Frequent charging error at home

[Klepper]

...Rather than tinker with timers, I built a little Excel sheet to help roughly estimate when to plug in my PMC+:

My off-peak electricity rate starts at 7 PM and ends at 3 PM the next day. So, if I'm at 40% SOC I can plug in at 10 PM, and my PB+ will be charged to 85% SOC at ~6:30 AM the next morning.

After a while, I said just forget all this and start charging shortly after 7:00 PM when the SOC is between 30% and 40%. The built-in profile will stop charging at 85% anyway.

Some folks have an alternative and equally valid approach: they plug in whenever and don't worry about finessing US$10 of electricity costs after paying over US$100k for a Taycan. Bottom line: do what works best for you.

This is the exact purpose of using timers. Set a timer for 85% at 6:30am, repeat it everyday, and you never have to manually figure out when to plug in the charger. The car will do it all automatically and start charging the car based on the current SOC and availabe kW rate.

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[Eric]

Over the last 3 months, I’ve been getting a frequent charging error at home almost every time I plug in. It charges for a bit but then later I see the error when I check the app or the car. This didn’t happen before and started happening just before I did the big update, and is still happening.

I also noticed that my power bill increased significantly over the last three months (around when this started happening).

Has anyone had this happen? If so, what do you think is causing it? I have had the car since January and this began about 3 months ago.

I had the same problem when charging at 38 Amps but I turned down to 34 Amps on the Porsche charger and i never had a problem again

 

[Loltheinternet]

How do you change the amps on the charger?

 

[TXAG]

This is the exact purpose of using timers. Set a timer for 85% at 6:30am, repeat it everyday, and you never have to manually figure out when to plug in the charger. The car will do it all automatically and start charging the car based on the current SOC and availabe kW rate.

Good comment - I didn't need to dig deep enough to come across that feature since it was easy enough to charge with 20 consecutive hours of off-peak electricity rates. If my electricity plan changes, I'll keep your suggestion in mind, thanks.

 

[Prit]

If your electricity comes from a plant powered by natural gas, I wouldn't be surprised if the rate skyrocketed recently. The price of natural gas has tripled from a year ago, and it's time the power companies passed along their costs to the consumers.

After one successful use, my PMC+ also cut out at a 100 percent charge rate during our hot Arizona summers (even with all cables uncoiled with a fan blowing on them). I've had the charge rate at 50 percent ever since.

Rather than tinker with timers, I built a little Excel sheet to help roughly estimate when to plug in my PMC+:

My off-peak electricity rate starts at 7 PM and ends at 3 PM the next day. So, if I'm at 40% SOC I can plug in at 10 PM, and my PB+ will be charged to 85% SOC at ~6:30 AM the next morning.

After a while, I said just forget all this and start charging shortly after 7:00 PM when the SOC is between 30% and 40%. The built-in profile will stop charging at 85% anyway.

Some folks have an alternative and equally valid approach: they plug in whenever and don't worry about finessing US$10 of electricity costs after paying over US$100k for a Taycan. Bottom line: do what works best for you.

Fortunately for me, my city locks the rate for a year ar a time. So it doesn’t matter when I plug in.

 

[W1NGE]

How do you change the amps on the charger?

If PMCC / PWCC then use the interface on the device to reduce the amps.

If PMC+ press the button on the unit to reduce.

...also read the manual for the above or whatever EVSE you are using.

 

[Loltheinternet]

...also read the manual for the above or whatever EVSE you are using.

Still waiting for the car to arrive - I shall do so once that happens

Glad to hear it sounds relatively easy to turn things down and prevent problems.

 

[W1NGE]

Still waiting for the car to arrive - I shall do so once that happens

Glad to hear it sounds relatively easy to turn things down and prevent problems.

You can always entertain yourself in advance and download the manual now.

 

[Hirschaj]

My car is in for service right now. This is one of the issues that they looked at. They said they replaced a part on the PMC+ and it is working properly again. I won’t get the car back until next week due to other services but will report more details at that time.

 

[whitex]

Based on saying your electric bill went way up, I would suspect there is some issue in the wiring of the EVSE or charger that is causing excessive electrical resistance. Have you noticed any extra heat or are you charging outside? Be aware that this could be a fire hazard.

We have no information in this thread that says the car charging caused more electricity usage. We do however know it's hotter in the summer (especially in Atlanta, GA where the OP's location is), and when it's hot, electricity bills go up due to increased A/C costs. We also know that hot garage can cause the EVSE overheat. So, even though the electricity usage and the troubles with charging correlate, it doesn't mean one is causing the other ("correlation does not equal causation"). In this case it is more likely they are both caused by the higher summer temperatures.

As a side note, if you are ever seeing an increase in your electricity bill which is caused by increased electrical resistance of the wires to the EVSE, those wire should be glowing, i.e. they would have caused a fire before you even see the higher electrical bill next billing cycle. A simple calculation will show this - in order for you to notice the a higher electric bill, that means that your home would have to be using 15% or more higher energy. Let's say your car uses 2/3 of that energy, so a 15% increase of the entire home would mean the car is taking 22.5% more energy than it should, meaning 22.5% of ~10KW, so 2.25KW would be lost in the wiring. That would be huge. If the car uses less than 2/3 of your total home energy, that number would be even larger. Also, EV's are supposed to detect this type of huge loss by monitoring the voltage drop when they start charging (if the voltage drops from 240V to 186V when charging at 48A, I sincerely hope the car would lower its charging current - I know Teslas do long before this much drop).

 

[Eric]

How do you change the amps on the charger?

you go to the settings on the charger and in one item in the menu is the power setting and you can set it up the the max of 40 amps or less

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