Friend drove his Nissan Leaf to my house and was going to leave it on charge while we went golfing. Plugged the adapter in (I have only 120v in the garage, car can use 120 slowly but 220v charges much faster). The Leaf has a dedicated charging cable for commercial charging stations and an adapter for standard electrical outlets. After 5-7 seconds of charging; nada. Outlet is without power. Go check GFI circuit breaker in the main box and it’s tripped. Electrical code here (Hawaii) requires GFI on wet, garage, outdoor circuits. Reset, replugged, repeat tripping. I try a heavy duty (12/3, 25 foot) extension cord to another outdoor outlet on a different circuit. Trips that too. Both GFIs are new within two years. Garage circuit has no problem with my air compressor, or 10" table saw, or 12" miter saw that all like 15 amps. Not used at the same time obviously.
Checked the outlets with my circuit tester that identifies bad grounds, reversed wiring, etc… They checked out fine.
Something about a Leaf that needs a special circuit?
I’ve never read the code for electric cars, but I want to say when I’ve run across Tesla forums I’ve read similar things.
Does the adapter have a GFCI built into it (you might want to check the specs). daisy chaining GFCIs always causes problems.
Another thing I’m seeing (only have a few minutes here) is that it can be brand dependent. Here’s a post (post 2 in this thread) from a random person on the internet, you could look at yours and see if it sheds any light on the subject.
The questions in my mind are how much amperage does the Leaf draw when charging at 120v, and what are the ratings of the circuit breakers that tripped?
If the gfi is operating correctly then the charger is likely leaking greater than 5 or so mA to ground. Which means the gfi is doing what it’s supposed to do. Why that might be though, I have no idea. Also, with gfi breakers I don’t think there is any way to tell by looking at the breaker if it tripped on 5mA, magnetic or Thermal. Tripped is tripped.
Standard GFCIs you buy at Home Depot or wherever are NOT circuit breakers. They are Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter outlets. They have to be fed from a standard breaker for over current protection on a circuit.
You can get combo units that mount in the main panel, they are about 3 times the cost of a GFCI outlet.
Sounds like the GFI’s aren’t happy with the switching power supply in the charger. It must be feeding some type of noise back into the household electrical power circuits. Confuses the receptacle and out it goes.
are you in a region getting a lot of rain or other precipitation right now? GFCI outlets break the circuit when they detect an imbalance between the current on the hot side and the neutral side. my Ranger has a 500 watt engine block heater which I use when the temp gets below 10F, and the outside outlet I plug it into is downstream from a GFCI outlet. the GFCI has tripped when I had the truck plugged in and it was raining/snowing.
These are actual Siemens brand GFI circuit breakers in the main panel. We did this because of the poor documentation of what circuits go where and the “possible” existence of multiple GFI on the same circuit. The older house wiring had some spotty work done. I replaced all the garage and exterior outlets with new 20 amp units and my cousin (actual electrician) did the breakers along with a bunch of other stuff.
For other replies; I’ll check the forums. The switching power supply could be the culprit. Yes it’s wet in Hawaii but not that day plus the Leaf was pulled up into the garage.
Thanks for the replies. My friend has a dedicated outlet at his condo parking garage and has no problems there.
