Level 1 charging with an ungrounded plug

The Level 1 charger will not work if a 110 Vac plug is ungrounded. Makes sense. I tried to charge my Leaf with a 2500 watt solar inverter. It did not work for the same reason (No electrical connection to ground.) Since the electrical service (that works at Level 1) has the neutral and ground connnedted in the brealer box, is the answer, on the solar inverter, to electrically connect neutral and ground? FYI, the source of power for the 2500 watt inverter is a large 24 volt, Lead-acid battery bank.
Thanks in advance.

To use the charging cable with the 120 volt breaker box, you need to run a cable with ground wire from the box. If the cable is buried and there is no ground wire but it's in metal conduit, check the conduit for a good ground and use that for a ground to connect a ground wire to a 3 prong 120 volt outlet. You may also be able to run a separate ground wire from the box to the outlet, bypassing the cable outside the outlet, but that isn't good practice...

you need to google generator bonding...same issue here.

billduck said:

The Level 1 charger will not work if a 110 Vac plug is ungrounded. Makes sense. I tried to charge my Leaf with a 2500 watt solar inverter. It did not work for the same reason (No electrical connection to ground.) Since the electrical service (that works at Level 1) has the neutral and ground connnedted in the brealer box, is the answer, on the solar inverter, to electrically connect neutral and ground? FYI, the source of power for the 2500 watt inverter is a large 24 volt, Lead-acid battery bank.
Thanks in advance.

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If the inverter neutral is truly isolated from ground, you need to make a connection between neutral and ground with either a resistor (100k ohm is appropriate to limit ground fault current below the standard GFCI threshold of 5 mA) or a bonding jumper. I made up some adapters using 120-volt plugs (one with resistor and one with solid jumper) to use with isolated generators to charge the car or to run test equipment that checks for safety ground connections. By using the plug-in adapters, I can leave the generator isolated for normal use and grounded/bonded when needed by just plugging the appropriate adapter into the second receptacle on the generator.

Actually it didn't work because the inverter has a floating neutral.
If you have to defeat a safety system to make something work, it's a bad idea.

If you have to defeat a safety system to make something work, it's a bad idea.

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We agree on that. Just provide a grounded outlet for the EVSE.

My goal is to be able to charge the Leaf from a solar charged battery pack thru an off grid inverter. Hope I do not let the smoke out if I connect ground and Neutral.

I can't find the thread now, but, if your comfortable with electricity you can make a "grounding" plug to the stock EVSE will think it is grounded. Of course this doesn't help the floating neutral issue meaning from the car to the ground you could have 60v and yes you can and will feel that

billduck said:

My goal is to be able to charge the Leaf from a solar charged battery pack thru an off grid inverter. Hope I do not let the smoke out if I connect ground and Neutral.

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Higher end pure sine inverters will fry if you connect ground to one of the 60v "lines" and modified sine wave appears to not work well at all with the leafs charging system or any charging electeonics.
You would need a higher end pure sine inverter that makes 120/240 with ground bonded neutral to do it the most correct way.

This is good information. Let me deconstruct it. Everyone understands that a 240 volt service is 2 each of a 120 volt sine wave that are phased 180 degrees apart. Are you saying that the voltage from a 120 volt recepticle on the pure sine wave inverter is kinda the same. That is, it is 2 sine waves at 60 volts separated by 180 degrees, time wise?
The inverter I am using is from reliable inverters - a pure sine wave inverter. Do not want to let the smoke out.

billduck said:

This is good information. Let me deconstruct it. Everyone understands that a 240 volt service is 2 each of a 120 volt sine wave that are phased 180 degrees apart. Are you saying that the voltage from a 120 volt recepticle on the pure sine wave inverter is kinda the same. That is, it is 2 sine waves at 60 volts separated by 180 degrees, time wise?
The inverter I am using is from reliable inverters - a pure sine wave inverter. Do not want to let the smoke out.

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The inverter output is 120 volts RMS sine wave but it is either completely floating with respect to ground (which means bonding the neutral to ground would create a grounded neutral system and allow charging) or it is two 60-volt sine waves as you describe which yields 120 volts with both neutral and line conductors offset from ground by 60 volts. I suggest you ask the manufacturer of the inverter to find out if its output is floating with respect to ground. If it is floating (like both of my inverter-type generators), then you can create grounding plugs as I described earlier to ground the neutral and allow car charging. If the inverter output is not floating, you could get an isolation transformer to create a separately-derived system and ground the neutral on the output side of the transformer.

Virtually all 120v inverters run 60v on the neutral and the hot, put them together for 120v.
A few years ago I was able to find exactly 1 inverter that ran a 120v hot and had a neutral bonded to ground.

Most but not all pure sine wave inverters fry when you ground one of the current carriers.

Oilpan4 said:

Virtually all 120v inverters run 60v on the neutral and the hot, put them together for 120v.
A few years ago I was able to find exactly 1 inverter that ran a 120v hot and had a neutral bonded to ground.

Most but not all pure sine wave inverters fry when you ground one of the current carriers.

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Good to know--I am starting to search for a 2 kW sine wave inverter (12-volt input) that I can use with test equipment which checks for safety ground by injecting a small current to ground. Like an EVSE, that equipment will not function if neutral is not grounded. I may need to use an isolation transformer if I cannot find one with neutral bonded to ground.

Since nobody's mentioned it, why not install a grounding rod in Earth and run a line from it to the ground lug of the receptacle to provide a reliable ground that doesn't require any tricks?

Nubo said:

Since nobody's mentioned it, why not install a grounding rod in Earth and run a line from it to the ground lug of the receptacle to provide a reliable ground that doesn't require any tricks?

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That was why I suggested using the box as a ground source. You really aren't supposed to have multiple grounds for your house, as I understand it, but maybe a system like this is the exception...

I don't want to be pedantic but both wires - 'hot' and 'neutral' - are conductors and carry the exact same amount of current. If they don't, that's the definition of a ground fault and it will trip a GFCI and/or cause more serious problems. The 'ground' wire should never carry current in normal operation. It might carry a small amount for the GFCI test but the ground wire should never be used as a conductor in normal operation.

Or just run a 240v inverter.

Back when I got rid of my modified sine wave inverters I read the manuals and at least one of the samlex and xantrex manuals said not to attempt to make a bonded neutral and ground. Actually both have a GFIC receptacle so unless you take the inverter apart and attempt to modify it you can't make a N-G bond.

The initial question was about Level 1 charging thru a 2500 watt pure sine wave inverter, operating off of 24 volts. I did short ground and neutral together, and it worked. Did not charge for long because the battery wire gauge was too small for 62 amps. But it worked. Yea!
This was an inverter from reliableinverters.com

billduck said:

The Level 1 charger will not work if a 110 Vac plug is ungrounded.

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My family's 2013 LEAF accepts a non-grounding electricity supply, it works just fine. I've tested it four ways: two different EVSEs, plugging-in to 120 and 240 volt outlets, and our LEAF never failed to charge while "floating"/non-grounding.

However, its Nissan/Panasonic EVSE (model 29690-3NF0A), DOES require EGC/PE (equipment grounding conductor/protective earthing), as it implements G.M.I.: Ground Monitor/Interrupter. Or maybe it is G.C.M., Ground Continuity Monitoring.

> Since the electrical service has the neutral and ground connected in
> the breaker box, is the answer, on the solar inverter, to electrically
> connect neutral and ground?

If you must use the Nissan "Zero Emission" cordset/EVSE, then you can create a bootleg ground immediately upstream of it, or inside of it. It should go without saying, a bootleg ground is dangerous. Like a NEMA 6-15P to 5-15C plug converter, it should be kept away from any body who could mis-use it.

Nubo said:

Since nobody's mentioned it, why not install a grounding rod in Earth and run a line from it to the ground lug of the receptacle to provide a reliable ground that doesn't require any tricks?

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That won't work: the generated AC electricity line/circuit will be still floating with respect to Earth/mass, and the (edit: was 'EVSE CCID') EVSE ICCB which implements GCM/GMI will not be tricked.

billduck said:

I did short ground and neutral together, and it worked. Did not charge for long because the battery wire gauge was too small for 62 amps.

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That was a good test, proof of concept. Now, I recommend un-doing your bootleg ground. For your use case, I suggest you get a cheap "China brand" EVSE, with adjustable current. These adjustable EVSE's typically lack GMI/GCM, so you'll only need to run two wires (non-grounding) from your inverter. Your existing energy storage equipment (battery, wiring, inverter) might be "happier" working less hard, generating six or eight ampere rather than 12 amps.



2020-09-29: This post was edited to replace a mistaken term. I used 'CCID', standing for 'Charge Circuit Interrupting Device', which basically refers to a RCD/GFI/GFCI applied to an EVSE. Corrected term is 'ICCB', In-Cable Control Box. Or alternatively 'IC-CPD', In Cable Control and Protecting Device.

matson said:

Nubo said:

Since nobody's mentioned it, why not install a grounding rod in Earth and run a line from it to the ground lug of the receptacle to provide a reliable ground that doesn't require any tricks?

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That won't work: the generated AC electricity line/circuit will be still floating with respect to Earth/mass, and the EVSE CCID which implements GCM/GMI will not be tricked.

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How about "tricking" it for functionality, but adding the ground for safety?