Chris, Two things: 1. modifying the plug on the 110V trickle charger to plug into the 110V of a NEMA 14-50 will *not* make a difference, your iMiev will still charge at the same rate as with the standard NEMA 5-15 plug. Reason is that the EVSE tells the LiMiev to draw 12A and that is what the car does.
2. There are ways to trick the trickle charger into supplying 240V to the car, while it will still tell the car to draw 12 Amp (because the cord and plug cannot handle more) but now that same 12A is twice the power due to the double voltage, allowing the car to charge twice as fast. There are two ways to modify the charger: 1, (as you already hinted at) it may be that the charger's power supply can actually handle 240VAC but you need to verify that. I inspected my Leaf's chargers (two different models) and each accepted only 120V.One actually has a switching power supply but I noticed the bulk capacitor had a 250V rating and 240VAC results in about 350V after rectification, so that was a no-go. The other charger had a 120V transformer and I had enough space in the second charger to fit a small switching universal power supply that I modified the output voltage to the minimum 15V that the charger needed (the transformer actually supplied 20V but the minimum was 15V) The first charger is too slim to fit an extra power supply, so we move on to the other way: 2. Attach a 4-prong plug and wire to the charger, wire the 120V (neutral and one phase) to the input of the charger. Inspect the charger to find the output relays. Disconnect (cut) the wire going to the output relay that is feeding the Neutral to the output cord and run the second input phase to this output relay, so when the charger engages, it sends 240V to the car instead of 110V. This is also the modification to the Leaf charger that is described in an Instructable: <http://www.instructables.com/id/CONVERTING-A-LEAF-LEVEL-1-12AMP-CHARGER-TO-A-LEVEL/> Cor van de Water Chief Scientist Proxim Wireless office +1 408 383 7626 Skype: cor_van_de_water XoIP +31 87 784 1130 private: cvandewater.info http://www.proxim.com This email message (including any attachments) contains confidential and proprietary information of Proxim Wireless Corporation. If you received this message in error, please delete it and notify the sender. Any unauthorized use, disclosure, distribution, or copying of any part of this message is prohibited. -----Original Message----- From: EV [mailto:ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org] On Behalf Of Chris Tromley via EV Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 6:18 PM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: [EVDL] Adapting L1 to 14-50 receptacle My used iMiEV came with a no-name L1 charging brick. I mean literally no name - there's no ID on the thing, only an ETL logo and some minimal instructions zip-tied to the power cord. It does clearly say 120 VAC, which surprised me. I thought these things generally had universal input. I'm trying to broaden my opportunity charging opportunities, and there is a Tesla store in a mall in my area that has a charging area in the parking garage. Apparently Teslas use a 14-50 (RV or electric range) outlet in addition to their proprietary port and they have several available. (And the plugshare blurb shows a Leaf charging there, so it looks like they're OK with that. But yes, I'll ask.) So here's my question. A 14-50 has a neutral, so I'm pretty sure I can adapt my brick to it by simply tapping one leg of the 240 V. Is there anything subtle that I'm missing? Like if there are a bunch of these outlets fed by a single panel and I pull 3 kW off one leg of one, is that an issue? Anything else? I'm thinking it'll be fine, but I'm not comfortable deciding that on my own. (Such is the challenge of being an electrical dolt in an EV world.) TIA, Chris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20170228/232e4d19/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
