So there's a free public L2 charger a block from my work where I do most of my charging.
Our local city owned power company (LADWP) installed a bunch of these last year. Most of them were damaged or destroyed by vandals (typically cutting off the J1772 connector) within a few months of installation but this one has been relatively unmolested and gets used quite a bit by regulars such as myself as well as random people you may only see once.
Over time it's getting pretty worse for wear. First the holster (for lack of a better term) where the J1772 plug is stored when it's not in use broke off, I ended up buying a generic one on Amazon and attached directly to the telephone pole.
The bigger problem is when the charger was installed LADWP also mounted a spring loaded cord retractor that lifted the cord and connector to make sure it never touched the ground. The issue with that was it had quite a lot of spring force and pulled up on the J1772 connector very strongly when it was connected to a car. Here is a picture of how it looked when it was in use when the charger was new:
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Well eventually the charger stopped working reliably (would not start to charge) with the cord being pulled up by the retractor. I was able to work around this issue by disconnecting the retractor entirely and mounting a hose reel on the pole to store the cord when not in use (keep it off the ground) but lately even that doesn't help, the charger is getting harder and harder to activate and you have to pull down on the cord just so as you plug the J1772 connector in or the charge will never start. Earlier this week I started a charge and when I came back a couple hours later expecting the battery to be ~80% I found that the charge had stopped, presumably because a large truck drove by and moved the car enough to interrupt the connection and stop the charge.
Now I could call LADWP and report the finicky charger, but based on their track record it will take them several months to do anything and they are more likely to just disconnect the charger entirely than to fix it so I'd rather not get them involved if I have any other choice.
I'm virtually certain that the root cause of the issue is one of the signal or ground wires (pins 3, 4 or 5) wires in the charge cable is no longer securely crimped to the J1772 connector, I think being pulled up by the cord retractor put a lot of strain on the connector/cable that it wasn't designed for and one of the cables eventually partially pulled itself loose. If so the "fix" would be as simple as tightening the crimp with some needle nose pliers. I'm extremely confident in my ability to perform this type of repair.
Of course the rub is that I have no way of shutting off power to the EVSE. Even if I brought a ladder to climb the pole the disconnect breaker is behind a tamper seal.
Now based on my understanding of the J1772 protocol there shouldn't be any dangerous voltage inside the connector even if it's powered on as long it's not actively charging because the EVSE doesn't send 220V power down pins 1 & 2 until it handshakes with the onboard charger in the car (this is the part that's not happening now).
I feel like fixing this falls under "don't try this at home folks" (it it matters, I won't be at home
). Definitely not something that's recommended but it seems totally doable without exposing myself to any high voltage.
FTR I have not worked on a J1772 connector before but I have a good amount of experience working on live high voltage equipment including 440V/4000A circuit breakers and numerous 440V motor controllers.
Of course I'd bring a multi meter and check every pin before I touched anything.
What to the knowledgeable people here think about my maybe not insane plan?
Our local city owned power company (LADWP) installed a bunch of these last year. Most of them were damaged or destroyed by vandals (typically cutting off the J1772 connector) within a few months of installation but this one has been relatively unmolested and gets used quite a bit by regulars such as myself as well as random people you may only see once.
Over time it's getting pretty worse for wear. First the holster (for lack of a better term) where the J1772 plug is stored when it's not in use broke off, I ended up buying a generic one on Amazon and attached directly to the telephone pole.
The bigger problem is when the charger was installed LADWP also mounted a spring loaded cord retractor that lifted the cord and connector to make sure it never touched the ground. The issue with that was it had quite a lot of spring force and pulled up on the J1772 connector very strongly when it was connected to a car. Here is a picture of how it looked when it was in use when the charger was new:
Well eventually the charger stopped working reliably (would not start to charge) with the cord being pulled up by the retractor. I was able to work around this issue by disconnecting the retractor entirely and mounting a hose reel on the pole to store the cord when not in use (keep it off the ground) but lately even that doesn't help, the charger is getting harder and harder to activate and you have to pull down on the cord just so as you plug the J1772 connector in or the charge will never start. Earlier this week I started a charge and when I came back a couple hours later expecting the battery to be ~80% I found that the charge had stopped, presumably because a large truck drove by and moved the car enough to interrupt the connection and stop the charge.
Now I could call LADWP and report the finicky charger, but based on their track record it will take them several months to do anything and they are more likely to just disconnect the charger entirely than to fix it so I'd rather not get them involved if I have any other choice.
I'm virtually certain that the root cause of the issue is one of the signal or ground wires (pins 3, 4 or 5) wires in the charge cable is no longer securely crimped to the J1772 connector, I think being pulled up by the cord retractor put a lot of strain on the connector/cable that it wasn't designed for and one of the cables eventually partially pulled itself loose. If so the "fix" would be as simple as tightening the crimp with some needle nose pliers. I'm extremely confident in my ability to perform this type of repair.
Of course the rub is that I have no way of shutting off power to the EVSE. Even if I brought a ladder to climb the pole the disconnect breaker is behind a tamper seal.
Now based on my understanding of the J1772 protocol there shouldn't be any dangerous voltage inside the connector even if it's powered on as long it's not actively charging because the EVSE doesn't send 220V power down pins 1 & 2 until it handshakes with the onboard charger in the car (this is the part that's not happening now).
I feel like fixing this falls under "don't try this at home folks" (it it matters, I won't be at home
). Definitely not something that's recommended but it seems totally doable without exposing myself to any high voltage.FTR I have not worked on a J1772 connector before but I have a good amount of experience working on live high voltage equipment including 440V/4000A circuit breakers and numerous 440V motor controllers.
Of course I'd bring a multi meter and check every pin before I touched anything.
What to the knowledgeable people here think about my maybe not insane plan?
