Granny charger stopped with fault

[JimD]

I put my MG5 on to charge about 5pm yesterday, intending to leave it on overnight (est time on dash was 17 hrs); battery was at 38%.

Got up about 6 this morning and noticed the smart meter was showing just normal background load, so checked the charger, and found the amber light on, and the red and green both blinking - the list of codes on the back of the charger tells me this is an over current fault.

In time-honoured fashion I switched the charger off and on, and it started charging as if nothing had happened. Checked the car dash - no fault codes anywhere and normal 'in charging' message. Battery was at 60%, so my guess is the fault stopped the charger around midnight. The new estimated time to full was 10 hrs.

Anyone else had anything similar, or got any idea what caused it?

The only thing I can think of is some sort of spike or surge in the mains supply. I've charged numerous times on the granny overnight without a problem and also on public fast chargers with no issues. Luckily, I wasn't planning a long trip today, just thought it was time for a top up.

 

[jackois]

I've had exactly the same, just once, again, no idea why... has worked fine every time I've used it since.

 

[JimD]

Thanks @jackois - good to know that can happen and then everything be OK afterwards.

Just checked my smart meter data and the charge stopped at about 11:06pm.

 

[BugEyed]

It sounds as if you had a micro power cut and the granny charger detected an inductive current spike.
The charging current is defined by the granny charger although actually controlled by the car. It is a major and dangerous fault if the car took more than the advertised current - that could lead to melted wiring and fires.
More likely is that you had a power cut of around a second - enough to notice lights dimming briefly but not enough to reset most devices with clocks as they have smoothing that supports them for a few seconds. An EV however has a huge inductive load and when you do the equivalent of turning it off and back on at the mains it will send a big voltage then current spike as it stops and tries to restart. I'd suspect that the latter tripped the limits in the granny.
Edit - such events are not unusual but don't cause issues with dedicated charge points, but granny chargers are more sensitive as they are working closer to their limits. It would be great if there were some sort of alarm in this event to notify you that charging had ceased unexpectedly.

 

[JimD]

Thanks @BugEyed - that sounds a very reasonable explanation and is reassuring.

 

[kimoluki]

Where are you based as I had something similar tonight (but my charger says "gdn dissconection error"). But now it works fine.

 

[JimD]

Where are you based as I had something similar tonight (but my charger says "gdn dissconection error"). But now it works fine.

Washington Tyne & Wear.

 

[BugEyed]

Where are you based as I had something similar tonight (but my charger says "gdn dissconection error"). But now it works fine.

That error is potentially very serious and may mean that your car is dangerous whilst being charged this way. How is your house wired - do you have your own Earth arrangements (TT) or does your Earth come from your supply (PEN)?