The only "design" element for a ground rod is a bolt in the frame to which one can connect the wire from a grounding rod. Obviously every generator has a bolt in the frame that can be used for earthing but as awareness of such things as requirement for grounding advances some are provided with a conveniently located one that serves no other purpose and is marked with the ground symbol. If no bolt is so designated any frame bolt will do.
No "most likely" about it. If it is connected into your house wiring it must be properly grounded and unless your transfer switch switches neutral as well as the hots or your transfer switch is the "service entrance" the generator may not be connected to the house grounding system and must, therefore, have its own ground.
You do not have to ground the car to charge it from a generator. You only need to fool it into thinking it is grounded. The "basic bonding requirements" referred to here is connecting neutral to the frame. Is that safe? Well no it isn't and that's why if you hadn't fooled the car into thinking it is grounded it wouldn't allow you to charge. Are you going to get killed? Probably with liklihood about the same as being struck by a meteorite. But people have been struck by meteorites. It's up to you to decide whether you want to go to the trouble of properly grounding the generator or not.
No generator requires a ground rod.
It has been proven that the first bridge has diodes. It has been proven that it has transistors. Both right here on the internet. There are many reasons why the input bridge could use active devices but the most likely one in this context "power factor" correction. That's a misnomer as in the case of the Tesla the true power factor is 1.0 but it has come to refer to correction of distortion of the current waveform. To do this, of course, the system must be able to fire correctly when the waveform is distorted as that is what it is designed to do.
The utility is highly motivated to produce harmonic free waveforms but that is impossible. More to the point in today's world where so many power supplies are "switchers" lots of harmonics are injected into the network to the point where requirements for "power factor" correction have been levied. If the Tesla has an active front end it is to meet these requirements.
The Tesla has no way to tell whether your generator's neutral is bonded to earth. But it knows that in a properly wired (passed inspection) building it will be. It, therefore, looks for 120V between hot and earth and if it sees it, allows charging. The company further protects itself by plainly advising that one should not charge from a privately owned generator.
An older generator may have earth and neutral pins connected but a newer one will probably not and may even have a sticker saying "Ground and Neutral Isolated" on it.
Now that's a great tip!
The design element I was referring to was that all non-current carrying metal parts need to be bonded to the generator frame. As specified in many websites I found including the OSHA website referenced above.
There are a lot of jokes about engineers know everything and how they are always right. I, unlike some, am not that kind of engineer. I said "most likely" because I do not pretend I know every possible situation. I do not know the electrical code in all countries, I do not know all situations. Maybe some electrical codes provide other options in case a ground rod is not feasible. I really do not know why this criticism was deemed necessary.
I said " The Tesla does look to see if neutral is bonded to ground." At first I could not understand the reply. First it says the Tesla does not do it, immediately following that the reply explains how it does. After rereading it a few times I noticed the author used the term "Earth" instead of "ground". I believe the assumption here is that when I said "ground" I meant connected to a ground rod. In the electrical world, the term ground can mean many different things. There are many types of ground. Earth ground, chassis ground, high resistance ground, digital ground, analog ground etc. This may seem like an extreme example, but I'm sure many electrical circuits on the international space station have references to "ground". In my post whenever I meant connected to the earth I would say ground rod. When I said ground I meant neutral bonded to the ground of the generator. Maybe I should have used a term like chassis ground.
First, no, the "basic bonding requirements" I was referring to was that all non-current carrying metal parts need to be bonded to the generator frame. Since this is the second time the words I used to describe this were misunderstood I will accept blame.
Not sure what is meant by this. NEC requires a ground rod for a generator in many applications. I guess technically it is correct. A GENERATOR does not require it. In case there is confusion, I meant check the manual to see if a ground rod is required for your application.
I have not seen anywhere on the internet that has proven the first bridge is diodes. Please reference your sources. I believe it was the third bridge that has been proven to be diodes. But the bridge that utility power first touches uses transistors in every example or investigation I've seen.
Another assumption here. I said "a true (pure) sine wave generator". I never used the word "inverter".
Here's the funny thing, we were arguing the same point the whole time from different perspectives. At least I'm assuming the recommendation is to use a pretty good generator after it was defined as a generator that specifies less than 5-6% THD. I don't have hard numbers, but asking around with other engineers at work, they expect a square wave generator to have at best 30% THD. (in case it isn't clear, %THD is like golf, the lower the number the better).
If you start with a diode bridge you start with a passive converter. All evidence points to the first converter using transistors and being an active converter in the Tesla charging circuit.
