Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

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Mircea
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Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by Mircea »

Hi All,
I managed to get my hands on a Model S. Now, I have a couple of questions:

Is there anyone that has bought a decent and safe J1772 Adapter and used it
successfully on their Model S?

Is anyone aware if the Mennekes charge stations (mainly in Canberra but other places as well) that Better Place installed are still working? Plugshare says: "only available for members before BetterPlace went bust" but I heard conflicting information.

The portable charger - it can be broken down into two parts - the part that connects to the car and the part that connects to the power socket. Is it possible to get that power socket-to-adapter in a different plug style? I am thinking 450V tri-phase or J1772maybe?
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Post by Johny »

I was under the impression that Australian Teslas came with a J1772 adapter.

https://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums ... 72-adapter
Last edited by Johny on Thu, 26 Nov 2015, 08:45, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Gabz »

Johny American Teslas don't get confused. we have euro teslas. if the betterplace stations are working you'll need a type 2 to type 2 cable available form tesla directly but more importantly you'll need a RFID card for betterplace.

a J1772 male vehicle inlet to Type 2 female vehicle outlet (J1772 adapter) are not approved of in the standard. therefore can't be certified and it's hard to qualify the use of the word "safe"

There is no pigtails for your portable charger for australia besides the one you brought with your car.
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MDK
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Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by MDK »


The Australian Model S does not come with a J1772 adapter, but you can buy one from a local Tesla owner and enthusiast at EVNomics

This will allow you to charge from chargepoint stations at up to 32A even if you don't have optional "second charger" installed in your Model S.

With other adapters your car may only charge at 16A due to the way Tesla on-board chargers are wired - unless you have the second charger.

I have one of these adapters and mostly use it for testing the J1772 charging stations on the RAC Electric Highway

The same company is currently making and testing adapters for the Tesla-supplied Mobile Connector that will allow you to plug into 20A or 32A 3phase sockets.

Note that the mobile connector itself is limited to 16A, but 20A and 32A sockets appears to be the most commonly found and aren't interchangeable.
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Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by Mircea »

Thank you guys, I really appreciate it!
Now let me get this straight:

The BetterPlace stations do not charge unless you have an RFID card, right? Which I don't so assume buying the cable is pointless? Or maybe a card can be sourced from some enterprising person? :)

Which standard does not approve of the J1772? The J1772 standard I assume?

In terms of "safe", I am concerned about frying up the electronics in my shiny new toy and getting warranty voided by the use of a cable that was not sourced from Tesla. Now THAT would be unideal.

I have the optional second charger installed so amperage should not be an issue.

MDK, Thanks for letting us know about the RAC electric highway. That is one super-cool idea. Is that your Tesla in the video? And I assume since you use that cable, it does not pose damage risk to the car?

Thanks again guys!
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Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by MDK »

Mircea wrote:
MDK, Thanks for letting us know about the RAC electric highway. That is one super-cool idea. Is that your Tesla in the video? And I assume since you use that cable, it does not pose damage risk to the car?


Yes that's my Tesla, and yes the J1772 adapter is fine - although the Electric Highway also has DC fast chargers at each location (which is 6 times as fast as the J1772) so I mostly use that (via CHAdeMO adapter from Tesla) with the J1772 adapter only for testing (and as a backup in case the fast charger is already in use or not functional)
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Post by Gabz »

yep so betterplace no good unless you have an RFID. best to start by asking at the places they are located to see if they have one on site. most places signed up for one because they have an EV and kept them because they still work for them at least.

I doubt the cable will fry anything enough people have been successful with it. but yes there are potential warranty/insurance concerns as tesla can say that's a non approved cable and the owner of the charging stations can also say you used a non approved cable.

FYI J1772 and mennekes are all covered in the IEC standard 62196. which I believe Australian standards have adopted unaltered.

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Post by alexeiw123 »

The J1772 adapter from EVNomics (as mentioned by MDK) is the one you want.

The intuitive way to connect the L1 pin on the J1772 side is to the L1 pin on the mennekes side, however this means you would limit the max charging rate available. This is because the tesla on board charger is actually three chargers, one for each 'phase'. If you have dual chargers in your car, you would likely never notice that limitation.

Anyway, the EVNomics adapter bridges L1 on the J1772 side to L1,L2,L3 on the mennekes side, and you get the full capability of the on board charger.
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Post by Mircea »

Cool.
Thank you for that guys, appreciate it.
The EVnomics cable looks very short on the website. MDK, would I need an extender cord for that or you can easily use it?
In other news, I just did a weekend Can to Mel return run and the superchargers came in superhandy.
I found a very small difference (in terms of convenience) between driving the EV and a petrol-powered car. The difference was easily offset by the free cost of travel.
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Post by MDK »

Mircea wrote: The EVnomics cable looks very short on the website. MDK, would I need an extender cord for that or you can easily use it?


The cables on J1772 charging stations (at least the ones I've used) are quite long, as they are designed to plug into cars without requiring an adapter or extension lead.
The EVnomics adapter plugs into the end of the existing cable.
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Post by antiscab »

Gabz wrote: yep so betterplace no good unless you have an RFID. best to start by asking at the places they are located to see if they have one on site. most places signed up for one because they have an EV and kept them because they still work for them at least.


If that is the case - see if they would be up for just supergluing the RFID tag to the sensor
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Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by MDK »

I wonder if it's possible to reprogram the Better Place charging stations to work without an RFID tag (or to allow "any" RFID tag)

It would be interesting to pull one apart and see if there's an Ethernet or USB port (or similar)
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Post by Peter C in Canberra »

The Better Place chargers in Canberra are now supposed to be working with a card from ACTEW. I was given an ex-Better Place cable to try with my iMiEV but could not get it to work. I am just now investigating inside. The J1772 end comes apart. The Mennekes end seems welded. At the J1772 end there is an encapsulated little board inside the plug which might be a RFID receptor thingy and the cable is numbered. Perhaps the RFID was cable-specific? I am looking to see is that can be bypassed so that the cable can be just wired up to work with the ACTEW posts.
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Peter C in Canberra
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Re: Charging-J1772 Adapter & Better Place Stations

Post by Peter C in Canberra »

An update. I managed to get the ex-BetterPlace cable to work. I had tried to make sense of what was inside its plug previously without success. Recently I found some much better documentation about how the J1772 communication protocols work and that enable me to work it out.

It did not have RFID components inside. The plug had some non-standard passive components hidden inside the plug under some shrink-tube insulation. They were hooked up in a way that would send a signal to the charging pillar that said ‘charging’. The plug was trying to spoof the signal that a J1772-compliant car would send to a charging pillar. This was needed because the 2010 iMiEV it originally came with doesn’t have the full implementation of the standard handshaking protocol.

So, this cable presumably worked OK when the pillars were BetterPlace pillars presumably needed to see at least some of that J1772 protocol. However, when ACTEW took over the pillars I suspect they updated their innards to the full J1772 protocol. The handshake from the car should first say ‘ready to charge’ and then later say ‘charging’. I suspect that having the hardwired ‘charging’ signal in the plug did not look right to the updated pillar. When the pillar had not yet seen a ‘ready to charge’ signal and no current was being drawn, I expect the updated pillar refused to continue the conversation with a cable that sent a signal that appeared to be a car saying it was already ‘charging'!

I took out the components that were trying to spoof the ‘charging’ signal and connected the wire that had been going to those components into the correct pin of the plug so that the pillar could see the genuine series of handshaking signals from the car. With standard wiring it now works at the ACTEW pillar at Belconnen Markets with both my 2012 iMiEV and my Holden Volt.
Daihatsu charade conversion 2009-18, Mitsubishi iMiEV 2013-2019, Holden Volt 2018-2019, Hyundai Kona 2019-2023, Hyundai Ioniq 5 2023-present on the ACT's 100% renewable electricity.
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