Duosida EVSE

[thomash85715]

It is true that solid info about the amps being drawn by one of these from a single phase 120V plug would be useful. A 6-20 plug with a sideways spade is still only single phase even if it is 20A. From what I can tell, Justoneman, you are not using dual phase 240V on this duosida yet. That would take a much larger dryer plug. A guy who is selling these on ebay out of New York stated that it will switch itself to dual phase 240V mode when it senses two hots and a neutral incoming and to single phase 120V when it senses one hot and one neutral and ground incoming which does make sense. Would be nice to have this verified empirically I submit...

 

[justoneman]

It is true that solid info about the amps being drawn by one of these from a single phase 120V plug would be useful. A 6-20 plug with a sideways spade is still only single phase even if it is 20A. From what I can tell, Justoneman, you are not using dual phase 240V on this duosida yet. That would take a much larger dryer plug. A guy who is selling these on ebay out of New York stated that it will switch itself to dual phase 240V mode when it senses two hots and a neutral incoming and to single phase 120V when it senses one hot and one neutral and ground incoming which does make sense. Would be nice to have this verified empirically I submit...

Well of course its not drawing 240v. Infact Its now clear it is a 15 amp breaker on my garage outlet circuit. The only thing I am unclear on is my charge rate seems faster than published rates. For example I put it on charge with 5 bars left at 6pm today and went out and checked the gauge at 9pm and it had increased to 10 bars total. Now obviously counting bars can be a little misleading as you do not know what percentage of a bar is charged.

 

[justoneman]

.... A guy who is selling these on ebay out of New York stated that it will switch itself to dual phase 240V mode when it senses two hots and a neutral incoming and to single phase 120V when it senses one hot and one neutral and ground incoming which does make sense. Would be nice to have this verified empirically I submit...

I read online about the Duosida when I bought the car a month ago. I read it detected the phases and amps and adjusted accordingly. On a listing for the device it states the amperage as:


Single amp: 10A or 13A or 16A

http://eyocar.com/portfolio-items/duosida-evse/

Could it be I am drawing 13A continuous current as opposed to 12A and that could account for a slightly faster charge rate? I know the outlet installed in my garage is a 20A and I know the breaker for it in the main service is a 15A, but if the wire in the circuit is of a suitable gauge for a 20A circuit, could it not move more electrons through the circuit (slightly) without tripping the 15A breaker?

 

[thomash85715]

Trailblazing is a learning experience and you are forging ahead where no man has gone before at least with i-MiEV. Until you put a Kill A Watt box on that plug it is impossible to know the amp rate unless you use a Canion app on your phone with a $50 dongle plugged in to the OBD port under the steering column of the car. I have a Kill A Watt box and it is telling me the exact rate my factory EVSE is putting to the car. Many on here have cautioned though that if you try and put a kill a watt on a 20A plug and shove all 20A through it, it will blow. The plug that came on your duosida is a 20A plug all right. I need to re-read your question about 15A vs 20A and think about the answer.
Meantime, you could put a kill a watt on the car at work where you know you have lower amp plug while using 15A adapter.

 

[thomash85715]

If the breaker is 15 and the duosida is setting itself to 16, that breaker should trip. Heavy or light wire has no effect on that other than to waste energy by heating up and melting. If the wire is rated for 10A and the breaker were rated for 20 and the EVSE is pulling 16A, you will have a meltdown sooner or later and the breaker will not protect you. A 20 amp plug as shown in your pictures should not have a 15A breaker ahead of it. What is not known is what the duosida is set for or how to alter that setting. In europe a single phase plug has 240V on one pin and neutral on the other just like our household plugs here do except ours are 120V and neutral. Our dryers and stoves have 120V opposite phase on each hot pin with 3d one neutral. A special adaptor for the duosida would be needed to make it charge at full rate our car is capable of. That would be double the rate and half the time compared with even 16A 120V.
Our factory EVSE is set to 8A but the car can take 16A from single phase 120V. Burning question right now is if duosida pushes 16A to our cars or something less, how much less?

 

[justoneman]

Your EVSE is telling the car it's OK for the car to draw 16 amps! - If you plug it into an outlet which cannot supply 16 amps, when the car sets it's charger to draw 16 amps, something bad is about to happen . . . .

Don

Since I am charging on a circuit that has a 15 amp breaker and I am not blowing the breaker, We can presume I am drawing less than 15 amps. Since I am charging at a much faster rate than the standard time for an 8amp draw then I would conclude I am drawing between 8 amps and 15 amps right? (since I am not going to buy any sort of metering device) can we conclude that I am drawing one of the three levels of amperage that the unit calls out to draw? That is 10A or 13A or 16A. The only one in the middle is 13A. Would that not account for my more rapid charge rate?

 

[thomash85715]

Yes I totally agree with your conclusion that you are charging at around 13A. A killawatt box is under $30. It is useful all around your house to chase problems or control consumption, not just to measure your car charging. What we don't know is how or why your new EVSE has set itself to 13A. The data I have seen on it says it runs at 16A. The newer more expensive ones can be shaken to alter amp level. Did you try shaking yours when you first turn it on to see if it changes? Without a amp metering device of some kind this is all speculative.

 

[justoneman]

Yes I totally agree with your conclusion that you are charging at around 13A. A killawatt box is under $30. It is useful all around your house to chase problems or control consumption, not just to measure your car charging. What we don't know is how or why your new EVSE has set itself to 13A. The data I have seen on it says it runs at 16A. The newer more expensive ones can be shaken to alter amp level. Did you try shaking yours when you first turn it on to see if it changes? Without a amp metering device of some kind this is all speculative.

No I did not shake it. I plugged it in and it worked. I was under the impression from what I read about it that it detected the draw and adjusted to it. I presumed that this is what it did.

 

[justoneman]

Yes I totally agree with your conclusion that you are charging at around 13A. A killawatt box is under $30. It is useful all around your house to chase problems or control consumption, not just to measure your car charging. What we don't know is how or why your new EVSE has set itself to 13A. The data I have seen on it says it runs at 16A. The newer more expensive ones can be shaken to alter amp level. Did you try shaking yours when you first turn it on to see if it changes? Without a amp metering device of some kind this is all speculative.

Its not new. It came with my used 2012 vehicle.

 

[PV1]

The i-MiEV tends to stay about .5 amps below the pilot signal (if EVSE signals 12 amps, the car pulls 11.5). Even with that, the car maxes out at 14 amps, so it wouldn't trip the breaker immediately (although it should after about an hour as that is higher than the 80% de-rate).

5 bars in 4 hours sounds right for 120 volt charging at 12 amps. That's the rate mine charges at.

 

[justoneman]

The i-MiEV tends to stay about .5 amps below the pilot signal (if EVSE signals 12 amps, the car pulls 11.5). Even with that, the car maxes out at 14 amps, so it wouldn't trip the breaker immediately (although it should after about an hour as that is higher than the 80% de-rate).

5 bars in 4 hours sounds right for 120 volt charging at 12 amps. That's the rate mine charges at.

My unit is charging 5 bars in less than 4 hours. Tonight I will photo my gauge and clock when I start charging and then 3 hours later.

 

[PV1]

That's still within normal expectations. We may see that bars/hour will increase as the packs degrade. For example, my 2nd car (Koorz) can recover bars faster than Bear (my primary car), although it isn't actually charging any faster. It's just that each bar represents less energy. Bear got a new battery in 2015, so that pack can store more energy than the one in Koorz.

Also, as you pointed out, there is a charge range that each bar represents, and this can sometimes trick you into thinking the car is charging faster or slower initially than it should.

 

[justoneman]

That's still within normal expectations. We may see that bars/hour will increase as the packs degrade. For example, my 2nd car (Koorz) can recover bars faster than Bear (my primary car), although it isn't actually charging any faster. It's just that each bar represents less energy. Bear got a new battery in 2015, so that pack can store more energy than the one in Koorz.

Also, as you pointed out, there is a charge range that each bar represents, and this can sometimes trick you into thinking the car is charging faster or slower initially than it should.

Yes I was thinking this very same thing. Both about the bars being misleading because one does not know what % of a bar is charged or discharged. I was also thinking about the batter degradation and certainly on a 2012 there must be some of that. The thing is I have a 58 mile round trip commute that I can make on one charge if there are not big problems along the way. Bear in mind that about 30 minutes of that round trip I am traveling at highway speed over 60 mph. My batteries must be pretty close to original.

 

[thomash85715]

When you say, PV1, that "yours" pulls 12A, is it a duosida or some other aftermarket evse? What I have yet to see thus far is quantified evidence of duosida amp rate on both levels it claims to be capable of. I am about to pull trigger on buying one with a 10-30 240v dryer plug on it but am lacking confidence it will actually work as advertised. That was my reason for coming on here and asking if anyone was using one. The pilot square wave duty cycle generated inside the EVSE determines the amps level the charger inside the car will draw. We know the duty cycle in factory EVSE is set for 8A. The duosida behavior and methodology surrounding this pilot signal are all still too vaguely defined for me to take a $220 bath. That is only reason I am asking for numbers from a Kill A Watt or similar device.

 

[PV1]

Sorry. 12 amps is what I get from my EVSEUpgrade unit.

If the EVSE has a 15 amp plug on it, then by code (rule of 80% de-rate for extended loads) it's only allowed to draw 12 amps. If it has a 20 amp plug, then it can draw 16 amps. However, for raw data on this particular unit, I can't answer, as all I have for charging are two MiEV cords and an Eaton Pow-R-Station.

 

[thomash85715]

This helps a lot. Just to repeat and rephrase so I know I got this: The people who affix the AC plug be it a 15a or 20a are required by code agreement to set the square wave duty cycle down 20% from the max for that type of plug. Thus a 15A plug dictates a 12A duty cycle wave and a EVSE with a 20A plug should set itself to 16A. I presume your i-MiEV factory EVSEs are unmodified and draw 8A. The eaton device I presume you speak of is a level 2 240V dedicated unit. From it, does your i-MiEV draw its full 3.3kw? That is something slightly under 16A per line I speculate. This Duosida is no Eaton power unit by any stretch. Just wondering if the people that make the duosida are complying with all the rules we have here. Assuming the eaton people do.

 

[justoneman]

This helps a lot. Just to repeat and rephrase so I know I got this: The people who affix the AC plug be it a 15a or 20a are required by code agreement to set the square wave duty cycle down 20% from the max for that type of plug. Thus a 15A plug dictates a 12A duty cycle wave and a EVSE with a 20A plug should set itself to 16A. I presume your i-MiEV factory EVSEs are unmodified and draw 8A. The eaton device I presume you speak of is a level 2 240V dedicated unit. From it, does your i-MiEV draw its full 3.3kw? That is something slightly under 16A per line I speculate. This Duosida is no Eaton power unit by any stretch. Just wondering if the people that make the duosida are complying with all the rules we have here. Assuming the eaton people do.

Were this true, I would be blowing my 15 amp circuit breaker, since I have one with a 20amp plug on it.

 

[Don]

Were this true, I would be blowing my 15 amp circuit breaker, since I have one with a 20amp plug on it.

Not if you're charging an iMiEV - Our cars won't trip a 15 amp breaker on either 120 or 240 volts

Don

 

[justoneman]

Were this true, I would be blowing my 15 amp circuit breaker, since I have one with a 20amp plug on it.

Not if you're charging an iMiEV - Our cars won't trip a 15 amp breaker on either 120 or 240 volts

Don

So then you know how many amps its drawing?

 

[justoneman]

6:04 pm when I got home from work this evening.