Tesla wall charger breaker caught fire

[GJunior]

Yes. I would like to know what caused the problem as well. They should have been able to look everything over and tell you what likely caused the problem.
Bad breaker, loose connections. Did they not put it on a dedicated circuit?
If for some reason you were drawing more current than the breaker could handle it should have just tripped the breaker.
You said the breaker caught fire but you were still able to turn it off? And you lost power to the whole house? So the main breaker tripped as well?
Maybe an electrician will chime in. Very interested as I am literally about to get my wall charger installed in the next few days.
Hoping you can give us more info on what they said.

 

[JssonB]

While Tesla was there, did they find or indicate what the source problem/cause was?

I would suspect it was a loose connection where the breaker connects in the panel or they didn't tighten the wire on the breaker. Loose wires will generate heat and catch fire. I see it all the time.....oh, and I'm an electrician.

 

[MomAz]

They didn’t say much about what caused it they just fixed it. I’m still kinda upset to be honest. No real answers and very scary. This all literally happened right before our vacation and I needed them to fix it so my house wouldn’t burn down while I was away but I plan to follow up with Tesla when I get back. Oh and they didn’t replace the wall charger or redo all the wiring like they told me on the phone. They just installed a new subpanel. And all new breakers. Wall charger is on its own breaker.

 

[rjpjnk]

Oh and they didn’t replace the wall charger or redo all the wiring like they told me on the phone. They just installed a new subpanel. And all new breakers. Wall charger is on its own breaker.

That's unfortunate. I guess they'll do it next time.

 

[JssonB]

They didn’t say much about what caused it they just fixed it. I’m still kinda upset to be honest. No real answers and very scary. This all literally happened right before our vacation and I needed them to fix it so my house wouldn’t burn down while I was away but I plan to follow up with Tesla when I get back. Oh and they didn’t replace the wall charger or redo all the wiring like they told me on the phone. They just installed a new subpanel. And all new breakers. Wall charger is on its own breaker.

There shouldn't be any problems with the wall charger since it was the breaker panel area that caught on fire. With them replacing the panel and breakers, I would supspect the breaker was faulty or they didn't seat it correctly on the install. I would imagine they will double check all the connections this time.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Right, it wasn’t the wall charger that was faulty. It was likely bad installation practices at the breaker panel OR a bad breaker that caused the fire. There’s nothing a remote piece of equipment can do to cause a breaker panel to catch fire through the electrical wires if the breaker was working correctly and the wires installed correctly (tighten down etc). Tesla did the correct thing here and replaced the entire breaker panel. I wouldn’t worry about future problems.

 

[dbldwn02]

Goes to show you that even hiring "professionals" can't prevent your house from burning down. I don't trust anyone to work on my house unless I know them personally.

Check those connections and make sure they're tight! Also, invest $30 in an IR thermometer and check your connection points (under load) every couple months.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Goes to show you that even hiring "professionals" can't prevent your house from burning down. I don't trust anyone to work on my house unless I know them personally.

Check those connections and make sure they're tight! Also, invest $30 in an IR thermometer and check your connection points (under load) every couple months.

Honestly, you can just touch the breakers. If they are very warm, then there’s a problem.

 

[dbldwn02]

Honestly, you can just touch the breakers. If they are very warm, then there’s a problem.

I agree. It's more for the rest of the circuit. Plug, wires, etc...my wires run into the attic and I check for hot spots at the staple points. I pull 40amps for 1 hour before checking.

I had a GE breaker fail internally. The spring for one of the hots broke so it wasn't pulling the contact tightly. It just sat there, resting on the contact...melted. bad news bears

 

[dhrivnak]

My car was charging at the time. I’ve read other posts about this happening as well. Fires at the breaker. Definitely some bad wiring as it didn’t trip the breaker for the wall charger but the rest of the house shut off. Now im wondering if it did damage to the wall charger as well and hopefully not my battery. The entire electrical panel and all the breakers need to be replaced. Tesla is not acknowledging they did the install. They’ve blocked me as well!

I unfortunately have seen bad breakers. It could have also been a lose connection. Neither should have caused a problem with the car or charger. Just get Tesla, or an electrician to put in a new quality breaker and you should be fine.

 

[mswlogo]

They might have set the wall charger to the wrong load. Did you notice what rate it was charging at?

Stuff like this happens even from quality installers. Could even be a faulty breaker, rare but possible. That’s what it’s all encased in metal.

But if I had to guess the breaker was not fully seated on the buss bar.

Could be the buss bar was oxidized a bit too. But a good installer should catch that.

 

[Cosmacelf]

They might have set the wall charger to the wrong load. Did you notice what rate it was charging at?

Stuff like this happens even from quality installers. Could even be a faulty breaker, rare but possible. That’s what it’s all encased in metal.

But if I had to guess the breaker was not fully seated on the buss bar.

Could be the buss bar was oxidized a bit too. But a good installer should catch that.

If it was the wrong load, the breaker should have tripped before it caught fire.

No sense doing a postmortem now anyways. The evidence has been thrown away into the trash.

 

[Cosmacelf]

By the way, not to take anything away from the danger of a breaker catching fire, but once again our modern belt and suspenders electrical code worked. There is a reason why breaker boxes are made of fire proof metal and allow the venting out of gases. The fire was contained, the main breaker blew and the threat neutralized without anyone having to do anything. Scary, but the system worked even with either or both a manufacturing or installation problem.

 

[mswlogo]

If it was the wrong load, the breaker should have tripped before it caught fire.

No sense doing a postmortem now anyways. The evidence has been thrown away into the trash.

No, if it was set one notch too high it will be just under tripping. Easy (and common) mistake.

Like if you set it for a 60 amp breaker instead of 50 amp breaker it will pull 48A amps. Which can overheat a 50A breaker, but not trip. There is good reason for the 80% continuous load limit.

Also the Wall Connector should not have caught fire and probably nothing wrong with it and pretty damn easy to check what it was set too.

 

[Cosmacelf]

No, if it was set one notch too high it will be just under tripping. Easy (and common) mistake.

Like if you set it for a 60 amp breaker instead of 50 amp breaker it will pull 48A amps. Which can overheat a 50A breaker, but not trip. There is good reason for the 80% continuous load limit.

Also the Wall Connector should not have caught fire and probably nothing wrong with it and pretty damn easy to check what it was set too.

Maybe? I’m no breaker safety expert but I would think that a properly manufactured breaker would trip before it caught fire regardless. I mean, one of the trip mechanisms is, in fact, heat build up.

 

[mswlogo]

Maybe? I’m no breaker safety expert but I would think that a properly manufactured breaker would trip before it caught fire regardless. I mean, one of the trip mechanisms is, in fact, heat build up.

No, not maybe.

Breakers are NOT designed to run at load continuously. One of the worst things you can do is run a 50 A breaker at 50 A. Yes, if the Wall Connector was set wrong it CAN cause the breaker to melt down.

Breakers can handle a surge to their limit or trip for a short circuit fault. But you never want to run them near their limit.

As suggested above it’s a good idea to monitor your entire circuit. Especially after it’s first installed and periodically (like twice a year). Nothing should be hot. Wiring, outlets, breakers. EV charging is a fairly unique load because of the long hours running at the limit of the circuit ( with the 20% safety margin).

 

[stopcrazypp]

No, if it was set one notch too high it will be just under tripping. Easy (and common) mistake.

Like if you set it for a 60 amp breaker instead of 50 amp breaker it will pull 48A amps. Which can overheat a 50A breaker, but not trip. There is good reason for the 80% continuous load limit.

Also the Wall Connector should not have caught fire and probably nothing wrong with it and pretty damn easy to check what it was set too.

This is one reason why some jurisdictions do not treat the gen 3 software limit as a valid limiter and still requires the wires to be installed to max capacity. This is different from the dip switches of gen 2.

 

[mswlogo]

This is one reason why some jurisdictions do not treat the gen 3 software limit as a valid limiter and still requires the wires to be installed to max capacity. This is different from the dip switches of gen 2.

Wow, I didn’t know that. I have installed 4 Gen 2. Didn’t know Gen 3 was software controlled.

 

[rjpjnk]

No, not maybe.

Breakers are NOT designed to run at load continuously. One of the worst things you can do is run a 50 A breaker at 50 A. Yes, if the Wall Connector was set wrong it CAN cause the breaker to melt down.

Not disagreeing with the above, but to me this means we need to invent a better current interruption device to use in place of these breakers.

Tripping for short circuits is good, but the whole purpose of a breaker (as I understand it) is to interrupt the current flow before the wiring catches fire. Is that not the case? If I use one of these 50 amp breakers that melts at 50 amps continuous, does it protect the wiring on that line properly?

 

[Cosmacelf]

No, not maybe.

Breakers are NOT designed to run at load continuously. One of the worst things you can do is run a 50 A breaker at 50 A. Yes, if the Wall Connector was set wrong it CAN cause the breaker to melt down.

Breakers can handle a surge to their limit or trip for a short circuit fault. But you never want to run them near their limit.

As suggested above it’s a good idea to monitor your entire circuit. Especially after it’s first installed and periodically (like twice a year). Nothing should be hot. Wiring, outlets, breakers. EV charging is a fairly unique load because of the long hours running at the limit of the circuit ( with the 20% safety margin).

I looked at some breaker trip curves, and seems you are correct according to the engineering data. Still seems odd that a breaker could overheat so much that it catches fire, yet won’t trip.

SO, the OP should double check this the next time they charge their car. Look at the breaker rating (should be 50A or 60A), and make sure the car doesn’t charge more than 40 or 48 A respectively.