Charging Timer Malfunction

I have my leaf charging on the charging timer between 12 am and 6 am. Been plugging it in after reaching home in the evening since May 2011. Last night I plugged it in, and after some time, I noticed the vehicle charging. This was around 7 pm. I stopped the charging, checked the charging timers, and they were still on, checked the times, and turned the power off. Left the vehicle connected to charge. This morning, I turned on the vehicle, and was suprised to fing the vehicle had not charged. The charging timers were on, times were correct. Just cant figure out what could have happened. Anybody else face a similar situation.

We have had a couple "early charging" events which I attributed to inadvertently bumping the timer override button. This conclusion may or may not be correct, but I'd expect a higher frequency if it involved some type of true failure. Only once have we had a failure to charge not caused by my confusion with setting the timer. The problem was caused by not inserting the EVSE handle completely into the receptacle where the latch would engage and close the internal switch(es).

Are you sure you had a start time specified? Were you charging with L1 or L2? How do you know the charging hadn't started because the timer fired (which it probably did). Because you interrupted the timer after it fired, it probably didn't start up again because it figured you interrupted it for a reason.

It may have seemed to you that it started prematurely, but my experience has been that charging starts up to 3 hours too early for the given end time.

I've also heard of some cases where when charging with L1 the charging pretty much starts immediately if you are at a low SOC even if you have a START timer set.

If you have the car OFF,
and S&E timer set for the NEXT day's early AM,
and get the 3 blue lights flashing on the dash (indicating waiting for charging to start later),
then I have not heard of problems like yours.

If you plug in and then change something in the car without unplugging, you can get the timer confused.

I get that every once in a while from mine...seems to occur when I've skipped a day of charging, like on Sunday night when I go to charge after not having plugged in at all on Saturday night. The only solution I've bothered finding (because it doesn't bother me) is to quickly unplug the J1772 and then plug it back in again.

sksingh said:

I have my leaf charging on the charging timer between 12 am and 6 am. Been plugging it in after reaching home in the evening since May 2011. Last night I plugged it in, and after some time, I noticed the vehicle charging. This was around 7 pm.

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I make it a practice to plug into the car and then just stand there for 5 seconds or so until I see the three charging lights blinking in their "timer set" cycle. If they don't, I unplug and replug. If that ever failed (it hasn't) I would unplug, start the car, turn it off, and plug in again.

Incidentally, I use an end time without a start time because I worry about (someday, hopefully ) thousands of LEAFs suddenly charging at midnight and taking the grid down.

Ray

i always check when I plug in away from home to be sure it has started. It only took a few times where, I have made some silly mistake and the charging hadnt started, for me to learn that lesson.
I have stopped checking to see if the charging is starting at 8 p.m. it always does.
I do check when I plug in at 6 p.m. though, to see that the blink has started and is being shut down by the Leaf.

Thank you all for your responses. I did skip a day of not charging, and it happened on the following day. Tried it the next day and it worked normally. I think that after I stopped the charging from the charger panel, unplugging and replugging the charging connector to the car may be needed.

However, it still does not explain as to why it started charging in the first place, although the possibility of inadvertently hitting the charging timer of button is likely.

Did go and checked out the Level III charger at Mitsubishi HQ in Cypress. Tested it on my car. Richard helped me out. Thank you Richard.

sksingh said:

I think that after I stopped the charging from the charger panel, unplugging and replugging the charging connector to the car may be needed.

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OHH! Stop the Press! I'm getting a very different picture now from what I had before. First, let's clarify some terminology. The charger is inside the car, and when you said "charging timer" I assumed, and I think others may have assumed, that you were referring to a timer built into the car. When you now say "charger panel" it sounds as if you are probably referring to a panel outside the car on the EVSE (also called a charging dock or charging station). So this leads to some questions:

• What brand/model of EVSE are you using?
• Are you setting a timer in the EVSE or on the console inside the car?
• Am I reading you correctly that you stopped the charging using a switch or something on the EVSE?

If your answers are what I suspect they may be, I'm probably going to bow out of this thread, because my EVSE has no panel and no timer and no switches. The make and model of ESE will determine where the conversation goes from here.

Ray