Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoWhat do landlords have to do with it? Can you not power the charger off 110V or 220V? Do you need a higher amp circuit cut in, larger than 30A? (American question obviously.)
fast charging requires a larger service connection than a wall outlet. you can slow charge from a normal wall outlet, but it will take ages to fully charge a modest battery.
generally people have it installed by an electrician, running a new conduit from the circuit breaker.
For home charging to keep up with a commute, a normal wall outlet all night long is fine. It just needs to be installed where the car is parked, and it should have some protection from weather while the car is plugged in.
…this obviously depends on how far your commute is, and how large the battery is.
220V? Better than 30A? I’m asking what I would need to install in my home. I have no clue on this.
talk to an electrician after looking at the specs on the charger you want. I’m not qualified to give you electrical instructions
In the us, home chargers will typically run on 240 volts, similar to a dryer or electric stove.
The amperage can be as low as 16 amps (not common) and up to 40 amps. There are higher amperage chargers, but they’re not super common. Most homes dont have that much capacity provisioned and adding it to the breaker box means new circuits and often the power company has to provide a higher capacity meter. It gets expensive.
Since volts x amps = watts, a 240 volt charger that operates at 40 amps will charge at 9600 watts or 9.6 kilowatts (maximum).
You can charge using a standard 120v outlet, most are rated for 15 amps. However, you will get 120v x 15a = 1800 watts or 1.8 kilowatts (maximum).
Don’t forget the 80% rule! Because those ratings are made for shorter periods of time drawing electricity, and cars usually charge for hours, you need to charge at 80% of the circuit rating. So really you’ll charge at 120V x 12A =1.4kW. Not only that, but if you have anything else on that circuit you need to leave room for that too. My car defaults to 8A on level 1 unless you tell it to do 12, in which case you get just under a kilowatt.
The work isn't hard - I did it myself (I checked my spare parts box and discovered the only thing I was missing was the cover for the outlet, so it cost me $3). However if you don't know what you are doing around electric I can't train you on the internet. While you can find good instructions via a simple search you can also find instructions that are dangerous and if you don't know what you are doing you won't know the difference.
How much do you drive in a year? What kind of car are you looking at?
For the average driver, a 120V (normal) outlet on a smaller car is actually perfectly fine most of the time. If you think you might get a bigger car, or multiple EVs, you may want to look into a level 2 setup. And while you’re at it, use thicker wires so you can run more power through it. But don’t feel like you have to go overboard. I think the sweet “buy once, cry once, hard to come up with a situation where this isn’t enough” number is a 50 amp 240V circuit running a 40A charge cord (always charge at 80% of your circuit rating, max).
But if your panel can’t take it or you want to do it cheaper or whatever, a 20A 240V circuit is on the lower end of the level 2 spectrum and it can still do a lot… Like, more than double that “average driver” amount for level 1. And here’s the fun part: everyone is so afraid of 240V and think it takes special wiring or whatever. It really doesn’t. I’ve got a 240V air compressor outlet on a 20A circuit, just like what I suggested a minute ago. It uses the exact same wiring as the 120V next to it. The only difference? It’s connected to two “opposing” hots with a double breaker (not terribly more expensive) rather than a single hot on a single breaker plus a neutral as you’d see on 120V. All you need to do is wrap the white wire (usually neutral) with a colored (not green, that’s ground) electrical tape to indicate that it carries current. Do it on both sides. Easy peasy, up to code, and uses really affordable wiring.
Also, volts and amps are apples and oranges. Home electric circuits mostly run on 120 volts, but some bigger things like stoves and central air run on 240 volts instead. Amperage is the other piece of the puzzle. Wire sizing is largely based on how many amps the circuit can carry. Multiply the two together, and you get watts. Divide that number by 1000, and you get kilowatts.
My car’s battery has a capacity of 65 kilowatt-hours, meaning it can run 65 kilowatts for an hour, 1 kilowatt for 65 hours, 13 kilowatts for 5 hours… You get the idea. Same idea goes for charging. My 240V 40A charging setup (which runs on a 50A breaker) can give almost 10 kilowatts of power, meaning my battery will be charged 0-100 in about 6.5 hours. A regular outlet gives about a kilowatt and can do it in about 65 hours. But before you think that’s useless, remember that you can easily plug in daily and if you only use a fraction of your battery each day, it’s no big deal at all!
I rent a house. Our lease is explicit about no battery charging in the garage, including EVs. Yet they seemingly have no problem with my welder or RC cars…
Zen_Shinobi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Some apartment buildings are nowhere near where tenets park vehicles. Running extention cables would be a mess and dangerous
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ah! When I think “landlord”, I’m thinking of a single family home. That’s generally the context in America.
Zen_Shinobi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It depends. More rural areas are single family/duplex set ups. If you are more urban you’ll find complexes or even skyscrapers in large metro areas :)