EV Charging Station: Shows Power, but does not charge

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mholzer asked Mar 22, '23

EV Charging Station: Shows Power, but does not charge

Hi,

The EVCS is part of a 3-Phase cerbo-GX System which does communicate with the system perfectly. If I plug my Renault ZOE (Q210) into the EVCS and start the charging process manually it shows up like everything is working fine (around 7,3kW of charging power) but the car does not charge! Charging the ZOE does make some high frequency noise which can not be heard. The Display in the car shows that it should be charging, but stays at the same SOC forever.
In the screenshot attached you can see that the power drawn for charging does not relate to any power meter shown in the system.

The difference between PV and Load is being balanced by the battery. But where should these 7,39kW come from? They do not exist, as proven by not charging the vehicle.

ev charging station

screenshot-2023-03-22-114331.png (247.9 KiB)

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Answer 1 · 2023-03-22T12:13:59Z

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) answered · Mar 22, 2023 at 12:13 PM

try to increase the charging current higher than 12 and tell me the results

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Answer 2 · 2023-03-22T15:46:20Z

mholzer answered · Mar 22, 2023 at 03:46 PM

I have changed the Current up to 15A and it started to charge! Oddly enough the car shows (CanZE) that the nominal power of the charger is around half the value which is showing up in the Chargers website! I played around with the power calibration value but even at the lowest factor (0.6) the charging power value is not small enough to match the power that the car sees.
By the way, sometimes the start of a charging cycle is not working. It seems, that the car is recognized an then it says "charged" as if the car is fully charged, but it is not.

I have already calibrated the CP several times. I have tried to set the charging current to higher values because of the chameleon-charger of the ZOE. Once this problem of not starting a charge occurs, it seems that only a re-plugging of the vehicle is helping out.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Mar 22, 2023 at 04:35 PM

Yes, ZOE has a strange AC/DC converter, using the main motor as inductor. That's why you hear that high frequency noise. So configure the EVCS to start with a higher current, you'll have to experiment what's the minimum on that model.

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Answer 3 · 2023-03-23T08:03:46Z

mholzer answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 08:03 AM

Hi, Seems that I have to set at least 12A to charge correctly.
But why is the actual charging power showing that much more than the real power?
When I set 12A the CanZE from the car shows that the charging station is capable of charging at 3.6kW, the actual charging power shows around 3,4kW (due to some losses i guess) but the EVCS shows somewhat around 5,5kW with the power factor set to 0,6!

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Answer 4 · 2023-03-23T08:48:07Z

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 08:48 AM

Can you try at higher charging current in the difference stays the same ?

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Answer 5 · 2023-03-23T09:43:29Z

mholzer answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 09:43 AM

OK with Factor 0.6:
12A -> Car: 3,3kW EVCS: 5,14kW
13A -> Car: 4,7kW EVCS: 5,83kW
14A -> Car: 5,3kW EVCS: 6,24kW
15A -> Car: 6,4kW EVCS: 6,4kW
16A -> Car: 7,2kW EVCS: 6,6kW
17A -> Car: 7,9kW EVCS: 6,9kW
18A -> Car: 8,8kW EVCS: 7,5kW
19A -> Car: 9,6kW EVCS: 8kW
20A -> Car: 10,3kW EVCS: 8,4kW
21A -> Car: 11,4kW EVCS: 9kW
22A -> Car: 12,1kW EVCS: 9,3kW

So, it seems that the only correct display is happening at 15A. At lower Power EVCS shows too high, at higher power it shows too low.

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Answer 6 · 2023-03-23T10:01:08Z

mholzer answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 10:01 AM

With Factor 1:
12A -> Car: 3,3kW EVCS: 8,5kW
13A -> Car: 4,7kW EVCS: 9,7kW
14A -> Car: 5,3kW EVCS: 10,2kW
15A -> Car: 6,4kW EVCS: 10,6kW
16A -> Car: 7,2kW EVCS: 11kW
17A -> Car: 7,9kW EVCS: 11,9kW
18A -> Car: 8,8kW EVCS: 12,5kW
19A -> Car: 9,6kW EVCS: 13,2kW
20A -> Car: 10,3kW EVCS: 14,2kW
21A -> Car: 11,4kW EVCS: 14,9kW
22A -> Car: 12,1kW EVCS: 15,4kW

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Answer 7 · 2023-03-23T10:20:42Z

Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 10:20 AM

That's strange, there are differences, but I never saw differences so big. Is it possible to try with a different vehicle type?

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Answer 8 · 2023-03-23T10:59:28Z

mholzer answered · Mar 23, 2023 at 10:59 AM

I will do so if somebody shows up with an other vehicle..
Btw. Automatic Charging with excess PV Power does work!
But I still have Problems that it does not start charging, just saying "charged" after connecting to the vehicle. I calibrated CP many times now.
Sometimes I have to try several times vie Website or Display, sometimes I have to dis- and reconnect the Typ2 Connector...

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Mar 23, 2023 at 01:44 PM

When can I have a look at your system? Please send me an email with the vrm portal ID

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mholzer Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Mar 23, 2023 at 03:09 PM

Hi, that would be great. I have not found your email address...

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ mholzer commented · Mar 23, 2023 at 06:03 PM

lpopescu@victronenergy.com

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Answer 9 · 2023-04-05T17:57:58Z

andreas-messerli answered · Apr 05, 2023 at 05:57 PM

Just wanted mention that I have the same issue as mholzer with showing the wrong data. It is showing charging eventhough it is not charging. My Grid Meter is not showing a single Watt.

Also, as mholzer has mentioned, the power values are way off.

I also drive a Renault Zoe and I'm on firmware v1.24/4.3 on the charger box.

I sadly can not provide any other vehicle data until the next week when my new Cupra Born should arrive and of course I will test it with it too but we are keeping the Zoe too so the box should work and not showing any charging when there is no charging to the vehicle occurring and also it should show the correct values. I was at 0.76 at 13A to be somewhat close to the official grid meter.

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Apr 05, 2023 at 06:56 PM

That's a known issue with ZOE, and it's not something we can manage. Minimum charging current for that vehicle should be 13A.

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andreas-messerli Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · Apr 08, 2023 at 12:12 PM

Sorry, but that is the wrong answer and to be honest, as a software and requirements engineer myself, not acceptable as a client. We clients paid a lot for this EV charger box and at least I want to hear from you that YOU TRY to solve it! Absolutely inakzeptable answer to give to a client!

Please state/explain what the issues are and why you cannot manage them.

You could for example have a car selector like the start stop to select the car (All other / Zoe). Most of us use our own car all the time there so we can easily set Zoe as the main car and then then detect if there is a value shown below 5kw which is not possible with the ZOE as it needs at least 10A on a 3phase and simply Null the value in this case. Of course that was just a rough first idea but there are solutions to this.

Showing power values even if the car is not charging is a bug, a major bug form my point of view because if we base our calculations of this devices measurements to drive automation stuff we fail constantly.

If the charger box is not working well with Renault Zoes and possible identically built other cars you have to advertise this on your page with a big exclamation mark! The only thing I found is you have to use 10A for Zoes, which is ok but it is not ok that half of the functionalities will not work right like showing consuming power where no power is flowing at all or the scheduling because the bus of the Zoes goes to sleep and will not wake up with an external power connected.

I therefore paid way too much for this box and could have stayed with my own built 10y old openEVSE box, which by the way worked flawlessly with the ZOE.

https://www.goingelectric.de/wiki/Typ2-Signalisierung-und-Steckercodierung/

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Lucian Popescu (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ andreas-messerli commented · Apr 08, 2023 at 01:06 PM

There are different AC chargers on ZOE, on some the minimum current is 10A, on some others, it is 13A. If you use a clamp-meter to measure the current when a lower than 13A is selected for your vehicle, you should see exactly the same as we are reporting. And that's because the vehicle is trying to charge using short pulses. Almost all the meters, when are calculating the power, are using peak current per cycle.

And Renault ZOE is the only vehicle with this strange behavior because they are using the motor as an inductor during AC charging – that's why you hear the high pitch noise when charging.

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