240V Charging Not @orking

[JVic]

2019 Leaf using the supplied charger on a Nema 14-50 outlet. Charges for a few seconds and then the Yellow Charging light starts blinking and the red Fault light goes on.

Put on the 120V adapter and charge from a regular outlet at the dealer works okay. Dealership says the adapter is fine because it works at 120V but they don't have a 14-50 outlet to verify.

Getting tested on another 14-50 outlet at a different location and getting an Electrician to check our 14-50 outlet.

Has anyone seen this issue before?

 

[jjeff]

The OEM Leaf EVSE will NOT work on 208v, you need to find a 240v outlet. Why the dealer wouldn't know or at least bring this up is beyond me....

 

[goldbrick]

+1 on the 208V thing, that is probably the problem.

In case you don't know, a nominal 240V outlet may actually be 208V. It depends on how the power to your house/apartment is wired from the transformer from the utility. In other words, it's not easy to change it.

The Nissan EVSE cable is known to not work with 208V systems. 208V systems are most common in apartment complexes and some high-density developments.

If you have a voltmeter, you can check the voltage at your outlet yourself. Otherwise, ask the electrician to check it. If it's 208V instead of 240V you can't use your Nissan EVSE and will need to buy a different unit.

 

[RNeil]

Look at the circuit breaker panel.

A 240/120 volt single phase panel will have two columns (or rows) of breakers. There will be some two pole 240 volt breakers.

A 208/120 three phase panel will have three columns (or rows) of breakers. There might be some two pole or three pole breakers.

 

[GerryAZ]

Look at the circuit breaker panel.

A 240/120 volt single phase panel will have two columns (or rows) of breakers. There will be some two pole 240 volt breakers.

A 208/120 three phase panel will have three columns (or rows) of breakers. There might be some two pole or three pole breakers.

A single-phase 208Y/120-volt panel looks identical to a 120/240-volt single phase panel. It just has two phases and neutral instead of all three phases. The only way to be certain is to measure the voltage between phases (ungrounded lines).

 

[JVic]

Yes I found a few other posts now that I know to look for 208v issue. We have 3-phase 208v. Apparently any building with an elevator will be 3-phase 208v.

Any recommendations for a low cost EVSE that does basic billing?

 

[alozzy]

I don't think there's such a thing as a low cost EVSE that also does basic billing.

If you need metering/billing, then a commercial EVSE would be needed, I would think...

https://grizzl-e.com/grizzl-e-smart-business/

However, maybe OpenEVSE could so basic billing. I've never used it though, but perhaps someone else here knows.

 

[alozzy]

Actually, this could be an option to use with OpenEVSE for tracking charging costs:

https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonpi/

 

[goldbrick]

I agree that the only EVSE's with built-in billing will probably be commercial units and not cheap.

Your original setup was to use the Nissan EVSE with the 14-50 plug, right? How was billing handled on that?

AFAIK, just about every EVSE except the Nissan-supplied unit will operate on 208V so there are many options (without billing). It would probably be easier and cheaper to just add an external Watt-meter in series with the EVSE rather than try to find one with that capability built in.

 

[alozzy]

I would guess that, with OpenEVSE, you can extract usage data as a CSV file at the end of each month. Presumably, that would give you all of the dates, times, durations, kWh supplied, etc that you could quickly arrive at the cost per charging session.