Joe, The TEVan charger is very similar to a PFC50. That is non-isolated and a PFC circuit. It has a GFI breaker mounted on the charger, but it never trips. There is a secondary GFI built into the charger control board. It will trip at a lower ground fault current than the GFI breaker. The leakage current I measured was with no line voltage input (the charge plug was also disconnected). I replaced the battery pack that I thoroughly cleaned and the leakage current was higher!!!! I guess I need to drop all battery packs and clean them well. Rod
If the ground fault goes away when not charging or the charger is not hooked up, then the problem is in the charger circuit. Not in your pack. Is the charger isolated? If you are using a non-isolated charger (K&W, Phasor, PFC-20, etc.) the charger is grounding the pack through the utility ground. Run the charger off an isolation transformer to verify this. If the ground fault goes away during charge, this is the problem. If you only charge at one amp, a 200 Watt transformer will work for this test. If this is the only ground connection to the battery pack, the system will work fine until you (accidentally) provide a second ground causing a ground loop therefore causing ground current to flow. Ground current is bad. It trips GFCI breakers immediately. Chassis hot to Ground is bad. It can shock you and trip GFCI breakers when you touch the vehicle. Make sure the chassis of the vehicle is connected to safety ground to prevent the latter. Joe Smalley Rural Kitsap County WA Fiesta 48 volts NEDRA 48 volt street conversion record holder [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Brandt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 6:01 PM Subject: RE: ground fault help > OK, I still don't know what is causing it, but it seems to be only happening > when it is charging. When it isn't, I have zero volts betwen body ground > and every place on the high voltage path. Now I'm really confused. > > On another note, I had asked about charging at work. My boss says that the > guy in charge of operations was very favorable towards adding some outlets > to some of the light posts in the parking lot. Something about > environmental conciousness looking very good at audit time. I really don't > see what impact it would make other than a good impression, but I'll take > it, whether from selfish motives or from pure. That'll let me commute in > the EV again. > > David Brandt > > _________________________________________________________________ > Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com >
