Checking out the charger

After the success with getting the motor turning, I moved to the charger.  It was all wired in, I just needed to plug in the heavy 120V extension cord and see what happens.

Success!  The red light shows it's in the startup phase of the charging cycle.

The temperature probe is deep inside the junction of 4 batteries in the front pack.

Here's a view of the charger in action.  Note that the charging system cuts off the 12V to the rest of the car and the state-of-charge gauge goes offline.

 

The battery box fan circuit came on, exhausting the hydrogen generated during charging.  Each battery box has a fan and a duct to the outside.

 

The DC voltage pushed out of the charger started around 139V and peaked at 148V.

 

I put my Kill-A-Watt between the wall plug and the charger cable.  It was dark by then but you can see it's pulling 14.64 amps...

for a total of 1262 watts.  That's a good size microwave or hair dryer.  Next time I do a full charge I'll get it to give me the total kilo-watt-hour (KWH) count of energy pulled.  This will help me estimate my yearly energy draw to see the impact on my solar power system.  I currently make about 80% of the power I use, so adding car charging will drop that down.  I have a clever plan to add a solar carport over my parking area.  This will shade the cars to keep them cool in the blasting heat of the sun, plus make some additional solar power.