EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) for Home Use

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) for Home Use

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | ... | 28

7415 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2850

ID Verified

Trusted

#2849750 13-Jan-2022 11:29

For our Leaf we use a pretty 'dumb' 16A caravan cable - same brand as timbosan's, which the dealer gave us to replace a more flexible (could do 8-16A, so with an adapter could also do 3-pin charging) but dodgy Charge Amps cable - this one here: https://oemaudio.co.nz/electric-vehicle-charging-products/ev-power-type-1-premium-16-amp-and-holster-package. (We went with this as we had a caravan socket on the side of the house, close to a secondary driveway/carpark built for the former owners' caravan; somewhat confused when the RCD popped every time we tried charging over 8A, until the electrician we brought in to fix it reported they'd wired it into the same 8A circuit as our bedroom plugs were on!) Using the car's timer works fine.

Not sure what we'll do when we replace my ICE with an EV (waiting for the MY...), but going by RobDickinson's experience, we may well be fine sticking to this and a 3-pin charging cable, though I'd certainly get a cable to be able to charge via the caravan socket when we get the Tesla. (We have a 3-pin cable for the Leaf as well in case we wanted to charge when away from home - hardly used it, but given the Leaf's range that's no surprise - would be critical with a longer-range car.)

I would note that occasionally the RCD on the caravan socket has popped when charging, but more critically the fuse in the street has also gone a couple of times; this is in a house that was apparently re-wired 12-14 years ago. It happened in winter when we've also been running the whole-house ducted heating system, but is something to be mindful of perhaps...

RobDickinson

1526 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 513

#2849754 13-Jan-2022 11:35

Also note with the tesla mobile charger you can do 'mode 2' up to 32 amps with the right plug and end.

All depends on your usage and requirements.

10 hours at 8 amps/2kw is 20kwh or enough for 120-140km of range.

afe66

3181 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1678

Lifetime subscriber

#2849789 13-Jan-2022 12:13

I got a caravan plug out in for my leaf 4 years ago on a new circuit to main board laid with 32A cable.

I have an adapter which pugs into the caravan plug with a 10a to 16a switch inline box then plug my leaf cable into that.

For cable organisation I have a holster cable hook device similar to timbisan. When unused the cable end is plugged into the holster on wall and when I get home I just disconnect it and plug into car. Takes less than 5s.

In future I might replace the caravan plug with a formal EV box so can draw 32a as internal cabling all done.

Electrician said it would only take 30minutes to modify each end and he wouldn't need to crawl under house/roof to lay new cable. Even though I knew at install time I didn't need to charge at 32a, the cost per m for 32 vrs 16 a cable was only 2 dollars per meter more.

Ps I have a UK 24kw leaf which can take 6.6kw

lmnop

22 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 8

#2850329 14-Jan-2022 00:37

Just one small point. EV's have the charger built into the car.

An EVSE is generally an overpriced current transfer cable with a small amount of electronics in it - mainly safety related - as well as telling the charger in the car how much current it can safely suck from the powerpoint on the other end of the cable.

Hurrrrumph.

Dingbatt

6804 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3694

Lifetime subscriber

#2850340 14-Jan-2022 07:14

Hence the title of the thread.

But point taken. Supply Equipment is being used interchangeably with ‘charger’. It’s already confusing with ‘modes’ and ‘types’.

But to try and point the thread in a useful direction, has anybody got/used/researched the ‘Zappi’ recharge system?

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

Obraik

2167 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1347

#2850554 14-Jan-2022 10:56

I don't believe the Zappi chargers have been approved for sale in NZ yet.

Looking to buy a Tesla? Use my referral link and we both get credits

Lego

Shop now for Lego sets and other gifts (affiliate link).

Dingbatt

6804 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3694

Lifetime subscriber

#2850690 14-Jan-2022 12:54

Obraik:

I don't believe the Zappi chargers have been approved for sale in NZ yet.

Correct. However, I have heard back from their Australian distributor. They expect certification later this year. I like the idea of centralised control of the energy flows in the house to maximise use of energy from PVs and minimise grid usage and cost. There is no point in selling back to the grid at quarter(?) of cost of buying it if it can go into an EV or static battery.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

RunningMan

9189 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4842

#2850831 14-Jan-2022 14:43

lmnop: Just one small point. EV's have the charger built into the car.

More correctly they have the AC charger/s built in to the car. A commercial rapid charger is DC and is external to the vehicle.

lmnop: An EVSE is generally an overpriced current transfer cable with a small amount of electronics in it - mainly safety related - as well as telling the charger in the car how much current it can safely suck from the powerpoint on the other end of the cable. Hurrrrumph.

It doesn't include just a cable plugged in to a powerpoint. A permanently mounted AC wallbox is also an EVSE. As for overpriced, probably depends on the particular model and what features it has, but in it's simplest form there isn't that much too it and the pricing seems remarkably high for not much componentry.

cthombor

86 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 13

Lifetime subscriber

#2854222 20-Jan-2022 15:48

I have only 6 PV panels on my roof so, to avoid over-running the power-output of my rooftop array, whenever it's a sunny day and I'm not in a hurry to charge my EV, I use an EVSE to top up its charge at 8A 115 VAC. (I'm using a utility-grade 2kVA isolating step-down transformer in a bespoke charging-circuit which -- for obvious reasons -- can't be installed by a registered electrician.) The resulting trickle-charge proceeds at a rate of about 900W, of which (at a rough estimate) about 600W actually gets to the battery. The AC/DC conversion on my 2013 24 kWh Leaf is pretty lossy -- dissipating maybe as much as 300W as heat, perhaps only 200W when run at such a low power level. Joule heating in the battery is negligible when charging at a slow rate. The step-down transformer dissipates approx 100W as heat, so the overall charging efficiency is maybe 60%... but if my HWC is already hot I have nothing else to do with power from my PV panels except spill it onto my local line for a credit of 8 cents/kWh... and I imagine the other rooftop PV arrays in my 'hood are also spilling their excess, contributing their little-bits to local-line destabilisation (since there's *no* likelihood of a "smart" grid coming anytime soon)... anyway I'm willing to tolerate the 400W heat-waste, and I'm forgoing $0.08/kWh of credit in order to charge a battery at 60% efficiency so ... it's sort-of-like buying electricity from myself at a marginal cost of $0.08/60% = $0.13/kWh... which is about half of the $0.24/kWh I pay when charge at night.

My night-time charges are usually 8A 230VAC through an EVSE that is fitted with a 16A "caravan" plug, using a not-WorkSafe-compliant 2m cord with a 16A "caravan" socket and a 15A NZ plug.

My maximum charge-rate at home is 10A 230VAC (by adjusting the current-setting on my 8A/10A EVSE). There's bugger-all difference in efficiency at the two charge-rates and the lower charge-rate is a bit safer. My 15A plug/socket wall connection gets a bit warm when I charge at 10A, so I certainly wouldn't care to charge overnight at 12A through this rig even if I had an EVSE which would deliver a 12A charge.

In 2018-9, I had been occasionally using the 15A "230 VAC" EVSE that was supplied with this vehicle. This EVSE would max-out the AC charge rate of my Leaf; and it seemed sort-of-safe to use because it was fitted with a 16A "caravan" plug (but lacked an SDoC and electrical-inspection notice). But... one day I noticed that the "230 VAC" label was held on with a piece of transparent tape... and after scraping off that label I could read (as I had expected!) that the EVSE was rated only for use on a Japanese-style 200 VAC supply! A bit of net-research persuaded me that it'd be far more trouble than it'd be worth to remove & replace a 200 VAC component which -- I'd suspect -- had a safety margin of no more than 20%. By regulation, my lines company can supply my electricity at 230 VAC +/- 5%, with "momentary fluctuations" outside this band. Yikes!! I didn't care to run the risk of having a component inside my EVSE explode in the middle of the night due to a "momentary" overvoltage condition... and my 15A plug was getting pretty warm if I charged for more than a few hours... so I stopped using it. At a later date, a bit more net-research revealed that the import of this particular EVSE was banned in Nov 2020. (https://gazette.govt.nz/notice/id/2020-au5440) Caveat emptor!

SaltyNZ

8869 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 9554

Trusted

2degrees

Lifetime subscriber

#2857935 28-Jan-2022 18:49

For most of the time we've had our Leaf the standard 8A wall socket charger was sufficient. Last year since the house was being rebuilt anyway I had the sparky install a caravan socket in the garage. I had the 16A charger already as we had used it when taking the car camping.

With that experience in hand I'm happy to continue with just the 16A charger for now, including when the Model 3 arrives.

However, we are keeping the Leaf at least until EVs Enhanced release more details on their custom design battery packs. Should that prove worthwhile I would consider having a second caravan plug installed outside on the side of the house for two cars to charge at once. There are external 10A sockets already but it's worth the bump from 8A to 16A in my opinion.

iPad Pro 11" + iPhone 15 Pro Max + 2degrees 4tw!

These comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of 2degrees.

RUKI

1405 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 422

#2860325 1-Feb-2022 22:41

Re: "caravan socket/plug" - reference pops up here and there. I've seen variations of those, some cheap versions could be very dangerous / unreliable, e.g. those without screws tightening the wire. And they are rated 16A which is what many EVSE can draw, so working at the limit.
What is rarely mentioned is the 20A server room thick fiat prong type plugs (orange colored).
Receptacle could also be 20A rated socket, which will also easily accept 8A normal plug from 3-rd party EVSE.

Toyota / Lexus Hybrid and EV Battery Expert Battery Test & Repair

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

RunningMan

9189 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4842

#2860411 2-Feb-2022 07:35

A number of the caravan plug type EVSEs seem to be derated from 16 amps which is a good idea to reduce the possibility of the plug/socket overheating. I guess the caravan outlet was used in early EV days because it was the only common publicly available power outlet across the country at all the camp grounds, but the those same sockets are often years old, neglected or corroded and may not safely cope with high current for hours at a time.

Scott3

4177 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2990

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2860480 2-Feb-2022 11:01

RUKI: Re: "caravan socket/plug" - reference pops up here and there. I've seen variations of those, some cheap versions could be very dangerous / unreliable, e.g. those without screws tightening the wire. And they are rated 16A which is what many EVSE can draw, so working at the limit.
What is rarely mentioned is the 20A server room thick fiat prong type plugs (orange colored).
Receptacle could also be 20A rated socket, which will also easily accept 8A normal plug from 3-rd party EVSE.

A lot of it goes back to the early day's of EV's in NZ.

In cira 2012 / 2013, NZ started to get it's first decent flow of Used Leaf's from japan.

They typically included the Panasonic (typically) built charge cord. Rated at 200V, and drawing something like 14 - 15A (but could be reduced a little by swapping out the thermal probe with a resistor. At the time, Replacement charge cords were both expensive, and poor quality compared to the ex Japan unit that came with the car. People worked out that by swapping a small transformer inside the unit, and swapping the plug, that the unit would run reliably in NZ.

Always was a bit naughty (and illegal to sell) due to the rating of the unit being 200v not 230v. But this practice was expressly prohibited in 2020: https://gazette.govt.nz/notice/id/2020-au5440

Initially the 15A AS/NZS 3112 plug was the go to for this. Sadly, despite being rated for 15A continuously it seemed that many could not handle that duty, and there were quite a few photos of blacked plugs / sockets around. Obviously quite worrying. As such the community moved on to the blue caravan plugs. Seems these had no issues with continuously running at 14 - 15A. Only issue I have seen is where an EVSE faulted, and far in excess of 16A was drawn through one. Plugs & sockets are cheap and widely available, including in outdoor appropriate versions. And back in 2012 / 2013, having a cord that would charge a leaf at near max AC rate at any one of NZ's thousands of campsites was pretty usefull. But the massive build out of DC chargers in the last few years reduces that need.

So a 16A caravan outlet became the defacto norm for a cheaper charging solution.

[edit] worksafe guidelines say you should only charge at 12A from a 16A blue caravan outlet, unless you have temperature monitoring on the pins to drop the rate if they get too hot.

Scott3

4177 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2990

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2860578 2-Feb-2022 11:36

Dingbatt:

There are multiple threads with disparate information about Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) spread across Geekzone (from Climate Change through to DC home charging). I have started this thread to try and collate just the charging side of things. It is not a discussion of the relative merits of a particular EV or PHEV, or really how to live your life.

To that end, I’m interested what equipment GZers have installed to feed their electrified vehicle. Why they chose a particular charger, how it is integrated into their household power supply. I know some wag will post a picture of a standard 10A 3-pin wall socket (for use with a mode 2 IC-CPD). Don’t bother. However, anything above that is worth a mention, including things like caravan plugs.

I am currently (no pun intended) considering the best approach to take in our 1980s built home. The main distribution board for the house is pretty full and is at the other end of the house from the garage where the cars are parked (8 to 14m depending on which side of the garage). There is no room left on the board for a 32A(?) RCD that I think an EVSE would need, so that end of the supply chain will need changing. At the other end of things (in the garage) I ultimately see an EV and (at least initially) a PHEV being parked. While we could probably just get away with a mode 2 solution for the PHEV, my concern is the overall control of the load on the house as a whole. Some of the blurbs I have read about EVSEs call them ‘smart’. But I was unsure as to whether that refers to the charger to vehicle communication, or further. So would be interested in the particular brands of equipment people have gone with, and why.

The ultimate would be to have PV and batteries integrated into the mix, which is what I think @LinuxLuver has. Powering vehicles directly from the Sun is appealing. But a system such as that would require some serious planning.

Personally have just been charging my 24kWh leaf with an 8A cable out a window, for over a year.

When I brought the car I had the intention to have a caravan socket, (and a domestic 10A socket for corded outdoor power equipment), installed on a dedicated circuit, and in a waterproof / sun poof box of some kind to protect the brick in the power cord. Never hit the go button on that.

If I did better charging now, I would have an EO EV Mini Pro 2 Wall charger with active load management installed. This is $1500 for a 32A charger (with DC leakage detection, so no large type B RCD needed at the switchboard), and the active load management bit is a clamp that goes around the houses incoming wire, allowing the houses total draw to be measured, and the car charging slowed if one is getting close to tripping the pole fuse.

I have little need for any smarts, other than load management in my application.

I think the active load management would be important in my case, as we just have a single phase feed, with (I assume) a 63A pole fuse. Given our house has no gas, it would be very easy to exceed 63A with a EV drawing 32A... Other major load examples: Induction cooktop: 32A, oven: 16A, Hot water cylinder: 16A, Heatpump: 4 - 10A, Dryer 8A...

Only issue with the EO EV Mini Pro 2, is that it does not support the load sharing between multiple EV chargers, so not ideal for future proofing. The older and cheaper $999 EO EV Mini Wall Charger does support this (up to 6 units), but needs an external Active load management unit ($200 + $100 CT clamp) and a type B RCD which occupied 4 bays on the switchboard ($399)

On the circuit board, I have a similar issue that mine is full too. Obviously a replacement with a bigger one would be ideal, but is not a cheap option. One trick electricians do to deal with this is to put multiple lighting circuits on one breaker. This was what was done when we added a circuit when we replaced a 16A ceramic cooktop with a 32A induction one. In short LED / fluro bulbs draw less than 1/4 of the power of incandescent light bulbs that our lighting circuits were sized for. Our house was set up with three 10A lighting breakers, but with LED / fluro bulbs, the entire houses lighting could easily be supplied by a single 10A breaker.

Our circuit board also has a two bay RCD for the wet area's. These days you can get combined combined rcd and mcb units that only occupy a single bay. Making this change would free up two bays for a new Circuit(s).

Family members have a 64kWh EV, and a 32A wallbox with Bluetooth? control. Allows charging to be started, stopped, and rate changed in 1A steps via a smartphone. They have a solar & battery setup, and will often manually start the EV charging at 8 - 12 amps if they are home in the mid afternoon on sunny days when the battery is full and the hot water cylinder is heated.

SaltyNZ

8869 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 9554

Trusted

2degrees

Lifetime subscriber

#2860592 2-Feb-2022 11:57

We had a visit from Future Energy yesterday to discuss additional heat pumps and solar, with EV charging on the side since he was here anyway and we're holding onto the Leaf at least until EVs Enhanced come out with more details on 16 Blade. Given that at for the foreseeable future there will be quite a lot of working from home for my wife and I (e.g. the new 2degrees office does not even have enough seats for 100% of staff, deliberately) a significant amount of our EV charging can be done during the day. With that in mind he not only recommends against batteries - which add a huge cost but can't store enough to touch the sides of even one EV, let alone two - but also getting a Wallbox Pulsar EVSE. Not only does it do up to 22kW charging when you need it (which as I said previously we can live without, from experience) but more importantly in this context it can do solar divert.

Solar divert means it talks to the inverter and whatever the PV is generating but the house is not drawing is shunted to the EVSE to trickle charge the car instead. That way you don't lose it by pumping to the grid and then buying it back later at a higher price. And if you need it to go from green mode to full noise you switch it in the app and it starts drawing full power immediately.

Batteries only make a contribution if you can only charge the car at night, and even then with the cost and relatively small capacity of a battery compared to the EV he feels it is still more economical to feed excess to the grid during the day and buy it back at night. Batteries currently only really worth it if power outages are frequent and long, which even out here they aren't. They'd average less than one a year, for maybe half a day, over 11 years here.

The only annoying thing is that an EVSE which can do both Type 1 and Type 2 is significantly more expensive so most likely if and when they come out to install the other stuff I'd get a second caravan plug installed outside the house so that the M3 can use the EVSE and the Leaf can keep using the 16A portable charger.

iPad Pro 11" + iPhone 15 Pro Max + 2degrees 4tw!

These comments are my own and do not represent the opinions of 2degrees.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | ... | 28