Interesting Pod Point charging failure (and fix)

[kevin ellard]

So, woke up this morning to find a red light on the Pod Point charger and the car at 82% rather than the 100% I had set it to.
Reset the car and tried again. It connected for about 30seconds and then errored again.
Reset the Pod Point by turning it off at the isolator and back on again - same result.
Disconnected the 12V battery for a couple of minutes, reconnected and same result.
A neighbour has a different charger so I popped along and plugged in there and all was fine.
Came back home and plugged in and all was fine again!

So the car/charger combination had got confused to the point where a reset didn't work but doing a small charge elsewhere sorted them out.
I do hope this isn't the start of charging problems, the car (a FL Trophy) has been great for the last 3 years.

 

[Bam Bam]

A neighbour has a different charger so I popped along and plugged in there and all was fine.

Good troubleshooting!

Came back home and plugged in and all was fine again!

It is like computers! No idea what the cause of the issue was or fixed it, but tried a load of things and somehow one of them worked.

Could be useful for others.

Curious to know if a granny charge would have also had a positive result.

 

[kevin ellard]

Good troubleshooting!


It is like computers! No idea what the cause of the issue was or fixed it, but tried a load of things and somehow one of them worked.

Could be useful for others.

Curious to know if a granny charge would have also had a positive result.

An update: Something similar happened today so I got out the Granny charger which worked fine.
This is going to surprise people - I called Pod Point, got straight through (after negotiating the first level robot) and the support operator was excellent. She checked the charger history and agreed there looks like a problem. She ran a diagnostic and the report was that the charger was experiencing low voltage. She did a remote reset and all is now fine.
I've got a cheap old power monitor that shows AC voltage and it reported that it was around 207V this morning. It has now risen to 222V so it looks like the problem is with our supply.

 

[emmrecs]

I've got a cheap old power monitor that shows AC voltage and it reported that it was around 207V this morning.

I'm sure you know that your DNO must maintain the voltage within the range of 216 to 253 volts in order to be regulation compliant. Nearly 10v below the minimum suggests there is, indeed, a problem with your supply!

As someone who, in the early days of my EVSE, suffered the opposite problem, overvoltage leading to activation of the PEN safety system and shut-down of he unit, I know how annoying such events can be! In my case the DNO did quite quickly rectify the problem and stepped down the voltage at the local transformer.

 

[kevin ellard]

I got the impression from pod point that the problem had been going on for a while and that the charger only shut itself down after a number of days of faults.
This morning the reading is 208 but the charger is working at the moment.
I've done a report to UK power networks - It will be interesting to see what happens.