Day 7:
It's Canada day! What could possibly go wrong?
The St. Christopher's EVSE worked great, and to give the car a bit of a break I only charged to 90%. Most of the day was spent on the ferry back to North Sydney, and I was only driving to Antigonish where I knew there was a working charger. Since it's Canada day, I called the hotel to make sure it was powered on. They said it was, and implied it would be left that way. My drive was only 200 km, so I hadn't expected any issues.
The ferry crossing had Bell data service for all but an hour in the middle.
So I get to the hotel, plug in, and it seems to be OK. But, after a minute or so the car stops and indicates there is a charger cable problem. To be honest, I'm not all that surprised because last week this EVSE had water pouring all over it. I tried reconnecting, but the behavior continued. So, I called the number on the side of the Sun Country unit, and got a text back within about five minutes. That was awesome, and totally unexpected. We exchanged a few texts, and based on that I talked the lady at the desk into letting me cycle the breaker. It didn't change the behavior.
So, here's what is going on. It's behavior I've never seen before. The EVSE is connected to the car, the car port turns blue, then flashing green as normal. The dashboard shows 215V and after an unusually long amount of time starts ramping up the current. After a few seconds to a few minutes the charging suddenly stops. Sometimes it simply says "charging stopped", then "charging will start momentarily". Other times it complains that the charge cable is bad and that I should "try another cable". When it does that, is seems to stay off for quite a length of time, and the Sun Country unit flashes for a while. Eventually it starts up again. Other things to note are the voltage is good, and hardly drops as the current ramps, and that I tried limiting the current to 20A and that made no difference. The EVSE connections look OK -- not corroded, for example -- and they're dry.
Now, the idea of the car cycling like this all night bothered me, so I called Tesla service. They said it sounded like and EVSE problem and that it wouldn't harm the car to let it keep cycling charging. I'm now trying to judge the duty cycle, and whether this is faster than just leaving it plugged into an adjacent 120V outlet.
There's probably someone reading this who has an understanding of the EVSE protocol, and might be able to explain what is going on. I'm guessing there is some kind of handshake where the car and the charger verify with each other the allowed current, and some of those messages are not getting through. Alternatively it could be the EVSE itself occasionally stops providing current, after all it starts blinking.
This may not be too big a problem. The car has 190km of range now, and there should be multiple chargers and RV parks closer than that on PEI. But I'm starting to lose count of the different ways Sun Country EVSEs have failed. It's probably prudent to not count on them at all.
While I was mucking about with the car Antigonish had a great fireworks display.
It's Canada day! What could possibly go wrong?
The St. Christopher's EVSE worked great, and to give the car a bit of a break I only charged to 90%. Most of the day was spent on the ferry back to North Sydney, and I was only driving to Antigonish where I knew there was a working charger. Since it's Canada day, I called the hotel to make sure it was powered on. They said it was, and implied it would be left that way. My drive was only 200 km, so I hadn't expected any issues.
The ferry crossing had Bell data service for all but an hour in the middle.
So I get to the hotel, plug in, and it seems to be OK. But, after a minute or so the car stops and indicates there is a charger cable problem. To be honest, I'm not all that surprised because last week this EVSE had water pouring all over it. I tried reconnecting, but the behavior continued. So, I called the number on the side of the Sun Country unit, and got a text back within about five minutes. That was awesome, and totally unexpected. We exchanged a few texts, and based on that I talked the lady at the desk into letting me cycle the breaker. It didn't change the behavior.
So, here's what is going on. It's behavior I've never seen before. The EVSE is connected to the car, the car port turns blue, then flashing green as normal. The dashboard shows 215V and after an unusually long amount of time starts ramping up the current. After a few seconds to a few minutes the charging suddenly stops. Sometimes it simply says "charging stopped", then "charging will start momentarily". Other times it complains that the charge cable is bad and that I should "try another cable". When it does that, is seems to stay off for quite a length of time, and the Sun Country unit flashes for a while. Eventually it starts up again. Other things to note are the voltage is good, and hardly drops as the current ramps, and that I tried limiting the current to 20A and that made no difference. The EVSE connections look OK -- not corroded, for example -- and they're dry.
Now, the idea of the car cycling like this all night bothered me, so I called Tesla service. They said it sounded like and EVSE problem and that it wouldn't harm the car to let it keep cycling charging. I'm now trying to judge the duty cycle, and whether this is faster than just leaving it plugged into an adjacent 120V outlet.
There's probably someone reading this who has an understanding of the EVSE protocol, and might be able to explain what is going on. I'm guessing there is some kind of handshake where the car and the charger verify with each other the allowed current, and some of those messages are not getting through. Alternatively it could be the EVSE itself occasionally stops providing current, after all it starts blinking.
This may not be too big a problem. The car has 190km of range now, and there should be multiple chargers and RV parks closer than that on PEI. But I'm starting to lose count of the different ways Sun Country EVSEs have failed. It's probably prudent to not count on them at all.
While I was mucking about with the car Antigonish had a great fireworks display.
