V2G charger not working - what does a solid red light indicate?

Some great community diagnosis going on here (although from the sounds of @Jequinlan’s experience this might be one for the smarthome@ovoenergy.com inbox)

Interested to here the outcome - whether a solid red light always means a replacement or there is the chance of a potential repair?- Let us know how things go and what the Smart Home team suggest.

I still think the Smart Home Team would need more to go on, @Jess_OVO 

I’m going to stray into the realm of conjecture…. but I hope that this is reasonable conjecture!

There is probably a cooling fan within the charger to maintain air-flow over the heavy-current electronics when it gets hot.

Let’s assume that this is linked to a temperature sensor, and that the fan is modulated. Thus the air-flow increases as temperature rises.

The power devices in the charger are most likely to be MosFET transistors. They will be bolted to a chunk of aluminium that acts as a heat-sink.

The fan will draw in dust. Although there will be some sort of filter, this can’t be very fine because it would be too easily blocked. So it’s likely to be a mesh with holes about 3-5mm in it. That’s enough to stop fingers, mice and larger insects getting inside!

Some of the dust which enters the electronics will come to rest on the heat-sink. If this is cold and the charger is within an unheated space, then the aluminium will also attract condensation due to its high thermal capacity. This sticky layer of damp dust slowly coats the surface of the heat-sink and reduces its efficiency.

A MosFET which gets too hot can malfunction, causing it to switch off. As it then passes no current, it cools down, which allows it to recover. So the first sign of cooling inefficiency is probably going to be manifested as intermittent faults, indicated to the user via the Red-light flashing.

If power is left off for a few hours it is likely that matters will appear to improve.

But the source of the problem is still present.

Using the charger in Boost mode will exacerbate any issues relating to internal heating. A fan will run at a higher rate, thereby depositing more dust on the aluminium cooling fins.

The next time the charger is used the temperature sensor quite rightly closes the system down.

Now that story fits the symptoms, such as we know them. It may or may not be true.

But only @Dambrogio can give us information about the fan running and the environmental conditions around that particular charger.

The same facts would be needed by Kaluza and Indra.

Each piece of background information will help to diagnose the source of the fault.

It is also a lot cooler today.

Great news @Dambrogio 

So these nuggets of information need to come to the attention of the Smart Home Team.

I suggest you now email them with a link to this topic.

I don’t believe that the issue affecting your charger is resolved. It’s likely to present you with another red light shortly. So let’s use the interim time to get as much background knowledge as possible.

Tell us a bit about where your charger is sited, cable lengths to your consumer unit and what sort of trips got installed by the fitters. Photos would be wonderful. Don’t crop them too much because we want to see the surroundings. Thanks

it didnt last long.  failed after about 1 hour on a red flashing light.  I have since de-energised and re-energised.  It comes on, tries and links to the car, right at the end it fails the connection with the car and goes off.  so no red  light.,  but it wont connect with the car.   i will get some photographs of the installation.

Ouch, definitely time to call in extra help then!

We’ll try to offer advice as well here if we can, but I’d strongly recommend reaching out to the Smart Home Team. To be honest, I’m also curious as to whether Transparent has the right theory...

That level of detail is great @Dambrogio - the designers will be able to dismiss certain possibilities because of what you’re reporting.

I’m particularly interested to hear that you get no red light on this last occasion. That will mean more to the techies than I. Certain sequences and sensors will trigger that red indicator, whilst others won’t.

Please continue to give feedback at this sort of level. Tell me where you are “energising” the charger from. Remember I can’t see your switches, isolators and trips!

When it “fails connection with the car” tell me where you are noticing this. On the App, or on a display within the car?

Thanks.