OpenEVSE charge inconsistency

Integrations OpenEVSE
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1

I noticed I’m not the only case falling in this kind of situation, but it seems to be hard to find the right answer.

I used the OpenEVSE for more than one year without any issue. Now things are getting complicated.

CAR: Dacia Spring
OpenEVSE: Programmed to charge between 1:00am and 5:00am at 20A MAX
Firmware: Now updated to 8.2.2.EU / Wifi v5.1.2
I always connect the car many hours before the charging time.
I replaced the cable with a new one a few days ago just in case.

As I said, things went smooth for many months. Then it starts sporadically to not charge.
Now this is happening quite frequently but:

  • In a couple of occasion I got the charge to start waking up the car (open the car with the remote, open the door of the car)
  • Sometimes the charge start long after it’s enabled, like a 2:00am or even 4:00am
  • The last night the charge start normally like scheduled but never rise up over 6A, I noticed that changing the Ampere limit generate a quick increase that immediately settle down to 6A
  • I charged the car on a public charger today and it immediately went close to 7kw (32A)

Anyone had similar issue? Or have any clue about how to diagnose the problem?
Could it be a problem with the relay (seems strange, the total relay count is 845)?
I have some “stuck contact” and “no ground” report, could it be an internal wiring problem?

Any help would be much appreciated, I’m annoyed to have to buy a new one without understanding why it’s happening.

Anselmo

2

The 6 Amp limit has been resolved. The day before I had set the charger on “level 1” by mistake. And reverting the option to “level 2” was not enough to apply it. Things went back to normal only after I reboot the wifi module.

So only the aleatory starting charge has still to be resolved!

3

Wrong, this happened again, and the last night the charge didn’t start at all.

I think I’m going to replace the wifi module and connection.

4

I’ve a suspicion, rebooting the wifi module every evening make it working correctly during the night. Will verify that on the next couple of week and be back.

5

Can you enabled logging the data from the open evse to https://emoncms.org? This will help us debug.

It sounds like the car could be non j1772 compliant by going to sleep and not waking up to charge on request from the evse.

6

Ok, I never configured emoncms so that was my first time. Hope to have done it right. The OpenEVSE app doesn’t appear to be available.

But the charger worked flawlessly for more than one year, then start to give some problem just in a few occasion. Now it’s like a lottery.

The sleep state of the car was my first idea, but it worked for a long time so why things have changed?

I also try disabling the sleep option but nothing changed.

For the moment rebooting the wifi module seems to resolv.

I will continue to reboot daily for a couple of weeks. Then stop again and see what’s happening.

7

It should look like this under the energy monitoring section, you’ll need to create an account and put the API key in from https://emoncms.org:

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Once the data logging is working let me know your username.

Have you taken a look inside the OpenEVSE? Could post some photos of the build showing the wiring inside?

8

I confirm OpenEVSE is logging on emoncms.org

My username is “anselmo” as in the forum.

I can take a photo tomorrow, but I don’t think there is anything visibly wrong there. It was a kit I mounted myself in 2022.

9

Ok great, data logging is working. Let us know next time you observe the issue. I’ll see if there’s anything I can spot from the data.

10

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11

Thanks for the photos. I can see this kit was not purchased from OpenEnergyMonitor. I would recommend contacting OpenEVSE directly: https://openev.freshdesk.com/support/home

12

That was my first try, but I didn’t get any feedback on the forum of OpenEVSE wich furthermore is not very user-friendly, maybe I should insist a little bit. As there are many users here that use substantially the same hardware/firmware, I posted on this forum too, hoping to find someone that had similar behaviour and some clue on how to resolve the issue.

Anyway, thanks for your help, registering the data on emoncms.org was a good idea, at least to easily keep track of the charging session and their behaviour.

13

I don’t mind having a look at your emoncms.org logging data to see if I can spot any issues. Has the issue happened since you started datalogging on emocnms.org? If so, what time and date did the issue happen?

14

Yes, but just once, on december 3. You can see the charge starting later than the programmed time. I had to generate an event on the car to have the charge to start.
But I am still rebooting the wifi module every night.
I will continue to the end of the week and then try to just let it work for the next couple of weeks to see if the behaviour change. I think it will.