Anyone using 16Amp 240V (3.8kW) home charging?

[Ride_the_lightning]

I think you need to think at this from a different perspective. Are you using 77.1 amps continuously? I sincerely doubt it.

You don’t need to throw breakers on things that aren’t being used. Assuming you have an electric stove and dryer here. You probably just need to avoid using the dryer, stove, ac, and evse all at the same time. Even then, the stove and dryer aren’t pulling full power the whole time they are on. They cycle.

There is a prescribed way to determine load factors in the national electric code. You can’t just guess if you are doing it the right way, although the odds of an inspector actually checking may be low in many areas.

A 100A panel can easily be maxed out even in the real world if you add a 40A charger.

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[Ride_the_lightning]

I’ve been charging on a 20A charger almost every night. It’s the one that came with our AUDI PHEV. It has a front switch to select 20A or 40A. It gets really hot when it’s set to 40A so I don’t feel comfortable running it overnight that way. Even at 20A I always wake up with my battery at 80%. There have been a few times I’ve set it to 40A if I needed to top off mid day before some longer driving, but even that wasn’t needed (I don’t have any DCFC within 10 miles of my house).

 

[GatorGrowl]

I’d have Qmerit take a look at it and tell you what can be done.

 

[Maquis]

There is a prescribed way to determine load factors in the national electric code. You can’t just guess if you are doing it the right way, although the odds of an inspector actually checking may be low in many areas.

A 100A panel can easily be maxed out even in the real world if you add a 40A charger.

He’s in Canada, so he needs to go by the CEC, not NEC. I’m not sure if the load calcs differ.

 

[music_cities]

Update: in my other garage at my vacation home I realized I have a 240V garage heater on a 20Amp circuit right beside where I want the charger, so I'm getting a switch (later: relay) to be able to switch between them. Then, I don't have to do anything at the panel, the circuit can never go over 20Amps which is what the existing breaker is. I ordered the Grizzle-E charger and I'll configure it for 16 amps and get an electrician to hard wire it in to one side of the switch, and wire the existing heater to the other side.

The switch was cheap ($20) and arrives tomorrow, but I also ordered a more expensive relay ($150, it should arrive in December some time) so I can switch over to the garage heater at 6AM on my home automation system, e.g. "hey Siri turn on the garage heater at 6AM".

It was actually hard to find the 240V 20Amp switch and relays. Fortunately my son is an electrical engineer and helped source them.

Anyway, I'm still left with the problem of my garage at my primary home. There's no 240V power out there, so regardless it's going to be a fair amount of money and work.

 

[Schmedlack]

I’ve been charging on a 20A charger almost every night. It’s the one that came with our AUDI PHEV. It has a front switch to select 20A or 40A. It gets really hot when it’s set to 40A so I don’t feel comfortable running it overnight that way. Even at 20A I always wake up with my battery at 80%. There have been a few times I’ve set it to 40A if I needed to top off mid day before some longer driving, but even that wasn’t needed (I don’t have any DCFC within 10 miles of my house).

I have a ChargePoint Home Flex hardwired on a 50A circuit. Using the service app, I reduced the power out to 16A. I did this to give the 12V battery more charging time. If I need a full overnight charge I can bump it back up to 40A.

 

[david_quick]

From a residential load calculation, it seems I'm at 77.1 of 100Amps. Rather than spending $$$ on an EVEMS, perhaps I should just limit my Grizzl-E charger to 16Amps. I guess with 16Amps I could charge my GT PE 50% in 12 hours (16Amps*240V*12hours = 46kWh).

What do you think?

We don't commute. If for some reason we were down to 10% on Thursday night I'm sure we'd be able to find 24 hours of charging time before a Saturday morning ski trip (or other road trip) departure.

I did this for years with my Volt. The car limited the charger to 16 A. It worked fine for recharging after my commute. It replaced 40 miles of rage in about 4 hours. Overnight was no problem. If that is your use case it should be fine.

I still have that circuit on the house. But the one in the new garage is 50A. Even with a 60 A breaker the charger only goes up to 40A and the car maxes out at 38a.

This turned out to be rarely needed because the commute hasn’t changed it’s just faster.

 

[JJR]

From a residential load calculation, it seems I'm at 77.1 of 100Amps. Rather than spending $$$ on an EVEMS, perhaps I should just limit my Grizzl-E charger to 16Amps. I guess with 16Amps I could charge my GT PE 50% in 12 hours (16Amps*240V*12hours = 46kWh).

What do you think?

We don't commute. If for some reason we were down to 10% on Thursday night I'm sure we'd be able to find 24 hours of charging time before a Saturday morning ski trip (or other road trip) departure.

My garage has a 240v 20A circuit that is for my table saw.
I installed a 16A charger and it charges at about 11 mph.

 

[Larry Paul]

From a residential load calculation, it seems I'm at 77.1 of 100Amps. Rather than spending $$$ on an EVEMS, perhaps I should just limit my Grizzl-E charger to 16Amps. I guess with 16Amps I could charge my GT PE 50% in 12 hours (16Amps*240V*12hours = 46kWh).

What do you think?

We don't commute. If for some reason we were down to 10% on Thursday night I'm sure we'd be able to find 24 hours of charging time before a Saturday morning ski trip (or other road trip) departure.

While I don't have a 16A EVSE, I do have one that draws a max of 20A (4.5kW). I have 4 plug in vehicles (3 BEV and one EREV). When I charge my Mach E on one of my 7.2kW (32A continuous) I get about 19-20 miles of driving for every hour I am charging. When I use my 4.5kW EVSE on my MME I add about 12-13 miles for every hour. So in an overnight of 8 hours I get about 150 miles more of driving on my 32A and almost 100 miles on my 20A.

I know people who make a 120V 12A EVSE work since over a course of a week the car charges up enough every night to recover the range during any given week.

A nice benefit is the slower you go, will heat the batteries less too.

But the primary questions should be:

What is the routine? Do you typically drive 40 miles per day? 60? 80? 35? 120?

How many hours can you have your vehicle plugged in when it is charging?

How many miles do you need to go in a day after a long distance the day before?
(most people don't drive a long drive the day after a long drive when they have gone back home)

Do you have access to a local DCFC charger? If you do for the rare days where you must go a long distance after you have driven a long distance from the home the following day.

Best regards,

Larry

 

[music_cities]

Most weeks I could get 60 continuous hours of charging sometime midweek -- we don't commute and work from home.

Worst-case normal ski-day would be a 290km round-trip on a cold Sunday, which would get us home at 17%SOC. Although there are level-2 chargers at the ski-hill and also both level-2 and level-3 charger where we might like to have dinner on the way home.

 

[kdonnel]

I have been charging two EV on a 30 A circuit (24 A charging) for almost two years.

Not once have I wished I could charge faster.

I don't have a time of use plan with my power company so I can charge whenever and I don't need to charge within a short window.

For the past two years when my wife comes home from work she plugs in her Chevy Bolt. It takes about an hour to two hours to put her back to 80% based on her typical driving day. When her car is charged I plug in my car and it gets to 85% sometime before morning depending on how much or little driving I have done that day.

We have arrived home from road trips at less than 10%, plugged in really late, and then found the car is not at 85% in the morning but I rarely need more than 20-25% of the battery so it is not an issue. I just leave with less than 85% and the following night it all evens back up again.

I have said before that unless you have a TOU plan or need a huge percentage of the battery every day that EV drivers really would be fine with a 20 A 240V circuit on inexpensive and easy to run 12 gauge wire. Many garages might already have a dedicated circuit that could be converted to 240V by changing the breaker at an extremely low cost compared to running a new 50 A 240 V circuit.

 

[TheVirtualTim]

Nevermind how much capacity your service panel has ... what about the wiring to the 240v outlet? The gauge has to be able to handle 125% of amperage you want to use while charging the car.

 

[music_cities]

Nevermind how much capacity your service panel has ... what about the wiring to the 240v outlet? The gauge has to be able to handle 125% of amperage you want to use while charging the car.

I need to double check the wiring, but the circuit breaker attached to the wiring is 20amps so it's probably 12AWG which is 20amp peak, so 16amp continuous.

 

[hprose]

From a residential load calculation, it seems I'm at 77.1 of 100Amps. Rather than spending $$$ on an EVEMS, perhaps I should just limit my Grizzl-E charger to 16Amps. I guess with 16Amps I could charge my GT PE 50% in 12 hours (16Amps*240V*12hours = 46kWh).

What do you think?

We don't commute. If for some reason we were down to 10% on Thursday night I'm sure we'd be able to find 24 hours of charging time before a Saturday morning ski trip (or other road trip) departure.

Before getting my Grizzl e I use a 16A left over from my hybrid days. Worked very nicely on the MME. you could also set your charge time for evenings when you sleep with little competition for power. As long as you have 6 or 8 wire you could probably do 32 or 40. People out in tankless water heats that require 3-4 40A breakers that mathematically would looked bad even on a 200A panel. Others have said the same or similar. Make sure your breaker doesn’t have GFCI since that will interfere with the Grizzle e GFCI

 

[Flyboy]

I kept my OpenEVSE set at 16 amps because I found that neither cooling or warming scheduled departure uses more than 16 amps at 240V AC. Never had a problem keeping the car charged. Lately I have upped it to 17amps because it reads an even 4 kWh. My monthly average is 350 to 450 miles.

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