Off grid charging the Bolt

[leodoggie]

I live in California and with all the electricity shut off talk , I decided put in an emergency solar system in with Lifepo4 batteries . I designed and built it myself, one of it’s jobs is to charge the Bolt with the 120 volt charger.
The reason for this post is to alert Bolt owners about a potential problem.
When I plugged the charger into my Inverter I got a ground fault error. After a lot of research I found a solution.
So here is the disclaimer, I am not an electrician so you do this at your own risk.
Most inverters and generators have a floating neutral, so the Bolt charger will see this as a ground fault and the red light stays on and it will not charge the Bolt.
The solution is a Neutral to Ground bonding plug, if you go to the noshockzone web site all will be explained.
BTW the GM Bolt manual states that you should not charge from a generator.
But it can be done, I hope this saves some folks a lot of time

 

[GetOffYourGas]

FWIW, a similar problem and solution was discovered by the Leaf community as well. I think this will be true of most EVs.

 

[shootist2004]

cant find this plug on the progressive industries website.

 

[Pigwich]

Ground the neutral. It should be grounded at the service entry anyway, there and ONLY THERE. Attached article explains why this is important.

Option 0: Hire an electrician. Hire somebody else to burn your house down and electrocute your kids. This is the only legally permissible advice to give.

Option 1: Open the inverter and tie neutral to ground at the back of the receptacle. Depending on the outlet style, you can probably just get away with a hunk of wire and a screwdriver. I like this option best because it protects ANYTHING you plug in to the inverter.

Option 2: Find some esoteric, bespoke and overpriced plug that does the job and that may be potentially dangerous and blow up in your hand if you plug it in to a miswired household outlet. You probably won't know if it's miswired until it blows up in your hand.

Option 3: Make a mini breaker box just for your inverter, with one or two breakers in it, bond ground and neutral there, and screw the whole setup to a wall and ground it to a water pipe or a $12 grounding rod. In other words, get a short, heavy extension cord, cut it in half and put the box in the middle, bonding N and G there, male end to the inverter, female end to the car.

http://www.esgroundingsolutions.com/why-do-you-have-to-bond-the-neutral-and-the-ground-wire-in-the-main-panel/