Electrical Problems at Home

I've got a 2017 Nissan Leaf, and I know my wiring at home is a little off. We quickly learned that while it was plugged in, in the garage, we couldn't use the microwave in the kitchen, or else we'd trip the breaker. The garage, laundry room, part of the kitchen, and a random room downstairs are all on the same circuit apparently.

After a couple months, we reached the point where plugging in the Leaf through the regular 110 outlet would produce an odd effect. Sometimes it would work fine. Sometimes it would work for 5 minutes and then stop. Sometimes it would work for an hour and then stop. If it stopped, we'd get the yellow dashboard light of a car, telling us to take it to the dealer for service. In any event, unplugging it and plugging it back in would always result in resuming the charging, but it would usually still cut out again at some point. And I didn't want to check on it every 30 minutes.

Anywhere else - no problem. Had trouble with it at a dealership ONCE, both the slow and fast charge. But apart from that one time, it's always worked fine elsewhere.

Took it to the dealership, and they said everything seemed fine. Got a new charging cord just in case it was the cord. Still had the same problem, just at home. Got an electrician to come out and wire a new outlet. Straight from the breaker box to the garage, on its own circuit, with a higher capacity in case I want to install a Level 2 charger at some point. Plugged it in this new outlet and had the same problem, first time.

I want to bring the electrician back out to fix the problem, but I don't know have the first clue what could be the problem. Any ideas?

Exactly what errors does it give that the vehicle stopped charging?
Any pattern to the disconnect? Such as time of day or other appliances used?
Otherwise I recommend going L2.

On the rare occasions when I've been in the garage when it stopped charging, there was just a clunk noise, like it had topped off the battery and was done charging, then all the lights stopped (no more blinking or anything). The next time the car is turned on, I have the yellow car signal active on the dash.

No pattern that I have noticed. Time of day - doesn't seem to matter. Other room lights on, off, appliances being used or not - nothing seems to necessarily trigger it. And the thing that bothers me most is that this new outlet is on its own circuit. There's literally nothing else in the entire world drawing power from this circuit simultaneously. And it still had this problem.

I'd love to go L2, but if there's an inherent electrical problem, I don't want to spend more money on a new charger and installation, only to have problems with that as well...

Do you know what lights are illuminated on the Nissan EVSE when charging stops? What about DTC codes (which you can read from the OBDII port with Leaf Spy Pro? I am suspicious that you might have a marginal neutral connection at the utility transformer or in the main power panel. Another possibility is a bad ground of the neutral at the service entrance (main panel). The new dedicated circuit should have eliminated branch circuit wiring problems from the equation.

Another possibility is a bad ground of the neutral at the service entrance (main panel). The new dedicated circuit should have eliminated branch circuit wiring problems from the equation.

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I second this. I think it's either a bad main ground, or a problem with the main service panel itself.

LeftieBiker said:

Another possibility is a bad ground of the neutral at the service entrance (main panel). The new dedicated circuit should have eliminated branch circuit wiring problems from the equation.

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I second this. I think it's either a bad main ground, or a problem with the main service panel itself.

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I will third this. As a load comes on, even not on that circuit, say a fridge starting, for a second it could pull the ground a tiny bit out, enough for the EVSE to see there is a problem and fault out.

TheDave said:

Straight from the breaker box to the garage, on its own circuit, with a higher capacity in case I want to install a Level 2 charger at some point. Plugged it in this new outlet and had the same problem, first time.

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What type of circuit was installed?

The L1 charging cord operates on a 120V circuit while L2 requires a 240V circuit. If the circuit is wired for 120V it will use some form of a 120V receptacle. 240V wiring could possibly be hooked up to this but I don't know if there is a code-compliant way to do this and I think it would be unusual to do so. It's also possible that only some of the wires required for the 240V circuit are connected (at both ends) but once again I don't know if this would be code-compliant.

Sorry everyone for not posting replies sooner. I got bogged down with a huge project at work and didn't have time to worry about dealing with the car problems.

So the problem replicated itself about a week ago at a Level 2 charger elsewhere, so I finally got confirmation that it's in the vehicle, not the wiring. That was a relief, considering what I had invested (and was planning on investing) in the house setup. The problem was that the issue wouldn't show up every time. On a Level 1 charger, it showed up most of the time, but higher level chargers seemed to rarely experience problems. When I took it to the dealership the first time, they had basically just plugged it in to try to replicate the problem so they could get the same indicator light and diagnose it, but it hadn't had a problem that time. So they had assumed it was the cord at that point.

When the problem arose, driving the car initially after it had experienced the problem, it would show the indicator light. After turning the car off and back on again, after that initial journey, no indicator light, no sign of a problem. So it was tough to get anything for the dealership to diagnose.

Finally, my wife had some availability when the car had the same problem one day, and she drove it to the dealership and stuck it in park without turning it off - so they could diagnose it. I wasn't there for this, but apparently there's a cooling component that keeps the battery from over-heating when it's charging. This cooling part had become twisted (as I understand it - or maybe it was just damaged somehow), so it wasn't functioning properly. The car would detect the battery was getting too hot, and shut down the charging process. Everything was under warranty, so I think we're ok now fortunately.

My new concern is that the battery might have gotten too hot many times over all this charging. Presumably it was shutting off before that, but I don't know at what point it shuts down the charging process for overheating. So I'm a little worried that we've shaved off some life from the battery, and that it'll die sooner. Any opinions on this?

TheDave said:

My new concern is that the battery might have gotten too hot many times over all this charging. Presumably it was shutting off before that, but I don't know at what point it shuts down the charging process for overheating. So I'm a little worried that we've shaved off some life from the battery, and that it'll die sooner. Any opinions on this?

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Overheating by charging off of level 1?!

Where do you live? Death Valley?

If you charge off of level 1, or even level 2, the battery is not going to be any hotter, except a very very slight bit, than ambient temperature.

TheDave said:

apparently there's a cooling component that keeps the battery from over-heating when it's charging. This cooling part had become twisted (as I understand it - or maybe it was just damaged somehow), so it wasn't functioning properly. The car would detect the battery was getting too hot, and shut down the charging process.

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I had a completely different problem, with a similar diagnosis: in my case, my car was showing a "turtle", shortly after starting driving at below-zero F temps, even with 70% or more SOC. I took it in, and the only problem the dealer could find was a DTC for a twisted cooling hose, which they rerouted. I was pretty sure this was bunk, as there's no reason the car would do fine in 80F summer, then start overheating at -5F. In my case, I think they threw up their hands, and said "we give up. But, well, there's this one cooling DTC we could fix!".

In your case, the explanation makes more sense... except that I'm not aware of there being any cooling system for the Leaf battery, other than some passive air channels; certainly not any cooling hoses. If your leaf had a traction battery cooler, then it would be the only one, and you could sell it for $30k on eBay Motors!

It's possible that the on-board charger (which takes your 120v AC power, converts to 400v DC, and feeds that into the battery) has some kind of temperature monitor, which went haywire and claimed to be hot, and stopped the charging. But in that case, your traction battery would be just fine.

I would guess the active cooling is for the inverter/charger/controller stack. That system runs when charging or the car is "running" and I bet it is throwing a fault.