[tehuberduber]

I'm currently using my dryer outlet with a 30 amp breaker to charge. I've been able to tell the car to charge at 36 amps without tripping it. That said the location sucks (I have to back into my garage and then leave the door into the house open for the cable) it just happened to be what I had available. We don't use the outlet for the dryer as we have one that runs on natural gas, but I'm not sure if it would be worth relocating it.

My home was just built this year and I have a 200amp service breaker on the wall outside of my garage. It should be simple enough to come through the outside wall and into my garage with a 50 possibly even 100 amp breaker and dedicated line. So the question would it be worth it? The Volvo charger I got says it's only rated to 40 amps, but I was thinking I should keep it in the car for emergencies. I was looking at something like this and it peaked my interest. https://wattzilla.com/products/wall-wattz.htm

Is anyone using something like this? What are you all doing to charge? Was it expensive?

Sorry I know already put up another topic for discussion tonight, but I felt this was un related enough to warrant its own post. Thanks!

 

[BikerBill]

I'm currently using my dryer outlet with a 30 amp breaker to charge. I've been able to tell the car to charge at 36 amps without tripping it. That said the location sucks (I have to back into my garage and then leave the door into the house open for the cable) it just happened to be what I had available. We don't use the outlet for the dryer as we have one that runs on natural gas, but I'm not sure if it would be worth relocating it.

My home was just built this year and I have a 200amp service breaker on the wall outside of my garage. It should be simple enough to come through the outside wall and into my garage with a 50 possibly even 100 amp breaker and dedicated line. So the question would it be worth it? The Volvo charger I got says it's only rated to 40 amps, but I was thinking I should keep it in the car for emergencies. I was looking at something like this and it peaked my interest. https://wattzilla.com/products/wall-wattz.htm

Is anyone using something like this? What are you all doing to charge? Was it expensive?

Sorry I know already put up another topic for discussion tonight, but I felt this was un related enough to warrant its own post. Thanks!

My Volvo was offered with the free ChargePoint wall adapter (not a charger-charger is built into your car) worth $700 and I accepted it, gratefully. My electrician friend cost me $300 as my electric service panel is inside my garage. He ran a 6amp circuit and breaker and we hard-wired the ChargePoint directly. This allows the ChargePoint to be able to supply 80% of the 60 amps=48amps to charge with. Of course the Volvo will not accept that much, yet. But my Tesla will.

So my answer is, YES, install either a 50amp 14-50 outlet or install a good brand wall adapter. This then allows you to carry your car-cord with you. But remember the difference in charging amps from 32 and higher really doesn't mean that much in time savings if you are charging at home, especially overnight.

 

[Rousie13]

We had 6 gauge wire run into our garage when we had our basement refinished and had a 14-50R outlet put in on a 50A breaker. I then got a Chargepoint Home Flex EVSE and had it set up for 40A and we ran that setup for roughly 1.5 years. Recently with the addition of a second EV in our garage, I did not want to have to swap the cable between the two vehicles. I have plugged my EV's in every night and wanted to continue that, especially since my wife needs to charge the XC40 every night.

I removed the 14-50R plug and got two Wallbox Pulsar Plus units because they can PowerShare(use one circuit and determine what vehicle needs power and split the available power between the cars). I hard wired the two Wallbox units in on the same 40A circuit, so i got 40A Wallbox units instead of the 48A.

Since I have 6 gauge wire run, I could have upped the breaker to a 60A and got two 48A Wallbox units since everything is now hardwired, but i decided it wasn't worth the extra cost for the 48A units over what I paid for the 40A units. Also, I like having a lot of buffer on my setup, which the 50A breaker and 6 gauge wire provides.....I like over kill. haha.

 

[Luckycharms]

This allows the ChargePoint to be able to supply 80% of the 60 amps=48amps to charge with. Of course the Volvo will not accept that much, yet. But my Tesla will.

This is not correct. The onboard charger for the XC40 Recharge is 11.5kW. 11,500W / 240V = 48Amps

Our XC40 charges every night at 48amps.

 

[arijaycomet]

Our battery is 75 kWh net. Let's assume that you arrive home at 10% at the lowest, and if you are following Volvo's suggestions, you are charging to 90% max. That means at any given time you're adding in 80% SOC which is 0.8x75 = 60 kWh of energy back into the car.

220v x 30a = 6.6 kW
220v x 48a = 10.56 kW

Using the existing line that the OP has mentioned (without overloading it to 36A, but at the correct 30A), it would take you 9.09 hours (60 / 6.6) to fully charge your car. Comparatively, if you had a max power line (48A is the max our cars can take) it would drop that to 5.68 hours (60/10.56) total.

On a daily basis, you may not really see a huge benefit here in the overnight charging. If you are plugged in by 10pm each day, your car's end time for a charge would be at best 4am, at worst 7am. Do you really need to use your car between 10p and 7a? If not, then you may not see any real world benefits overnight.

HOWEVER --- if you tend to do heavy days of driving and you need to put charge back in for a 2nd/3rd daily trip, that is where you may benefit here. Example: you have a busy Saturday morning/mid day running errands, and you get home at 3pm with 20% charge. You have evening plans that have even MORE driving. You have 3 hours to charge at home.

In the case of the current charger, 3 hours would had 19.8 kW of power, versus the more robust charging would provide you 31.68 kW of charging. Based on ~200 miles of range per 75kW (375 wh/mi) that would be the difference of adding back in 85 miles vs 53 miles -- so that extra 32 miles of range might be useful, in this "example" provided here.

The other benefit with the 48A charging is down the road if/when you have a 2nd EV at home and you need to charge them BOTH. If you don't install a second EVSE, then you'll want to charge each car as quickly as possible. 11kW charging (48A) is future proofing things a bit here. Though plenty of new EVs still have 32A or 40A max, 48A seems to be the standard we're moving towards. So spending the money now for faster charging may pay off in the future. Bottom line if you have the means to spend the time/money/resources, faster charging never hurts. But the real world times you may benefit from it will truly depend on your individual use case.

 

[tehuberduber]

You guys have great advice here!

First off apologies about my misnomer regarding wall charger vs charging station. I didn't realize the charger is actually in the car but it makes a lot more sense.

I'm thinking given I need to move it anyway and we do drive a lot in general I'm going to go with a 48amp station. If l was too go higher then 48 amp would the car accept it? Or does faster charging than that require a dc fast recharge station and the css outlet?

 

[DeaneG]

240V. USA standard line voltage is 240V/120V, not 220V/110V. It was changed to 240V many decades ago. 48A * 240V can provide up to 11.5kW to the XC40 EV.

In California for PG&E customers, actual voltage range including tolerances and losses are 222-252V at the home's service entry, and 209-254V at the outlet.

 

[DeaneG]

First off apologies about my misnomer regarding wall charger vs charging station. I didn't realize the charger is actually in the car but it makes a lot more sense.

I'm thinking given I need to move it anyway and we do drive a lot in general I'm going to go with a 48amp station. If l was too go higher then 48 amp would the car accept it? Or does faster charging than that require a dc fast recharge station and the css outlet?

No worries, EVs are new and the technology is sometimes not obvious.
The car will only draw as much charging power as its design allows. For the XC40, this is 11kW on an AC power source (the typical J1772-connector home charging setup). But the XC40 can DC fast charge from a DCFC source at up to 150kW, depending on how much charge the battery already has (State of Charge or SOC), and battery temperature. Some other cars DC fast charge much more slowly (Bolt), others much more quickly (ETron and Taycan).

 

[arijaycomet]

Ohio vs California, age of home, lots of things at play here @DeaneG -- but yes, 240V is the standard. I was listing 220V to make a point at the lowest part, where in many places in the country that is what you get. Also, some people may be installing this on a 3phase 208V panel if you REALLY wanted to get technical -- but I felt conservative was the way to go for my math. There was a method to my madness, that I didn't feel needed explained for the purposes there.

@tehuberduber --- like two modems connecting on a computer, the lowest baud rate will always win. Plugging your 48A max XC40 into a charger that is rated for more will never draw more; the car would never sabotage itself. So they'd meet at the happy lower end. Plug your XC40 (48A max) into a wall connector that is 30A max and it'll charge at 30A. Plug your XC40 into a 60A L2 and you'd only get 48A, the car's limit.

 

[cinnamontoast]

Our battery is 75 kWh net. Let's assume that you arrive home at 10% at the lowest, and if you are following Volvo's suggestions, you are charging to 90% max. That means at any given time you're adding in 80% SOC which is 0.8x75 = 60 kWh of energy back into the car.

220v x 30a = 6.6 kW
220v x 48a = 10.56 kW

Using the existing line that the OP has mentioned (without overloading it to 36A, but at the correct 30A), it would take you 9.09 hours (60 / 6.6) to fully charge your car. Comparatively, if you had a max power line (48A is the max our cars can take) it would drop that to 5.68 hours (60/10.56) total.

On a daily basis, you may not really see a huge benefit here in the overnight charging. If you are plugged in by 10pm each day, your car's end time for a charge would be at best 4am, at worst 7am. Do you really need to use your car between 10p and 7a? If not, then you may not see any real world benefits overnight.

HOWEVER --- if you tend to do heavy days of driving and you need to put charge back in for a 2nd/3rd daily trip, that is where you may benefit here. Example: you have a busy Saturday morning/mid day running errands, and you get home at 3pm with 20% charge. You have evening plans that have even MORE driving. You have 3 hours to charge at home.

In the case of the current charger, 3 hours would had 19.8 kW of power, versus the more robust charging would provide you 31.68 kW of charging. Based on ~200 miles of range per 75kW (375 wh/mi) that would be the difference of adding back in 85 miles vs 53 miles -- so that extra 32 miles of range might be useful, in this "example" provided here.

The other benefit with the 48A charging is down the road if/when you have a 2nd EV at home and you need to charge them BOTH. If you don't install a second EVSE, then you'll want to charge each car as quickly as possible. 11kW charging (48A) is future proofing things a bit here. Though plenty of new EVs still have 32A or 40A max, 48A seems to be the standard we're moving towards. So spending the money now for faster charging may pay off in the future. Bottom line if you have the means to spend the time/money/resources, faster charging never hurts. But the real world times you may benefit from it will truly depend on your individual use case.

Or, in your example, if you're on a TOU plan this comes into play. For example in MN, the super-off-peak rates (2.7¢) are 12-6 am... so my EVSE only delivers from 12-6 unless I override it manually. Our old 32A ChargePoint Home wouldn't fill the car in the time allocated if we were down to even 30%, so we upgraded to the Flex and now can charge at 48A. Since our breaker box was about 3' from the EVSE, it was no real cost to change out the breaker since the wire was already the right gauge. And since the power company owned the EVSE, they covered the upgrade.

 

[arijaycomet]

Or, in your example, if you're on a TOU plan this comes into play. For example in MN, the super-off-peak rates (2.7¢) are 12-6 am... so my EVSE only delivers from 12-6 unless I override it manually. Our old 32A ChargePoint Home wouldn't fill the car in the time allocated if we were down to even 30%, so we upgraded to the Flex and now can charge at 48A. Since our breaker box was about 3' from the EVSE, it was no real cost to change out the breaker since the wire was already the right gauge. And since the power company owned the EVSE, they covered the upgrade.

Brilliant! Thank you for educating me. Here in Ohio we aren’t offered any sort of TOU plans — so I so often forget about that. And of the friends I have in LA, CA that have EVs — 2x of them -— both have battery/solar. So they charge based on that system too. Funny enough the person who should have solar/EV is my brother who lives in SF,CA and yet he drives a Lamborghini. LOL oh well… I’ll convert him eventually. (His daily is a Honda at least!)

Anyhow… great example of why faster charging can really benefit you —- much appreciated — one i had not considered

 

[vantablack]

I have a Chargepoint that is hardwired via a 60amp breaker I had an electrician install. Ive been happy with the quality and the app associated with the unit.

 

[BikerBill]

This is not correct. The onboard charger for the XC40 Recharge is 11.5kW. 11,500W / 240V = 48Amps

Our XC40 charges every night at 48amps.

I stand corrected. Its my wife's car. She or I just plug it in and don't look at the dash. She has it set to charge to 90% and whether 32 or 48 amps the time is irrelevant since its sitting in the garage.

 

[blitzswede]

You guys have great advice here!

First off apologies about my misnomer regarding wall charger vs charging station. I didn't realize the charger is actually in the car but it makes a lot more sense.

I'm thinking given I need to move it anyway and we do drive a lot in general I'm going to go with a 48amp station. If l was too go higher then 48 amp would the car accept it? Or does faster charging than that require a dc fast recharge station and the css outlet?

You can go as high as you like (the car will draw no more than it is designed to draw), but it will need at least 60 amps at the circuit breaker to benefit from 48 amps at the station.

 

[brew]

I'm currently using my dryer outlet with a 30 amp breaker to charge. I've been able to tell the car to charge at 36 amps without tripping it.

Keep in mind the breaker is there to protect the wiring, not the device. Please limit your charging to 30A until you decide on a way forward. 👍

 

[DeaneG]

I'm currently using my dryer outlet with a 30 amp breaker to charge. I've been able to tell the car to charge at 36 amps without tripping it...

The charging current allowed by the national electric code is 80% of the breaker's rating, or 24 amps in your case. The printed amp rating for breakers and outlets is for non-continuous only.