Charger trips out during charging

[Lescol]

I acquire my MG4 SE LR today and giving its first charge at home - it keeps tripping out whilst charging - the car started at 33% it is now 55% and has tripped the charger 4 times, never on plugging and I haven't had the patience to wait to find out when it does. Suspect the RCB in the charger is too sensitive? My partner's VW has never caused a trip out.

 

[Tight Git]

Is your SE brand new?

 

[dawson2099]

Are you using the granny charger on an extension? If so, you need a larger extension cable.

 

[Lescol]

Is your SE brand new?

No second hand 11500 miles in 9 months

 

[Lescol]

Are you using the granny charger on an extension? If so, you need a larger extension cable.

No dedicated 7kW charger

 

[siteguru]

No second hand 11500 miles in 9 months

Does it have a rear wiper?

 

[Lescol]

Yes

 

[Rolfe]

Welcome to the forum, by the way!

The presence of a rear wiper would indicate that your car is a phase 2 model, and so far as we know it is only phase 1 models that have developed the CCU fault. However, it might be worth your while skimming some of this thread.

Issue with AC charging/New CCU fitted (Phase One SE LR)

Edit: Originally, I thought I had an issue with my Zappi not being able to charge the car, but after testing other AC charging points (cutting out after fifteen minutes or less) and contacting the dealer, I eventually found out it was an issue with the car, namely the charge control unit, which...

www.mgevs.com

 

[tsedge]

I acquire my MG4 SE LR today and giving its first charge at home - it keeps tripping out whilst charging - the car started at 33% it is now 55% and has tripped the charger 4 times, never on plugging and I haven't had the patience to wait to find out when it does. Suspect the RCB in the charger is too sensitive? My partner's VW has never caused a trip out.

What do you mean by "tripped"?

If you mean it trips the circuit breaker then something is wrong with your installation - it could an overloaded circuit or it might be that it trips the internal breaker in the charger or that your need a supply fuse upgrade. Consult an electrician.

If you just mean it stops charging then it could be a problem with the car. Easy enough to check by using either a granny or a public AC charger with a Type 2 cable to see if the charging terminates early. Check you don't have a charge limit or a charge schedule set on the car first.

If it works fine on one of those but not at home, then there's a problem with your home charger installation. If it stops early on several different chargers, I'd suspect a problem with the car.

 

[Coulomb]

Suspect the RCB in the charger is too sensitive? My partner's VW has never caused a trip out.

Does the VW charge at 7 kW?

What can happen is if the wires aren't terminated tightly to the RCB, then conductors in the breaker can heat up and cause the RCB to trip on temperature. It can trip on leakage current, temperature, or overload, assuming it's actually an RCBO (Residual Current Breaker with Overload (may but not all are). If the VW only charges at 3.6 kW, then the heating due to the loose connections might not be enough to cause the breaker to trip.

Checking with another EVSE, e.g. a public one, should rule that in or out.

 

[hmibennett]

If it's second hand has previous owner scheduled charging on the car's system which may be conflicting with your dedicated charger?

 

[johnnyboy]

I acquire my MG4 SE LR today and giving its first charge at home - it keeps tripping out whilst charging - the car started at 33% it is now 55% and has tripped the charger 4 times, never on plugging and I haven't had the patience to wait to find out when it does. Suspect the RCB in the charger is too sensitive? My partner's VW has never caused a trip out.

Check power input to your home, if above 253V the charger will not work, older properties often have old cables & voltage is increased to compensate for this. If this is the case your network supplier will turn it down for you. I had this problem last year when I took delivery of my mg4.

 

[fnegroni]

Does the VW charge at 7 kW?

What can happen is if the wires aren't terminated tightly to the RCB, then conductors in the breaker can heat up and cause the RCB to trip on temperature. It can trip on leakage current, temperature, or overload, assuming it's actually an RCBO (Residual Current Breaker with Overload (may but not all are). If the VW only charges at 3.6 kW, then the heating due to the loose connections might not be enough to cause the breaker to trip.

Checking with another EVSE, e.g. a public one, should rule that in or out.

You could indeed limit the on board charger to 16Amp or less to rule out what Coulomb suggested above.

 

[Lescol]

Sorted - the RCB was faulty, it was about 13 years old. It does make me wonder how it can develop a fault as it was only tripped out once a year on pushing the test button that's hardly called a heavy use.

 

[Coulomb]

the RCB was faulty, it was about 13 years old.

It would have been operating at full power for hours on end, with the temperature trip part warming up inside, but not quite tripping.

I agree it's disappointing life, but sadly not hugely unexpected.

One of the EVSE brands had a high internal RCB failure rate initially... maybe it was Ohme.

Was this an internal RCB (inside the "charger"), or one in your house's distribution panel?

 

[adriangalilee]

My charger starting tripping out during charging. Indra over the phone said had the supply tripped. It had not. But the charge had simply stopped. So Indra said to switch off at the trip and back on and the charger worked again. For another 3 or 4 kWh. Then tripped again. Eventually Indra sent an electrician. He discovered that the tails of the supply lead into the charger had been stripped back to bare copper too far and were exposed to each other, and at the 7kWh feed were sparking across the gap causing the charger itself to stop working - through, strangely, not causing the circuit breaker to trip. They installed a new charger and it works fine. However, I now need to convince OVO that I did use Indra/Charge Anytime for most of June because my old charger's data is no longer showing on OVO's computers. Indra have that data. I'm just trying to get the two companies to communicate!

 

[Wendwell]

I acquire my MG4 SE LR today and giving its first charge at home - it keeps tripping out whilst charging - the car started at 33% it is now 55% and has tripped the charger 4 times, never on plugging and I haven't had the patience to wait to find out when it does. Suspect the RCB in the charger is too sensitive? My partner's VW has never caused a trip out.

My Zappi charger kept failing due to the mains supply being at too high a voltage. I reported to UK Power Networks. They installed a monitoring device for a week and agreed the local sub-station needed tamping down. No problems since the reduced the voltage. Whatever your issue is, I hope it is quickly resolved.