EV taking nights to charge to 80%

1

10amwalker

Registered User
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Back in May we bought an EV- Cupra Born. We had a " Wallbox " charger with up to 7kW capacity installed and thought everything was rosy. The Cupra Born has a 58 kW battery.
It is widely recommended that you only charge to 80 % of the battery capacity to enhance the life of the battery.
Our problem is that we are receiving a very low supply of electricity. We are in a rural part of Donegal however we do have a smart meter and by registering with ESB networks we were able to see how much electricity we were using on a historical bases. It is about 1 day behind, not real time. We could see that we were only using/receiving 2kW per hour during the night. We were charging the car from 1100 to 0800 but were never managing to completely charge it. I think we should have managed to charge it to 100 % in one night !!
ESB networks upgraded the transformer we are connected to. We paid to have new ducting installed underground (over €1,000) so that the ESB could upgrade the cable from the pole in our garden to the metering cabinet. ESB installed the new greater capacity cable.
However there is no appreciable increase in the speed of the EV charging.
They subsequently put a voltage meter in the house and report back to us that the voltage was with limits, ie 207 to 253 Volts.
As we were planning a journey to Dublin today we had to charge the car during the day today even though we charged it from 1100 to 0800 last night. Naturally the day unit rate is more expensive than the night rate.
ESB networks are obliged to provide 12kVA's. They believe they are but I can't avail of that capacity.
Why ?
 
Have you contacted whoever installed the home charger about this?
Perhaps there is something in the settings that needs to be changed ... or in the car settings
 
There are definitely options that might be set to enforce slow charging in the app for the car. Even a cursory Google throws up loads of threads, for example https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/threads/stuck-with-low-charging-rate.473375/ for a hidden setting that someone found.

If you want to see how much energy you can draw at any one time you could turn on all your appliances (including the car charger) and see how what that looks like the next day in the ESB portal. Anything with an element will eat electricity; a one-bar fire uses 1Kwh, an immersion might be 3. So it's easy enough to spike your usage quite high as an experiment.

Is there any friend with an EV that you could ask to charge it so you can see if it's quicker?
 
The charger will not detect what level of electricity supply there is to your house, that’s just not the way they or electricity works. The charger will attempt to draw the electricity it needs, if the ESB had mistakenly put too small a fuse in your house (say one that would limit it to 6kVA) the charger wouldn’t run slowly, it would try to run at full power and the fuse would blow.

So if it’s only charging at 2kW that’s because the charger is only asking for 2kW, which can happen because that’s what the charger is set to charge at, because the cable to your car is a 2kW cable (not likely!) or your car is only asking for 2kW.

I’d start by checking the charger configuration - https://support.wallbox.com/en/knowledge-base/adjusting-the-chargers-power-limit/
 
Reactions: Leo
Its not clear from what you say. Does it give you 7kw during the day?

Could be car setting

First major problem

First major problem Faults and Technical chat for the CUPRA Born - CUPRA Born Forum
www.cuprabornforums.com

As a last resort, try resetting your user profile in the vehicle. I've read reports of this working.
Click to expand...
 
Sometimes there's a setting for amps on the car as well.

I don't have a Cupra. But on mine I can only set a slower rate (less than 7kW) when charging on preset schedule. If I plug in during that scheduled time and the plan is turned on. Car will charge slower. If no plan is enabled. Car just charges at the full rate. 7kW.

The 20-80% thing is for regular charging. If I was doing an infrequent long run I'd let it get to 100%.
 
Micks'r said:
Have you contacted whoever installed the home charger about this?
Perhaps there is something in the settings that needs to be changed ... or in the car settings
Click to expand...
We checked the car settings and have used a high speed charge and the car charges no difficulty. We advised the installer of the home charger however he had never come across such a slow charge.
 
Thank you. I am going to ask the ESB to arrange for the meter to be installed again. It was recording over Christmas week. We were taking it easy so I would like to have the meter recording and turn everything on. Last week the 63 amp trip switch tripped and we had to switch it out with a new one as it would not reset. This happened around 1930 and we had put the car charger on as the night rate is not allowing sufficient charge.
We did check with a neighbour who has an EV too and they were are receiving 7kW from their wall charger.
 
No, at night we only get 2kw with some spikes of 3kw. Yesterday between 08 and 1200 the car was only charging at 1.5kw . We know this from the wall charger app which is real time.
 
Just boiled my kettle the energy went from 0.2 to 2.9.

I would get some power monitors in.

Does your wall charger not show how much the house is using?
 
AlbacoreA said:
Just boiled my kettle the energy went from 0.2 to 2.9.

I would get some power monitors in.

Does your wall charger not show how much the house is using?
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I used the power monitor (from the public library kits) and like you saw the kettle go to 2.9. Used the monitors around the house which was very useful. Oven, hob and stand alone heater in a garden room were using the most. We are unable to connect the power monitor to the wall box charger.

I thought the wall charger only showed what the wall charger is using for the car ?

What about the 63 A trip switch for the sockets failing ? Could this be related ?
 
10amwalker said:
We checked the car settings and have used a high speed charge and the car charges no difficulty. We advised the installer of the home charger however he had never come across such a slow charge.
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Do you mean you have used a DC charger fine? There may be a setting affecting AC charging. Go to a public station and use an AC charger and see what happens. Probably the easiest way to tell whether the slow rate of AC charging is with your car or not.
 
My uneducated guess your wall charger isn't wired correctly.

Your house pulls more than your car at times. So unless you had problems with that previously the next thing is the wall charger.

Who installed the car charger. Can you get them to come back and test it. Did they not check it could do 7kw when it was installed.

Though as others have said it might be a setting on the car for AC.
 
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Yes, we have used a DC charger fine. No problem. Good suggestion, we will do that.
 
I have taken screen shots of two consumption graphs from ESB Networks however I don't know how to upload them from my desktop to here or how to create a link !! Which is preferable ?
 
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