Soul triggering breaker and pulling too much juice

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raptor6677

New member
Joined
Jun 23, 2015
Messages
1
Hey all,
I'm looking for some help for an issue that has started happening recently. I had a Nissan Leaf for 4 years then moved to a Soul EV last December. My home AeroEnvironment charger that I used to use for my Leaf worked fine until recently. Lately every time I charge the breaker for my charger flips about 10 min into charging. It's a 30A charger with 30A wiring and a 30A breaker. I had an electrician come out to test and see what was wrong and his tester showed that the Soul was pulling 31.7A causing the breaker to flip. Does anyone have any idea why the car would try and pull more then 30A and how I can stop it?

Thanks,
Kevin
 
1) Your setup is dangerous. Electric vehicle charging is classed as a "Continuous Load" as it runs for more than 3 hours. Continuous loads should be wired with a breaker and wire at 125% of what is being drawn, or inversely the load should only be 80% of what the breaker and wire are rated at. Rounding up to what is available you should have a 40Amp breaker and 40Amp wiring for a 30Amp (or even 32Amp) EVSE.

2) Others have posted that although Kia publishes it as a 6.6kW draw, if you plug it in to a 32A EVSE then the Soul EV will draw over 7kW from measuring at the EVSE and the charge time.

3) The EVSE signals to the car how much current it can supply with the width of a pulse. It may be that your EVSE needs adjustment. Some of the more DIY friendly ones just require opening up and adjusting a variable resistor to change what it signals to the car. With your 30A breaker and wiring you should limit it to a max of 24A. You may also want to replace the breaker - pulling more than 80% for a long period can damage them and mean that they don't trip when they need to!
 
notfred is absolutely correct. If you have a 30A breaker for a 30A EVSE you're playing with fire. The Soul will max out a 30A EVSE at 240V in my experience and if your supply is lower than 240V (it often is) your EVSE might be ramping up amperage availability to compensate and tripping the breaker.

If you had a Leaf with a 3.6 kW charger (2011-2012, 2013+ "S" models) it was only pulling 16A from your EVSE and this is why this faulty installation didn't reveal itself before.
 
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