A charger that keeps resetting — restarting itself, replaying its start-up lights, dropping the session and booting again — is reporting something. Each restart means the unit lost power, or a protection inside it stopped and retried. The useful question is not how to make it stop, but what pattern the resets follow. And one rule runs through it: do not answer a resetting charger by resetting it yourself.
Key Takeaways
- A charger that reboots itself is reporting power loss or a protection at work; the timing pattern is the first evidence.
- Session-start resets point at the circuit, timed mid-session resets at heat, idle resets at supply or the unit itself.
- Record stage, clock, house load and breaker behaviour before calling anyone.
- Repeated resets with trips mean stop: never upsize a breaker, never defeat a protection, never open the unit.
A Resetting Charger Is Not a Session That Ends
From the car both look the same — charging stopped — but they point to different families. When a session simply ends early, the charger stays awake: lights steady, screen alive. When a charger resets, the unit itself goes down and comes back: start-up lights replay. If yours reboots, you are looking at power or protection, not settings.
Read the Pattern: When Does It Reset?
| When it resets | The likely class | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Right at session start, as the load appears | Supply or protection under load: the circuit or a protective device reacts as full current flows | Check the breaker; if it trips with the resets, the circuit owns the problem — see why a charger keeps tripping the breaker |
| Mid-session, after a similar run time each time | Heat: a thermal protection cycles — stops, cools, restarts, trips again as it warms | Note the run time before each reset; that record is what support will ask for |
| At random, including while idle | Supply interruptions reaching the unit, or the unit itself failing | Record it and take the unit out of service — this is the manufacturer’s route |
| After storms, outages or other electrical work | Disturbed supply, or a protection on repeated duty — the ground-fault case is in does an EV charger need GFCI protection | Treat every trip as information: a licensed electrician reads it |
Connected chargers add a software class: restarts on a schedule-like rhythm may be an update or a crashed control process — indistinguishable from hardware at home, and worth reporting.
What to Record Before You Call Anyone
- The stage: at plug-in, at session start, mid-session, or idle.
- The clock: time of day and, for mid-session resets, how long charging ran first.
- The house around it: what else was running; any flickering lights or an outage just before.
- The breaker: stayed on, or tripped.
- A short video of the light sequence as it goes down and boots.
An app’s session history turns “it keeps resetting” into timestamps: the EVDANCE EV-ACT5006T 48A Level 2 wall charger records when sessions started and stopped, and screen-equipped units such as the EV-ACS4005T show their state as they come back up. If the record points at the unit, the route is the manufacturer — EVDANCE chargers carry a 3-year warranty — via contact us.
The Hard Rules
- Repeated resets plus breaker trips mean stop. Unplug the car, leave the charger off, and escalate — electrician for the circuit, manufacturer for the unit.
- Never fit a bigger breaker to stop the trips. Breakers are sized to their circuit — 125% of the charger’s current for EV charging, such as 60 A for a 48 A charger. Changing size is an electrician’s design decision, never a cure.
- Never defeat a protection. A ground-fault or heat trip that keeps firing is the safety system working; bypassing it removes the protection, not the cause.
- Do not open the unit. There is no owner-serviceable part behind a reboot loop, and opening it ends the warranty conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
It reset once after a power cut. Is that the same problem?
No. A single start-up sequence when power returns is normal booting. The problem here is repetition: the same restart, on a pattern, under the same conditions. One event is a boot; a loop is a report.
Can I keep using it if it only resets once a week?
Treat it as a fault on record, not a quirk. Protections and power faults tend to worsen, and a weekly reset means something in the chain is already at its limit. Have the pattern checked while the charger is under warranty, not after the cause does damage.
Should I power-cycle it myself to see if it clears?
One controlled power cycle, after recording the pattern, is a fair test: it separates a latched state from a live fault. If it returns, the test has answered — stop there. Repeated cycling only erases the pattern support needs.
Related Reading
- Why Does My EV Charger Keep Tripping the Breaker?
- Why Is My Electric Car Charger Not Working? A Driver’s Checklist
- Does an EV Charger Need GFCI Protection?
- How Do Home EV Chargers Work?
