A regular 220V outlet EVSE will be finally available for Renault ZOE on March 4, 2014

It's never too late ...

Finally, in two days, ZOE owners should be able to purchase a portable EVSE to charge their ZOE wherever they want, at 10A or 14A on a dedicated Legrand Green'up reinforced 220V outlet

Let's test this New J1772 Extension Cable to Charge our LEAF at an Autolib Station

Now that we have received this J1772 Extension Cable, we took it down to the parking to put it in the LEAF trunk, its new home ...

Any volunteer ? Yes, Clément :-)

He was coming to the Tesla Store with me anyways





When we got there, I thought, let's try it right here, between our wall mounted EVSE, and the LEAF => works like a charm :-)


and charges the LEAF - after turning OFF the charge program -



Remember my wall mounted second original EVSE, well it has been charging our LEAF for almost 2.5 years now ...



Clement filming his dad's experiments



Close up on the J1772 plug - extension -



On the ground, the EVSE 1772 plug is simply plugged into the J1772 extension inlet



Let's go to the Tesla Store ! 

....

Back in Paris, the Tesla Store is actually in Gennevilliers, close to Saint Ouen where I used to work, outside Paris, but in the relatively close suburb

So here we are, at one of our favorite charging locations, in Marais, behind Hotel de Ville, and one spot out of two is taken by a Renault Twizy, the other one, by a Bluecar / Autolib

Twizy and its telephone curled up blue cord


What is it doing here ??! ICEd by an Autolib - Take 2, not the first time -

Guess what, we just had to go 2 spots ahead and parked at the Autolib station :-), not a problem anymore with our new cable !

This cable is just perfect :-)

Locked up



Autolib charge cable extended

Testing Wattson Transmitter to make it work for the US & Canada SplitPhase Consumer Units - Part 3

Last night, at 03:30AM, I finally made a Wattson unit work on a simulated US Split Phase Electricset up

This Wattson unit displays the our home usage, divided by 2 more or ess - see real usage below at 715W - : It have managed to change the Voltage Setting - to 110V - so that it thinks it is reading power usage in the US


Here I tried 115V


This is how you can change it, using the New Holmes2 Software from Energeno


Real Usage, displayed on another Wattson, with unchanged Voltage Setting

It looks easy, but it was not ...

I started after diner and, after making my own Y cable, I then picked one Wattson unit to try and change its Voltage Setting: I bought few units from the UK in the last months, some old, some more recent, and every time I had to use Holmes and Holmes2 when I learned it came out - Thanks to Mark Elliott at Energeno via Twitter - checking this 'Enable Generated Logging', or 'Activate Generation Mode', depending on the software version

On the new version of Holmes2 I noticed that many more Settings were now available, like language - new ones -, currencies - new ones too, including USD -, and Voltage : This last one is by Default set to 230V - from the UK mains standard voltage I guess - and this is what the Wattson display unit uses to determine the Usage in Watts : It take the Amps it receives from the Transmitter and multiplies them by this set - fixed - Voltage to give Usage in Watts - not perfectly accurate, because Voltage goes up and down too depending on the loads, by good enough -

But, I played with this voltage and realized the new set value would never be saved ....

And since my whole experience here, is a bit - a lot - based on this, I will have to make the Wattson hold it this time ...
So I thought, maybe it is a Wattson firmware version issue: this new settings are made possible to new units coming to the market, and this would make sense !

I took an old unit, plugged it into my Mac and launched to Wattson Loader program, which I discovered needed a firmware file ... I looked for it online, and after forums, finally found it as an attachement onto DIY Kyoto/Energeno Knwoledge base - great BTW -

I was happy to find it, and saw also that 2 of my older Wattson units would never be able to be flashed, because they do not have this Clock function, meaning they are from an older generation

So I used a more recent Wattson, that glows Green when Net Usage is negative - not Orange -, for the first time, I flashed a Wattson unit with a new Firmware

After that, weird messages and moving dashes were displayed, until I reset the unit using a pin in the top center hole, and started saying 'Hello Wattson'

This new firmware changes many things, especially when using the top central pushbutton, the display modes, there is New Settings Menu right on the Wattson unit, without plugging into a computer, etc ...

Now I used the Holmes2 to try and change this Voltage Setting, and the software was freezing after few seconds of use; I tried numerous times, quitting, killing it, restarting the Mac, which drove me crazy

After a while, I started to use another software called Wattson Settings, which allows to change Settings but not this Voltage .... Jeeesss

But it has a console tap whch is very cool because you can see the Serial Commands sent to Wattson, and received from it: Here I tried to find the Voltage Setting Commands ... => Good Luck :-) 

And I finally found, in Energenno/DIY Kyoto Knwoledge base - again -, a procedure to Erase a Wattson unit's Memory - which holds 28 days of logs - via this Wattson Settings console; This did it for me: it erased the memory, and then when I used the Holmes2 again, no more freezing !! -Tha's what I thought, the software got stuck trying to retrieve logs from the memory and the change of firmware in between probably messed it up ...

I then could change this Voltage Setting, save it and the Wattson unit would reboot - very quickly - and display the Watts based on this new Voltage value ! Wow, it works :-)

So it should be fine now for Split Phase Electricity Consumer Units in USA and Canada !



and I updated my notes on this

SMA Sunny Boy 240-US Micro Inverter - How to Install

Ben Castillo from SMA America takes us through the easy installation process of the New SMA Sunny Boy 240-US Micro Inverter



"The Solar Academy demonstrates the simple installation of the Sunny Boy 240-US micro inverter and the innovative Multigate XT communications solution."

Tesla Model S - Charging in Europe

Tesla Model S - Charging in Europe
The Model S comes with all kinds of adapters for charging

Here a 400V 32A 3-phase AC outlet

The Mennekes or Type 2 plug is the standard for EVs in Europe