Charging experience with 6-20 outlet on 240/20A?

[pti]

Hi,

I should have a Premium AWD Extended arriving in mid-June, if the ETA is to be believed.

I have an already-full electrical panel that is also on the opposite end of my house, which has finished ceilings in the lower level. Adding a 50A circuit would likely require a new panel and lots of drywall cutting to run new wire to the garage.

I do, however, have an electric baseboard heater in the room above the garage that appears to be fed by its own 240/20 circuit. It would be feasible to have an electrician start a run from there for a garage outlet.


- Has anyone used a 240/20A circuit for home charging?

- Did you install / have a 6-20 outlet for it?

- What charger did you buy?

- What charging rate in mi/h do you see?

- Am I correct that I would I have to sacrifice the heater, as either that or the EV charger would be a "constant" load?


Thanks!

- Patrick

Sponsored

 

[Sweetwater]

Will not work. That heat circuit is calculated to the correct load.
Have a line installed from your panel. To do this I would go outside
from panel and underground PVC conduit to garage.

 

[pti]

Will not work. That heat circuit is calculated to the correct load.
Have a line installed from your panel. To do this I would go outside
from panel and underground PVC conduit to garage.

Thanks. I hadn't thought about an underground run... a new box and new run would let me do a 14-50 or hardwire and have higher current, so it might be worth the hassle and cost.

The problems, though, are that the box is full, so I think that would need a new box, and I'm also in a condo, so anything done externally can be an issue. That's why I was hoping I could repurpose the existing 20A circuit if I was willing to remove the baseboard heater and use a charger that was limited to 16A on the existing circuit, like this, for instance:

https://www.amazon.com/LEFANEV-100-250V-Portable-Electric-Charging/dp/B08CX6YFPB/

Is your thought that the Romex to the thermostat wouldn't be rated/sufficient for a constant 16A or that the 20A breaker in the box would be deficient?

I really appreciate the help. I am just trying to get slightly educated before contacting an electrician.

 

[OttawaGuy]

You may need a subpanel or again you could go with a Thermolec DCC-12 (it's a current manager when your panel is full)

I had to install a 3rd subpanel to my main panel and the DCC-12 in order to ensure I wouldn't have any issues!

 

[SpacePony]

I'm charging my car on an "ancient" SPX Voltec 15A charger plugged into a dedicated NEMA 6-20 socket I had installed for it (in 2011). It works fine, but definitely not as quick as the 50amp chargers. You're correct that you wouldn't want to be running the baseboard heater at the same time as the car was charging, as that would almost certainly kick the breaker.

If you don't want the mess of new box and wiring, you can always start with a lower power charger on a NEMA 6-20, and see if it works for you. And if that is too inconvenient/slow or you don't like toggling between baseboard heater and charging, then you can upgrade the box and wiring to the garage with a 50 or 60 amp circuit. There are some chargers out there that can be set to charge at different rates, so if you got one of those, you could keep the same charger and just swap the plug end.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT:
If you're going to expand the panel and run the wire, make sure your electrical supply line/service is rated to handle it. 15A charger is fine for my use, but one of the reasons I haven't upgraded to a 60/50A circuit for the car is because we also have a hot tub on a 50A circuit, and our entire house is only 100A service from the power company.

 

[pti]

If you don't want the mess of new box and wiring, you can always start with a lower power charger on a NEMA 6-20, and see if it works for you.

Right. I do just enough driving that the "3 miles/hr" replenishment from 120V won't be quite enough on an annoying number of occasions, but if I could just get 2-3x that with 240V / 16A, I'd almost always be fine and reduce the need to top off at a public charger to a few times a year.

My plan would be to just remove that baseboard heater in the room above the garage and take advantage of having a starting point for the electrical work that is basically already in the garage ceiling.

 

[SpacePony]

Right. I do just enough driving that the "3 miles/hr" replenishment from 120V won't be quite enough on an annoying number of occasions, but if I could just get 2-3x that with 240V / 16A, I'd almost always be fine and reduce the need to top off at a public charger to a few times a year.

My plan would be to just remove that baseboard heater in the room above the garage and take advantage of having a starting point for the electrical work that is basically already in the garage ceiling.

Yep, my 15Amp Charger charges at 3.2 kWhr (into the battery, or 3.6 from the wall), which adds about 9-10 miles of range/hr. Enough that even an *empty* battery would be replenished to 80% in less than a day.

 

[Sweetwater]

Thanks. I hadn't thought about an underground run... a new box and new run would let me do a 14-50 or hardwire and have higher current, so it might be worth the hassle and cost.

The problems, though, are that the box is full, so I think that would need a new box, and I'm also in a condo, so anything done externally can be an issue. That's why I was hoping I could repurpose the existing 20A circuit if I was willing to remove the baseboard heater and use a charger that was limited to 16A on the existing circuit, like this, for instance:

https://www.amazon.com/LEFANEV-100-250V-Portable-Electric-Charging/dp/B08CX6YFPB/

Is your thought that the Romex to the thermostat wouldn't be rated/sufficient for a constant 16A or that the 20A breaker in the box would be deficient?

I really appreciate the help. I am just trying to get slightly educated before contacting an electrician.

DO NOT mess with that heat circuit !! That heater is connected to other
heaters. The circuit it is on is maxed out. You may find 2 circuits in panel
to double up and give you the 2 spaces. With baseboard heat you must
have a 200 amp service. Have an Electrician help you find space in that
panel. Most likely it can be done. DON'T MESS WITH THE HEAT !!!!
It will not work.

 

[breeves002]

If the baseboard heater in the garage is the ONLY thing on that circuit you can simply remove the heater and use that circuit for a max 16A charger. You can installed a new receptacle for any 240v/16A charger.

I'm not sure why sweetwater and others are freaking out. As long as it is the only thing on that circuit you can re-use the wiring for a different purpose assuming you don't pull more than a 16A load. You do need to be certain it is the only thing on the circuit though.

In theory if you wanted to use it for both you could add a manual transfer switch of some kind to switch between charger or heater manually.

Sounds like you'll be using an electrician to install a receptacle or hard wired charger anyways so you may just ask them. They will tell you if it can or cannot be done as they can look at it directly where as we are speculating based on what we know.

 

[pti]

DO NOT mess with that heat circuit !! That heater is connected to other
heaters. The circuit it is on is maxed out.

Now I understand what you were getting at. Here, though, the house is primarily forced air. This is a one-off electric baseboard on what appears to be its own dedicated circuit.

However, I take your point and that would be the -first- thing I would confirm with an electrician before considering use of that circuit. Any potential use of that circuit was predicated on the one heater being the only thing on it, which all testing appears to confirm. If that's not the case, yes, the concept would be tossed.

Sponsored