I bought a Clipper Creek HCS-40 charging station for my BMW i3 about five years ago and it worked continuously and reliably for about four of those years. As of this week, it appears to be working reliably again.
It started throwing intermittent power faults a couple years ago. Its user interface reminds me of an old HP inkjet printer I once beat to death. That printer indicated all status with a single LED. The Clipper Creek has four. One means that the station itself has power. One means that the car is charging. One means that there has been a power fault. One means that there has been a charging fault. A variety of exceptional conditions are indicated with patterns of blinks by one or more of these lights.
The manual says that 'power fault' means that my house wiring has a fault. That's it. It says nothing detailed about what particular blinking sequences mean. The intermittent power faults thrown by my unit became more regular and then turned into a series of blinking codes. I took the unit apart, drained water that had accumulated inside it, drilled a weep hole, and replaced some corroded ground screws. It worked fine for a few days and went back to a state of permanent power fault. The blinking codes are irrelevant. They mean warranty replacement or Congratulations! A Blinking Unit That You May Keep. Clipper Creek offered no advanced diagnostics over the telephone. They did offer to have me send a thing the size of a cat sarcophagus back to HQ for repair at my expense. I declined.
My charging station is mounted outside on the wall of my freestanding workshop building. The workshop is connected to the back of the house with underground conduit. The service to that conduit runs the length of the house from the panel at the front. I gutted the house in 2018 and replaced the main panel and nearly every wire in the house. The utility replaced the meter and replaced the lines from the street at that time. I did not really want to revisit any of it.
While the Clipper Creek was out of commission, I charged the car using the L1 charger that came with the car. It never reported a power problem when using the same electric service in the workshop.
My theories were that the Clipper Creek had either lost its mind or there was a loose ground or neutral somewhere. I couldn't find one. I expected I would replace the Clipper Creek but I was in no hurry because the cost of a new EVSE is a notable fraction of the total cost of the electricity it will ever dispense and because I already had holes in my outside workshop wall for the Clipper Creek.
About a year before we remodeled, the water utility replaced our 3/4" lead service line with a 1" copper service line. They brought it into the house and broke up the concrete and soil in the basement right under the electric service panel where our grounding rod was. They installed a pressure regulator beneath the bonding wire that tied our copper domestic water line to ground. The regulator had a threaded union wrapped with teflon tape. The combination of dielectric union and disturbed grounding rod meant that the house apparently had a very marginal ground.
I noticed that whole situation only because the charging station came alive just for a day. I jumped on the forums and found a suggestion that Keurig machines especially might generate enough noise to confuse the charging station. Clipper Creek tech support made the same Keurig suggestion to me on the phone. If I had a Keurig, I would probably deserve this punishment. I don't but I did start spending hours at the service panel flipping circuits on and off to see if I could poke the charger back to life again.
A culprit may have been a Smarthome-branded Insteon lightswitch in the basement that had recently absolutely lost its mind. It was the only lightswitch left in the house from before the remodel. All of the other Smarthome stuff had died years earlier and been thrown away. In fact, this switch had stopped working as a switch years earlier and I just didn't care. I pulled its local disconnect and the car charger came to life.
As part of the remodel, my wife made me promise that no light switch would cost more than about two dollars. That was one of the best decisions I made. I use these.
Everything I ever bought from Smarthome turned out to be like something from Radio Shack laundered through the SkyMall catalog. I regret every single transaction.
As for Clipper Creek, I'm happy my unit is working again. I'm happy its Power Fault LED turned out to be right. I'm happy the fix didn't involve me re-trenching my back yard. I'm disappointed in a user interface that did nothing to build confidence. The EVSE LED is no more persuasive than the LED on a handyman's outlet tester that says ground is fine. I've been inside my HCS-40. Like all L2 EVSE, it's a simple product built around a microcontroller, a contactor, and some sense transformers. The cordset is probably the most expensive component. I suggest that Clipper Creek could bundle their same power fault algorithm (whatever it is) in their existing microcontroller architecture into a cheap plug-in tester with a 1-line LCD to prequalify installations and troubleshoot existing installations. They already sell a dummy EVSE tester, so it's a small leap. The majority of electricians doing residential installs own little test equipment and bring even less on calls. With manufacturers like Clipper Creek now offering plug-based EVSE, the substantial majority of EVSE installs will be done by handypersons and homeowners who have none.
