Holden Volt - Charging Cable Limited To Six Amps.

[acmotor]

......... In-cord devices should not be necessary and in some cases may give a false sense of safety..........

I gather you are referring to the occasional use, in cord EVSE units ?

Best give some real world example of this.

[Rob M]

In relation to in cord units:
The ones we looked at were to be used for occasional charging and plugged into a standard 10 amp socket.
They claimed to test the earth connection at the car end of the lead but in fact worked whether there was an earth connected to the car or not.
Temperature sensing was not present at either end of the cord as implied, only at the central box.
The occasional use cord has a 3 pin plug identical to some extension cords. The nature of this connection is critical and there is still potential for high resistance to develop over time.
The internal breaker needed to be set by the user according to the current drawn by the charger. It would be very easy for an operator to use too high a breaker setting.
Earth leakage should be detectable by the outlet irrespective of whether the appliance is a car or anything else. The extra earth leakage protection in the cord would then be redundantor or considered as a double layer of protection (which is not necessarily a bad thing of course).
Our concern is that users might believe the units will provide protection from all electric shocks and never have an overheating issue.
We dont believe this to be true.

[acmotor]

I am not familiar with the cord unit you tested then. (10A plug and adjustable CB). Was it an EVSE of some form ?

What was the date of your test and model / supplier of the unit ?

Did you test the cord with a production EV with the 'other half' of the J1772 system (assuming it was J1772) ?
Note. EV conversions can be upgraded to use full J1772 functionality. Looks like some folk in the US are already doing this.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/J1772-Active ... 3a7bcd1952

For clarity here, the 'in cord' unit that you refer to is not an EVSE of the form that is supplied with Mitsubishi iMiEV or Nissan Leaf.
( I've not examined the Volt unit yet )

These EV manufacturer supplied occasional use EVSE (made by Panasonic) use the J1772 system and do detect and protect users from numerous charging faults including earth issues. They respond with 'fault' light and will not power up the cable.

They DO NOT monitor connector temperatures ( potentially doing so is a good idea as you say) however they DO use plated pin 3 pin 15A Oz plugs, 2.5mmsq high flexibility heavy duty cable and suitable IP rated 20A J1772 plugs. Through this they draw a conservative 10A. So the very 'running at rated 10A on Oz 3 pin and need to monitor temperature' as you suggest is not quite the same issue !

Just another feature that helps with charging connector temperature rise.... Most EV chargers in production EVs are constant current on the AC input side (e.g. 10A) rather than the older constant current on DC output side chargers used in EV conversions. This reduces the risk of thermal runaway if a connector's contact resistance rises since the response of the older style chargers was to increase their current draw as the voltage sags in order to maintain their output power.

The full charging option (and the one recommended by EV manufacturers) is a hard wired wall mounted EVSE to obtain full 15A or 32A charging.

None of this comment is at all knocking conversions. It is just observation on the advancing technologies and a reminder to adopt best practices with our conversions.

Should we ask weber's question ?

[g4qber]

note that one has to select 10A each time when using Holden EVSE
can charge higher with these thirdparty EVSEs
a) http://evseupgrade.com/
b) http://charge-amps.com/um-evse
but these trip RCDs
even the iMiEV EVSE trips RCDs
hunch is that they might be double insulated
there is earth leakage on certain Volt

volt EVSE replaced under warranty by Melville Holden
red LED kept flashing

Phoenix Holden volt tech said that one needed to follow the procedure
a) power everything off
b) plug in cable
c) turn on power at mains

NOT true
Paul Davies (dealer at Melville) plugs in with EVSE powered up.
no problem.
He replaced the EVSE under warranty

Currently investigating why a certain Volt is tripping RCDs when not using the Holden EVSE nor the e-station EVSEs