Which Home Charger Supplier

Hi,

I take delivery in late December too and I have just had my 30amp charger fitted by Chargemaster.

I first contacted Chargemaster when I ordered my car over three months ago.

I have to say in my personal experience I found them to be poor in all aspects of service, especially the office side. It's a long story needless to say I had to complain direct to my DS to get Chargemaster to finally pull their finger out. At which point after around 20 calls and 10 emails, they asked me loads of questions they had forgotten to ask me including if I had previously had a charger fitted under the grant scheme, which I had, so I ended up paying £680 for a "swap out" of my charger, but then they wanted to keep my old one too. I finally got them to see sense that my old one is actually mine even after I buy a new Tesla one and have it fitted.

My advice if you can get another company then do, if not chase them daily or it won't be fitted before your car arrives.

PaulMac said:

Thanks, disappointing but useful.
Does the chargemaster gun have a button to open the charge door.

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No, there's no button to open the door on any of the fixed chargepoint equipment you can buy in the UK. There is someone in the Netherlands who sells a separate door opener (I have one stuck on the front of my Chargemaster unit), but apparently he isn't selling them in individual units any more. There's someone over on the UK section of the Tesla forums who is currently organizing a group buy to get some more of them - suggest you check there.


Re chargepoint suppliers, I don't have personal experience but as an alternative to Chargemaster you might like to try Rolec - who apparently now offer a 32A unit for free (on the face of it, both better and cheaper than Chargemaster).
http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/product/free-ev-home-charging-points

PaulMac said:

Hi All

My Model S is due in December and I need to get the charge point installed...can't wait.
I have duel chargers in the car, so will be getting a 32A connection.

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I used Chargemaster and, once you dispense with email as a communication channel and just use the 'phone, they were fine.

Just for information, the 32A unit actually is limited to 30A with the Model S and will give around 7kW of power, so having dual chargers gives you no advantage over a single 11kW charger for single-phase 30A home charging unit. Now ifyou had a 3-phase supply at home, you could get the full 22kW I believe.

Chargemaster offer 13A and 30A units (not 32A). Both can be used at their full rate with either single or dual charger cars.

Having dual chargers is only useful if you are going to charge at 3 phase charge points, e.g. ecotricity motorway service station chargers and a few other fast public points.

If you are lucky enough to have 3 phase mains supply at home, and a dual charger car, then you could opt to have a 3 phase home charge point installed (cost £1000+) which would let you fully charge the car in 4 hours rather than 12. But in 5 months of ownership we haven't yet had a single situation where a faster charger at home would have made any difference.

Just jumping on this thread.

My car isn't coming until March '15 but I've just had the email about arranging chargers and I see they've got both Chargemaster and Pod Point on there, anyone have any experience of the latter?

arg said:

Re chargepoint suppliers, I don't have personal experience but as an alternative to Chargemaster you might like to try Rolec - who apparently now offer a 32A unit for free (on the face of it, both better and cheaper than Chargemaster).
http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/product/free-ev-home-charging-points

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I had a charge master unit installed about a year ago, while they offered great service, and way before my car came. It has been very satisfactory though it is limited to 30A.

On Friday I went round to a neighbour who has had a Rolec 32A unit installed and gets his car in April. I tested the unit for him. It really does give 32A in the car (so that's another 0.5 KW or approximately 1 mph quicker charging than the 30A charge master).

The unit is clean and simple. I believe they only come untethered; I have a tethered charge master which avoids having to buy a second Type 2 cable or constantly plug and unplug it.

It is important, whatever unit you have, to have thick enough cable to it - the longer the run, the thicker the cable. Otherwise the car will detect a voltage drop as it ramps up the charge current, and deduce excess resistance. If that happens it reduces the maximum charging rate itself as a safety measure.

I ended up getting stranded by ChargeMaster (they promised delivery, before the car but kept pushing back the install), so I cancelled them and got a small local contractor to do the install, AFTER the car arrived

Identical polar box, which has been said is capped at 30A, not 32A, but it makes for me it makes no difference.

The main reason for dual chargers (which are only a software switch anyway, as it seems all UK all cars have them, just not enabled) in my experience would be to use the Ecotricity points. So personally I'd buy a CHAdeMO adapter instead .

I do have 3 phase at home, but it's not covered on the grant so I skipped it.

The biggest bugbear I have is that my car seems to refuse to schedule charge at anything other than 16A, since they flicked the "you didn't pay for dual charging" switch at Tesla HQ

smac said:

The biggest bugbear I have is that my car seems to refuse to schedule charge at anything other than 16A, since they flicked the "you didn't pay for dual charging" switch at Tesla HQ

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I have the same problem Simon, and Tesla are aware of it as a problem in the software.
(FWIW I am on firmware version 1.65.15, but it's apparently not fixed, in even the latest version 1.67.125)

The symptoms are:
If you charge manually from within the car, you can push it to 30A (so chargers work, etc)
If you schedule it to charge within 30 mins of you leaving the car, it will charge at the last remembered charge (i.e. 30A)*
If you schedule it to charge after over 30 mins after leaving the car (or manually start a charge remotely via the phone app) it will charge at 16A
(Once it starts to charge at 16A it will remember that and from then on will remember to only charge at 16A, even if starting manually from inside the car, so you have to keep pushing it up)

To me, it sounds like some type of timeout, where it starts up charger A and ramps up to the 16A, then asks for charger B, but times out waiting for it and so stays at 16A.
When you are in the car, it takes less time to start charger B and so works (although you can see it limited to 16A to start with, then after a few seconds goes up to 30A (or if set at 16A shows the small font notice that there is 30A available))

It would be worth contacting support, if only to give them another set of logs to examine, another data point to add - and some additional pressure to get it fixed!


* This means that the instructions that Tesla first provided to resolve this appeared to work because the scheduled charge was within 5 minutes, but they actually failed for longer term schedules.
I've listed them below in case they work for you:

1. Ensure the vehicle is off charge and cable is disconnected from vehicle.
2. Change the charge setting so the vehicle on a non-scheduled charge.
3. Check the charge rate setting is set to 30A, if not correct the setting to 30A using the current control function.
4. Connect the vehicle and allow to charge for a MINIMUM of 60 seconds before disconnection. (Confirm that vehicle is charging at 30A)
5. Disconnect Charge lead.
6. Set a scheduled charge within the next 5 minutes.
7. Reconnect charge lead.
8. Now the 30A charge rate has been set please reiterate to customer that the current setting must not be altered (Up or Down).
9. Confirm that charge rate is now at desired setting of 30A.
10. If all OK, then please ask customer to set their preferred scheduled charge time if not run through again one more time.
11. From now the vehicle should remain charging at 30A, as long as the current setting is not changed.

@Kribensa,

Good to know it's not just me being daft.

Normally it makes no difference, as 16A is plenty to replace what I use in a day during the Economy 7 window, but would certainly help for charges after the rare occasions I do more than 100 miles.

TBH I'd prefer the schedule to work out the other way round, i.e. a "Target end time". I leave the house the same time pretty much everyday, but do a random number of miles. It would be better for the battery pack if it was warmed through via the charging before I start driving round in it.

Yesterday I did less than 20 miles for example, so my schedule charge would* have finished 6+ hours before I set off, all that time the battery has sat at subzero temperatures, just before I get in and drive it.

*I keep guestimating the time the charge will take, add in a safety factor, and set the scheduled charge accordingly, but it's a faff.

smac said:

Normally it makes no difference, as 16A is plenty to replace what I use in a day during the Economy 7 window

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I think that's why it doesn't seem to affect many people. It actually does, but not everyone it affects has noticed yet ;-)

Regarding the warm up - with the cold temps now coming in, I now turn on the climate control via the phone about 30-60 mins before I leave.
Not only does it warm up the car, but it seems to also warm the battery as the low reg warning is not as low as it has been before I started doing that.

Of course that's probably not as efficient as just having finished a charge, but it's just pennies

One random guess: I wonder if there's a correlation between seeing this reduction to 16A and not having ordered dual chargers? I have (and paid for) dual, and I never see it.

mgboyes said:

One random guess: I wonder if there's a correlation between seeing this reduction to 16A and not having ordered dual chargers? I have (and paid for) dual, and I never see it.

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Very likely is my guess. This problem coincided with the OTA disablement of the non dual charge equipped (paid for) cars.

I didn't go for dual chargers on the basis a CHAdeMO adaptor would be cheaper than dual enabling, and every time I've been somewhere that had 22kW it has been Ecotricity and an empty CHAdEMO point was next to it.

However, now I'm pretty hacked off as at the time of ordering CHAdeMO was only a rumour of "coming soon, but delayed". I figured I'd just wait, and put up with a slower charge occasionally. Little did I know I'd get stung for a full SC upgrade on top to use it (I know I should have spent more on batteries I'll seldom use )

Dealing with Chargemaster has been trying at best, up to the installation no issue. Highly disorganized and I had to remind them who the customer was. Good product, poor CS.

Gary

Following some of the ChargeMaster issues mentioned here and especially the problem with the overheating/melting connectors I've cancelled my ChargeMaster installation and moved to Rolec who are installing a 32a charger free of charge! So far the service has been great (but it's not installed yet)

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Roy

PaulMac said:

Yes I am proceeding with Rolec...communication has been great...very impressed so far, just waiting for install now, pick up car tomorrow afternoon.

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P85D scheduled for delivery in June 2015 - I read this thread and rang Rolec directly. A little bit premature but I wanted to take advantage of the Govt subsidy. Spoke to a very nice lady who has passed my details onto a company called techforenergy.co.uk who will be installing the Rolec unit. Am awaiting to hear from them and will give feedback on how I get on.