addio06

Hello all. As you guys know, there is a charging pause function on the vehicle that you can activate from the car or the app to allow you to pause charging during the most expensive electricity hours.

Does this function work for you guys? In our Tesla, it works as intended, and when the car is plugged in, the wall charger tries to deliver a charge and the car does not accept the charge until the intended time (in our case, 12:00 AM).

In our Mercedes, the wall charger will try to deliver a charge during he pausing period, the car will start to accept the charge, but instead of staying paused until 12:00 AM, the car refuses the charge, causing the wall charger to continuously cycle on and off, trying to deliver a charge and the car refuses again. Obviously this is bad for the wall charger.

The dealer is saying it is a known compatibility issue with Clipper Creek but when I brought this up before, others were having similar issues with their brands as well. Some wall chargers you can buy are Wi-Fi connected themselves and you can program those directly; I wouldn't be having this issue if I had one of those.

Anybody else have success using the on-board charging pause for their EQS? If so, let me know what brand of wall charger you guys use and maybe we will have to change ours out.

MB37

Funny you mentioned this issue. Last week, left my car plugged in to charge and went out of town during the storm in Houston. My area was not affected, but the EQS did not accept the charge. However, my Emporia charger (wifi enable) said that the car refused the charge and made no further click or clack about it. To answer your question, my car refused the charge, and the Emporia wall charger was like, OK. I won't make a fuss and I won't charge you. While the led indicator blink as if it is in charging mode, the Emporia app indicates no charging, and the EQS was not charging.

The bigger issue was that I did not set a Charge Pause on the EQS. Days after the storm when I was back in town, the EQS continue to not charge saying there is a Charge Pause. But neither my app or the EQS showed a pause. I kind of panic and rolled my eyes, but I decided to switch the charging profile to "standard" and all is normal again. I will switch it back to the Home profile with eco charging enable, and see what happens.

A theory I have is that the Profile is geolocated, and perhaps MB set any charging to pause over the air to prevent potential electrical shortage to the EQS. Perhaps I am giving MB too much credit. A guy I know who cuts hair for a living has all of his plugged in tools broken after the storm. It could just be a coincident.

Diesel Benz

I've used a CTEK Njord (Euro model) for the 223 plug-in hybrid and it works well with charging pauses set from the car. I also had a "no brand" charger from eBay many years ago and it neither had any issues with pauses.

I remember this charger cycling on and off was discussed before but cannot remember the explanation found there.

stealth.pilot

I have never found this feature functions as I expected so I deleted the pauses I set up. It's not intuitive.

nosnoop

I have Tesla Universal Wall Connector, and it would cycle every 5 to 6 minutes during charging pause.

My solution is to also set scheduled charging at the Tesla Universal Wall Connector to be at the same schedule as the car, so both the wall charger and the car would start at the same time.
And this works fine for me, the wall charger no longer cycles, and the charging would start at the intended time.

One thing I cannot set is Pre-condition departure time schedule. Once Pre-condition time is set, the charging would be delayed and timed to complete at the departure time.
This would cause the charger cycling until the charging starts.

LAZARU5

I am using the Tesla Wall Connector with a dedicated J1772 plug. This was the unit offered prior to the current Universal Wall Connector. I have one pause set for 6 hours each day. The car only charges before and after the pause and the charger does not cycle during the pause. My car is in a detached garage a good distance from where the key fob is kept.

hlothery

I stopped using charging pauses, with my ChargePoint Homeflex charger. When I set a charge pause using the onboard software in the EQS, the ChargePoint cycled every 10-15 minutes with a series of clicks, basically asking the car if it wanted to start charging. It eventually charged the car and shut off charging when it was done, but I worried about this constant clicking in my garage, and stopped using pauses. I talked to ChargePoint about it, and they said not to worry about it, but I did worry....it was unnerving. I can now immediately start a charge, and leave it connected after it is finished if I want to, and it shuts down and everything is OK. But, programming pauses produces the clicking I described, so I have stopped trying to do that. In a perfect world, the charger would wait until the programmed time to communicate with the car, start charging then, and finish and shut down. But that is not the way it works in my experience. Maybed the MB wallbox is different? Don't know.

addio06

Thanks for your reply. I had a feeling it was not just my particular brand, but was happening across other brands as well. When I started having this issue a couple of years ago, as the car and EV was new to Mercedes, I thought that they would eventually fix this, but apparently they have not. They have not communicated a timeframe to when this would get resolved.

The constant clicking is not good for the wall charger, as it is only rated for a certain number of "cycles" prior to failure. Clipper Creek says 10,000 cycles is how long the Charger is rated to last, which would last many, many years in normal circumstances, but, at every 2-3 seconds would significantly limit the lifespan of the charger.

Gilbert580

For those who have successfully set up charging pauses: do they work only on weekdays or every day? I tried setting mine up but gave up when I realized there's no option to select specific days of the week.

My wall charger has that feature, so I scheduled the pauses through its app instead of through the car. The only issue is that I usually (not always) get a charging error message when the wall charger goes into a pause. When this happens, the charging status in the app changes from blue to red. I find it annoying.

LAZARU5

Every day. There does not seem to be a way to specify only week days. I would be happy if the pauses were only recognized in the Home charging setting.

nosnoop

Interesting. I did not expect different models of the wall connectors would behave differently.
Did the wall connector cycle at least once when you first plug it in during paused time?

finlayson

Charging pauses work just fine for me (with my Lectron level-2 charger, at home).

However, I wish that it were possible to set up charging pauses to work only in Home charging mode. If I am on a road trip, and want to use a (free) level-2 charger at a hotel, I need to remember to explicitly turn off charging pauses. This is a PITA.

LAZARU5

I set up a new pause entry today and observed the following:

If I plug the Tesla Wall Connector (with J1772 plug) in during the pause period, the charger cycles once.

Later, if I open the driver's door, when the car is locked, the charger is still connected, and the pause period has not ended, then the charger will cycle again. Just once.

hlothery

I would not have known about the cycling (clicking) going on when charging pauses were programmed if I had not been in my garage, regripping all my golf clubs. That's when I kept hearing it happen, and started to get concerned. I wonder if those of you using pauses ever spend much time in your garage during a scheduled charging pause? I mean, if both Clipper Creek and ChargePoint do it........

nosnoop

Agree, you do have to stay in the garage for a period of time before you hear the clicking.
Other makes EVs don't do this? Just a Mercedes problem?

addio06

From what I can gather, ChargePoint and Clipper Creek click every 3 seconds and Tesla Wall Charger clicks every 5 minutes.

The Tesla folks whose work should see if theirs clicks every 5 minutes.

Diesel Benz

I just spent more than half an hour at the garage, the car plugged in but charging paused. No single click.

nosnoop

But plug-in hybrids don't share too much design with the EQ cars though, so may behave differently.

LAZARU5

I am in the garage for hours at a time during the Pause window and my Tesla J1772 charger does not cycle every 5 minutes. The software version on my EQS SUV is 316. My charger is not connected to my WiFi. The garage is 120 feet from the house.

addio06

When mine cycles, during the clicking, the driver instrument panel shows the pause sign over the battery charge level for a moment and then the pause sign will go away and the clicking cycle starts again.

One out of 100 times, the pause works as it should and the pause sign stays illuminated and no click happens and it works as it should.

Does your pause sign stay on during the charging pause?

Diesel Benz

They are not that different really other than the high voltage battery is bigger, electric engines more powerful etc. The AC charging circuitry is actually exactly the same. MBUX software and hardware the same, just configured differently.

hlothery

I'm also still on the 316 software version. My charger clicks about every 15 minutes when on pause, although I admit I haven't tried it again for over a year. I am wifi connected, but not sure that has anything to do with it. I think it is an issue with how it interfaces with MBUX.....at least that's the way the ChargePoint customer service people explained it. Maybe I'll try it again soon and see if it works, although I am quite satisfied just to plug in and start charging. That works well, and shuts off when it's finished, even if it remains plugged in. So, I'm not sure what value (other than from a societal aspect) a charging pause would offer me, since my electric rates are fixed.

LAZARU5

Yes. See attached photo.

Pause symbol over charge level during Pause window.

addio06

thanks for sharing. Mine is an EQS sedan. Maybe there is some difference in the charging pause programming between the two models ?

Diesel Benz

Never know but the sedan versus SUV should not make a difference. The firmware release for MBUX and other related control units can make a difference but the same core software is used for a very wide range of MB models of the same age. Hlothery seems to have quite an old MBUX version but I did not have charging pause related issues with 316 either, now have 445.

Perhaps comparing the status lights behaviour on the charger port would reveal something. When first plugged in, the car checks the charger (status and set charging current), perhaps if the charger detects the car in pause, it switches itself off and the car repeats the starting process when the charger comes back. My CTEK does not switch off even if it tells from the control app that the car has paused charging.