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Trouble with charging at Dutch charging stations

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widodh

Model S 100D and Y LR
Moderator
Jan 23, 2011
6,861
2,840
Venlo, NL
Charging stations (700 right now!) are popping up everywhere in Holland, but there is a problem with charging at the majority.

We have created a Type 2 (Mennekes) -> Tesla connector and works fine with most charging stations, but not with the one from Alfen.

When connecting the Roadster and keeping my card for the charger it:
* Turns green
* Locks the connector
* Turns blue

But the Tesla keeps saying "Connect power cable".

To not make this a long story, after some phone calls and asking around a other Tesla owner did a test and noticed that the charging station gave a 11.4 Volt signal over the pilot (correct?) instead of the 12V the Roadster is expecting.

We/I contacted Alfen and they said that the 11.4Volt is within the 0.6 margin the specification says, so they say their charging stations is working fine.

Now we are in between two camps, Alfen says everything is fine, but the Tesla won't accept it.

Alfen have said that they will correct the problem, but never the less, shouldn't the Roadster accept the 11.4 Volt if it's within the specified margin?

Who knows more about this? If Tesla is to blame here, where to start? Where do we report this in the fastest way?
 
We/I contacted Alfen and they said that the 11.4Volt is within the 0.6 margin the specification says, so they say their charging stations is working fine.
Interesting problem. My guess is you'll have better luck with Alfen than Tesla at this point since Tesla's resources seem spread thin at the moment. If it's within spec, the Roadster is supposed to accept it, but the purpose of a margin is so that you can tolerate some variance. That purpose is defeated if you make your product at the very edge of the margin, so it's in Alfen's best interests to take care of it since it's an issue that may come up again with other vehicles.
 
In the software world, for file format issues it's supposed to be strict on output, loose on input. I'd say the same should apply here.
Indeed.

I guess the problem here is that the voltage out of the charger is 11.4, but due to cabling and inside the Roadster it will drop to like 11.3 or maybe 11.2, below the spec.

I'll contact Alfen for this :)
 
After contacting the organization who places all the charging station I found out that the chargers installed here were old stock, they've upgraded them last friday.

All new chargers will send out 12V and this should work with the Roadster.