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I have a Kia Niro PHEV in New Zealand. Charging is 240 VAC (single phase) at a max of 16 amps via a Mennekes type 2 charging cable.

This isn't listed in the vehicles compatibility list, but I assume from the number of European models listed that the Niro PHEV would be compatible - very grateful if somebody could confirm this.

Also I'm wondering how the Mennekes pilot signal cables should be connected.

My understanding - which is a bit limited!, is that the charging cable has a resistor in the charging cable plug between PP and earth to define the current capacity of the charging cable. Therefore for a single phase charger, no connection is required from PP to the controller?

For CP (control pilot) I believe the signal protocol is identical to the J1772 protocol and that CP is connected to the controller in the same way as for a J1772 charging cable.

Very grateful if someone can confirm the above before I go ahead and order to kit.

Chris

I have connected an OpenEVSE to a type 2 connector in Sweden, so it would be nice to make use of the PP. Are there still EU builds at openenergymonitor? The builds at the link above has not been updated for 3 years.

Yeah so the station is untethered. The circuit is only 16A so it's unlikely someone would bring a cable with lower current capacity but it would be nice to be compliant just in case.

So if there's no EU build, how does one enable the PP?

Circuits in Sweden are rated at continuous load, so 16A is permissible. But this brings up an interesting question because all the cables and outlets etc that I've been able to find here are rated at either 16 or 32A. I guess I should measure the PP resistance of my "16A" cable.

Ok looks like my "16A" cable advertises itself as a 20A.

Glanced at the firmware code and it seems one needs to uncomment "// #define PP_AUTO_AMPACITY" in open_evse.h.

So I attempted to update the controller with a new firmware by building "openevse_eu" and also setting PP_AUTO_AMPACITY, but this did not work. The firmware appeared to flash ok (using a usbtiny), and in the web firmware menu it does say "8.2.3_EU", but when I plug in the car nothing happened.

I then tried reverting to both the "openevse" and "openevse_1-8-3" configs but the same thing happens, the controller is alive (it cycles the relay on boot, version shows up in the firmware menu, and I can see stuff happening in the openevse debug log, but when I plug in the car nothing happens. It is not registered in the log as a "car connected" event and the relay does not close.

Any idea what I might have broken? Just to double-check, the controller board says "openevse v5.6", the correct firmware is https://github.com/OpenEVSE/open_evse and 8.2.3 (which is the current master) should work?

The station worked perfectly before the firmware upgrade, so all physical connections should be OK. I did actually get it working by flashing with the pre-built emonevse firmware from github as opposed to building and uploading it myself.

It appears the behavior with the emonevse firmware is different than with the original. I believe with the original firmware the relay would close even though the car was fully charged and did not pull any current. The car would then display "plugged in and fully charged". Now it appears to not do this, the relay does not close and the car says "error, check external charging station". This is why I thought it was not functioning. However, when I tried with a depleted battery, the charge does start and proceed normally.

When the car is plugged in but fully charged, the log on the web ui is full of instantaneous state changes between "Disabled - sleeping" -> "Active - car connected" -> "Charging" (but doesn't actually charge anything) -> "Active - car connected" and then, at some seemingly arbitrary time later, back to "Disabled - sleeping ".  Is this the car waking the EVSE up in some way, even though it doesn't have to charge?

I verified that the PP_AUTO_AMPACITY seems to work, but I don't think it works as desired. However, the open_evse repo doesn't have an Issue tracker on github. Should issues be reported through discussion topics?