ALL POSTS about Charge Timer Failure

[TeCKis300]

Bringing this back from the dead.

Has everyone sold their car, or is everyone's delay timer working for them consistently these days?

My wife car has on the whole been reliable charging with a failure to initiate every blue moon.

But in the past 2 weeks, the car has failed to initiate charging on 3 separate occasions! Anyone else have continued issues?

 

[TonyWilliams]

Bringing this back from the dead.

Has everyone sold their car, or is everyone's delay timer working for them consistently these days?

My wife car has on the whole been reliable charging with a failure to initiate every blue moon.

But in the past 2 weeks, the car has failed to initiate charging on 3 separate occasions! Anyone else have continued issues?

I have not had a failed charge and years and then just last week at skipped one... it was probably user error but I don't know!

The good news is it does charge on every month that has a 31st day :mrgreen:

 

[fooljoe]

I'm guessing the recent failures you guys reported might have something to do with the switch to daylight savings time.

 

[smkettner]

Mine failed to charge this morning for the first time that I can remember. Timer is set to charge by 8 am.
30 amp Schneider was displaying the red error light. First I have seen this.
Car said error with EVSE.

Unplugged the EVSE and it reset. Car charged using Immediate Charging.
Will see if it repeats. I mostly use immediate charge at work.

 

[fooljoe]

If your EVSE had an error light it seems pretty clear that was the problem. My openEVSE gets "stuck" a couple times a year and requires a power cycle or I'll miss a charge. Just happened last Thursday actually (to my Leaf). Hopefully the power cycle fixes it in your case and there's not an underlying problem...

 

[smkettner]

Yes maybe. By the emails it seems to have charged about 20 minutes and was interrupted at 2:09 am.
Could it be a brief power outage? Not sure RAV is smart enough to restart.
Nothing in the house seemed reset.

 

[leeard533]

We just got our RAV4 EV this weekend and tried a delayed charge last night for the first time. We had a little bit of a strange experience in that the charge did not completely fail to start, but only charged for about an hour instead of giving the battery a full charge (which would have taken about 2 hours). The indicator on the dash said that charging was stopped because the EVSE was unplugged, but this was not actually the case. The EVSE was still plugged in and working properly. Changing the car to charge immediately allowed it to complete its charging cycle. Have other people had this issue with the car partially charging? If so, are there any solutions for how to fix it? We are on a TOU plan so I would like to charge during off peak hours if possible, but the idea that the car might not reliably charge overnight and leave me stranded in the morning is a bit scary.

 

[fooljoe]

If your charge started then I'd say the timer did its job - stopping in the middle of a charge is another type of issue. There's nothing about the timer that could make a charge error out in the middle; however if there's something that causes the charge to stop (like a power outage or low voltage) it is true that if you're on a timer the car won't resume charging when the power comes back, while if you're on charge immediately mode it would.

It could've just been a one-off event like the occasional power outage, but I'd suggest checking up on your wiring to make sure everything's in order. Measure the voltage while charging to make sure it isn't dropping to low levels, and check for heat buildup at all points. On the car side I'd check your 12V battery - a failing 12V can cause all sorts of weird problems. On the EVSE side I suppose a loose connection somewhere could cause a problem like this but that's probably unlikely. At least visually inspect the pins on both the J1772 plug and socket to make sure there's no obvious buildup of dirt or corrosion that could case a bad connection. What type of EVSE do you use and how/where is it installed? Did you charge another EV with it previously?

Either way you could try RavCharge to give you some extra assurance that your charges will start and complete when you want them to. It lets you set two separate charge timers, and each of those has an automatic backup, so if the first attempt to start your charge doesn't work for any reason or if your charge gets interrupted it'll try again later.

 

[miimura]

If you're going to use the 120V charge cord provided with the car, you need to make sure that there are no other appliances on the same circuit. Running a hair dryer should quickly trip the breaker. Something like a chest freezer could cause a voltage drop at startup that the car won't like and could cause it to stop charging.

 

[leeard533]

If your charge started then I'd say the timer did its job - stopping in the middle of a charge is another type of issue. There's nothing about the timer that could make a charge error out in the middle; however if there's something that causes the charge to stop (like a power outage or low voltage) it is true that if you're on a timer the car won't resume charging when the power comes back, while if you're on charge immediately mode it would.

It could've just been a one-off event like the occasional power outage, but I'd suggest checking up on your wiring to make sure everything's in order. Measure the voltage while charging to make sure it isn't dropping to low levels, and check for heat buildup at all points. On the car side I'd check your 12V battery - a failing 12V can cause all sorts of weird problems. On the EVSE side I suppose a loose connection somewhere could cause a problem like this but that's probably unlikely. At least visually inspect the pins on both the J1772 plug and socket to make sure there's no obvious buildup of dirt or corrosion that could case a bad connection. What type of EVSE do you use and how/where is it installed? Did you charge another EV with it previously?

Either way you could try RavCharge to give you some extra assurance that your charges will start and complete when you want them to. It lets you set two separate charge timers, and each of those has an automatic backup, so if the first attempt to start your charge doesn't work for any reason or if your charge gets interrupted it'll try again later.

We are using a KEBA KeContact P20. We just got it installed a couple of months ago so it's close to brand-new and it seems to have been working fine both with our Chevy Volt and with the RAV4 when we use the "Charge Immediately" mode. The 12V battery is a good thought though since we did buy it off a lot and don't know how long it was sitting prior to that. I'll try replacing it and see if that helps the situation. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[miimura]

You could also try leaving the car on a battery tender (maintainer) overnight and see if the charging problem goes away. If it does, then replace the battery. Check the battery thread for the recommended AGM battery.