Electrical line noise while charging at 240V

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Best picture I have seen that the charger lives in the lump behind the rear seats.. looks like a bit of component relocation could result in a flat cargo floor. Best place to place the filters in the AC line.

QueenBee said:
My new charger installed:
306205_3300179795227_1589902871_2653612_442706466_n.jpg
 
My LEAF was repaired last week, and I am now enjoying being able to charge during the day without setting off buzzing in various electronics. I recommend Nissan Sunnyvale for those in the SF Bay Area with this issue...

Jay
 
jsnable said:
My LEAF was repaired last week, and I am now enjoying being able to charge during the day without setting off buzzing in various electronics. I recommend Nissan Sunnyvale for those in the SF Bay Area with this issue...

Jay
Congrat's Jay . . .ain't it great to have a quiet Leaf after all this time?
 
hmm inverters and converters (charger todays wording) not talking to each other. lets go back in time to early 70s nasa,learjet,hansa,gulfstream,IAI all had the same problem waves all of them(sine, radio) ,magnetics,speakers.these and transitors ring a bell!! I remember my first cell phone (cost $6000.00)would buzz when I would pass a RADIO station and somebody figured it out hence a NEW product it was called a RF FILTER. as we all know todays bright people will figure this out.and all parts will play nice!! we even get FREE cell phones but bandwidth cost alot.Ive never seen a bandwidth have you.Its friday and had a bad week so here is some humor for the day!!!
 
Bumping an old thread up here, VIN 2193 and I definitely have this issue. I used to live with a detached garage far from the house on its own 100A sub panel to which I never had any issues noticing any noise. I have since moved to a smaller house with a carport right near the living area. The house was built in 1971 with aluminum wiring (which I have been going through with some new wiring methods to make safe) and I had the original 100A panel upgraded to a brand new 200A panel by a professional electrician as the original panel was sketchy at best.

I'm charging using an open EVSE I built. The circuit I installed myself, it consists of all of 20 ft of 12/2 romex going from the new panel on a 20A breaker pair straight to a NEMA twist lock plug inside my storage room. The open EVSE plugs in to this and goes to the car, it doesn't get much more straight forward than that. Inside the house I notice the noise mainly on LED lights. My kitchen is lit by eight GU10 style 120v LED bulbs spread across the area of the kitchen so the sound in there is particularly annoying.

I'll get the car in to the dealer and see if they can contact the person listed here. Sad they don't have a TSB for this, but I suppose replacing chargers is not a cost effective strategy.
 
RickS said:
Bumping an old thread up here, VIN 2193 and I definitely have this issue. Inside the house I notice the noise mainly on LED lights. My kitchen is lit by eight GU10 style 120v LED bulbs spread across the area of the kitchen so the sound in there is particularly annoying.

I'll get the car in to the dealer and see if they can contact the person listed here. Sad they don't have a TSB for this, but I suppose replacing chargers is not a cost effective strategy.

I'm VIN 2062 and had this issue and no problem with getting my local LEAF tech. to replace the charger. I'm not sure if they are still verifying but he did come out to the house to listen to the noise (Even brought a LEAF and offered to swap them if I wanted but I preferred to drive my LEAF while we waited for final approval and the part to arrive.)

If they do want to verify it it might be wise to have the Panasonic EVSE handy so they can verify the issue with that and don't get distracted by the OpenEVSE. Let us know how it goes, hopefully by now it is very straightforward and I'm sure they can identify if your charger is pre-noise filter fix.
 
Thanks for this thread. I think I have this same issue. The buzzing is bothering me, but my wife can't hear it and sleeps just fine. I can track the whole path of the wire from the circuit box to the vehicle along my walls and ceiling listening to the buzzing. And devices like electric clock radios are buzzing too. And if you listen right at the breaker box it kind of chirps gently while the charging is happening.

I've got a 2013, and have only had it for about a month now, so I wasn't sure if I had a problem with my house wiring or the vehicle. I've tried swapping out the breaker as well as plugging other devices in, but those make no noise. I'm charging through a Juicebox, but I doubt that's inserting any sort of noise. Has anybody heard of a 2013 with this issue? I would have expected nissan to have fixed this for 2013 model.

I guess what I need is a second car to plug in and see if it charges just fine. Anybody care to come to south San Jose near Almaden and 85 for a free charge and a sixpack of beer? :)
 
Levi8than said:
Thanks for this thread. I think I have this same issue. The buzzing is bothering me, but my wife can't hear it and sleeps just fine. I can track the whole path of the wire from the circuit box to the vehicle along my walls and ceiling listening to the buzzing. And devices like electric clock radios are buzzing too. And if you listen right at the breaker box it kind of chirps gently while the charging is happening.

I've got a 2013, and have only had it for about a month now, so I wasn't sure if I had a problem with my house wiring or the vehicle. I've tried swapping out the breaker as well as plugging other devices in, but those make no noise. I'm charging through a Juicebox, but I doubt that's inserting any sort of noise. Has anybody heard of a 2013 with this issue? I would have expected nissan to have fixed this for 2013 model.

I guess what I need is a second car to plug in and see if it charges just fine. Anybody care to come to south San Jose near Almaden and 85 for a free charge and a sixpack of beer? :)
My understanding was that the on-board chargers on the early 2011's didn't have a enough noise filtering, which caused some LEAF owners to experience the line noise, but this was corrected in the later 2011's (added more noise filtering to the charger). I just had my 2011 charger replaced to fix this problem. It was a slow process to get Nissan to fix the problem but they eventually did. If your 2013 is having a problem, it could be that you have a defective charger, but I don't think it's because of a lack on noise filtering in the design of that charger unless they reintroduced the problem in the newer chargers. Let's hope they didn't.

From what I understand, the EVSEs are unlikely to be the problem. Your approach of getting a different car to plug into your Juicebox is probably going to be your best bet at initially troubleshooting the problem. It doesn't necessarily have to be a LEAF. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to try out a non-LEAF EV or PZEV. I used my neighbor's Volt to troubleshoot my problem. My LEAF would cause my solar (string) inverters to buzz loudly. When I plugged his Volt into my EVSE, my solar inverters did not buzz. I then took my LEAF and plugged it into the EVSE at his house, which also had a solar string inverter, and my LEAF caused his inverter to buzz! You would think that would have been an open-and-shut case when getting Nissan to fix the problem, but I still had to go through a fair amount of stonewalling before Nissan agreed to fix it.

Unfortunately I don't live close enough to help you troubleshoot the problem, but hopefully someone in the area can help out.

Hope this helps. Good luck!
 
Levi8than said:
Thanks for this thread. I think I have this same issue. The buzzing is bothering me, but my wife can't hear it and sleeps just fine. I can track the whole path of the wire from the circuit box to the vehicle along my walls and ceiling listening to the buzzing. And devices like electric clock radios are buzzing too. And if you listen right at the breaker box it kind of chirps gently while the charging is happening.

I've got a 2013, and have only had it for about a month now, so I wasn't sure if I had a problem with my house wiring or the vehicle. I've tried swapping out the breaker as well as plugging other devices in, but those make no noise. I'm charging through a Juicebox, but I doubt that's inserting any sort of noise. Has anybody heard of a 2013 with this issue? I would have expected nissan to have fixed this for 2013 model.

The relays in my Blink make a fair amount of humming but I don't seem to be able to hear it anywhere else. Definitely see if you can reproduce the issue using the Panasonic EVSE that came with the car.
 
QueenBee said:
Definitely see if you can reproduce the issue using the Panasonic EVSE that came with the car.

The EVSE that came with the car running on 120 makes no noise. I have not done the upgrade to turn it into a 6.6kw charger.
I could make a breakout adapter that splits my 240 jack into 2 separate 120 outlets and try both legs of power to see if one is at fault or the other. Maybe I'll try that.
 
Levi8than said:
QueenBee said:
Definitely see if you can reproduce the issue using the Panasonic EVSE that came with the car.

The EVSE that came with the car running on 120 makes no noise. I have not done the upgrade to turn it into a 6.6kw charger.
I could make a breakout adapter that splits my 240 jack into 2 separate 120 outlets and try both legs of power to see if one is at fault or the other. Maybe I'll try that.

Well that's good at least but the amount of noise will certainly increase with the power going through the charger so I was expecting that to be the case. If you can't hear it at the panel then changing the phase most likely will not changing things.
 
QueenBee said:
Levi8than said:
QueenBee said:
Definitely see if you can reproduce the issue using the Panasonic EVSE that came with the car.

The EVSE that came with the car running on 120 makes no noise. I have not done the upgrade to turn it into a 6.6kw charger.
I could make a breakout adapter that splits my 240 jack into 2 separate 120 outlets and try both legs of power to see if one is at fault or the other. Maybe I'll try that.

Well that's good at least but the amount of noise will certainly increase with the power going through the charger so I was expecting that to be the case. If you can't hear it at the panel then changing the phase most likely will not changing things.

Thanks for working with me on this. I appreciate it.

I can hear a very subtle chirp at the panel. But nothing like the buzz I can hear around the rest of the house. I tried swapping from a 30amp to a 40amp breaker to both check for loose connections, because the 40amp breaker has a better wire-mash connection, and to make sure the 30 amp breaker wasn't wonky or near its throw limit. But it didn't change anything, so I'll be changing it back. I haven't disassembled the plug box to look for a loose connection there. I'll do that tonight and report back.
 
Levi8than said:
I can hear a very subtle chirp at the panel. But nothing like the buzz I can hear around the rest of the house. I tried swapping from a 30amp to a 40amp breaker to both check for loose connections, because the 40amp breaker has a better wire-mash connection, and to make sure the 30 amp breaker wasn't wonky or near its throw limit. But it didn't change anything, so I'll be changing it back. I haven't disassembled the plug box to look for a loose connection there. I'll do that tonight and report back.

I think the next steps for you are trying a different 240 volt full power EVSE at your house, or even somewhere else quiet. Or as you requested have someone else stop by your house to test.
I'm scheduled to go into the dealer and when I finally make an appointment I'll ask the tech that took care me in my 2011 to see if he has heard of any 2013s with this issue.
 
QueenBee said:
Levi8than said:
I can hear a very subtle chirp at the panel. But nothing like the buzz I can hear around the rest of the house. I tried swapping from a 30amp to a 40amp breaker to both check for loose connections, because the 40amp breaker has a better wire-mash connection, and to make sure the 30 amp breaker wasn't wonky or near its throw limit. But it didn't change anything, so I'll be changing it back. I haven't disassembled the plug box to look for a loose connection there. I'll do that tonight and report back.

I think the next steps for you are trying a different 240 volt full power EVSE at your house, or even somewhere else quiet. Or as you requested have someone else stop by your house to test.
I'm scheduled to go into the dealer and when I finally make an appointment I'll ask the tech that took care me in my 2011 to see if he has heard of any 2013s with this issue.

I swapped the 30 amp socket I was plugged into with a new one, and now the buzzing is down to a subtle 60 hz hum, which I'm guessing is normal and acceptable.
Thanks for having this thread here to bounce it off of.
 
FYI I was able to get Nissan to replace the on board charger in my car after a lot of back and forth with them. I managed to get a case opened up and was able to send in videos via drop box links which they sent on to engineering. By the time I took the car in to the dealer they had already sent a replacement charger to them to swap out. It took them three days, but apparently they were doing something to a GTR and I guess a $100K car has priority so I suspect it sat there for at least a day before they even worked on it.

I did have video of the car charging and a 2013 leaf as well. After the charger swap out the wiring, panel and lights in my house were dead silent.
 
RickS said:
FYI I was able to get Nissan to replace the on board charger in my car after a lot of back and forth with them. I managed to get a case opened up and was able to send in videos via drop box links which they sent on to engineering. By the time I took the car in to the dealer they had already sent a replacement charger to them to swap out. It took them three days, but apparently they were doing something to a GTR and I guess a $100K car has priority so I suspect it sat there for at least a day before they even worked on it.

I did have video of the car charging and a 2013 leaf as well. After the charger swap out the wiring, panel and lights in my house were dead silent.

Am I reading this right? You're were hearing this buzzing on a 2013 leaf? and that's what you got fixed? Or this was a 2011 that had the issue?
Thanks for your story.
Post the video if you can.
 
Levi8than said:
Am I reading this right? You're were hearing this buzzing on a 2013 leaf? and that's what you got fixed? Or this was a 2011 that had the issue?

No, he has #2193, a 2011. He evidently got someone local with a 2013 to plug in for comparison.
 
Sorry, should have specified. I got a 2013 Leaf to come by and there was no noise what so ever. I immediately plugged my 2011 back in and the buzzing was instantly noticeable after the double beep when the car does it's hand shake with the EVSE (which is when it starts actually charging).
 
QueenBee said:
The relays in my Blink make a fair amount of humming but I don't seem to be able to hear it anywhere else. Definitely see if you can reproduce the issue using the Panasonic EVSE that came with the car.
It's not a 120v issue. Read the early threads . . . . 240v only.
Our early vin was one of the 1st that was corrected
As for the post just a few higher relatning to one's spouse not being able to hear it ... that just means their hearing is limited above a certain khz level. Gary Gid came over to hear our noise, and he couldn't ... acknowledging his hearing at high frequency is toast. When the dealer came out though ... they could easily hear the noise.
One follow up - (I'm NOT saying which dealership it was) when we 1st contacted the LOCAL dealer, they blew us off. One closer to us was much more understanding, and eventually helped us resolve the issue. We got a survey relating the the 1st dealership and we posted our dissatisfaction how they were not helpful. Apparently they not only GET those surveys ... they know WHO they come from. The service manager called me on it ... that's how I know. They've been very unhelpful ever since. So just be aware to face their wrath if you ding them for poor service. That's the last time I fill out a survey - now that I see they can use it as a weapon against you.
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