Charging during a thunderstorm?

[wilmerfjohnson]

Hi! The first serious thunderstorm rolled in as I pulled into the driveway today. Whenever I get home, the Lightning gets plugged in, until today....

A couple of years ago I had a lightning strike on my property and it fried my cable TV connected devices and everything connected to my ethernet network. Does the Lightning have surge or lightning strike protection? Asking because it'd be really nice to be charging it up now in case I have a power failure.

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[thedadlegend]

Interesting question. I installed a whole home surge protector long ago. I assume that plus rubber tires prevent the truck from becoming THE path to ground. Would love to know official stance though!

 

[TaxmanHog]

DO NOT CHARGE!

 

[Whammy Bar]

The manual strikes again.

 

[Maquis]

DO NOT CHARGE!

So as long as the storm isn’t “severe” we’re good to go!

 

[Pod]

Wait…I cannot charge my truck, called a LIGHTNING in a severe storm? What’s next, you gonna tell me I do not have phone as key…oh wait

 

[Labs4Lightning]

Charge before the storm, in case it takes out power you are full.

 

[SmoothJ]

I think this is due to liability and not knowing how your electrical infrastructure is at your home. I believe if you have the proper grounds, and have a whole house surge, you should be fine. I had many electrical cars since 2016 and charged in many storms without issues.

 

[Maquis]

I think this is due to liability and not knowing how your electrical infrastructure is at your home. I believe if you have the proper grounds, and have a whole house surge, you should be fine. I had many electrical cars since 2016 and charged in many storms without issues.

If your home or the service wiring leading to it suffer a direct strike, all the grounding, surge protection, and tin foil hats in the world aren’t going to protect connected equipment.

But the odds of a direct strike are pretty slim unless you live on top of a hill. In 2+ years, I’ve yet to take any special precautions in this regard.

 

[TaxmanHog]

And most of us are all still waiting on the powerball, I'll do me ..... you do you.

 

[Calvin H-C]

If your home or the service wiring leading to it suffer a direct strike, all the grounding, surge protection, and tin foil hats in the world aren’t going to protect connected equipment.

Besides, the state of your connected equipment will be a minor worry as your home is engulfed in the ensuing flames from the lightning strike.

Seriously, in the 5+ years since having a Focus Electric, I never thought twice about plugging in the car when a storm is coming or underway. Leaving the flag flying on our flagpole if the storm has high winds, now that's a different story.

 

[chl]

Hi! The first serious thunderstorm rolled in as I pulled into the driveway today. Whenever I get home, the Lightning gets plugged in, until today....

A couple of years ago I had a lightning strike on my property and it fried my cable TV connected devices and everything connected to my ethernet network. Does the Lightning have surge or lightning strike protection? Asking because it'd be really nice to be charging it up now in case I have a power failure.

If lighting (from a storm) hits your property, no regular surge protector is going to help. Lightning can deliver 100s of thousands of volts to a circuit with a direct strike. Most surge protectors cannot handle the high voltage high amps of such a surge and will melt-down, literally.

I had two lightning strikes over 20 years ago on my property, one hit a tree in the back yard and found some underground telephone cables and fried all my computer network cards and modem cards - that was back in the days when modems went over phone lines, which is how the lightning found its way into my computers.

The second one hit my attic roof fan about a week later and fried the newly replaced network cards...but this time the "juice" followed the fan power line to the house breaker box and fused the breaker in the closed/connected position, then apparently jumped to a close by branch circuit down to a wall outlet into which my printer sever was plugged - through a surge protector btw - melting the insulation on the wire in the wall near the outlet and fusing/melting the surge protector electronics (MOV varistor, thyristor or Zenor diodes) also frying the PC's internal power supply and yes, finally traveling down the network cable to fry the other networks cards.

I was lucky there was no fire!

After that, I had my power company install a whole house surge protection package which included multiple ground rods added to the service near the meter, as well as a surge protector at the service entrance, and multiple outlet surge protectors for indoor use.

Bottom line, nothing short of a lightning arrester (like utility companies use) will protect you house from a direct or very near by lightning strike.

Since 2022, electrical codes call for new circuit installations, e.g., your new Ford EVSE charging equuipment, to have surge protection, but one can opt-out of the requirement.

My L2 GE WattStation, bought in 2011 for my 2012 model yearNissan Leaf, included built-in 6kv surge protection.

However, there were some cases where charging a Leaf using the GE WattStation during a thunderstorm or blackout/power loss resulted in problems -i.e., damage to the Leaf on-board circuitry.

However, the problem was found to be in the Leaf itself when used with certain EVSE's and a program change recall for the Leaf fixed the potential issue.

“Nissan and GE have completed their investigation into the instances of Nissan Leafs experiencing on-board charging (OBC) issues when using certain EV chargers (sic.) Nissan has traced the root cause of the issue to the Leaf’s OBC software that can allow damage to occur to its OBC components while using certain chargers and in certain instances, such as when a brief under voltage or blackout condition occurs,” a GE spokesman told us.

See: https://www.greencarreports.com/new...ndicated-leaf-blamed-in-charging-station-woes

That said, better safe than sorry. I never charge my Leaf when a storm is expected.
I didn't install additional surge protection or lightning arresters since I had the whole house surge protection installed.

I'd say if one lives in an area with frequent lightning strikes unplug sensitive things during a thunderstorm. For lower level power surges, install surge suppression on at least the EVSE circuit - for example whole house surge suppressing breakers are available for the breaker box or 2-pole single circuit ones for less money.

Of course if lightning does strike and fry the surge suppressing breaker, then you'll have to replace it.

Home owners insurance should cover a major loss due to power surge/lightning strike, but read you policy to be sure, and there's the deductible.

 

[GarageMahal]

From personal experience (https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...nd-of-lightning-strike-damaged-charger.15234/) I am happy to report that the truck was unaffected although it was actively charging when lightning struck close enough to blow up the EVSE.

 

[Joneii]

Risk is a combination of the likelihood of a hazard occurring and the consequences if that hazard does occur. A direct lightning strike is unlikely, but the consequences are potentially significant. In my case, we have a very large underground dog fence (about 1/2 mile copper loop). This increases the area of a potentially damaging lightning strike to about 8 acres as a direct hit near that wire has a pretty easy path back to my home electrical system. The power of a direct hit can easily overcome the inline surge protection. A couple of years ago a strike took out the dog fence, my internet router, my septic pump and a few GFCI outlets. That was before the EVs, but we did have an RV which wasn’t plugged in at the time luckily. This means that if I know a storm is coming, I’ll unplug the EVs. However, if one rolls through while they are plugged in and I’m not able to unplug them, I don’t sweat it too much.

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