Blink L2 EVSE and LEAF charging module destroy each other

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Levenkay

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 27, 2011
Messages
524
Location
Portland, OR
For the last 15 months or so of my participation in the EV project, the Blink EVSE unit issued to me has regularly (like at least once a week) generated a nuisance trip of some safety feature, refusing to let my LEAF charge on its 04:50 end-timer because "A Power Fault Has Occurred". And on these occasions, if I awoke early enough for it to do any good, I'd go into the garage, stroke the Blink's touch-screen to initiate a reset, punch the car's timer override button, and then have at least a little recharging done while showering. After what happened this past Tuesday, I can now see what a stupid procedure that was, and am posting this in hopes of cautioning others avoid the damage my LEAF sustained.

This past Tuesday began like so many other "Blink fault" days, with me stumbling groggily through the reset/retry ritual. This time, though, the disaster I had been courting by leaving the Blink's J1772 plugged into the LEAF while the Blink reset itself struck. I tend to think that the timing of my actuating the LEAF's charge-timer override button probably had something to do with it also; coinciding with a very vulnerable spot in the Blink system's restart or something. Anyway, the end result was a very brief "snap" sound (which I thought came partly from the LEAF, but might have all been from the circuit breaker tripping), and everything went dark. I finally got some sense, disconnected the LEAF, and tried resetting the Blink's breaker. The Blink's screen stayed dark, however, and the powerline modem that had been installed as a workaround for Blink's inability to make a wireless net connection work indicated no activity on its data port. I got out the portable EVSE and plugged it into a 110V outlet, but the car wouldn't charge from that either. I drove to a nearby DCQC station, thinking that since a DC port is just a straight shot into the battery, it might still be functional even if the internal AC/DC converter wasn't, but the DCQC reported "Could not communicate with vehicle" or somesuch, and wouldn't charge either. Hmm..

Fortunately, enough charge remained in the battery to drive to the dealer (Wilsonville Nissan). The service techs there tried doing what they described as a "master reboot" (probably a disconnect/wait/reconnect of the 12V battery), but that didn't restore charger functionality. And, although the techs cleared out some of the error codes that had accumulated from all the more benign Blink faults, they concluded that the on-board charger module was toast. Having heard stories of long delivery times for replacement LEAF parts, I was glumly prepared for what I hoped would "only" be a couple weeks, and was hooked up with a rental car for the duration. (The rental wound up being a Fiat Sport 500; the most hilariously hideous contrast with a fluid-smooth and quiet LEAF you could imagine.) But after only two and a half days, the dealer's shop had a replacement OBC (on-board charger) delivered and installed. Everything including the rental was covered under warranty; I was charged nothing. And apparently Nissan took an interest in the incident, at least to the extent of (according to the repair report), "Remote linked to TL (from context, this is "Tech Line") to transfer logger data; replaced on-board charger per TL...". At the end of the repair ticket was the very prudent advice to not let the Blink unit anywhere near the LEAF at least until it has been repaired and recertified. Very good service, I think.

I'm probably going to have to wait 'till after the Memorial Day holiday weekend to look into whether repairing the Blink is much of a possibility. Unfortunately, according to the agreement I had with the EV Project folks, the Blink became my property (and my responsibility, I guess) on the first of this month, so I doubt Ecotality will provide warranty service for it.

To summarize, I guess my hard-sparks lession is: Don't powercycle or otherwise reset an EVSE while it's connected to your LEAF.
 
Levenkay said:
... To summarize, I guess my hard-sparks lession is: Don't powercycle or otherwise reset an EVSE while it's connected to your LEAF.
Absolutely. You should have had Blink fix this before as the fix is easy. The fix involves changing the connection (the connector they used cause the problem) of two wires inside the Blink. we could probably scare up the details of the fix if Blink won't step up and do it.
 
Levenkay said:
To summarize, I guess my hard-sparks lession is: Don't powercycle or otherwise reset an EVSE while it's connected to your LEAF.
I thought this was a similar issue with wattsatation. Using the power switch at the wrong time causes issues with LEAF.
 
davewill said:
Levenkay said:
... To summarize, I guess my hard-sparks lession is: Don't powercycle or otherwise reset an EVSE while it's connected to your LEAF.
Absolutely. You should have had Blink fix this before as the fix is easy. The fix involves changing the connection (the connector they used cause the problem) of two wires inside the Blink. we could probably scare up the details of the fix if Blink won't step up and do it.
I will abashedly own up to the lion's share of laziness in ignoring the Blink flakiness, but I did exchange a few emails with someone in a product support capacity in Ecotality early on. These conversations always ended up with them claiming that I must have "inadequate grounding" for my install. I would counter with the observation that as the Blink was mounted about two feet away from my electrical panel, and I could see a 3/8" bare copper braid wire coming out of the bottom of that and poking through the wall to a grounding rod no more than three feet away, I didn't see how it could be made much more 'adequate'. That plus my (perhaps mistaken) belief that current-fault detection circuitry is most likely transformer coupled and indifferent to grounding anyway made me kind of discount all their advice. Besides, at the time, so many other folks were having what sounded like worse problems than mine that I thought the Blink folks would be a long time getting to me anyway. I did ask the dealer's service techs, when I brought the car in for its first annual battery inspection, whether they had any fixturing for checking the car's J1772 inlet connector for compliance with whatever leakage/imbalance current specs the standard has, since for all I knew, the Blink might actually be identifying a legitimate concern (I doubted it, though, based on the other glaring deficiencies in the Blink, and because it was so intermittent). They didn't have a means of making the measurement, and seemed very surprised that I would have such an unrealistic expectation of them. Anyway, without a way to validate the LEAF's connector, the issue of which equipment was at fault was always a little cloudy.

As long as I'm on this soapbox bleating out my woes, though, I'll go on to observe that it was a little curious for an outfit (Ecotality) that was gathering such detailed information on how home-charging stations get used, and which technically owned the equipment doing the gathering, wouldn't have noticed all the "Help! my pfhurkkitry iszzz.. <popplikks!>... " error codes from the units they were data mining. But that's no more odd, I guess, than their not knowing whether or not their DCQC stations are operational at any given time.
 
One would tend to think residential grounding (and bonding) should be a simple subject, but judging by the number of pages the NEC devotes to it -- it's not. I suggest you get an experienced, competent electrician to check it out -- intermittent problems are often very difficult to troubleshoot. If Ecotality was right about a grounding problem, it might be that any EVSE you install could also have intermittent problems -- and possibly you have a larger safety issue.
 
The situation with the Blink residential L2 EVSE installed in my garage seems to be resolved (at least, the technician dispatched by Ecotality was satisfied), so, as suggested, I'm updating this thread with such results as I have.

Despite the issue of ownership still being a little murky, Ecotality dispatched an electrician/service tech to have a look at the Blink EVSE I've been using, the very next day after I got through to someone at the phone number I was given by the outfit that did my original install. The technician expected to find a particular hardware issue, given my description of the unit's behavior, and was somewhat surprised that the unit remained completely dead even after re-closing its circuit breaker. After a bit of probing with his multimeter, he discovered that an internal 60A cartridge fuse (a really cute component: about 1/2" in diameter, and not much more than an inch and a half long) in the main 240 inlet line had popped, in addition to the 40A breaker in my service panel. With its fuse replaced, the Blink was able to restart, so the tech began performing a list of modifications. During the telephone check with Ecotality HQ at the conclusion of his visit, he rattled off a list of at least half-a-dozen "TSB" numbers of the modifications he'd made; I don't remember any of them with confidence, but I did notice that they covered a range from 1 to about 47, and one of them was the removal of an RFID card-reader unit I hadn't known was there. The tech then replaced the SD card with one containing presumably updated firmware. The technician had to replace the SD card three times, because the first two packaged parts had the wrong preloaded firmware, and were for a commercial rather than a residential unit; this was humorous because the poor tech had to go through the touchscreen calibration steps on each one before being able to tell which flavor he'd just put in. The new firmware describes itself as version "2.1.2012 0404B, E1.10".

The reworked unit passed its checks on the technician's "car simulator" test box, and then delivered half an hour's worth of charging power to my LEAF without incident. While it was doing so, the tech got on the phone with Ecotality HQ (as mentioned before) and got confirmation from their end that the unit had checked in and reported its updated status. And it supplied power for a 5:00AM end-timed charging session this morning; if it can do that for two or three straight weeks, I'll consider its tendency to throw "Power Fault" fits cured.

One thing that I'm starting to kick myself about is that I forgot to insist that the technician leave me some shred of documentation attesting to his repair and recertification of the Blink; he just packed up his kit and drove off. The last section of the warranty repair report for my LEAF's blown charger hints that warranty coverage of the new charger is conditional on the EVSE having been repaired and recertified, and I hope I don't wind up needing to prove that it was.

As to the question of the quality of (to earth, I presume) grounding of my power panel, I still don't have a rock-solid verdict. Neither the outfit that did the original install (from whom I got the contact number for the Ecotality repair contact) nor the field repair tech thought that grounding could be an issue. The first shop's installer pointed out that the Blink unit is a two-terminal device and runs solely on the two hot wires of the 240 supply it's connected to. There's a (safety?) earth(?) ground for the low voltage computer circuitry to be referenced to (necessary, I suppose, when one uses a hardwired Ethernet connection), but no current flows in it, and none of the internal circuitry is conductively connected to it (except through the one intentional safety connection). I tried several times to ask the service tech if he could check the quality of grounding, but his way of doing that was simply to verify the proper balance, line-to-neutral, of the 240V service (it was spot on).

Prior to the service visit, I had taken a couple chunks of aluminum square-tube that I had lying around and drove them shallowly into my lawn about a dozen feet apart, in the same general area as where the visible grounding wire from my power panel dives down to connect with its grounding rod. Using a spool of hookup wire to extend the reach of my multimeter, I made a couple of continuity measurements between the two temporarily inserted ground contacts, and from each one of them to the earth ground cable near the power panel. I was surprised that the meter kept showing "offscale" even on its auto-ranged Megohm range, between the ground rod for the house and either of the two temporary probes, while showing fairly low resistance (about 1Kohms) between the probes themselves. Possibly the high readings were due to noise pickup; there was quite a lot of wire involved and probably a fair loop area too. I measured about 300mV of AC between one of the fresh ground rods and my power panel's, vs. only about 80mV between the probes. All of this is still somewhat inconclusive, but I shared it with the service tech anyway. He didn't think it was relevant
 
NEC Article 250.53 (Grounding Electrode System Installation) gives requirements for grounding electrodes, which I have read normally requires two electrodes, among other specs. Apparently one is ideally wanting the electrodes resistance to earth to be no more than 25 ohms. In "Wiring a House" (4th ed) by Rex Cauldwell, the author recommends an "above code" requirement of eight 8' electrode rods. The reason he writes: "It is imperative that residences, especially those with computers, answering machines, and other high-tech sensitive equipment [an EVSE and the EV it is charging?], have an extremely good grounding system. Otherwise, these expensive machines will wind up in the high-tech junk pile." and "If there's a high ground resistance, a surge won't be diverted into ground, but instead into that delicate electronic gear mentioned earlier." and "A grounding system is like a string of old-style Christmas tree lights. All the bulbs -- in this case the connections -- are all in series. If any one is loose, burned out, corroded, or installed incorrectly, the system won't work.".

I admit to being unable to understand and appreciate all this, but I can conclude that your worrisome "offscale" reading is not close to 25 ohms -- something's wrong -- and may still be causing your intermittent charging problems. I suggest getting another opinion about the importance of a good grounding electrode system -- I would think a city inspector should be willing to help.
 
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