SolarEdge Inverter + SolarEdge EV Charger troubleshooting

[mkeys]

I've got a SolarEdge inverter (SE10000H), and a SolarEdge EV Charger (SE-EV-SA-KIT-LJ40P).

We've been using it for about a year and it has been problem free, until the beginning of this month when it stopped charging our Chevy Bolt EUV. SolarEdge support created a ticket for me but never provided any troubleshooting/diagnostics support. I got them to agree to an RMA and they sent me out a replacement unit EVSE.

I installed it today and I'm getting the exact same issue. You plug in the car, the car immediately says "Unable to charge". The charger after a while will turn its status indicators red, and beep 10 times. Reading the error logs I see a variety of similar errors about self test fails, max retries, etc. (screenshot attached).

We've been charging the car on other level 2 chargers without issue, and other aspects of our home solar have continued to work normally. I am pretty stumped here. Based on what I am seeing, the problem has to be something with the inverter or the configuration of the inverter + EVSE.

I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction on some things to check before I have to pay someone to help me get this working again.

 

[mkeys]

I should clarify/specify that the EV Charger is getting its power from the inverter. I used the SolarEdge SE-EV-KIT-V3UPG-01 Smart EV Charge Solar Boost Kit to add the appropriate terminal blocks to my SE10000H inverter for that connection.

I don't see an obvious way that you are supposed to be able to get a voltmeter to these connections without having loose wires exposed. When installed I see no like 'test pads'. I am going to open it all up and look again today with the goal of verifying the 240v to the EV charger.

 

[mkeys]

I'm not able to find anywhere to get a meter on the EV charger side of things while fully assembled. But I verified the wires going to the EV charger are both 120v to ground, and 240v together.

 

[400bird]

I'm not much help, I've never touched one of those before.

Is the self test fault set by the EVSE?

Did you get a replacement charge cord? Or just the bare EVSE?

 

[mkeys]

Hey thanks for the reply. Yes the self test fault error is coming from the EVSE, and doesn't seem to require ever having plugged into a car to trigger. It might just be a red herring though, like maybe that occurs when I power cycle my inverter.

Yes when they replaced the EVSE they also replaced the cord, so this is a brand new cord.

I wish I had the proper outlet to plug the EVSE in directly instead of powering it through my inverter, to simplify the setup and rule out additional factors. But I can't really understand why it should matter. Power is power the EVSE doesn't know if its getting it from the inverter's AC or otherwise. I am going to go re-read all the manuals today and start over, I feel like there must be some configuration or software issue causing this problem.

 

[Snaketzu]

But I can't really understand why it should matter. Power is power the EVSE doesn't know if its getting it from the inverter's AC or otherwise.

Not necessarily. Do you have a meter than can check frequency? Some products in the solar and EV charger space use frequency drops and climbs as a proxy for power loading. Since you have a brand new charger that is doing the same thing and this is a sudden problem, my troubleshooting vibes want to know that the power output of the inverter is within spec.
I would also log into my SolarEdge portal and check the production numbers for the period just before and just after this problem showed up. Unfortunately SolarEdge is often a black hole when it comes to error codes, about 50% of them simply say "contact customer service" and they won't tell you what they mean, either, if they respond to you at all.
One way to check would be to wire the charger cord directly to a 2 pole breaker in your panel and shut off the inverter so you are seeing only grid power. It shouldn't need a very large rated breaker as long as you don't actually plug in the car, you just need some 240V to power it on.
(Turn the main breaker in your panel off before removing the cover if you aren't an electrician that is comfortable working in a hot panel. Don't forget to do a structured shutdown by turning off all of the loads breakers first. In the same manner, turn the main breaker back on first, then the loads breakers when you are done.)

 

[mkeys]

It's an interesting thought. I will see if one of my meters does frequency today. I would think the AC is just 'passthrough' from the grid in the inverter, at least at night time when the sun isn't shining though right? This problem has effected us day and night.

As far as testing this purely on the grid I might take it over to a friends house who I think has the right NEMA outlet already on the side of their (new construction) house. My panel is in a difficult place for this testing. Also my mother in law is on oxygen so while there are backups she can use when power is out, it puts her in an undesirable spot.

 

[Snaketzu]

Also my mother in law is on oxygen so while there are backups she can use when power is out, it puts her in an undesirable spot.

I like the idea of taking it to a friend's house with the correct receptacle the best. No power outage and that's the best possible A/B test.
My money is on the inverter being the culprit. When those SolarEdge inverters have a problem all kinds of weird issues and error codes start happening.

 

[mkeys]

I tested the frequency, sitting very steady at 59.99/60Hz.

Talking to my friend now to verify they have the right outlet I need to bring it over to their house and test it there.

 

[mkeys]

Brought it over last night but they had the wrong outlet type. I might pick up a Nema 6-50 to 14-50 adapter and take it back over there. I'm otherwise stumped on why this thing won't work.

 

[mkeys]

Okay I went back to my friends house today with an adapter and was able to test the EV charger on my friends 240v outlet. It all just worked, no fuss; just plugged it all in and it worked.

So I guess this points toward my inverter being the issue somehow. I'm not sure if there is more testing I can do to further narrow down the issue or if I need to start an RMA process with SolarEdge to get a new inverter.

I do wonder if it is possible for the AC terminal block itself to somehow be the issue? When I ordered the EV charger solar boost kit for this inverter, they actually sent me an extra set of all the terminal blocks. Annoyingly I just got rid of them some months back as I had no use for them and we were cleaning up the utility room.

I'm also wondering if its worth trying to find a way to wire up a 240v receptacle from my houses grid power to further eliminate other variables and confirm the issue is somewhere within the inverter itself.

 

[mkeys]

The inverter gets its grid power through a 60A breaker in a combiner box. I picked up a NEMA 6-50 outlet at the hardware store. I am going to shut down the inverter, and instead power this outlet directly from that 60A breaker the inverter normally uses. If the EV charger works from that outlet it would seem to confirm that the failure is between the EV charger and our grid power supply, so ... the inverter.

From within the inverter there are a couple terminal blocks for these AC connections I could look at, and beyond that its all the brains of the inverter and not much for me to test/change out.

I should be able to test my new outlet tomorrow or maybe late tonight.

 

[mkeys]

Okay this is solved. The TLDR for anyone reading here is that the ground connection from the grid to my solar inverter was severed. The only symptom of this I was experiencing was the EV charger not working, all of the solar generation and exporting kept working normally.

I had removed the inverter from the equaition earlier today and was still having the same problem so I kept opening up different panels/combiner boxes on the side of my house and tracing wires between everything. When I got to the AC ground from one of the panels I followed it back behind my meter from my energy provider and it had been cut clean behind a pipe where it was not easily visible.

Some weeks ago we had one leg of our 240v service go down and our energy company recently re-ran our power from the street to the meter. So they must have severed it either intentionally or unintentionally. I suspected the timing of that event was somehow related to this but I thought it was because it caused equipment failure. We even had a successful charge after their work, but the loose ground wire must have been touching the panel housing or something causing it to work for a while until it stopped touching anything and was just hanging on the brick.

The SolarEdge EV charger does a 'self test' at start up and must check for ground and throw it's hands up if it doesn't have a good ground. I wish their error code was more specific about *why* it failed self test.

So I am equally relieved and annoyed at the resolution here. I hope this helps someone else in the future as I've been racking my brain for weeks trying to figure this one out.

Thanks to those who helped me think along the way.

 

[Snaketzu]

That's very interesting, I am glad you got it solved.
I never run the ground wire outside of the conduit in the outdoors unless it is required for classified areas when using LFMC. This would be a good reason why, weather degradation would be another.

 

[mkeys]

Yeah glad to have it solved too. I think running the ground outside of the conduit must be somewhat common, but there is so much conduit to go around I wish they hadn't. I say 'they' because I actually had this system installed by a company before taking ownership of it over to install the EV charger/maintain it myself.

We've got a gas meter on the other side of the house which is bonded to the electric meter panel as well. Or at least it is supposed to be. Duke energy cut that wire too. No idea what they are thinking.

 

[400bird]

Edit: I meant to quote your line about running the ground outside the conduit...

I doubt that's code compliant, but I'm no expert.

My question is, why was the PV inverter OK with an open ground? That should have caused a fault for the inverter.

 

[mkeys]

As far as code goes, I am no expert either. However this did all pass inspection after installation so it seems it passes the mustard, at least here in NC.

Why the inverter kept working with the open ground, also a mystery to me. Nothing in the error logs, everything in the app looked normal the whole way through this process of figuring out what was wrong.

 

[b0bg]

Although this is an older thread, I want to thank @mkeys for sharing his troubleshooting here. This is exactly the info I needed to chase down my gremlin (also a ground issue, but on the inverter side). The information here is more thorough, and ultimately more useful, than the vague and unhelpful SolarEdge "documentation".

....now to figure out why my EVSE won't take any firmware updates.