Hi guys, I've connected my PiP to a Kill a Watt (P4480) and twice so far the connection was interrupted by the Kill a Watt because it was pulling in too many amps. Yesterday at about 0.1 KWH into my charge the Kill a Watt reported that my PiP was pulling 17.17 Amps. Why do you guys think this is?
Defective kill-a-watt ? Assuming you are using a 110 V charger, if it was correct ~ 1.8 kw would be flowing through the meter, and about 85% of that = 1.53 kw would be flowing to the battery. The battery only takes something in the range of 2.7 - 3.0 kwh from empty to full SOC, but it takes about 3 hours to fill up. You are not putting 4.6 kwh into a (max) 3.0 kwh storage.
Hook it up to a 900watt - 1.2kw hair dryer or microwave oven (or what ever its stated draw claims) and see what the kill-a-watt reads. For that matter, just read off a 100 watt - 200 watt light bulb. It may be inaccurate at different readouts, but not others.
Your house neutral may not be properly grounded at the main panel or the ground may be weak. This may be causing the Kill a watt to read in error. Different math is used to calculate wattage if the neutral is open (i e 2 hot wire hotwater tank) than for a 3 wire circuit with the neutral connected. 3 wire is used if the load might be unbalanced across the legs like a normal branch circuit. If your level 1 device is actually allowing more than 12 amps to pass to your car it is defective. It should be signaling 11 amps or less available on the j1772 control wire and the battery charger in the car should be responding to this and pulling 11 amps or less.
If you could get your hands on a Clamp-On Amp Meter, you could get a very accurate idea of what the unit draws. Hill nailed it. Check the accuracy of your Kill-A-Watt with a 100 Watt lamp, or a device with a known wattage.
If your drawing 17.17 Amps you'd be smelling something burning in the car. That's way over the charging draw for PIPs charger. I assume the car is running fine? It's most likely your Kill- A-Watt. The advice to try measuring with a known device is good. If you feel the car isn't working properly get it checked at the dealer.
What does the Kill-a-Watt say about your line voltage and the actual power taken by the PiP? I don't have my PiP yet and haven't tested this, but it's possible that the car takes increasing current with decreasing line voltage to keep the power constant. (Negative resistance on the input is a normal characteristic of switching power supplies.) You might have low line voltage causing the seemingly high reading. Another possibility: If the charger doesn't act as a resistive load, current will read high due to power factor effects. In other words, those may not be "real" amps. Richard
Hi Richard ! Hey! Are you going to get a PiP? I'm thinking this is a WAY cool source for keeping the PriUPS running - but that'll have to be saved for another thread.
I've tested voltage at work before and seen it vary a lot and it's usually lower than at my house (different electric supplier). My home voltage is normally steady but you may not be so lucky in your neck of the woods.
I just checked mine and it's 121.7 to 122 (fluctuates slowly). Some power companies will tell you 115v is within normal range but I'd be unhappy with anything below 118v. Your lower voltage means higher amps to get the same watts. It might get down to 15 amps if the voltage were high enough. You should check the voltage on a different circuit (check as many as you can) to see if you get higher voltage elsewhere in the house. A severely unbalanced panel could lower the voltage on some circuits. Too small wires for a circuit drops voltage so even with proper balance in the panel if the home was wired cheaply that could be a problem. Of course you could always run a new circuit just for the car charging. If you can't find an obvious problem with the wiring at your end, call your power company and have them check voltage at your meter. They might tell you nothing is wrong or they might fix the low voltage situation. Could be as simple as a bad transformer in your neighborhood.
PiP's portable charging unit is limited to 12A, so it won't go higher than that in any case. It will just charge at a slower pace.
I just got my kill a watt and hooked it up. Everything is normal. About 1300 watts and around 13 amps. I got it because I need the car to charge every day from 3am to 6am for the SCE dicount electric car rate. Not sure if car timer had to be reset everyday or not. The super off peak rate is from midnight till 6 am and all weekend. If I run my electric jacuzie and heat it at the same time I think I might even save money. The Pip qualifies for this program. You dont need a second meter or anything.
The charge timer remembers the last setting, so the charge time needs to only be set once. However, it is necessary to push the timer button to activate it.
