so today we're going to look at these EV charger test adapters
and why they're a fantastic bit of kit if you're installing EV charge points
i'll start off with their fantastic bits of kit this is probably the cheapest EV car on the market
well it's mimicking one so we can plug it in and carry out some of those tests that are needed
a current to flow in other words those live aspects of testing yeah if you don't have one of
those yeah there's so many safety features built into an EV charge point that if you don't have
one of those to yeah create the impression that there's a car there you'd be it'd be impossible
to do those tests unless you say i wanted to remove the cover but obviously you've installed
the charge and you want to validate that actually working so you don't have a return visit the site
if it actually doesn't work and the A1532 we've done it on the channel already me and Joe have
gone all the way through how to carry out the tests on an EV charging point and if you haven't
seen that video we'll leave it in the link in the description and possibly the eye above our heads
yes it will be that is a fantastic video yeah but today we're not looking at actual the test
procedure itself we're going to take a closer look at the testers themselves or the test adapters and
some of the clever features that are in an EV charge point that will explain how these work
and what obviously these various buttons do so i think first Gary probably have a look at the
common type 2 plug okay so most EV's now use when they're charging at home so i've got one here if
i take the cover off let's have a look in there so we'll see uh uh obviously familiar connections
yeah earth connection uh obviously three phases because these can support up to three phase
charging neutral and then these two here labelled PP and CP which are the key to the operation of
our test adapter and obviously the charge point itself can just remind what PP stands for so PP
is the proximity pilot or it's also known as plug present so i think the car is plugged in
and ready to charge then the CP the control uh the control pilot then talks between the charger
and the car itself right and obviously they have a conversation say the car wants 32 amps the charger
says actually i'm capable of producing 32 amps and just so you can see what's going on there
we've managed to pull out a circuit diagram very simplified version of what's actually going on
between the car and the charger right okay so as i look at that there was something we investigated
wasn't it that the lead itself is probably the key element of this so i might have 32 amp fuse
i might have the ability to draw 32 amps into the car but my lead might not be rated that would it
yeah and that was something surprising we found out and that's where the proximity pilot comes
in or the plug present there's a resistor between the PP connection and the earth or the protective
earth in the cable that the value of that resistor tells the charger and the car what capacity the
cable connecting the two together has okay so that that makes perfect sense i get a lead that's only
capable of doing 13 amps i sit in the car or it takes forever to charge you up and i'm ringing up
the electrician saying well hang on a minute you put a 32 amp supply in it i know my car can take
it it's taking three times as long to charge as you said it would well actually the first fault
finding thing is have a look at that lead isn't it yeah you've bought a incredibly competitively
priced lead on a well-known online retailer that does next day free delivery and perhaps it's not
to the specification of the original cable that came with the car and obviously as time goes on
cables are going to wear out you might might need a replacement so that was something yeah
we thought was quite interesting to note as we've gone through this that yeah if you if you've ever
had a service call and the car's not charging at the rate it could be down with a cable yeah that's
a really key piece of information also as we look at these two adapters it looks as if i've got
a different button arrangement on the new one do you want to take a little closer look at that
yes so there is so uh let's have a closer look at the tester so this is the
uh this is the A 1532 XA from Metrel okay and so here's our button that mimics the uh the PP
or the uh the proximity pilot or the plug present so you can set that to different current ratings
and that's the rated value of the fuse uh supply and EV charger isn't it yeah that's capable of
supplying and then we've got the diff this uh the control pilot that mimics the effect that
the car is plugged in in a basically a standby mode or say the car is fully charged or in
position see that the car is charging now if we campaign contrast this with a previous version
that we featured in our earlier video we had this button E right okay so button E was for an error
code and that was basically the control pilot had been connection had been lost i wasn't there to
mimic that and at which point the charger should shut down okay yep so that was just one fault you
press you press the button in the video that you can see in the link in the description it created
a fault and obviously it stopped charging didn't it yeah and um yeah that was fine but obviously
EV charges all was always changing in different parts of the world have brought different charges
standards in and different fault tests that they want electricians to do so Metrel have kept up to
date with that and that E button has now been replaced by three individual buttons okay so
i'll bring it in and we'll have a little look at the three new buttons so they're the three
there so yeah so the most uh obviously probably uh popular one would be this one here so this is a
simulates that the fault in the earth connection to the car so between the charger and the car
there's a fault with the earth that's a fault now that we can test for we can test for that
here's a problem with our control pilot so that's similar to what we had before yeah that's
what i had before and then there's this other button here with the diode symbol that's
simulating a fault within the electronics of the actual charger in the car all right and so yeah so
you've got those those three options so it may not be a requirement in this country as normal as we
say on the EV charging yet yeah okay so in other parts of the world it is so Metrel have obviously
updated theirs in order to add those functions in that's really good i like that where do you want
to take me next um so we'll just just approve that packed on the uh on the uh on the plug present
connection we're going to measure the resistance before we can just measure the resistance so let's
uh let's boot up our Metrel we've got the 3155 today we're going for the Rolls-Royce
version here so i'll just do a single test let's have a look for nice and low continuity test
right so we think there's different values now don't we depending on the amp rating of the lead
yeah so this is a 32 amp cable so we expect this to be around 200 and i think it's 220 ohms um so
i'm going to probe it between i'll just take the top off that one there so we can get into the
earth connection between there and our proximity pilot so measuring that resistance and you expect
it to be press the play button remember wow spot on yeah so that resisted value
tells the uh car and charger the communications that actually we've got a rated 32 amperes
so what about if it was a different value what about so if it's a lower value then that that
value tends to increase all right okay so it's clever it is clever and until we made this video
we didn't realize we tried just turn that button to that we've tested them before but we don't
actually know what's going on with that button and Metrel added another function because what's
uh what also do we sometimes add now at the origin of our supply origin of our supply we add uh
we've current transformers on going forward yeah i was going to go somewhere else then i've gone
current transformer yeah we were off to well no i'll leave it so so current transformer so
what we could have a situation is that we've installed an EV charger like we did the Zappi
if you haven't checked out our uh EV install where we took that journey through again there'll
be a link in the description so that had a current transformer that measured so we didn't over stress
the incoming fuse also linked to the app didn't it but what if i've got the charger installed before
the car as the electrician and i want to confirm that because it wasn't that wirelessly connected
yeah that was wirelessly there's hard wired current transformers but what the easiest mistake
to make on a current transformer is what's that here it could be the wrong way round yeah okay so
the power flow is going yeah completely opposite direction yeah again it's a very simple mistake to
make especially when you've got multiple tails and yeah the meter box is a bit of a jumble you can
put them around the wrong way so one way to test for that is to use the test adapter so say you've
commissioned the app on behalf of the customer right i'm going to show you the power flow you
can still connect your meter through the terminals so use the banana plugs yeah the banana plugs okay
use those yep but then you can plug something like uh you know a fan heater what like this like a fan
heater yeah so you plug the fan heater in to mimic the fact that there's a car there so you
can set it to stay at C charging plug in a one kilowatt heater or a load and then my app will
tell me and then hopefully if your app set up and the current transformer is in the right direction
you can you can do that too so so the car's not there we've not arrived we've got any of those
issues and that means we're leaving it and we're probably not going with that call back are we
yeah so we're confident we've we've done done the installation that is yeah that is a nice
little feature and one that we found out as well today didn't we yeah um so yeah so again Metrel
keeping up to date with the with the changes in the market obviously when we've used this we're
pairing it with that we've used the 3152 we've stepped up the 3155 here um and obviously that
if you haven't seen the video on that the meter itself guides you through the whole test procedure
but you can also make changes yourself because another thing we've noticed a lot happening with
EV chargers is a lot of them have all of the RCD functions built into the charger itself
but some of the ones we're seeing now just have the DC leakage part in there and then rely upon an
external RCD as well so you may want to come up with a dedicated function or test sequence for
the charger that you're actually installing okay and we've done that before we did that
in a different we did um we reconfigured uh some for three-phase insulation resistance didn't we
yeah the ten test for the insulation resistance we configured it in there again check out that video
because we could program it in so it automatically did it through the switch didn't that's it
as always we're interested in your feedback on anything to do with EV we've done a massive series
of videos and if you haven't checked them all out there is a playlist on EV and it'd be worth
working your way through it if you're new to EV or you're looking to buy an EV but there is one thing
we want to address that keeps coming up we know this over here is not charging the vehicle what
is it actually doing here it's a connection point to enable you to charge the build the
actual charge and people correct us on that all of the time and they entirely write that actually
this charge part here it isn't an EV charger it's a connection it powers AC into the car
where the charging electronics in the car actually transform that AC into the DC required to charge
the battery in this case but perhaps in the future we'll look at some of the generation of fast
dc charges that are coming along that use a slightly different approach and if there's
anything else you want us to touch on in this series but but first of all check the play let's
see what we have done in there if there's anything missing you'd like us to add in it leave in the
comments below we're trying to add it in and we'll get back to as many of those comments as we can