Featured Community Question

For plug-in hybrids, L1 is generally all you need, unless you absolutely have to drive it in EV mode as much as possible, especially for short trips around town after you get home from work. But L2 charging is definitely worth the cost if you plan to go all electric down the line.

Pretty sure the J1772 plugs will be the standard for electric cars going forward, but the DC fast chargers are still in their "Betamax vs VHS" or "HD-DVD vs Bluray" phase. I don't blame you for not wanting to pick a side there yet, because public chargers are still few and far between in many areas outside of California.

But for home charging, 240v is more than enough unless your daily commute is 200 miles, in which case you might want to move closer to work as that's already a 3-5 hour drive everyday. Incidentally, that's what Erick Belmer's round trip commute was in his 2012 Chevy Volt, and why he racked up nearly 450k miles on it. His commute's gotten a lot shorter recently though due to job changes, so hitting 500k will take longer.

 

The conflict between DC fast charge standards aren't on par with betamax v. VHS, because DC chargers are already being installed that have plugs for both CCS and CHAdeMO. At this time, only Tesla's can access the Supercharger network, and there is at least a CHAdeMO adapter for Tesla cars.

 

late 2010, early 2011? there WERE no choices - it was like deciding what color Model T you wanted when they 1st came out. Any color you wanted as long as it was black. So it was, with the J plug. Any J1772 manufacturer you wanted, as long as you got aerovironment. So, we paid up the wazoo for the AV.
Last year, for ⅛ LESS than the AV's cost (with installation), we got a sweet deal on Tesla's wall unit - which delivers 16.8kW's MORE powaah, than AV's mediocre 7.2kW's. The hose/cable length of the AV was only 12' long - just ½ the length of the new unit. I bought this sweet tesla to J-plug adapter too,

for our much slower charging, short range plugin ... an extra $200. Even so, the whole upgrade, including the adapter & the necessary extra big breaker (&heavier wire run) , was still only ¼ the cost of the AV, some 8yrs ago.

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@hill
Is that a solar inverter adjacent to your EVSE?

 

good eye - sort of ..... it's 2 of 'em. Each rated at 4kW's. And if you're curious about the 240v twist lock box to the right - that's used to back feed the main service panel - once you throw the interlock switch which can't be thrown until the main disconnects from the grid.
Here's an older picture before switching the car charger wiring and breaker which was only 40 amp at the time - plenty big for the old AV setup.


You can see that plate slides, and the backfeed breaker can't be active until the main is shut down, disconnecting from the grid.
.

 

^ sweet!
You are living the life my friend!!

I have the same interlock for the generator connection on my main panel. Impossible to connect the backup power unless the main disconnect is off. Simple but safe (and passed inspection w/flying colors).

I have a solar engineer (locally owned solar company- not one of the big corps) coming over on Monday to give me ideas on going grid-tied solar.

 

I actually have a ChargePoint 32 amp (25' plug in version). Charges our Leaf at 6.7 kW and our PiP at a whopping 2.2 kW. I wouldn't have got one but our local electric utility was giving out $500 rebates and I was able to buy one when they were 20% off.
Love the way it interacts with the app. Although I'm surprised there is no way to shut it off via the app.

 

Grid-tied is the greatest! The cost of a net-zero electric bill versus the amount of occasional maintenance required in going off grid is hardly a fair deal - unless you have a ton of talent, & the energy of someone not yet in their late 50's or beyond.
However, I recently was brave enough to try an experiment that could have very easily let the smoke out of our 2 PV inverters, but I tried it anyway - only after getting lots of advice & reading up on the nuances of grid-tied inverters
Grid-tied inverters are referred to as anti-islanding. That means they immediately drop out when the grid drops, or you throw your main breaker. However, pv inverters don't need to see 100's of amps of 240v coming in to your service panel in order to be "spoofed" into believing they are still grid-tied. When they see a pure 60htz sine wave, the only other thing they look for is 240v ± 5V, even if it's just a couple amps.
We have a very high-end Honda inverter generator & I was assured that 'if' the grid were disconnected, and "if" your service panel were fed the appropriate quality power, your grid tied inverters would sync with your pure voltage/60htz & restart.
Voilà !!! - & Buaaahhahaha ...
(caveat - your results may be catastrophic)

When our home burned down near Nashville recently, we realized we have enough land to actually go whole-hog - off grid as this genius young man has done - quite a do-it-yourselfer;

Battery Hackers Are Building the Future in the Garage - Bloomberg

I'd love just to be his gopher - just knowing so much of the knowledge would likely via osmosis, get absorbed simply from being nearby. He's posted pictures of his wild projects here,
Dropbox - Solar Public - Simplify your life
As well as a YouTube channel. You can watch him disassemble an entire salvaged Tesla traction pack for his own home backup, as well as converting his old style 85kWh Model S, into a super car, not to mention hacking Tesla's code for flaws, for which he gets handsomely paid. I remember some time ago he discovered in the code that Tesla was rewriting it's code for the not yet announced 100 kwh. When he made that public, Tesla removed that version from his car, but it made no difference, because he had already backed it up!
Search genius should not be allowed. Makes us mediocre folks feel really inadequate. I might have to buy a jacked up 4x4.

One might ask them self, who needs such a massive battery backup!?! Well - if you build your very own 100kW supercharger, where else would you conveniently pull that much power.
Wow

the little UMC is quite unbelievable. iirc, the newer ones have been derated to something like 30 amps, but our older ones will do 40amps! Such a Tiny/light weight little thing - yet capable of 40amps. Maybe i'm just too easily impressed.
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