Revision 2 upgrade for Nissan EVSE - Allows full level 2!

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Ingineer

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 15, 2010
Messages
2,742
Location
Berkeley, California
I started this thread to keep the main EVSE upgrade thread clean. Please use this for discussion, Thanks!

NOTE: We are now accepting orders for new revision 2 upgrades on the web site.

We are now accepting the "second wave" of units from existing customers with Rev 1 units to also get the Rev 2 upgrade, however, We are only going to ship out on Wednesday, June the 15th. We will be devoting Tuesday/Wednesday to processing these upgrades for existing customers to satisfy demand. It is imperative your unit is delivered to us before Wednesday the 15th if you expect it back upgraded, otherwise you will have to wait until mid July! If you need quick turn-around please try to get it to us by noon on Wednesday, and we should be able to ship back out that afternoon.

There is an ordering button for existing customers at the bottom of the order page on the web site.

Also Note: We will be closed from June the 17th - July the 11th, so any orders received during that time could be refused delivery and may end up sitting in limbo until we re-open. Please do not ship us units during this time, we cannot be responsible for what happens to your package if you do!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the mini FAQ:

1. Please don't email/pm/call me. More time spent answering questions is less lab time! Ask your questions here so everyone can benefit from the answers.

2. The upgrade is firmware only, no hardware needs to be changed.

3. We are calling it the "Revision 2" or "Rev 2" upgrade to distinguish it from the original.

4. Presently the unit charges at the standard 12A when used on 120 volt outlets and the full 16A when used on 240 volts.

5. All existing EVSE upgrade customers can have this additional revision 2 upgrade applied to their revision 1 units for the same $48 as new customers, we will not be charging extra even though there is significantly more labor required. You will have to ship the units to us as before and cover the return shipping. (see top of page)

6. The cost is $48 additional if you are ordering the original revision 1 upgrade. Initially this may delay the turn-around of your unit (normally same day) by one additional day.

7. The unit charges your LEAF at 16A when connected to 240v, and the original 12A when connected to 120v. There is no way to adjust the charge rate other than this.

8. We have throughly tested this unit at 16a and believe it will be trouble-free, however you need to make double sure whatever source you connect the unit to can handle the 16a load. Please have a fully-qualified electrician inspect your wiring and outlets before use.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:

The revision 2 upgrade has been throughly tested at 16 amps, and even at up to 26.5 amps and had no trouble, failures, melting, etc.

Here's a thermal image of the EVSE after handling 26.5 amps for several minutes, and prior to that, 16 amps for almost an hour:
pic

As expected one of the warmest parts was the fuse, which is still very reasonable. The relays didn't seem to get much hotter even with the 26.5 amp current. There is still several watts of heat from each relay's coil which occurs even without any load, which is the source of warmth you feel after the unit has been in charge mode for a while. At 26.5 amps the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) traces got noticeably warm, but not hot. This means if the unit can survive 26.5 amps, it can easily handle 16!


Here's it charging a LEAF on 240v at 16a:
pic



Just for kicks, my "Quick240" charging my Plug-in Prius at 240v and 14.9a from 2 normal 120v wall outlets:
pic



Here's it being tortured at 26.5a. The cover is off so I can watch for smoke! (The thermal image above was taken soon afterwards.) It never smoked or (surprisingly) blew it's on-board fuse.
pic



Here's the conglomeration of wiring and adapters to plug both a LEAF and a Plug-in Prius into the same EVSE to give us the 26.5 amp torture-load:
pic



I have tested it over a weekend, overnight, and all day today in many situations and found no problems, so I believe it's ready for prime time.

Because of the immediate demand for this, it will be a fixed 16 amp upgrade. It is not user-adjustable down to any lower unless you use 120v. (it runs at 12a on 120v)

After spending considerable time I concluded that adding the mode select is difficult and involves re-writing the entire software for the unit, basically starting from scratch, as there is no source code available to me. This would drive up costs and require much more testing to insure the integrity of the new software.

So we have a relatively simple upgrade, which keeps the cost low, and there is less testing needed. The unit is running it's 99% original, well-tested software instead of an all-new version. The only scenario I can envision that would be problematic is attempting to charge from two 15 amp 120v circuits using a "Quick220", however I believe this is a rare circumstance, and in that case you will be forced to drop back to 12a (120v) or find another source of 240v, such as a dryer outlet.

I envision this as a total replacement for a more expensive permanently-installed home charging solution, as well as a faster "opportunity charging" option.

The cost is $48 additional for the revision 2 upgrade if we are already upgrading you to revision 1. It takes significantly more work to add this to an already upgraded revision 1 unit, but as a reward to our existing customers we have decided to charge the same as for new customers. You will still have to cover shipping, however. (see top of page for restrictions)

Unfortunately due to the expensive and complex programming hardware and procedures required, we simply cannot provide this as a "field upgrade" at this time. If we can develop portable programming hardware we may consider it in the future.

If you are not comfortable subjecting your wiring to 16 amps, or feel there may be instances you'd rather charge at 12 amps, simply don't avail yourself of this upgrade.

I'll try to answer all reasonable questions here in this thread. Please do not PM, email, call, or post in the other EVSE thread. I will try to add the questions to the FAQ as I can.

Thanks!

-Phil
 
As I mentioned, the prototype unit charges at the standard 12A when used on 120v and the full 16A when used on 240v.

I can't think of a reason you'd ever need to charge at less than 16a on 240v unless you are sharing a 20A circuit with another LEAF or device. (which you shouldn't be doing anyway!) The LEAF will only charge at 12a on 120v regardless of what the EVSE tells it.

Charging at lower rates maybe desirable in certain rare situations on 120v, but in those cases is it really even worth the bother? If we are charging at only 8 amps (960va), that's probably only ~850w into the battery. That would be a 28+ hour charge time!

Adding the mode select logic that would allow you to select lower charge rates is possible, but it will increase the development time and thus the cost.

I'd love to hear what everyone thinks.

-Phil
 
Good work Phil,

I think 12A at 120V and 16A at 240V is perfect. I think simple is better, no need for a mode select function to add 12A at 240V...

Chris
 
Ingineer said:
I'd love to hear what everyone thinks.
Automatically using 12A at 120V and 16A at 240V is perfect. I don't think it's worth the additional time or cost to add the other options that provide marginal value anyway (and also add complexity for the typical user).

And thanks for all the great work you have been doing!
 
chris1howell said:
Good work Phil,

I think 12A at 120V and 16A at 240V is perfect. I think simple is better, no need for a mode select function to add 12A at 240V...

Chris

I agree. Keep it simple. The need to have a reduced rate would be so rare, its not worth the extra cost and effort.
 
Ingineer said:
Adding the mode select logic that would allow you to select lower charge rates is possible, but it will increase the development time and thus the cost.
I'm with Chris on this, Phil. Keep it simple. You know better than anyone what works and how to optimize the product, so give us the best bang for our buck. Let Blink add the bells and whistles, they already know how to overdo things!

Glenn
 
Ingineer said:
Adding the mode select logic that would allow you to select lower charge rates is possible, but it will increase the development time and thus the cost.
I'd love to hear what everyone thinks.
My vote: no need for the lower charge rate.

Lower charge rates don't seem particularly useful (it's low enough at 12A 120V or 16A 240V already).
The promise of a higher rate (20A 240V) is definitely worth it obviously.

That being said, I will likely have to put in a dedicated L6-20 outlet for Revision2 as I don't believe the Quick220 would be wise (or work?) with a 20A draw.
Thanks again for your work Phil.
 
I am probably way ahead of time, but still curious if this upgrade will work with future Leafs that might have 6.6 kWh chargers
 
Glenn said:
I'm with Chris on this, Phil. Keep it simple. You know better than anyone what works and how to optimize the product, so give us the best bang for our buck. Let Blink add the bells and whistles, they already know how to overdo things!

I vote for keeping it simple. For an "electrically-deficient person" like me, I just want to plug the EVSE in the wall outlet and let it do its thing. I have the mod-EVSE from Phil but haven't had a need to use it yet. My Blink appears to be working fine (knock on wood) so far.

Thanks Phil for your efforts.
 
wq2345 said:
That being said, I will likely have to put in a dedicated L6-20 outlet for Revision2 as I don't believe the Quick220 would be wise (or work?) with a 20A draw.
I would certainly recommend putting in a dedicated outlet but I thought the Quick220 was designed to handle 20a:
Model: A220-20L Version 2 20 Ampere, 4600 watts 220/240 volt single locking outlet NEMA L6-20
I also agree leaving the 120v at 12a and boosting the 240v to 16a is the way to go. Great work Phil!
 
wq2345 said:
My vote: no need for the lower charge rate.

Lower charge rates don't seem particularly useful (it's low enough at 12A 120V or 16A 240V already).
The promise of a higher rate (20A 240V) is definitely worth it obviously.

That being said, I will likely have to put in a dedicated L6-20 outlet for Revision2 as I don't believe the Quick220 would be wise (or work?) with a 20A draw.
Thanks again for your work Phil.

Keep in mind, the LEAF only draws 16a, not 20. This should be ok with most 20a circuits as long as you don't have worn outlets, etc. If you try it on a circuit protected by a 15a breaker, it will trip within a few minutes.

This is the only argument I can see for reduced level on 240v.

FYI: On quite a few occasions I have used my homebrew version of the Quick220 to charge at 16a on my Plug-In Prius, and I have never yet had a problem, even in 80 year old victorian houses in SF with only two 20 amp circuits in the whole house!

-Phil
 
Sounds perfect. I see little point to 12a 240v for my purposes. Feel free to do it to mine while you have it! Seriously. I have a Blink, and have freedom to do some testing and report back, or send it back if there are problems.
 
IBELEAF said:
I am probably way ahead of time, but still curious if this upgrade will work with future Leafs that might have 6.6 kWh chargers

In the prototype, I have set the Pilot to 33.3% duty cycle, which will allow up to 20a. So if you had an EV with a 6.6kva charger, you would only get 4.8kva. That's about ~73%, so not bad.

I can't safely increase beyond 20a without new hardware in the EVSE. And as it is, I need to run extensive tests at 20a to verify there is no problem.

6.6kva will require 27.5a, which really should have better than 12awg cable as well, so really the whole EVSE would need to be replaced. (Except for the sticker on the front that says "Zero Emission"! =)

-Phil
 
Ingineer said:
Keep in mind, the LEAF only draws 16a, not 20. This should be ok with most 20a circuits as long as you don't have worn outlets, etc. If you try it on a circuit protected by a 15a breaker, it will trip within a few minutes.
Thank you for working to improve our charging options! How common are 15A breakers out there? My only data point is that our service panel dates back to 1981 and 20A is the smallest we have. The Quick 220 unit I purchased is rated at 16A max. continuous, or at 20A for three hours or less. So we should be good on that front.
 
I understand KISS well but I think anyone who plans on using this along with a quick220 would certainly need the 12A/220 model or as Phil noted at 16A draw a 15amp breaker will trip so if you didn't have two 20amp circuits you would be stuck at 12 amp 110volt draw.

One other thing to note is how a circuit is sized. From some of the messages its not clear that everyone understands that ~16 amps is the most you should draw on a 20 amp circuit and that it also requires at a minimum a 20 amp circuit. In the simplest form you take the load and then add a 25% safety margin and round up to the nearest standard size. So 12A * 1.25 = 15, so 15 amp circuit and breaker. 16A *1.25=20 so 20 amp circuit and breaker.

Thanks Spies, it was too "early" for math :)
 
QueenBee said:
In the simplest form you take the load and then add a 20% safety margin and round up to the nearest standard size. So 12A * 1.2 = 14.4, so 15 amp circuit and breaker. 16A *1.2=19.2 so 20 amp circuit and breaker.
I thought the NEC rule was 25% over for continuous loads so I have always just multiplied the load by 125% so 12A would become 15A and 16A would become 20A. Now if you have a circuit and one wants to know what continuous load it can handle than it would be 20% less or 80% of the circuit rating so 20A becomes 16A and 15A becomes 12A.
 
That sounds great, Phil! Though I'm a bit confused by the statement that the LEAF draws 16a. It's a 3.3Kw changer in the car, right? By my math, that's 13.75A max at 240v. What am I missing?

But in any case, this rev 2 mod will be capable of up to 20A (if the car supports it)? Did I read that right?

Thanks!
 
Back
Top