Fried Wall Charger: Looking for Opinions

[DuxClarus]

Hey all,

Long time lurker - first time poster.

Long story short, recently my Wall Charger fried. After opening it up I clearly saw the culprit (see photos).

What I would like to discuss is if the hired electrician did a good job or if there is negligence on the hired electricians part. I'm by no means am a electrician and I took my contractors recommendation. This contractor has worked on my house multiple times so I trusted his word . The hired electrician wasn't Tesla Certified at the time. (Still don't know if the company is or isn't.) But at the very least they are a licensed electrician.

So here are my facts and see the photos for visual details.

Timeline/Usage

• The Wall Charger was installed back in Nov 2017.
• I received my Model 3 in June 2018.
• August 2020 - May 2022 I was living in Indiana and only used the charger during the summer/winter breaks. (I was in Indiana for graduate school).

So roughly around 3.5 years of service.

Possible Negligence Areas

• The conductors used were aluminum. It clearly states in the manual and on the hardware use copper conductors only.
• The hired electrician didn't acquire a permit from the town. Thus didn't submit plans of the work to the town. I wasn't aware this was necessary but am now after getting estimates from Tesla certified electricians for installing a new Wall Charger.
• The break installed is an 80amp breaker and I heard from some friends that could cause a problem in the case of power surge scenarios. I'm not necessarily sure I understand this one and more explanation would be greatly appreciated. Something along the lines of if a surge did happen and the breaker wasn't trip, 80 amps would be sent to the Wall Charger which is a 60 amp unit. Thus, receiving more power than it's intended, is this correct?

Pictures

• Fried Internals
• Fried Internals with Copper Conductor sticker
• Installed breaker
• Outline of work on original estimate
• Main Breaker information sticker

Thank you all for participating in this discussion. I appreciate any help/advice that you'll leave.

 

[Tronguy]

Uh. First things first: Yes, there are houses with aluminum wiring throughout. After a large number of house fires, using aluminum wire was depreciated.

The general problem with AL wire is that aluminum forms a high-resistance oxide through which current can't pass. My understanding is that when one has an AL-certified connection, there's both scraping action (to remove the oxide) and very high pressure, to keep Oxygen Out, in order to prevent that oxide from forming. Note that this kind of connection has to work despite variations in temperature which will make the various components of such a connection expand and contract, and that expansion and contraction can't compromise the gas-tight connection over a very long term.

Making connections between copper-certified connectors and aluminum wires is, I believe, forbidden. ALL electricians know this. There are devices that allow for that kind of connection, but it's kind of AL-AL, some strange metallurgy, then CU-CU, and expensive.

Houses burn down because of this. So, if your electrician did this.. This was BAD.

Next: Requirements on what needs inspections vary depending upon the municipality. In NJ, in my town, I went and asked at the city clerk's office. They said it did deserve an inspection, after the fact. Further, the Tesla-certified electrician that did the work said the same. So, it got inspected.

Don't know where on the East Coast you are, but a call to your local city clerk's office will get you your answer. But, I'm a-telling you: Mixing aluminum and copper wire is very, very bad and would have, no doubt, been caught by the electrical building inspector.

Finally: The reason that aluminum wire got popular for a time was that it was cheaper than copper. Far as I know, it still is. But the only place for AL wire is in a AL house. And if the manual for the Wall Connector says not to mix it.. you don't.

 

[DuxClarus]

Did this post just get approved or something? I originally posted here but it never was approved by a moderator. I assumed it was rejected. /shrug.

Anyways, for anyone else and @Tronguy, I posted again in the Model 3 area and there was a lot of conversation there. See the thread here: Fried Wall Charger: Looking for Opinions I still reply to the comment but I think its best any new posts are made in the thread linked above.

Uh. First things first: Yes, there are houses with aluminum wiring throughout. After a large number of house fires, using aluminum wire was depreciated.

The general problem with AL wire is that aluminum forms a high-resistance oxide through which current can't pass. My understanding is that when one has an AL-certified connection, there's both scraping action (to remove the oxide) and very high pressure, to keep Oxygen Out, in order to prevent that oxide from forming. Note that this kind of connection has to work despite variations in temperature which will make the various components of such a connection expand and contract, and that expansion and contraction can't compromise the gas-tight connection over a very long term.

Making connections between copper-certified connectors and aluminum wires is, I believe, forbidden. ALL electricians know this. There are devices that allow for that kind of connection, but it's kind of AL-AL, some strange metallurgy, then CU-CU, and expensive.

Houses burn down because of this. So, if your electrician did this.. This was BAD.

Next: Requirements on what needs inspections vary depending upon the municipality. In NJ, in my town, I went and asked at the city clerk's office. They said it did deserve an inspection, after the fact. Further, the Tesla-certified electrician that did the work said the same. So, it got inspected.

Don't know where on the East Coast you are, but a call to your local city clerk's office will get you your answer. But, I'm a-telling you: Mixing aluminum and copper wire is very, very bad and would have, no doubt, been caught by the electrical building inspector.

Finally: The reason that aluminum wire got popular for a time was that it was cheaper than copper. Far as I know, it still is. But the only place for AL wire is in a AL house. And if the manual for the Wall Connector says not to mix it.. you don't.

Thanks for the reply! I'm actually in NJ myself and I talked to my town clerk already. A permit is required and an inspection is required once installation is done. I clearly made a mistake just picking any electrician, more details on that in the other thread. In short, I had no idea they weren't complying with Tesla's requirements. The electrician was reading the manual as he did this b/c he never installed one before.

 

[Rocky_H]

there's both scraping action (to remove the oxide) and very high pressure, to keep Oxygen Out, in order to prevent that oxide from forming.

Instead of an air tight sealed high pressure whatever, which isn't realistic in house wiring, what's done there is that after the scraping to scrub the outside of the wire, it gets coated in a goopy gel stuff called NoALox (no aluminum oxide), which covers that purpose of trying to not let air get to the metal wire.