One thing I really don’t get in the discussion around EVs and charging is, why are people so afraid of tripping the main breaker? If you have a total of e.g. 17 kW available and happen to go over, just reset the main breaker (or replace it in case it’s still a traditional one). It’s there precisely so that you wouldn’t need to care about overloading the connection.
In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US) while using the available power to
- heat/cool a single family home (in -20 °C weather mind you)
- run all appliances (including the oven, stove, dryer etc.)
- heat up a sauna
- charge an EV
- whatever else you typically would want to plug in, kettles and such
While it’s true you can trip the main breaker if you have everything on at the same time, typically it never happens even if there are no lockouts in place preventing overuse. And it’s not like tripping it causes any permanent harm.
Why is an electrical service upgrade constantly brought up as a solution when any home with >15 kW of available power won’t need it? Is it against code to purposefully overcommit your mains in the US or something?
Edit: there were valid concerns raised over how long-lived the breakers are (probably won’t be rated for tens of fault-condition related trips), also that these smaller service specs aren’t as common as I’ve gathered from the media. That might have something to do with this at least. Thanks for the replies – it’s been an interesting discussion.
why are people so afraid of tripping the main breaker?
Not everyone know as much as electricity as you, I think is natural to be afraid of something you not know so much and that potentially can burn your house.
In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US)
Wow, how do you do that?
Of course over-provisioning is a thing but that’s crazy. Maybe you have much smaller appliances or assume much lower usage, but 70a basically assumes 2 major appliances at a time, using close to max load, and with nothing else turned on.
Typical 240v major appliances
- level 2 EV charger: 50a
- stove: 50a
- central ac: 40a
- dryer: 40a
- heat pump: 50a+
- water heater: 50a
Of course you won’t use them all at once and they won’t usually be drawing their full rated load but I would not want to deal with being limited to one at a time so I can also turn on the lights or use the microwave
That can theoretically draw 280a, before you even count things like lights and small appliances. If you added up all possible circuits, you may be hitting 1000a theoretical in a modern house. I’m comfortable that My 200a service will handle any combination I might use, but 70a definitely not
By contrast I once lived in an apartment with 60a service. It did not have most of these large appliances but I frequently tripped the main with combinations like stove + window ac + microwave + lights
Aside from the heat pump we have all of these things and they’re often running all at once. Never had an outside
The way that it works in most countries is that the breakers are per circuit in your wall. The breakers trip in order to prevent that single circuit from overheating and starting a fire in your walls.
Let’s say you have a wire that’s rated for 16amps. More than that and it becomes a fire risk just threw overheating. @230v that gives you 3680w per circuit.
If you have your industrial microwave, water heater, and car charger all going at the same time on that same circuit. This will draw way more than 3680w and thus would go over that 16a limit.
The breakers trips once you go over that 16a limit for safety. It’s a good thing. This all being said no sane electrician would put those three things on the same circuit. lol.
Circuit breakers are actually what enable you to safely over provision. Without them fires would just be a matter of time.
I know it works this way in the U.S. and Germany at least.
Also worth noting that breaker ratings are for instantaneous usage. A 15A 120v breaker can only actually support 12A of continuous usage. But it says 15, because most things use a little extra power when they first turn on. AC system spinning up the fans and compressor, for instance. Spinning things up takes more power than keeping it moving. If you put a 15A device on a 15A breaker, it would likely trip as soon as that device turned on. In that instance, you’d likely use a 20A breaker to support the 15A device instead. But that 20A breaker would also call for upgraded wiring and outlets which could support 20A.
Not talking about the circuits, but the main electrical connection to the grid. To me it often seems like there’s reluctance in
overcommittingoverprovisioning that capacity: as an example, four 16A circuits on a 25A main breaker. Here that’s quite common, but even in Tech connections videos I’ve seen him bring up smart electric cabinets or automatic load monitoring when putting enough capacity on the mains to possibly go over.What I’m asking is, why bother? If you trip the mains by having too much load, just reset the breaker and be done with it. No need to automate things to not run into that situation, one will learn to not have the oven on while charging the car full blast. No need to gimp the charger amperage since you’re running a new circuit anyway, and it’s not like it’s much different running a 20A circuit vs a 40A one. If that’s 70% of your total available capacity, it doesn’t matter – worst you have to do is walk downstairs and flip a switch.
The infinitely easier solution is to let the car charger know how much power is available to draw.
Well, true. Fair enough
ADHD guy here.
Wondering if these are reasons but need someone knowledgable to answer
- does the mains breaker have a limited amount of resets / duty cycle?
- is it bad for the whole house to trip sometimes? For me having to reset electronics, potential data loss etc makes it annoying.
- is there a potential for surging when the mains is flicked back on from everything starting simultaneously?
one of us
- Hadn’t considered that one TBH, no practical limits with actuations (rated in the thousands) but they’re probably not rated for that many trips under a fault condition – now I’m curious, will have to dig up a spec sheet at some point
- Not really, unless you have equipment that’s poorly designed everything should be fine. It’s not much different from a brownout, and things should be configured to deal with that anyways if you don’t have a UPS
- If there are a lot of reactive loads, then yes – e.g. electric motors, large capacitors. Those will have a large inrush when started again. Typically there isn’t that much reactive loading in a residential home though, and it should be covered by the latency designed into the breaker.
The first point is actually a really good one, and one I didn’t really remember to consider. I’d guess it has at least something to do with that (and would explain why many homes around here are still configured with traditional fuses for the main connection – no need to worry about lifetime when you have to replace them anyways)
I don’t think overprovisioning is a thing that is realistically is a problem in the U.S. or in Germany. I know that modern homes tend to have 300amp mains. Older homes 100amps. You would have to have a house that was wired in 1920 in order to have a 20amp mains available. In that case you have bigger issues safety wise.
My wife had to try charging on a 120V outlet last winter. The plug couldn’t even keep up with the battery heating requirements to actually start charging; the battery percentage was going DOWN while plugged in. It was -25°C outside though, so it’s a specific situation, but it’s actually why she had to try to charge; it’s a trip we can easily do without charging in the summer.
Car specific maybe? I was able to charge at -30C outside from a 120V outlet last winter.
Maybe, I know Teslas are a bit power-hungry when parked.
We have a granny charger that came with one of our EVs that we use as a backup and with our caravan to charge on sites that allow it. As I am UK it tops out at 2.4kw (10A @ 240v) and its annoyingly slow even charging for more than 12 hours at a time.
Our main home charger is 7kw, and as we get cheap electric every night for 7p a KwH for 5 hours, we can charge about 40kwh in that time period. Means even our largest battery is fully charged in two nights from completely empty. If we tried that with the granny charger it would cost significantly more, as it would be up to 40p a KwH outside of the main hours and take 40 hours to charge the same amount.
Now if you doing only a few miles a day, less than 40 miles (4 miles per KwH, charge for the 5 cheap hours using the cars charging timer, charge 10 KwH), it might work out ok for you, but then charging every day cannot be good for the battery? I know it would get annoying quite quickly. It would also get pretty painful if you have more than one EV, we have three between us and the kids, so its not remotely practical.
Granny chargin’, not triple phasing like you should.
You almost had me charging? You never had me charging - you never had your car charging, it had tripped the socket
Pedantic but: 7kw isn’t three phase in the UK, just 30A. Three phase electric can give you up to 22kw in the UK for charging, obviously not every EV can charge that fast, most only go up to 11kw AC. I would kill for that extra charging speed but I can’t justify the extra cost and effort to get it fitted by the electric company
You don’t double clutch on upshifts either (it was a drag race) so I’d say the parody is accurate
Uh.
I drove semi trucks in the US for years…
You’d better either double clutch or float those gears, because if you don’t, you’re destroying your clutch brake, which means you’ll have trouble getting it into gear from a dead stop. That applies for both upshifts and downshifts.
Ever sit next to an old truck or bus and hear them grinding gears to get into gear?
That’s due to the clutch brake failing to stop the flywheel.
All semi trucks in the US use synchro-less manual transmissions.
When shifting a syncro-less transmission, YOU are the synchro.
The clutch in these trucks has 2 positions. You either just barely engage the clutch enough to break contact, or you depress it fully to engage the clutch brake and (attempt to) stop the flywheel from spinning.
If you do the second one while shifting a moving vehicle, you’re causing undue wear and tear on the aforementioned clutch brake.
I can’t speak for big rigs, but I drive and ride multiple manuals. Synchro or not, there’s no reason to double clutch an upshift in the cars under normal or high performance situations. It’d only make sense if I took too long to shift and had the engine rpm fall far below what matches the speed of the next gear. It’s a drag race. They’re burning synchros to drop 6krpm to 4k in the next gear in half a second. Even in normal driving, dropping 1000rpm or more is plenty of time to catch the next gear. 2 of my mini trucks have burnt synchros on one gear each (prior to my ownership), so I’m pretty well aware of how to time it for a smoother shift on the downfall. If double clutching was necessary on upshifts, I wouldn’t be able to do gasless clutchless shifting. But I can
Downshifts, absolutely. There’s plenty of reason to double clutch a downshift. The engine is, by definition, under spun for the next gear so yes, blipping it up will make it easier to drop a gear. Not needed for 1 gear at a time with good synchros, but certainly adds consistency when I do a 5>3 downshift to pass in the truck with a burnt 3rd. Almost required when I had braking problems and needed to downshift into 1st since the speed differential was far greater.
The source of the line form the movie is probably from the theatrical soundtrack from Bullitt. The engine sound was recorded separately from a GT40. The driver double clutched because it sounded mean.
Let’s not forget the line comes from a scene in which granny shifting burnt the piston rings, dangered the manifold, made the floorboard fall off, and spilled a jar of o-rings.
I assume you used the wrong word towards the end. The flywheel is bolted to the crankshaft. If anything stops the flywheel, the engine is now turned off.
Yeah, meant the input shaft
Sure. But in the first Fast and Furious movie they’re not driving syncro-less transmission semis. They’re driving tricked out sports cars in a straight line and somehow having about 14 gear changes in a 6 speed manual.
While true, there are syncro-less racing transmissions as well for a number of the more popular moddable cars.
Well I did say I was being pedantic, which is absolutely the best way to watch fast and furious with friends
Friends? Sib, you watch FnF with family
Donut Media has excellent videos about the worst and best lines. Some are dual category because they’re so bad they’re ironically integral to the community now
I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so … antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.
Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren’t all on together but I think I’ve replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we’ve lived on this house and I’m pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.
Fuses sound antique compared to resettable circuit breakers. Though, if I remember correctly, your outlets have resettable breakers? Anyway, part of the wattage deficiency comes from the voltage being half of Europe’s. The wires are similarly sized so they hit about the same max amperage (largely 15a for most circuits, 20a frequently in kitchens/garages/exterior outlets, 100-250a main breaker for the house) but halving the voltage halves the wattage available
Though, if I remember correctly, your outlets have resettable breakers?
Here in Finland we don’t have breakers on outlets themselves, they’re all on electrical panel. But we have ‘automatic fuses’ which you can reset, they’re just referred as ‘fuse’ almost always. Also, as our house is older, the 25A main fuses are actual porcelain ones, but new ones obviously have those automated too. Similarily, nearly all of the fault current protectors are on electrical panel instead of individual outlets.
And in here nearly all fuses for lights, sockets and everything are either 10 or 16A with bigger main breakers, normally 3x25A for individual houses.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Any modern US house would have a similar capability, it’s just older homes that would struggle since there would never be a need for such high power devices in a garage.
Most older garages would only need enough power to run a single lightbulb, if it was slightly newer, maybe a low power automatic garage door opener.
It’s the same in any country with buildings over 100 years old.
It’s the same in any country with buildings over 100 years old.
In here 100+ year old houses are pretty common but practically all of them still have at least somewhat up to date electrics with that 3-phase input. It’s been around for decades after all. My house is built originally 1928 and my mothers house is from 1909 and both of them have 3x25A main breakers with those 380V 16A CEE sockets around.
And as garages commonly double as a work space with 3-phase induction motors on the tools it’s still pretty common to have that 3x16A available as it’s not that much more expensive to pull 5x2.5mm² cable to the garage compared to 3x2.5mm² for single phase 16A outlet.
Also, it’s typically not that expensive to upgrade your panel, if you live in a zoned area. Buildings in the unzoned area typically have good electrical connections since in the countryside you typically want access to three phases.
As an example for moving from older single phase service to 3x25A, it costs around 810 € typically, with 2000-3000 € as a worst case scenario. That’s in Lahti, Finland – in Espoo it seems to be around 500 €
Of course there’s then the need to upgrade the panel as well, but that’s a relatively simple operation.
My childhood home had 3x90A breakers since it originally had a resistive heat setup, in a relatively large building (plus some other energy intensive equipment housed there). In reality it was far too much even then, the max load we calculated under full load was more like 25-30 kW.
Yep – US also doesn’t generally do residential three-phase unlike many countries in the EU. A lot of garages around here have 3x16A 230V, not (only) due to the power requirements but because having three phases allows for simplest induction motors for things like blowers and circular saws. When you have three phases having a proper outlet in the garage starts making sense.
Around here (Finland more specifically) we have three-phase even in most apartments. My two bedroom apartment has a 3x25A main breaker, and two devices on 3x16A circuit’s – the sauna stove and oven+stovetop. Most single-family homes have 3x25A or 3x36A as well.
US households are missing out on a lot of things due to their split-phase system.
having three phases allows for simplest induction motors for things like blowers and circular saws
Which is really nice. No capacitors or other electronics needed. My old drill press has 750W 3-phase motor and it just works. Also having the power available gives options like running a 7kW log splitter with circular saw at the end of 20 meter long extension cord.
Ohh! I spent some time in the U.S. and there are 230v mains available. They just have special plugs. All homes have 230v. It’s just not available through the shocked face plug.
I might’ve been unclear, I don’t mean 230 V by itself, but three-phase distribution. The standard socket is labeled either 3x16A 230V alternatively labeled 380V 16A. Typically uses an IEC 60309 plug that looks like this:
(Source: https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/IEC60309_2.html)Three phase has other benefits besides just more power, the US has it with their lower voltage as well, but typically reserved just for larger buildings.
What they do here for (a good amount of) home car chargers is read out the electricity meter using their serial port and dynamically adjust the charge current to never take more than those 3x25A.
In recent test of a German auto club they found out that it‘s cheaper/ more effective to charger faster. You loose a lot of energy if you load slow over hours.
This energy is taken by the electricity of the car. So, while charging the car is on and takes some Watts/h. There are just a few brands that have decoupled the charger circuit from the overall electric circuit of the car.
Can’t find the article now, but I think charging a PHEV through a standard power plug had about 20% energy lost. It was clearly visible that a charger is a good choice.
Yes, he responds to that in the video.
Watts/h
Just watts, watts is already Joules per second.
Did that account for battery lifetime, because if not, that could offset efficiency gains as fast charging degrades batteries.
Any AC load you can throw at an EV is effectively “slow charging”. My car supports a maximum of 9.6kw from an AC charger, but up to 150kw from DC fast chargers. Even with the fast charging, its not like a phone, it has active thermal management which will cool the battery and slow down the charging if it gets too hot. phones don’t really have that and is mainly why they degrade faster if quick charged.
Can you source that?
It’s a neat conversion for EV charging. 7kw x 2.5 miles per kwh is 17.5 mph. Most EV onboard chargers top out at 11kw, 27.5 miles per hour. So from the battery’s perspective, 22kw is it’s normal discharge rate at 60mph.
Link?
It’s not fucking overkill. There’s no such thing.
I’m really disappointed with the video. That dude usually knows his shit, but he’s way off the mark here. It’s just plain wrong.
Getting a smaller charger might save a few hundred, but it will also increase your chances of burning the house down. Good fucking advise, huh.
Fuck that. You’ll always want to charge as fast as your main circuit breaker will allow.
Do you think a device with regulation circuits is more likely to be overloaded and start fires…?
My guess would be yes, somewhat, probably. but maybe not much. As he says in the last part of the video: If it gets hot, you have a problem.
Better ask an electrician.
The devices sold as “EV wall chargers” are not really chargers. They’re simple power suppliy units, whether or not it has bells and whistles to time the charging and what not.
The actual battery charger is in the car. It will attempt to suck as much energy from the PSU as it can and it will itself balance the load and all that. Having a separate unit also trying to regulate the load seems like something that will inevitably create more heat than necessary somewhere in that chain.
Generally speaking you do not need to protect the car from unstable supply. It will protect itself.
I will still recommend getting a proper “EV charger” to ensure that it can utilize all the phases unlike a regular garage plug. Also to ensure that it is properly grounded, which can be an issue for some cars.
At least here in Europe, where we have 3 phases. It’s much better to have all 3 phases wide open and let the car suck a little on each, instead of having it overloading a single phase through a granny plug.
I know the American 2 phase circuit is different, but I still believe it’s better not to put any more heat inducing obstructions in the chain.
I wish we had 3 phase, but the fact is many European homes only have 1 phase. The distribution is 3-phase, but the residential wiring is only set up to use only 1 phase and upgrading the whole electrical system of our home is simply too expensive. This is in Norway, but it’s similar in many countries.
We recently installed a charger, and the electrician put in a 32A breaker. He told us you should never run continuous draw above 80% of the breaker, which gives us 25A * 230V = 5.75 kW as our max charging speed. Not fantastic by any means, but means we can go from 10 to 80% overnight, which is good enough for us. If we need a fast charge, the local gas station has a 250 kW charger anyways, so we could top of if need be - though we have never needed that so far.
Yeah, running a 240V 50A outlet in a garage in most homes would be fairly cheap, since it’s usually not going very far from the main panel. So might as well do it if you’re already spending a huge chunk of change on an electric car.
The last time we hired an electrician to run about 30 feet from a panel to a new 50A sub-panel across the shop for a project was around $800 IIRC.
I don’t disagree with this, but we have a detached garage and got quoted over $6k to retrench an upgraded line to it. I know he mentioned this condition in the video, but our driveway is so tight it would be an obstacle to put a charger just on the outside of the house.
In the meantime, we started using a regular outlet in the garage with the basic charger that came with our Ioniq and after 2 years have never needed anything more. Never even used a public charger.
I think “might be overkill” would be a better title and position than “usually overkill.”
There is absolutely a subset of EV drivers that could get by with a level 1 charger (ignoring time of day rates), but most people would fall behind anytime they drive further than the average number of miles. Sure, taking 10 hours to recharge your Chevy Bolt overnight when you’ve driven 40 miles is doable; 64 hours when you’ve returned home from a longer trip isn’t.
I own a PHEV, and installing a level 2 charge has been one of the best quality of life and financial changes.
Yep the difference for our setup was going from 12-18 hour full charge times (Level 1) to about 6 hours on Level 2. L1 charger could only put out 12 amps at 120v, and while the L2 charger can do up to 50A of 240v power, our vehicle can only use about a third of that capacity at max draw.
So as the video’s topic covers, we didn’t need a 50A circuit for Level 2 charging on our limited vehicle. But I put in a full 50A circuit anyway so now I can eventually upgrade our other car to electric or PHEV and be ready for whatever those need.
Agreed, and that headline is needlessly inflammatory . Looking at my EV mileage , I could almost certainly get away with just plugging into a standard outlet. However the level 2 charger means that even if I screw it up, I can be mostly charged in a couple of hours. It’s been really effective at helping me get over what range anxiety I had. It’s really helped keep car usage as a somewhat impulse thing, rather than a process: I’m ready to go anywhere anytime.
It also means I can charge multiple EVs, if I wanted to.
If you screw up, you can usually get to a charger a few blocks away and snag 50% of your battery in 20 minutes.
I charge entirely off of a standard 120 outlet, and it easily handles my daily and weekly travel needs, along with my partner’s numerous errands and extra trips throughout the week.
you are assuming functional infrastructure, not everywhere has that.
Gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that people living in a cabin where the electricity only works a few hours a week aren’t going to buy an electric car.
As for access to public chargers… I just spent the weekend in a rural area and had no problem finding a charger within 20 miles of me.
What kind of range do you have on that? I’ve been debating installing a l2 charger because overnight charging is usually good enough. I tend to get about 15-20 miles range tops on pure electric.
The way I explained it to my brother:
- technically just plug in to an existing outlet will work. Even if you didn’t keep up every day, you would get tot the weekend and make it up then
- but your garage already has a dryer outlet. Adapters are cheap and it will charge 4-5 times as fast
- but 50a level 2 charger is the same size as a stove outlet. Maybe a little longer wire run, and the “outlet” is more expensive, but it’s well worth the cost for the freedom, the flexibility, the convenience … and may even add to your house value
As explained in the video you can’t run 50 amps ona dryer outlet. It’s 42 amps max.
Can you cite a time stamp? I don’t want to watch a 30 minute video.
I’m very curious where “42 amps max” comes from, as NEMA outlets are rated for 15A, 20A, 30A, 50A, or 60A. 42A is a rather oddball number; I’d like some context for it.
Most dryer outlets are rated for 30A, NEMA 10-30, or 14-30.
Not the same person and cba to get a timestamp right now, but it’s the 80% rule - the electrical stuff isn’t designed to deliver the rated amperage continuously for hours on end, so for car charging, you’re apparently supposed to limit it to 80%. Now, 80% of 50 isn’t 42 but 40, so not sure if it’s a case of 80% not being a precise number or a mistake here, but it roughly checks out.
I believe dryer outlets are typically 30a@240v. That’s a nice step up than a standard outlet and simple math shows 4x the power of 15a@120v
If you have one in your garage, then you already have an outlet that can do faster charging than a standard outlet.
Just like you technically don’t need a 50a level 2 charger, you may not have to settle for a standard outlet. I bought a heavy duty extension cable with adapters for several different outlet types.
30-35 miles, depending on the season.
I think “might be overkill” would be a better title and position than “usually overkill.”
It factually is not.
most people would fall behind anytime they drive further than the average number of miles.
Assume you drive it all the way to empty, then park it and plug it back in at 7PM. Leave it for 12 hours until you leave again in the morning at 7AM. A typical small EV will charge at ~5MPH on a 110V, 1.2kW connection (faster on a 20A circuit). So 5MPH x 12 hours means you already have 60 miles of range again for the next day. And I would say that’s a pretty extreme scenario.
Realistically you would never drive it to 0% and you would probably leave it parked longer than 12 hours.
I use L1 almost exclusively, BTW.
Probably if you have a Hummer or something you might want something a bit faster.
Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a “usually” basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy’s house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I’m maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.
Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.
This is not about me or you, this is “usually”.
That depends on what is meant by usually. You seem to think it means “most daily situations,” but I think it means “most house installations.” Yes, a usual day in a person’s life does not require L2. But the usual person does require L2 if they want to use their car like most people prefer to use their car. Once a week I need L2 charging because of all the stuff I do that isn’t commuting. That is 1 day in a 7 day week, so usually I don’t need L2. But I would not be able to have an EV if I didn’t have L2 unless I had a second car (which I don’t have). I think most people fall into this category, so the usual person needs L2 even if they don’t usually need L2.
You seem to think it means “most daily situations,” but I think it means “most house installations.”
That’s the opposite of what I think.
Once a week I need L2 charging because of all the stuff I do that isn’t commuting.
No you don’t. You go and do those things, then plug it in and charge it up over the next 6 days until it’s fully charged again. If that is insufficient then you are not a typical usecase.
So when I get home from a 200 mile round trip to the desert on Sunday night, I have roughly 20 miles of range on the Bolt. If I can add 40 miles of range to my car overnight (10 hours of charging at 4mph), that gives me 60 miles of range to do a 20 mile round trip commute. But what if I want to go to the Dodgers game after work? Or if I need to run a bunch of errands after work that I skipped while in the desert? People want their car to be able to go places when they want to go places.
You are talking to me as if you think I didn’t own multiple full EVs as my only car for over 6 years. I lived with a 90mile range Toyota Rav4 EV without DC fast charging and took it on road trips. I also lived with that car without L2 charging for a month. That month was miserable, and I would have never kept that car if I didn’t upgrade to L2.
If you have a second car, then you don’t need a 300 mile range EV and also don’t need L2. If you have a very short commute and don’t do anything after work or on the weekends, then you don’t need L2.
If that is insufficient then you are not a typical usecase.
If you are doing a 200 mile trip, being home for 10 hours, then going out and doing another hundred miles on a regular basis, you are an extreme usecase. If you do this 1 or 2x/year this could easily be covered by spending literally a few extra bucks and stopping at a (presumably existent) L3 station for a few minutes.
I do the same trips as the rest of you, only on a monthly basis with multiple bikes strapped to a hitch on the back, and in a 200-mile vehicle. I arrive home with very little range (<10%), but over the course of just a few days on L1 I will be back to 80%, without making any compromises about where I want/need to go.
People want their car to be able to go places when they want to go places
“People” don’t need to travel the same way you do.
You are talking to me as if you think I didn’t own multiple full EVs
No I am talking to you as if you don’t understand the usecase of the vast majority of drivers, and you don’t understand the point of the video in the OP. Which is fine, most people don’t, that’s why he made it.
It factually is not.
Factually, it’s not either. Both are statements of opinion, although I’d say saying the word “usually” should have some degree of proof behind it.
My statement of “might be” recognizes that there are many instances that L1 makes sense, and I agree with the video that for those for whom it does shouldn’t needlessly install a 240v outlet. Sounds like you’re among those.
I’d say that, sadly, most EV drivers drive more than 40 miles per day on average, and that the moment you drive more than 60 miles per day you’ll have difficulty recharging to full. Most days, you’ll have no trouble recharging overnight. But if you’re like me, you might take a day trip over 100 miles away a handful of times per year. When that happens, I’d arrive home with very little battery left; am I supposed to have the ability to charge for 50 hours?
Factually, it’s not either. Both are statements of opinion
It is not. Hence “factually”. We know for a fact how far people “usually” drive.
But if you’re like me, you might take a day trip over 100 miles away a handful of times per year. When that happens, I’d arrive home with very little battery left; am I supposed to have the ability to charge for 50 hours?
I just explained this in the comment you replied to.
I just explained this in the comment you replied to.
You explained how it’s doable when you drive 60 miles, which I admit will be most people most days (12 hours of charging at 5 miles per hour charged.) Average EV has 293 miles of range currently; even if you arrived home with 20% battery remaining and you only wanted to recharge to 80%, that’s (at 5 miles per hour charged) over 25 hours. Empty to full is over 58 hours!
At least once every few months we take a day trip to the nearest “big” city, which is 105 miles away. Typically a Sunday. Leave on a full battery, arrive home nearly empty. 8 hours of charging, and I maybe have enough for the next day. I will run a deficit until the weekend.
Again, I’m certainly not saying that a L2 charger is a must for all people, or even most people. But I would not agree that L1 is enough for most people.
You explained how it’s doable when you drive 60 miles
Read it again. I said 60 miles the day after driving it to 0%. People don’t “usually” need this.
Average EV has 293 miles of range currently; even if you arrived home with 20% battery remaining and you only wanted to recharge to 80%,
Thats 176 miles of range. People don’t “usually” need that.
At least once every few months we take a day trip to the nearest “big” city, which is 105 miles away.
You said all of this already and I already replied to it.
I’m certainly not saying that a L2 charger is a must for…most people. But I would not agree that L1 is enough for most people.
🤔 Wat. Do you think there’s like a L1.5 or something?
Wat. Do you think there’s like a L1.5 or something?
There’s the option of a level 1 charger at home, supplemented with an occasional stop at a fast charger.
The L1 charger is not quite enough to keep up with their usage, but their usage isn’t enough to make an L2 absolutely necessary.
Let’s agree to simply not tell people what they do and do not need.
I’m not telling anyone what they need. I’m telling you what people usually need. Which is the topic of the conversation you started.
What electric vehicle gets 5 miles/1.2kWh? That’s only 240 Wh/mi.
What electric vehicle gets 5 miles/1.2kWh?
Most of the small ones.
You guys really should do some reading before you downvote things you don’t understand
A small 30 amp level 2 charger can put another 10 miles of range in a 450 Wh/mi car in 40 minutes.
A 15 amp level 1 charger can put another 10 miles of range in a 450 Wh/mi car in 2.5 hours on paper, but practically it takes longer, over 3 hours if it downrates itself to 12 amps, and almost 5 hours if it chickens out to 8 amps.
Another 4.5 kWh of battery gets another 10 miles of range without charging.
Having a level 2 charger at home means any time you go home for just about any reason you can always take just about any trip again right away, without an expensive vehicle with an oversized battery.
Highly recommend Technology Connections for anyone interested in easy to understand, relatable breakdown videos of technology.
Mostly old-ish technology, which is far more interesting because they had to be more innovative.
Dat toaster
I agree with this youtube comment:
As an electrician (in Australia), I agree with your basic premise. However, if you are asking me to install an EV charger, unless you tell me “I want it to charge slowly with a limited current capacity”, I am going to assume it is to charge an EV under ALL situations - fast to slow, for whoever may drive one today or in the future, even with a potential new homeowner. We generally do our work with the priority order (1) safety - nobody gets an electric shock and nothing catches fire; (2) avoidance of nuisance i.e. the thing you just installed doesn’t work and keeps tripping the breaker 😑 (3) avoiding needing replacement electrical work for at least 25 - 50 years
Also I live in a townhouse with no garage. Our charger is between the neighborhood sidewalk and our parking spaces, so I’d prefer keeping it plugged in as little as possible to minimize any issues with foot traffic (neighbors, delivery people, garbage pickup, etc). I’ve seen other townhouse EV owners literally run an extension cable over the sidewalk to do an L1 charge for their EV and that’s just asking for trouble.
He did say that it’s different if you don’t own your own garage or live in a townhouse
Personally, I’m on an electricity plan that gives me free usage at midday when solar is flooding the grid, so it’s useful for me to be able to charge as fast as possible in that window.
Faster charging is useful for more than just finishing before your next drive.
could this be an article instead of a video? I’m not spending 32 minutes watching this, tbh
This has to be my favorite thing about Jeff Geerling vs other YouTube channels, he’ll make an accompanying blog post to go with each of his main channel videos that is effectively an annotated text version of the video with appropriately embedded images and links.
Lots of them do that if you look.
You should give it a shot. The dudes videos are super captivating.
For me, they’re captivating for about 5 minutes. Then the dry humor and constant cries of outrage become irritating. He could probably make 15-20 minute, info-dense videos without all the extra “personality”.
It’s called edutainment
Similarly Doug DeMuro could make 5 minute car reviews but he’s really good at the long-form ones and has become a millionaire because of it. His quirks and features are not for everyone, but a majority of people like it, quirks and all.
I think Technology Connections is just like that, and I respect that you’re one of the people who may not like the personality part, but the information is pretty solid.
Yes. In a nutshell it’s “if you don’t know about electric cars, here’s some information you probably don’t know as well”
deleted by creator
Good video. Accurate information.
Two notes:
-
For North American homes: I agree with the overlooked value of a downrated circuit for EV charging, but I don’t think he talked about a possibly better option for downrating: Using an existing 120v circuit (at whatever current rating) already wired in the garage . Remove the outlet, install EVSE (charger), and swap the breaker for a 240v one (at a current rating matching the original. So if you have a 120v 15A circuit (white romex) you can use the exact same wire for a 240v at 15A. If you have a 20A (yellow romex) you would end up with a 240v 20A. You get more than double the speed of charging with zero new wires added, only changing the breaker and removing the old outlets. Note: If you have multiple outlets in your garage all fed from this same circuit, this would mean all of your outlets in the garage are now 240v and not usable for regular 120v items.
-
He didn’t like Smart chargers. Thats a valid opinion, but smart chargers can do some nice things that I like. Some will also talk to each other if you have two chargers, such as if you have two EVs. They can be configured to share the same wire to the breaker box, so you can plug both cars in at night, one car will charge, then when that is complete, the other will charge automatically without having to unplug one car and then plug in the other. It will charge the least charged car first ensuring the best balance of charge to both cars assuming both cars can’t be charged to full in one night. If you have solar panels, some smart chargers can talk to the solar system and be instructed to only charge when there is excess power that would otherwise go to waste. It can do this automatically so if clouds go overhead and not enough juice is available from the sun, the charging stops. As soon as the clouds clear and there is an excess again, charging resumes automatically. For outdoor charging, you can also configure most Smart chargers to only charge you authorized cars. So you don’t need to worry about someone rolling into your driveway when you’re not home (or a bad neighbor) and running up your electricity bill.
Running more than one outlet on a 220 circute is generally against us codes. It will work but don’t do it.
I have a phev with only 30 miles of range - ofen I get home with a nearly dead battery and need to leave again soon - I want faster charging. I’m sure someone with 200 miles of range can be fine on 110 volt slow charging as there likely enough time over a week that it works.
I think #1 is suggesting to move the neutral over to another hot phase and change the outlet to a 240v nema 6/three prong (I think) with two hots and a ground instead of the 4 prong.
The 240v at the same amps gives you higher watts so faster charging without an expensive new conductor. I’m
The problem with #1 is that most garages only have one circuit for the outlets AND the garage door opener. Moving to 240v would fry the opener.
Changing a 120v line over to 240 is likely also against code even if the physical cable can handle it. 120V cable is typically white/black/green, and the electrical code prohibits using the white one as a hot leg. That’s why 240V cable of the same AWG is red/black/green. The red & black legs both carry 120V.
Code allows painting the white conductor black which is what i do. Or at least it did 10 years ago when I last checked.
This.
That said, it’s rare that only one or two outlets in a garage are tied to a breaker. Usually they’re all on one circuit in older homes, in my experience.
If you can find a circuit like this, though, it’s perfectly valid. Many chargers made for 110V also have a 230V/15 or 20 amp mode. My Mother-in-law’s portable charger has a 230V NEMA 2-20 adapter that comes in the bag with it.
A 240V 20amp circuit I think would meet the needs of 99% of commuters in the US. If your average miles/kWh is around 3.3 and you’re charging at 80% of the 20amp breaker limit (as you should be), even factoring in 10% losses in power transmission, you’re still charging somewhere around 11 miles per hour. Easy 100+ miles overnight with zero infrastructure change outside of a couple wire nuts and a cheap charger. Hell, depending on local codes, you might get away with slapping in a nema 6-20 receptacle to make it even easier…
Hell, depending on local codes, you might get away with slapping in a nema 6-20 receptacle to make it even easier…
If you do a receptacle, you’ve got to then do a GFCI. Check out the price difference between a GFCI breaker and one that isn’t. If you hardware the EVSE, you don’t need GFCI because GFCI is built into nearly all EVSE. If we’re doing this exercise to keep low costs, adding GFCI outside of the EVSE jacks up the price.
Are they somehow more expensive in the US? 40A 230V rated ones cost something like 30-50 € around here which doesn’t feel that expensive to me. I’ll admit it’s considerably more expensive (~4x the price) than a standard breaker, but it’s still more like a rounding error in overall costs.
Although EVSE’s projection doesn’t require you to periodically trip the GFCI so it doesn’t get stuck, which is a major plus.
Are they somehow more expensive in the US? 40A 230V rated ones cost something like 30-50 € around here which doesn’t feel that expensive to me.
In my suggested hardwired 240V 20A EV charger the total parts cost is just the regular breaker on the left at about $18.
The suggested solution you had of putting an outlet in would have parts cost of $119 + the cost of the GFCI breaker, the outlet and the receptacle cover. So that solution is 660% more expensive.
Ok, so the US-style GFCI-breakers are indeed a lot more expensive than similarly rated DIN-rail alternatives. TIL
If it makes you feel better, I was shocked (pun intended) to learn this too, and I live here.
Fair enough! Anyone with existing 240v receptacles of any kind is a lucky duck, regardless.
deleted by creator
#1 is a terrible idea if you ever need to hire an electrician in the future, plan on selling your house, etc. The National Electric Code prohibits using white, green, or grey wire for a hot/load connection. The 120V cable will contain a black wire for the hot connection, white for neutral, and green for ground. To properly convert it to 240V you would need a cable that consists of black & red wires for the two 120V legs.
If your home ever suffered an electrical fire then this sort of jury rigging is precisely the sort of thing any competent insurance inspector would spot, and insurance carriers would deny coverage for since it clearly isn’t code compliant, which means a licensed electrician didn’t install it and it wasn’t properly inspected.
The “120 volt cable”, assuming you mean NM-B aka Romex, is rated for up to 600 volts if you look at it closely. It is absolutely acceptable to use that wiring for a 240V circuit, as long as you wrap colored (not green) electrical tape around the white neutral wire to indicate it’s another hot.
Yes, there are 3-conductor (plus ground) wires one can also use for switches and 240V circuits with neutral. That neutral can be used to have 120V and 240V together (your oven may use 240V coils, but the light bulb probably runs on 120). Doesn’t mean you need to have it, if your 240V circuit doesn’t need a neutral. My air compressor is just a motor that can run at 240, no neutral needed, and its outlet is wired up with the same kind of Romex used for a 120 right next to it (with black tape to indicate a second hot)
#1 is a terrible idea if you ever need to hire an electrician in the future, plan on selling your house, etc. The National Electric Code prohibits using white, green, or grey wire for a hot/load connection. The 120V cable will contain a black wire for the hot connection, white for neutral, and green for ground. To properly convert it to 240V you would need a cable that consists of black & red wires for the two 120V legs.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m no certified Sparky, but wire relabeling is used in a number of situations fully in accordance with NEC. My understanding is that some of this is in NEC 200.7. It requires relabeling both ends, but I don’t think there’s any code violation with it. If what you’re saying was true, wouldn’t that mean any -2 NM (Romex) would be code incompatible with 240v loads? I don’t think that’s true.
For me the smart charger was a key feature, and I never understood why that is never talked about. I have 200a service which was plenty for one fully powered charging service, but with the likelihood of electrification in upcoming years I was hesitant to have two. It was pretty clear I needed to prioritize smart charging so I’d have that possibility.
I can also configure it to only charge my allowed vehicles, should that ever become an issue
So far my family only has the one EV, so we only need the one charger. But I like that if we needed a second charger it could be on the same circuit and they could dynamically share the power to maximize charging
deleted by creator
-
Yeah I don’t need to refill my battery in 2 hours, but it’s nice to be able to meaningfully top off between errands to make the most of a small PHEV battery.
