? Wiring the EVSE directly would have the non hot wire hooked to the neutral bus bar in the EVSE. Now you can understand why my screen name is Stumped
The round hole is correct. Its ground. At least on Tesla UMC's the neutral would be left unused, and if the ground wire were connected to neutral instead of the ground, the UMC would throw a fault because it wasn't seeing ground connected.
On a 240V circuit, the return line for one Line conductor is the other Line conductor. The only reason you'd need a Neutral is to get a 120V path, as is frequently done on electric stoves/ovens to get control power(clock and controls) where the real heating stuff is driven by relays off the 240V path. I imagine the same is done for electric dryers.
Rereading your prior post, it looks like you really should look at your EVSE guide to see if they really want ground or neutral. If they want ground, leave the outlet as it is, and fix the plug so you are using the ground line. If they want neutral, move the ground line to the neutral in the outlet.
Better yet, return to a 10-30 outlet and plug configuration so you aren't miswiring the 14-30
On a 240V circuit, the return line for one Line conductor is the other Line conductor. The only reason you'd need a Neutral is to get a 120V path, as is frequently done on electric stoves/ovens to get control power(clock and controls) where the real heating stuff is driven by relays off the 240V path. I imagine the same is done for electric dryers.
Rereading your prior post, it looks like you really should look at your EVSE guide to see if they really want ground or neutral. If they want ground, leave the outlet as it is, and fix the plug so you are using the ground line. If they want neutral, move the ground line to the neutral in the outlet.
Better yet, return to a 10-30 outlet and plug configuration so you aren't miswiring the 14-30
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Uh, you need to do some research, my friend. Start here, and maybe read a lot of other pages there too.
This is the pinout for the 14-30.
The white angle above is for the neutral line, the round green is for ground.
EVSEs need three wires, two hots and one ground. I have no idea what your EVSE is seeing since I can't untangle your description. Just make sure that inside the EVSE, you're connected to two hots and one ground. BTW, since you don't know if your converted 10-30 plug has wiring that isn't compromised, you aren't guaranteed the wire will work. There could be water in the conduit and the wire could have degraded over 30 years.
At any rate, this is yet another reason why I say to get rid of the 14-30 receptacle since it is just confusing you (and it isn't wired correctly since it doesn't have 4 wires - never create a receptacle that is known to be miswired - the next owner of your house will thank you). Just direct wire your EVSE using the 14-30 receptacle junction box.
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