Gridserve chademo problem

[Mr Gus]

Wife & daughter were out getting daughter parallel parking & shopping which meant a Chademo charge on the return leg today.

Gridserve in Peterborough, seems they have upgraded their chargers recently (have used this place a few times)
Wife tried hooking into the chademo unit which was trying to pump 100kW into the leaf which as you'd expect refused the charge, (I got a phonecall about it as she never uses reason when this happens

Suffice to say they got back fine with 7% but drove slowly to make sure.

What went wrong? (i'll have to report it to gridserve y'see) i'm obviously used to faulty chargers but not ones that try to "overjuice" you.

[Mr Gus]

Update, wife went into the "extra" services (as the facility is called) no management there to speak of merely lots of fatberg inducing fast food outlets.

She coasted home, plugged in (no problem)

This morning I rang gridserve who weren't open to take calls beyond a switchboard (ie not 24 hour capability so be warned) the lady lacked customer service skills, .."help" after nine am.

The lady was insistent that if she'd called straight away they could have sorted it out (does she possess both a crystal ball & psychic sensibilities)!?
Fact is that after ramping up to 100 kw (apparantly) & the car refusing the charge (as it should) she wasn't keen on the car being used as a "test dummy" with likely no comeback / protracted, expensive argument if things went wrong.

Why would a chademo, with a limit of 60kW ramp up so hard to a supposed 100kw? (I wasn't there so cannot comment)

[Ken]

how did your wife know it was trying to charge at 100kw especially as they dont seem to achieve that when people want it on CCS cars which could take it. ?

Ken

[Mr Gus]

She's not currently here to ask, but presumably via an LCD screen on the gridserve unit.
That unit also has a ccs on the other side.

[Mr Gus]

Oy vey that was a bad phonecall at the hands of an inept CS person, as a result I haven't even been able to report the apparant fault.

No supervisor to speak to (for whatever it would have been worth) suffice to say the woman I spoke to (chanelle)!? should choose another profession, she was abysmal. not listening, & talking over me when I was speaking, ie trying to give the full letter & numeric detail (last 5 digits not deemed acceptable)

I'm off to put a brew on, sad waste of time though, felt like a strangulated testicle type experience, what a waste of time that still needs sorting.


Hope their management is better, a wedge of their website is missing (in progress) ..the woman I spoke to took umbrage at me asking about data use & "didn't like my tone" (what, deaf, & asked you to simply slow down your speech & speak up a bit)!?

Clearly i'm a complete A-hole.
Wonder what she'd be like with the fiercely independent guy who I used to regularly deal with on the phones via his early 2000's letter tapping speech system!

[Ken]

I dont think that can happen? The charger asks the car what charging rate is required as this depends on the state of charge of the car. So the car has failed to provide this info or the charger has chosen to ignore it. The charger/car would respond in millisecs to a fault and not show it charging at the wrong rate but then again the charger might say after why it stopped ?? Interesting.

[Mr Gus]

Yup, that's why I asked.
To be fair I haven't charged the car on a chademo since sometime before lockdown, so my battered brain, "thinks" its seen a ramp up & settle down" Kw previously, but my memory recall obviously sucks, otherwise i'd be more purposeful / thorough in my query here.

Not having seen it myself i'm somewhat dubious as to figures but cannot discount it happening if the gridserve unit is knackered (electrical anomaly) however as the wife wasn't willing to try it again (needed to get back home pretty urgently) & knowing how you can hang on the phone for assistance & then an engineer who can hopefully re-set it in a timely manner she chanced her arm & came home, whereupon it was put straight on & took a low level charge.