MG ZS EV Exicom Home Charger Tripped
It is raining pretty heavily in Mumbai and the charger went all RED!
So, this is slightly different from my usual blogposts, but it is important, so I am documenting it here for easy reference.
I put my car to charge at home because I am headed to a trek locally in Mumbai. The car started charging with no issues, however, 10-15 mins into it, the charging stopped.
I tried resetting the charger and that didn’t work. I then checked the MCB installed by Exicom, and that too was on. I went inside the meter room and the MCB coming from the meter was also on. I tried to switch off everything and tried to start again, but sadly there was no light on the charger. I whipped out a tester and opened the MCB unit to see if there’s power coming in. Nope, no luck.
I traced the wire back to the meter room MCB. I went on to check the meter and realised that was off, or had tripped. Stupid mistake, should have seen this in the first time itself. However, pleased that I found the source of the issue, I flicked on the meter, the meter turned on. I subsequently turned on the rest of the MCBs and voila, the charger came back to life. However, with a problem.
The light was supposed to be green and not red. This was the first time I was facing this issue. My first instinct was to reach out to the community on Telegram and the dedicated MG community on the Pulse App. Some people suggested that it is an earthing issue. However, a user on Pulse app, goes by the username Teja Bolla, was quick to help. He suggested that I download the iPlugged App from the App Store / Play Store. It is an app used to manage Exicom charger.
TIL. I was never informed of this app by MG / Exicom / Chargebays. The app provides a bunch of rich data which I never had access to, before. The app is also used to provide an OTA to the charger if needed. The app also has bunch of session and error logs for quick and easy access! A data mine!
The Exicom chargers have bluetooth and you need to be next to the charger to pair your bluetooth with it. The way to pair it is by entering modelnumber#serialnumber in the field and stand close to the charger. Soon enough it will pair your phone’s bluetooth with it and the data will start flowing. You can start / end session too. More on that later.
When I paired, this is what I was greeted with.
You can swipe around and it will land you on this tab.
I couldn’t see any alarms here. I checked the session logs → alarm logs and this is what I found.
As you can see, the emergency detect was still set instead of being clear. Which meant that I had forgotten to un-reset the charger and that is why it was blinking red.
For the uninitiated, there’s a red reset button on the right side of the charger, which needs to be unpressed for regular usage, and if it is pressed it means that it is currently in reset mode.
I unset the charger and the car started charging. Hope you enjoyed this little misery that I went through. I’ll obviously be monitoring my charging till it is 75% and above.
Some key points :
MG should send an alert whenever the charging session is initiated and stopped, otherwise why is it “Internet inside”?
Pretty cool app by Exicom, which is used by technicians to debug and understand what’s happening with the charger.
The Exicom MCB should’ve also tripped if the main meter MCB tripped. And we still don’t know why it tripped.
Always RTFM. Keep a tester handy, always.
Community helps you faster than the technicians themselves. Join ‘em and help people!
This piece can be re-published (CC BY-NC-SA) with a line mentioning ‘This was originally published on ExperiencesWithEVs Substack’ and a link back to this page. In case of re-publishing, please alert priyansevs@gmail.com