Gridserve chargers

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Mick Evans

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I've used Gridserve chargers in the past with no issues. The last cpl of times I've plugged in and got HV fault. Had to switch the car on and off a few times to get the car to move. The charger was working fine as they had an engineer working on one of the machine's. He tried his van and no issues. Anyone else had these issues?
TIA
 
I've been using the Gridserve chargers at Woolley Edge recently, both north and south, without any issues.
 
Mick Evans said:
I've used Gridserve chargers in the past with no issues. The last cpl of times I've plugged in and got HV fault. Had to switch the car on and off a few times to get the car to move. The charger was working fine as they had an engineer working on one of the machine's. He tried his van and no issues. Anyone else had these issues?
TIA
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Fine at Great Notley (Braintree)
 
Yes, today at Exeter services. Charging stopped at 96% (charger screen said ‘charging complete’ and then some sort of error message which I’ve forgotten on disconnecting). Car said ‘system fault’. Partner poked around and fiddled for a while, getting crosser and crosser. After a bit I reconnected car and tapped card, let it charge for a few mins then disconnected and all fine. Who the hell knows? Quite hot day.
 
Nanuchka said:
Yes, today at Exeter services. Charging stopped at 96% (charger screen said ‘charging complete’ and then some sort of error message which I’ve forgotten on disconnecting). Car said ‘system fault’. Partner poked around and fiddled for a while, getting crosser and crosser. After a bit I reconnected car and tapped card, let it charge for a few mins then disconnected and all fine. Who the hell knows? Quite hot day.
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The ones at Notley get a lot of use by myself and colleagues as it is the only useful charging station near work that we can use our fuel cards on.
None of us has ever got beyond a 95% charge. I assume it is for battery safety.
Similar errors have been reported here and by colleagues on many different brand chargers.
 
I've only used Gridserve once, at Corley Services on the M6. Didn't have any problems, but I never rapid charge beyond 80% as the rate drops off after that. Better for my battery too.
 
Frequently use Gridserve chargers on my trips from London to Aberystwyth and I see this fairly often. If you let the charge go past about 90% then at some point the charge ends abruptly with the vehicle having terminated it as it was unhappy with the response time of the charger when commanded. The "HV system fault" error gets thrown but if you diconnect and leave it all switched off for 5-10 mins then it sorts itself out and you can be on your way.

I find that stopping the charge by around 80% - 90% prevents this from happening.
 
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I used both Moto Rugby and Woolley Edge North chargers today with no problems.

Saying that, I stopped both chargers at 80% as that was all I needed.
 
WigglePig said:
Frequently use Gridserve chargers on my trips from London to Aberystwyth and I see this fairly often. If you let the charge go past about 90% then at some point the charge ends abruptly with the vehicle having terminated it as it was unhappy with the response time of the charger when commanded. The "HV system fault" error gets thrown but if you diconnect and leave it all switched off for 5-10 mins then it sorts itself out and you can be on your way.

I find that stopping the charge by around 80% - 90% prevents this from happening.
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V helpful to know, thanks :)

Tweed98 said:
The ones at Notley get a lot of use by myself and colleagues as it is the only useful charging station near work that we can use our fuel cards on.
None of us has ever got beyond a 95% charge. I assume it is for battery safety.
Similar errors have been reported here and by colleagues on many different brand chargers.
Click to expand...
Thanks, good to know. I rarely do long journeys so don’t often need to grapple with public chargers, feel like every single one is different. Prob lots of user error in there.
 
Yes, I've had an issue once with a Gridserve charger. It was one of their new style machines (I can't remember exactly which services it was, but in the East Midlands somewhere). The car (1st gen, SR 5) was plugged in when the battery was at about 30% and we left to go and get some food. Returned to the car when we expected it to be about 75% only to find that it had stopped charging at about 63%.

Then when we tried to start the car it wouldn't start reporting HV battery fault. We tried to start it a few more times and were starting to panic (we'd had a previous experince of being taken away on the back of a lorry and didn't want that to happen again). Thankfully after about 5 mins the car started without issue.

Interestingly we have never had this issue whenusing their older style chargers, so I did wonder if the new style machine tried to charge the car faster than it would have liked. That's purely speculation on my part btw...
 
Padaung said:
...

Interestingly we have never had this issue whenusing their older style chargers, so I did wonder if the new style machine tried to charge the car faster than it would have liked. That's purely speculation on my part btw...
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It's the car that dictates how fast it charges, the charger just 'offers' the power. :)
 
Tweed98 said:
None of us has ever got beyond a 95% charge. I assume it is for battery safety.
Click to expand...
Why would you want to charge to 95%? The charge rate drops after 85%, so quicker to charge to just over 80%, then stop and charge again later. Really don't understand why anyone sits on the charger trying to get to 100%, takes far to long. My brother does this regularly in his ID5 and on a same journey I'm quicker than him whilst driving at the same speed.
 
It might be worth carrying a 10mm spanner, popping the negative terminal off the 12v battery waiting 30s or so and then putting it back on may clear the system fault message.

(It did for me when a malfunctioning Public AC charger upset the car last time).

I was also going to try using an OBD2 dongle but I got fed-up waiting for my phone to scan the various ECU's to find the error code and decided the spanner was quicker.

On reconnecting the 12V you do however get a laundry list of faults (Presumably due to there being no stored readings from various sensors) they should clear within 30s or so once you start driving.

Disconnect the car from the charger BEFORE removing the 12v power ;-)

Edit: Also make sure the car is off, you don't want the DC-DC convertor trying to charge the 12v when you are trying to disconnect it.
 
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RetiredPope said:
Why would you want to charge to 95%? The charge rate drops after 85%, so quicker to charge to just over 80%, then stop and charge again later. Really don't understand why anyone sits on the charger trying to get to 100%, takes far to long. My brother does this regularly in his ID5 and on a same journey I'm quicker than him whilst driving at the same speed.
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We had 6 weeks without workplace chargers so I wanted as much charge in the car as possible to avoid two 40 minute drives to Gt. Notley. I could if I behave get home only using 6% charge and depending on whether I had to do both childcare runs I use between 10-15% a day, driving unusually calmly! Plus a bit for unexpected travel. I usually got back to Notley around 25% on Saturday/Sunday morning. I sat in Costa read a book and had a nice coffee and a cinnamon bun so the extra 10-15 minutes didn't bother me and as there was no queues I didn't feel I had to rush.

Personally I try not to drop below 20% to see if I can avoid the problems I've read on here about having to muck about unplugging the battery.
Some of my colleague do 90 miles a day commuting so they say the difference between 80 and 90% battery is stopping twice a week or three times a week.

Before anyone asks there are closer charges available but they are either full of taxis charging up before doing airport runs from Stansted or not on our fuel card and work will not reimburse us for home charging. My only reason for getting this car was the tax break for company cars and saving money. When they offered us the id.3 I quite liked the car and it was on my list of potential cars, when they told us the car was changing to the MG5 it became all about saving money and the lack of hassle with dealing with maintenance. Also I'd spent some of the savings on the Missus Puma.
 
Mick Evans said:
I've used Gridserve chargers in the past with no issues. The last cpl of times I've plugged in and got HV fault. Had to switch the car on and off a few times to get the car to move. The charger was working fine as they had an engineer working on one of the machine's. He tried his van and no issues. Anyone else had these issues?
TIA
Click to expand...
We've had issues with the Gridserve Ultra Rapids and my MG4 but the 50kW chargers generally work OK. We had a recent issue with a Gridserve 50kW and our MG ZS LR but we were able to get round the HV battery fault issue by using the iSmart App to restart communication with the car. It seems if you try and rapid charge a ZS Gen 2 whilst the car is still switched on it could throw a HV Battery fault based on my personal experience.
 
RetiredPope said:
Why would you want to charge to 95%? The charge rate drops after 85%, so quicker to charge to just over 80%, then stop and charge again later. Really don't understand why anyone sits on the charger trying to get to 100%, takes far to long. My brother does this regularly in his ID5 and on a same journey I'm quicker than him whilst driving at the same speed.
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Why indeed? BUT...

Although they're gradually fading out, ChargePlace Scotland, who operate the majority of chargers on this side of the border, still have a significant number of totally free chargers scattered about. A few of these, especially in remote locations, are rapid chargers. If charging to 95% means getting even more free electricity while gazing at Highland scenery for a while, rushing off down the motorway to save five minutes can seem like the worse option...
 
adiel said:
We've had issues with the Gridserve Ultra Rapids and my MG4 but the 50kW chargers generally work OK. We had a recent issue with a Gridserve 50kW and our MG ZS LR but we were able to get round the HV battery fault issue by using the iSmart App to restart communication with the car. It seems if you try and rapid charge a ZS Gen 2 whilst the car is still switched on it could throw a HV Battery fault based on my personal experience.
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I would imagine trying to rapid charge any EV whilst still switched on (Ready) is going to be a problem.
 
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