Ground Leakage Current Tripping GFCI While Charging

daughter had the same problem with a washing machine, works fine on a regular outlet. it's frustrating because the only answer seems to be replace the washer

 

It just might be the GFCI outlets reached their life expectancy. I’ve read somewhere 10-15 years is the expected replacement interval.

 

Have you checked for other loads on that secondary GFCI circuit? The effects are cumulative, some other load in that same circuit could be contributing to the tripping of that outlet. If this is the case, changing the GFCI would have no effect it's doing what it suppose to do.

 

Great to hear you figured it out...

FWIW; circuit breakers and GFCI are supposed to be engineered so they fail in the open position. Better an open circuit than burning down a house - due to an overload. Most kitchen appliances are designed to draw less than 13A and modern houses usually run 20A circuit breakers to the kitchen. No more than two duplex circuits per kitchen run; when I was doing work for Habitat for Humanity.

 

Agreed , some friend electrician tells me that since GFI became mandatory , he replaces a lot of GFIbreakers over 7 years old...good extra income for him , like he says : with age some people have a shorter temper so does GFI

 

I'm having exactly this same experience of GFCI trippinng after 1 - 2 hours of charging our 2018 Prius Prime. But in my case the GFCI in question is brand new, recently installed in the garage of a 30-year-old house we just moved into. We never had this problem at our previous house, where we also charged off a GFCI-protected outlet in the garage. In between the two houses, the car was never charged for around 8 months, because we were living at a rental with no charging outlet available. Is it possible/likely that either the car or EVSE/cable developed some defect over those months that would account for this? I have some reason to question the competence of the electrician who installed our new outlets, so will soon call another person to evaluate and try to fix this.

 

Get one of those 3 lamp outlet testers from amazon or Walmart. Check to see if it's connected properly. If it's OK; pop the circuit and see what outlets goes out in your house. A lot of times, electricians will daisy-chain a single GFCI outlet up to a bathroom or kitchen - someplace it's required by local building codes. Other appliances on the same circuit, may pop your GFCI, cumulative leakage current across multiple appliances. Make sure everything is off or unplugged on that circuit, while the car is charging or switch to another circuit. That big black brick in your charging cable is also a ground fault interrupt.

Hope this helps

 

I had a problem, but it was a GFCI breaker tripping because the freezer in the garage was kicking on in the middle of the night when the car was trying to charge.

Obviously not the same problem as you're having, but I dropped the charge mode from the maximum (12 amp) to the 8 amp charging mode. If you can take going from 6 hours to 8 hours to charge the car, maybe this will help.

Do you have a different charger you could borrow to try?

 

Just fyi the prime can draw either 8 or 12 amps, it’s switchable in the car’s settings menu. I had two primes charging on the same circuit and it kept tripping ;-)