stefan9107
DIY
Hi all, just a quick one to ask about an issue I'm having with my EV charger. I'll give a little background first but ultimately I want to know if I reached the correct conclusion or whether I'm actually doing something wrong with the testing?
I had an EV charger installed a couple months back but didn't have my car yet to test it. Car arrived just before Christmas, plugged in for my first charge and it just stopped working after about 20 minutes. The charger didn't go into any of the normal fault modes that would be expected, it just lost power altogether. I went and checked the breaker and all appeared fine. I waited for it all to come back online which took several hours and then tried again. This time it failed after less than 5 minutes. Since then I've had varying success with the longest charge lasting just over 30 minutes, but normally it dies after just 5 or so.
Now the weird thing is I've had to start flipping the RCBO off and then back on to get it to work. Not quick flicks but off for 15 minutes and then back on. This doesn't always work though and I'll flip it off for 30 minutes or an hour and then back on. Eventually it always comes back on (until now anyway). I hadn't used the charger in a couple days because of the issue and was reading around about what might be the fault. Someone suggested trying the test button on the RCBO. I hit the test button and the breaker went. All good. Well since then I haven't been able to power my charger back on and the test button no longer works.
I figured I'd get the multimeter out and see if anything obvious was going on. I put the meter on the live input to the RCBO (A on picture below) and I'm reading 240V. But when I put it on the live output (B below) I'm getting nothing (used the same earth point both times). Now I know testing voltage can sometimes be a bit of an odd one so I was wondering if there is anything downstream that could affect my results? Or with the RCBO in the on position, should I be getting 240V at point B and therefore something is clearly wrong?
On a side note, I also found it odd that the RCBO is rated to 32A when that's the max rating of the charger. Shouldn't some redundancy be built in using say a 40A RCBO?
Thanks for any help ahead of time - it's much appreciated.
I had an EV charger installed a couple months back but didn't have my car yet to test it. Car arrived just before Christmas, plugged in for my first charge and it just stopped working after about 20 minutes. The charger didn't go into any of the normal fault modes that would be expected, it just lost power altogether. I went and checked the breaker and all appeared fine. I waited for it all to come back online which took several hours and then tried again. This time it failed after less than 5 minutes. Since then I've had varying success with the longest charge lasting just over 30 minutes, but normally it dies after just 5 or so.
Now the weird thing is I've had to start flipping the RCBO off and then back on to get it to work. Not quick flicks but off for 15 minutes and then back on. This doesn't always work though and I'll flip it off for 30 minutes or an hour and then back on. Eventually it always comes back on (until now anyway). I hadn't used the charger in a couple days because of the issue and was reading around about what might be the fault. Someone suggested trying the test button on the RCBO. I hit the test button and the breaker went. All good. Well since then I haven't been able to power my charger back on and the test button no longer works.
I figured I'd get the multimeter out and see if anything obvious was going on. I put the meter on the live input to the RCBO (A on picture below) and I'm reading 240V. But when I put it on the live output (B below) I'm getting nothing (used the same earth point both times). Now I know testing voltage can sometimes be a bit of an odd one so I was wondering if there is anything downstream that could affect my results? Or with the RCBO in the on position, should I be getting 240V at point B and therefore something is clearly wrong?
On a side note, I also found it odd that the RCBO is rated to 32A when that's the max rating of the charger. Shouldn't some redundancy be built in using say a 40A RCBO?
Thanks for any help ahead of time - it's much appreciated.