I am a new owner of P3D+ and I am currently unable to charge using Tesla provided Charger from 120-volt wall outlet. After a few miles of charging at 3-4 miles/hour I get a "Charging interrupted at 9:18 am with battery at 235 mi" notice. Then later I would say start charging but it will do that again without ever going past 235 mi with charging interrupted failure notice. No matter how many times I try it just keeps on getting interrupted. I have set to charge beyond that on my daily charging limit and my trip charging limit. I have it probably set at about 250 miles roughly. Even when I set the limit the maximum amount to full charge it has this error. It has no problem charging to set limits without interruption on the supercharger or Nemo 240-volt at 30 amp at work. Is it possible this a defect that needs to be addressed by a service department or am I doing something wrong? It does this even when I have only about 195 mi range left. The service manual says it is good practice to always have your car plugged in when not in use but this charge interrupted notice is annoying and pointless at this point.
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Intermittent Charging Failure using 120 volt wall outlet
- Thread starter AnesDragon
- Start date
No, it is by itself. I have no problem running any power tools and vacuum cleaner and other power appliances through this plug. Also, don't have any problem with tripping of the fuse. Also I have used other plugs in the garage with the same result.
What does the voltage droop to when it's at a full 12A load? It's possible if it's marginal (110V or something), then voltage sag on the lines during general transients could be flagging the Tesla charger to stop charging since it sees to high of a voltage droop.
For reference, my 120V line droops from 120V -> 113V at 16A load and that doesn't cause problems. Still, it's pretty high.
Almost certainly a problem with having too much voltage drop on your circuit. It’s not the car or the UMC. (Note the UMC stands for Universal Mobile Connector. It’s not a “charger”. The charger is in the car.)
The continuous 12A draw of the car can be too much for marginal house wiring, even if vacuum cleaners and power tools run ok for a few minutes. Try setting the amps down on the charging screen, for example down to 8A, and see what happens.
You really should have a dedicated circuit run for your car charging.
The continuous 12A draw of the car can be too much for marginal house wiring, even if vacuum cleaners and power tools run ok for a few minutes. Try setting the amps down on the charging screen, for example down to 8A, and see what happens.
You really should have a dedicated circuit run for your car charging.
Eno Deb
Active Member
Very likely either the wiring or the outlet is at its limit (does the outlet get warm?). I would stop using this outlet until you get to the bottom of this. There is a risk of electrical fire. This is why the car stops charging when it detects too much voltage fluctuation.
My house is pretty modern for house standard, built in 2003 and has good electrical wiring. I have multiple plugs in the garage with a dedicated fuse. This happens even on 120-volt 20 amp dedicated circuit. It's possible but I don't think it is inadequate wiring since it is designed for 20 amp 120-volt standard but I could be wrong. Someone else had to get the ECU and the charge port exchanged in order to get it fixed. I was wondering if anyone else had this issue. I will try to plug into the friends 120-volt to see if it happens again since he has been successfully charging his without any issues at his house. He uses the 120-volt most of the time because he does not drive that far for a commute even though he has installed dedicated 240-volt charger since his wife parks it there.
Dmagyar
Member
My 120 volt outlet (shared circuit) has been getting me by until I get my 240 volt range plug installed in the garage. That noted I see mine register 3 volts voltage drop on my charging app, indicating 117 volts @12 amps per hour charge with that. Checked the specific outlet with a "SureTest 61-165" circuit analyzer and it registers 4% drop at 15 amps load, which would make sense as increased amperage increases voltage drop with the circuit distance remaining the same.
It’s very common for “builders standard” cheap outlets to have poor connections, called “backstab” which don’t even use screws. That may be ok for a vacuum cleaner for a few minutes but not for an EV for hours. And when you say you have multiple plugs in the garage with a dedicated fuse, that statement contradicts itself unless you are saying that each outlet has its own fuse (or rather circuit breaker as I assume you mean). A dedicated circuit means that outlet is the only outlet on the circuit, which is very unlikely in a 15 year old garage that wasn’t wired specifically for an EV.
Do yourself a favor and get a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed.
I had the exact same problem you are describing on my wife’s model 3, and also concluded that other “applicances”, were causing the failure by stressing the 20A circuit. I isolated the circuit as best I could and problem continued. I also used the UMC from my model S, and it still continued to fail in the same manner. I then replaced the wall socket, and tried again with my known good UMC. Voila.... all was good. I explained the problem to Tesla and they sent me another UMC. New UMC worked great, and original UMC still failed. So, I not only had a bad 120V wall socket, but a bad UMC. Hope this gets you pointed in the right direction.
Interesting you had two points of failure, but the OP said he charges successfully on a 240V 30A outlet at work, so this pretty much excludes a problem with his UMC.
JeffK
Well-Known Member
I'm personally using a 120 V outlet myself but it's on a dedicated circuit. Works fine for now, no issues.
That not true. I do not use my UMC with 240V 30A NEMA charger at work. I just use a little adaptor to convert NEMO charger no Tesla. So it could still be UMC defect. I guess I will have to call Tesla Service.
I checked my electrical fuse box outside which specifically had diagram and labels of the electrical fuse. Within my garage, I have a few dedicated outlets. One is for a sprinkler system with the 20amp circuit, and there is one for dedicated whole house vacuum system with 15 amp circuit, and dedicated GFCI outlet with 20 amp fuse and separate double 15 amp circuits for rest of the Garage. Other appliances in the house have its own dedicated circuits. I unplugged the dedicated plugs and tried to charge my car and it gave me the same error on all of those dedicated 120-volt wall plug.
Well, if you were not all the way over there in Nevada, I would run over my UMC to you to see if that is the problem. Maybe someone locally to you will respond, and provide a UMC for you to try.
I'm sorry but that just doesn't make any sense. There is no way to plug a Tesla into a 30A outlet without using the UMC. Is it a NEMA 14-30 outlet (NEMA, not Nemo), or is it a J1772 charging station and you're referring to the J1772 adapter?
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