Nissan/AV L2 EVSE not charging

Running the climate control will make charging take longer. If you're using an end timer and the timers overlap, the climate control may make it miss your end time. There's a setting in the menus as to which timer wins out. Is that what's going on here? If so, try setting the charge timer to end before the climate control timer starts.

Sorry about that, bowthom. Should have read your question more carefully. The timer topic is one that will require a bit of reading. Both the battery pack and the heater can consume the entire 3.3 kW that the built-in charger can provide, so Nissan has provided a user-settable priority... charging timer or preconditioning timer. The factory default is charging. GeekEV has it right.

-Karl

And it appears that on L1 the Climate Control pre-conditioning actually draws from the battery in addition to drawing from the wall, slightly reducing the range ( I don't have exact data ). But at least there seems to be a 15minute timeout on that function (if activated from browser or via timer on browser -- have not tried the timer in the car).

OK I get it, I have lots-O-studying to do yet.
On another topic, I went over to Shorepower to test their new L2 charger revision with the Leaf. The Leaf did not respond to J1772 commands to ramp down current. It stayed at 3.5kW. There was a Prius plugin hybrid there also that had the same response so not sure what to make of it.

bowthom said:

On another topic, I went over to Shorepower to test their new L2 charger revision with the Leaf. The Leaf did not respond to J1772 commands to ramp down current. It stayed at 3.5kW. There was a Prius plugin hybrid there also that had the same response so not sure what to make of it.

Click to expand...

Two different production cars, same response? My guess would be their product isn't working right.

bowthom said:

OK I get it, I have lots-O-studying to do yet.
On another topic, I went over to Shorepower to test their new L2 charger revision with the Leaf. The Leaf did not respond to J1772 commands to ramp down current. It stayed at 3.5kW. There was a Prius plugin hybrid there also that had the same response so not sure what to make of it.

Click to expand...

There are no J1772 "commands", there is only the PWM duty cycle. The car is supposed to not drain more than the duty cycle is set for at any given time. If it's ignoring this, then it's not J1772 compliant.

I've already noted that the Panasonic L1 EVSE is not fully compliant, so this wouldn't surprise me.

-Phil

Maybe, I assumed that too, but then again I was watching the engineer and he had the guts all laid out on the mockup and I could see the commands and the J1772 standards. All was not right with things. I need to download the service manual so I can give him some real data. Because their stations may have a high load when all the ports are being used I assume they want to be able to control the total load to their system if needed.

bowthom said:

Maybe, I assumed that too, but then again I was watching the engineer and he had the guts all laid out on the mockup and I could see the commands and the J1772 standards. All was not right with things. I need to download the service manual so I can give him some real data. Because their stations may have a high load when all the ports are being used I assume they want to be able to control the total load to their system if needed.

Click to expand...

I'll test this on the Leaf when I get a chance.

Ingineer said:

bowthom said:

OK I get it, I have lots-O-studying to do yet.
On another topic, I went over to Shorepower to test their new L2 charger revision with the Leaf. The Leaf did not respond to J1772 commands to ramp down current. It stayed at 3.5kW. There was a Prius plugin hybrid there also that had the same response so not sure what to make of it.

Click to expand...

There are no J1772 "commands", there is only the PWM duty cycle. The car is supposed to not drain more than the duty cycle is set for at any given time. If it's ignoring this, then it's not J1772 compliant.

I've already noted that the Panasonic L1 EVSE is not fully compliant, so this wouldn't surprise me.

-Phil

Click to expand...

But would it be compliant on the spin cycle? Did you check that?

So, concerning use of the PWM part of the EVSE-generated Control Pilot signal,
does the LEAF:

1. totally ignore the PWM? (seems unlikely, check L1-Mod EVSE usage in L2 mode)

2. use it initially to set the Max-Current, but ignore it while charging? (quite possible)

3. watch PWM while using current, adjusting to varying PWM? (should do, but possibly does not)

Well, I know for sure it at least initially adheres to the PWM limit. The L1 EVSE sends a 12A limit, and the Leaf adheres to this on 120V or 240V appropriately.

The test I'll do as soon as I get the chance is to vary the duty cycle dynamically and see how quickly the Leaf adjusts, if at all.

-Phil

GeekEV said:

AskDrStupid said:

That's funny because the first thing I thought of was that it sounds more like "someone" isn't fully capable of installing the EVSE and instead of implying that he has had two bad chargers, maybe he can take responsibility for not knowing what he's doing as he plays electrician and screws up both EVSEs when he installs them. But who am I to expect that? Ha ha ha! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Click to expand...

Ouch. I don't care how many smiley faces you put, that's just rude. Combining your nickname with the fact that this is your first post almost makes me wonder if you're a rep from AV monitoring this thread and trying to salvage your reputation by dissing me...

Click to expand...

Yes, believe it or not, you got that right. "AskDrStupid" is posting from an IP that points to Aerovironment. I've sent a warning to the poster.

If anyone thinks Nissan and other related companies aren't reading posts here, rethink.

I don't know whether the poster had any permission from AV to do what he did or he was just doing it on his own. Either way, very poor judgement and business ethics.

Indeed. Thanks for checking that, it gives a sort of closure.

Classy.

Aside from the poor judgement displayed, its kind of funny - the poster from AV certainly picked an apt name - obviously not smart enough to know that blog postings are easily traced by IP!

Hello all,
Here is the chart of our Leaf charger test done today. We found the leaf to be fully compliant with the J1772 standard.


Horizontal is the commanded max amperage (each 10% of PWM signal = 6A) in 1 amp increments, vertical is actual load. You can see the Leaf maintained ~80% of the max amp command.

Also, building a small portable 240V EVSE for opportunity charging is bone head simple, I intend to do so.

bowthom said:

Here is the chart of our Leaf charger test done today. We found the leaf to be fully compliant with the J1772 standard.

Click to expand...

So did the problem end up being Shorepower's programming?

Well........ not sure, we were in a hurry last time and may not have qualified the conditions of the test . His PWM looked picture perfect and the Leaf reacted correctly. He had made no changes to the signal or programming. Don't know what was different. The Prius was still non-compliant. When done with it's charge cycle it returns to 12V rather than 9V so it triggers the "someone disconnected your car" email rather than "charge cycle complete." I didn't stay for the rest of the Prius results so I can't speak to those.
He did say that noise in the signal is not addressed in the J1772 specification and it is possible for RF to cause the charge cycle to end. They are using shielded cable, even though it is not specified, to mitigate RF noise problems. I am keeping in contact with him so if anything new comes up I will post it here.

evnow said:

GeekEV said:

AskDrStupid said:

That's funny because the first thing I thought of was that it sounds more like "someone" isn't fully capable of installing the EVSE and instead of implying that he has had two bad chargers, maybe he can take responsibility for not knowing what he's doing as he plays electrician and screws up both EVSEs when he installs them. But who am I to expect that? Ha ha ha! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Click to expand...

Ouch. I don't care how many smiley faces you put, that's just rude. Combining your nickname with the fact that this is your first post almost makes me wonder if you're a rep from AV monitoring this thread and trying to salvage your reputation by dissing me...

Click to expand...

Yes, believe it or not, you got that right. "AskDrStupid" is posting from an IP that points to Aerovironment. I've sent a warning to the poster.

If anyone thinks Nissan and other related companies aren't reading posts here, rethink.

I don't know whether the poster had any permission from AV to do what he did or he was just doing it on his own. Either way, very poor judgement and business ethics.

Click to expand...

Our company makes us log on with our own PIN in order to access the web. Likely AV is the same. It'd be nice to know if the post was actually from some disgruntled employee, or, an officer, director, manager etc. Maybe that'd be worth passing on to Nissan as well. At our company, misuse of company assets/privileges - contrary to company policy are grounds for immediate dismissal. Maybe that's not the case with AV ... what with the lion's share of their business stemming from military contracts.