Dual EVSE Recommendations please

[Ahlarict]

We have a Grizzle Duo and it works great. We have a Mach e, Kia EV 9 and Tesla model 3 and we have never had a problem. We are going on 3 years with the charger.

Same - Flawless operation for my Mach-e and my daughter's Fiat 500e. Only hiccup I ever had was when I left my Mach-e plugged into the Grizzl-e Duo while its circuit breaker was tripped and that drained my 12v. Otherwise, it's been pretty much perfect.

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[WR221]

We have a Mach E and Kia EV6 sharing a single 32A charger and averaging 12K miles/year on each car. There has never been a time that I felt I needed a second charger. If both cars need a charge on the same day, I might plug in one during the evening and the other over night. It might be a different story if I had lower electric rates at night, but I don't.

 

[kltye]

I will once again shill for the Wallbox Pulsar Plus, which has been 100% reliable for me, and the best smart charger, IMO. You can disable automatic updates, and they can do power sharing out of the box.

And if you're nerdy, it also implements OCPP natively and can talk to your own OCPP server for command and control, so no cloud is required. (I use a Home Assistant addon for that)

 

[load97]

House currently has 100 amp service with only 20 amp in the garage. Plan is to upgrade service to 200 amp and add a separate 100 amp panel in the garage. Then I can add extra lighting, a few standard outlets and a 50 amp plug for the current EVSE we own.

I suppose I could add 2 50amp circuits and have 2 EVSEs. After reading some of the feed back here, not sure that expense is actually worth it even if it would be easier at that time to do so.

We had an old Georgia Pacific 100 amp panel. We upgraded to a 200 amp panel In 2021 I think it was. We then brought a 100 amp panel in to the garage in 2022-23 I think it was. Just in the last 9 months we went from just 1 EV charger to 2, plus a 5k electric garage heater. One EV charger is in the garage (for winter use), but can be accessible outside garage if needed. The other is mounted opposite side of the garage and outside. The outside one mainly takes care of the hybrid Wrangler 4XE that doesn’t go in the garage in the winter. Each EV charger is 40 amps, 50 amp breaker. Using Wallbox chargers doing power sharing. So if we have both plugged in at same time (usually in the winter) we don’t have to move vehicles around etc. Just plug both in and forget it until time to unplug & go to work etc.

If I had to do it again, I’d just do 2 EV chargers & a 125 amp panel in garage when we did the 200 amp panel in the basement. I would have saved probably $2k. So right now the 2 EV chargers share 40 amps because of the need for heat in garage. Your mileage may vary. Hope that helps!

 

[TRP]

We had an old Georgia Pacific 100 amp panel. We upgraded to a 200 amp panel In 2021 I think it was. We then brought a 100 amp panel in to the garage in 2022-23 I think it was. Just in the last 9 months we went from just 1 EV charger to 2, plus a 5k electric garage heater. One EV charger is in the garage (for winter use), but can be accessible outside garage if needed. The other is mounted opposite side of the garage and outside. The outside one mainly takes care of the hybrid Wrangler 4XE that doesn’t go in the garage in the winter. Each EV charger is 40 amps, 50 amp breaker. Using Wallbox chargers doing power sharing. So if we have both plugged in at same time (usually in the winter) we don’t have to move vehicles around etc. Just plug both in and forget it until time to unplug & go to work etc.

If I had to do it again, I’d just do 2 EV chargers & a 125 amp panel in garage when we did the 200 amp panel in the basement. I would have saved probably $2k. So right now the 2 EV chargers share 40 amps because of the need for heat in garage. Your mileage may vary. Hope that helps!

All things are worth considering at this point since we have not started the upgrade.

We have no need for a heater. Most KY winters are not that bad. We have lived in the Chicago land area, so I'm comparing it to those winters.

A slightly larger sub panel and separate circuits for each Ev would be nice tho

 

[MonkeyNutz]

I have a Grizzl-E currently. You aren't having any issues with your Duo?

No issues with my Duo <knock wood> but we'll see how it goes when I'm regularly charging two vehicles. I installed the Duo after we sold our Model Y at the end of March and have been regularly charing my Lightning with it, have tested both cables. And we just picked up our '25 Mach E and its first charge at home was last night. Worked just fine, but the Lightning was fully charged and not plugged in. I'll plug both of them in tonight after we drive them a bit today.

 

[khbkhb]

Code may not allow. But from a technical standpoint a pair of wallbox pulsar+ units can intellentgly share a 60amp circuit. Then you could just plug both cars in and the chargers can load share. Say car #1 starts first, it gets all, that is 48amps even without another car, the curve tapers down as the pack gets full. Plug in #2 and load sharing kicks in. As #1 demand goes down #2 will get more

Practically overkill unless you really need totally automatic hands off; we went with separate circuits (code compliance) and for a time had three EVs …. Just tweaking the charger start times sufficed for most times, and alternating who plugged in

for unrelated reasons we are down to 2 evs and have more than ample capacity the machE figures out its own schedule in non peak, and ive set the Mini to just start after nonpeak at night

 

[MonkeyNutz]

Just an update here after a week of owning our Mach-E and charging it alongside our Lighting. Grizzl-E Duo Charger... The charger works well and only one issue encountered so far and I blame Grizzl-E for bad advice in their user's guide. Our discounted rate charging window begins at 9PM, so I followed the advice in the Grizzl-E user's guide that says vehicles on a charging schedule should be scheduled to charge at the same time. I don't think they meant that literally because having both our Mach-E and Lightning set to start at 9PM causes a charging error on both vehicles and the EVSE errors out with a flashing red LED and I have to power cycle to reset it. Problem is solved by offsetting the charging start of one of the vehicles by a couple minutes. So I set the Mach-E to begin charging at 9:05.

I ended up with the Grizzl-E Duo to make charging the two more convenient after spending the last 2-1/2 years sharing a Tesla charger between the Lighting and our Model Y. I would have preferred to install a second EVSE, but we just don't have panel capacity to do so and it's also a long and expensive wire run. The new Mach-E seemed like a good excuse to change the charging setup.

Grizzl-E has a good product here, but I wash it had connectivity like their other chargers so we could monitor with their app and perhaps even have some more configuration options in terms of charge rates and priorities. I hope they bring that functionality to future models.

I wish they had a dual charger that could be installed on higher capacity circuits. 50A works fine for our needs and that's all I have capacity for anyway. But to be able to have a charger like this that can take advantage of more amperage would be great.

 

[methorian]

I will once again shill for the Wallbox Pulsar Plus, which has been 100% reliable for me, and the best smart charger, IMO. You can disable automatic updates, and they can do power sharing out of the box.

And if you're nerdy, it also implements OCPP natively and can talk to your own OCPP server for command and control, so no cloud is required. (I use a Home Assistant addon for that)

Second the Wallbox Pulsar Plus.

I've had 2 of them on a single 50A circuit via their (wired) load balancing for over 3 years now without any issue.

We also installed one at my partners business which has been going strong.

The PRO's are:

• Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity - Always able to fall-back to BT if wifi goes haywire.
• WIRED connectivity for load balancing - Means you do have to run a communication cable (I used CAT5E) between the two units, but ensures no reliance on wireless/cloud communications for load balancing.
• Excellent app/web portal + integrations available, and useful reporting if needed.

My only Con just came to light... they have yet to release a NACS cable retrofit. I recently added a '25 Kia EV6 to my stable, and it has NACS. J1772 adapters are fine and cheap enough, but I'd like to retro a NACS connector onto one of the Wallbox Pulsars in the garage.

Here's a post I shared back when I installed them for reference.

 

[TRP]

Just an update here after a week of owning our Mach-E and charging it alongside our Lighting. Grizzl-E Duo Charger... The charger works well and only one issue encountered so far and I blame Grizzl-E for bad advice in their user's guide. Our discounted rate charging window begins at 9PM, so I followed the advice in the Grizzl-E user's guide that says vehicles on a charging schedule should be scheduled to charge at the same time. I don't think they meant that literally because having both our Mach-E and Lightning set to start at 9PM causes a charging error on both vehicles and the EVSE errors out with a flashing red LED and I have to power cycle to reset it. Problem is solved by offsetting the charging start of one of the vehicles by a couple minutes. So I set the Mach-E to begin charging at 9:05.

I ended up with the Grizzl-E Duo to make charging the two more convenient after spending the last 2-1/2 years sharing a Tesla charger between the Lighting and our Model Y. I would have preferred to install a second EVSE, but we just don't have panel capacity to do so and it's also a long and expensive wire run. The new Mach-E seemed like a good excuse to change the charging setup.

Grizzl-E has a good product here, but I wash it had connectivity like their other chargers so we could monitor with their app and perhaps even have some more configuration options in terms of charge rates and priorities. I hope they bring that functionality to future models.

I wish they had a dual charger that could be installed on higher capacity circuits. 50A works fine for our needs and that's all I have capacity for anyway. But to be able to have a charger like this that can take advantage of more amperage would be great.

Thanks for the update. The offset start times is very good to know

 

[Ahlarict]

Grizzl-E has a good product here, but I wash it had connectivity like their other chargers so we could monitor with their app and perhaps even have some more configuration options in terms of charge rates and priorities. I hope they bring that functionality to future models.

I know you and the general direction of the market disagree with me, but I regard Grizzl-e's lack of network connectivity and an app as a huge positive. Properly designed and manufactured, this charger could possibly outlive the company that built it, and will definitely outlive that company's desire to continue the endless treadmill of R&D necessary to maintain the security and functionality of any such app on iOS version fifty! Grizzl-e makes solid well designed and constructed products that last - why screw that up with buggy "why-tech" apps made mostly redundant by the car's apps?

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