A home EV charger is a simple thing to use and a more complicated thing to fix than most people expect — it sits between the switchboard, a dedicated circuit and the car itself, and a fault can genuinely belong to any of the three. Before you call anyone, it helps to know roughly what you’re dealing with, because “it stopped working” covers a lot of different problems with very different fixes.
This runs through the faults we see most in Brisbane home chargers, what’s usually behind each one, and when it’s worth calling an electrician rather than resetting the breaker again.
Charger won’t start charging at all
- ✓Check the obvious first. Is the charger’s status light on at all? No light usually means no power reaching the unit — check the circuit breaker and any dedicated isolator switch before assuming the charger itself has failed.
- ✓Cable or connector not fully seated. Most chargers won’t start if the connector isn’t locked into the vehicle properly. Worth a second try before anything else.
- ✓Scheduled charging is set in the car or an app. A lot of “faults” are actually a charge schedule or app setting doing exactly what it was told to do, just not when you expected it.
- ✓The charger has faulted and needs a reset. Most units have a documented reset procedure — check the manual before assuming it's dead. If a reset doesn't hold, that's a genuine fault.
Charger trips the breaker or safety switch
This is the one worth taking seriously rather than just resetting and moving on. A charger repeatedly tripping the circuit is telling you something, and repeatedly resetting it without finding out what risks a bigger failure.
- ✓A faulty RCD (safety switch) is one of the most common causes — either the RCD itself has degraded, or it's correctly detecting a genuine earth leakage fault somewhere in the charger, cable or the car's own charging system.
- ✓An undersized or shared circuit. An EV charger draws a sustained high load for hours, unlike most household appliances. If it's sharing a circuit, or the circuit and cable were never sized for continuous full-load draw, it will trip under load even with nothing actually faulty.
- ✓Moisture in the connector or unit. Outdoor and carport installations are exposed to weather, and water ingress into a connector or the charger housing is a common trigger, especially after heavy rain.
- ✓A fault inside the charger itself — ageing internal components, a failed relay, or damage from a previous fault event.
Don't just keep resetting it
A breaker or safety switch that trips once might be nothing. One that trips repeatedly is doing its job — it's found a fault. Repeatedly resetting it instead of diagnosing the cause risks the fault getting worse, or masks a genuine safety issue until it fails in a worse way.
Charging stops mid-session
- ✓Thermal protection. Chargers and the cars themselves can throttle or stop charging if either gets too hot — more relevant on a 35°C Brisbane afternoon with the charger in direct sun than most people realise.
- ✓Load management kicking in. Some installs — particularly strata, workplace or multi-charger setups — share available capacity across chargers, and one session pausing or slowing can be the system managing total load rather than a fault.
- ✓Intermittent connection fault. A cable, connector or internal wiring issue that only shows up under sustained load rather than at charger start.
- ✓The car, not the charger. Some EVs pause charging based on their own battery management (e.g. reaching a set charge limit, or battery temperature) — worth checking the vehicle's own app or dashboard before assuming the charger is at fault.
Slow charging, or charging at less than expected
A 7kW single-phase charger and a 22kW three-phase charger are genuinely different speeds, and it's worth confirming which one is actually installed before assuming something's wrong. Beyond that, some cars limit their own charging rate below what the charger can deliver — particularly on a cold battery, or where the vehicle's onboard charger is rated lower than the wall unit. A charger delivering less than its rated output consistently, with the same car, is worth having checked; a slower session on one cold morning usually isn't.
When it's worth calling an electrician
- 1The breaker or safety switch trips more than once with the same charger and car combination.
- 2The charger's status light shows a fault code rather than simply being off.
- 3There's any sign of heat, smell, scorching or physical damage at the charger, cable or the switchboard end of the circuit.
- 4A reset doesn't hold, or the fault comes straight back after resetting.
- 5You're not confident the issue is the charger and not the circuit it's on — which is genuinely hard to tell from outside, and exactly what a proper fault-find sorts out.
We repair and fault-find chargers of most major brands — Tesla Wall Connector, Zappi, Fronius Wattpilot, Sungrow, GoodWe, Wallbox and others — whether or not we installed it originally. A proper diagnosis checks the charger, the dedicated circuit, the breaker and RCD, and the connection at the switchboard, rather than guessing at which one is at fault. See our EV charger installation page for new installs.
EV charger playing up? We'll find the actual fault.