Hello today, i'm going to do some tests on my largest power bank, which is my car. It's the mg zs ev, and i'm going to use my new v2l cable, which is this one, which i got from ev cables, dot, co, dot. Uk i've got a commando to regular three pin uh small extension lead there and the graphical multimeter. So first, a little word about the v2l cable, so evcables.co.uk are making v2l cables.

This one is for the mg cars mg zs ev at the moment and then later on, the mg5, the new style, mg5 and anything mg bring out subsequently. Now this is a 10 meter, type 2, so type 2 at that end to a c form or commando socket at the other end. So, theoretically, this cable is capable of 16 amps um. It's just that the mg zs is not rated for 16 amps.

It's only rated for well 2.2 kilowatts, but let's connect this to the car and do some initial tests type 2 plug connected to the car's normal charge. Port wire running down here. I've kicked it under the car so as not to trip up the postman and because this is 10 meters i can run it all the way just inside the fence. Here right, let's switch on the v2l, so i need to go to the discharge.

Uh screen. I've got it set to discharge down to uh 40 and then switch off. I can change that. I can move that to 20 percent.

I'm not planning to use a large amount of the battery for these tests, but, let's start the discharge. Listen out for the relay clicks and although i didn't hear the clunks of the contactors that is now on it says discharging so, we should have mains voltage on that commando or c form connector and with the discharging system switched on, i can actually switch the car Off get out of the car and lock the door, i'm going to uh shut the gate here, because it'll be a little bit quieter without the traffic noise, so my 16 amp socket is down there, let's plug in the extension lead and the graphical multimeter. So there's the commando plug-in socket supplying mains to this socket. Here's my graphical multimeter, i've put it in the shade right just check that these connections are not in the 10 amp, because that would be pretty disastrous.

Okay, let's plug it in see what we get well. The voltage is quite low, it's 223 volts, so well below 240. Nevertheless, that's still going to operate, i would say almost all pieces of equipment i'm likely to plug into this okay. So let's press and hold this that should put it into graphical mode and then for some reason it doesn't auto range and i can never remember which way these buttons go and that i've gone too far.

That's the sine wave: we've got 49 hertz once again, 222.9 volts and the sine wave looks pretty sinusoidal to me now i've just plugged in this mains tester this parkside one and you can see it's got just the green led in the middle lit. And if you look at the table, it's saying missing earth so there's no current flowing from live down to earth or at least back to earth on the car. It doesn't provide a circuit for that. I suppose that's right, but as far as this test is concerned, the earth is missing.

So that's an interesting effect. I think i remember plugging this tester into various power banks with mains outlets and they show exactly the same missing earth. So there's no path from live back to earth. Just a quick test on this power meter uh in voltage mode.

That's saying: 222 volts! The meter is saying 222.8, so they're in fairly good correlation. So now i'm going to start using this fan heater to start drawing power and see how much power i can draw so i'll turn. The heater on i've now got the power meter in the watts setting. So that's saying: 884 kilowatts.

Now it's a bit lower than one kilowatt, because, of course this is uh one kilowatt at 240, volts. Okay, let's turn it up to the two kilowatts setting, i'm now pulling 1.72 kilowatts and yeah. I can feel a fair bit of heat coming out of the front of that heater. All going up into the sky, of course, wasted um, let's see if the sine wave has changed in any way.

Well, it doesn't appear so yeah, so i can only actually pull 1.7 kilowatts with this two kilowatt heater, i'm going to need either a bigger heater or more heaters. I now have this silver crest oil filled radiator, which has, i think, 800 1602 kilowatt settings on this dial, but it also has a 400 watt fan heater. Now all those wattage is going to be slightly low because of the low voltage, but i've also got the two kilowatt fan heater, which can be one kilowatt or two kilowatt, but i really want to get them all onto this measuring device um. This should be good.

It says three one two, oh watts on the back as the maximum, but i know these are supplied in different country flavors, so the shuco version of this is probably good for 16 amps. So i would imagine we can overload this we'll give it a try. Now the trouble is, i've got two plugs here and i want to get them out of this one socket. So i found this but it's pound shop and it's quite nasty and it's also got a 13 amp fuse in it.

So we'll push it as high as we can until either that fuse blows or something else blows here. We go. Oil filled radiator on its first setting, that's 740 watts. Let's switch that to its 1600 watt setting and that's only maybe it was 1200 watts.

Anyway. That's only one kilowatt, let's turn it to its two kilowatts setting and that's pulling just shy of 1800 watts. Now, let's turn on the one kilowatt fan heater as well: oh that's going to be quite a lot. Let's back this off put on the one kilowatt fan heater and we're now pulling 1.9 kilowatts, we can go up to 2.2, that's what the car is rated for.

So let's turn this one up. Oh i'm actually pulling 2.6 kilowatts. Now! That's interesting because the mg zs i've seen rated for the v2l i've seen rated at either 2.2 or 2.5 and i'm putting 2.6. I wonder if i'd dare switch on this fan heater.

Let's just do it and see what happens. 2.7. Oh 2.8. Kilowatts.

2.88. Now. 2.9. Kilowatts, why is that creeping up, but anyway it looks like the mg zs can supply, and this panel shop adapter can handle three kilowatts and that's still creeping up.

Why would that be creeping up, something to do with um heater coils? I suppose i can hear the oil filled radiator clicking, but that's holding a sustained three kilowatts. I suppose we should go out to the car and just see if it's complaining have a look. No, the car is not really saying anything other than still discharging the 17-hour remaining discharge. Time is now down to under 12 hours.

At this current rating. What's interesting is on the dash. Oh, if i can get that shown, we've got 384 volts at 9 amps. So, what's 384 multiplied by nine? Well, if it were 384 multiplied by 10, that would be 3.8 kilowatts.

Now, of course, that's at the high voltage battery side, so after the inverter, of course, it will be less because there will be losses in the inverter. Of course, the other thing i should check under the bonnet is whether the inverter is getting hot but yeah that's 384 times nine. Let's go back to the heaters. Oh 384 times.

10.. That's 3.8 kilowatts times nine! It's probably about 3.5 kilowatts coming out of this car! That's only supposed to be able to supply 2.2 kilowatts, i'm not sure how long i should leave this running really, but doesn't seem to be complaining at all interesting and back here with the heaters. Yeah 2.99 kilowatts uh we've got a kilowatt coming out of that fan. Heater there's a little fan heater on the side of this oil filled radiator and the oil filled radiator is on max, so that should be getting hot and it is yeah.

That's interesting! That's quite substantially. Overloaded from what the cars v2l output is rated at and three kilowatts, if we're looking in terms of amps at 220 or 218 volts, oh the voltage dips a bit under load, that's interesting is actually 13.7 in excess of what this fuse is rated for. That's probably getting quite warm yes, it is right this, as far as i'm aware, is the inverter. It's certainly got the uh mains cables coming out and going to the socket on the front of the car and that's stone cold.

This is a pdu power distribution unit. That's even colder, so no nothing getting warm under the bonnet of the car and that's been running for oh 10 minutes or so at just shy of three kilowatts and i'm not planning to take it any further. There's no sense in damaging the inverter on my car for no good reason, but yeah well over the 2.2 kilowatts that the car is supposed to limit at if it has got a limiter built into that inverter. It's certainly not doing it now, so the mg zs ev giant size power bank with v2l cable, can do or outputs uh 222 volts at 50 hertz.

Of course, this is the uk version and if you push it and if you have the correct connector, so if you're getting one of these leads, i would recommend the 16 amp c form. If you, if you really want to overload your zsev um, can produce three kilowatts and trusting cheerio.