this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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I'm excited to see how we upgrade everyone's houses to handle charging. I don't think my house can handle it without spending thousands to upgrade. Not to mention adding chargers to all apartments and condos.
The apartments and condos are a problem for sure, but everyone can charge at a house. I went 3 months charging my EV using a standard level 1 charger on a normal house plug, and I have a fairly long commute of about 80km total. The level 2 charger just allows me to only charge a couple times a week, rather than it being something I do every time I get home (it takes about 15-20 seconds to plug in a charger)
You can also get smart splitters for your existing dryer circuit (as long as it isn't on the opposite side of house) that allows you to only run one at a time and therefore saves you needing to upgrade your overall electrical service.
There’s also smart chargers that will scale the charging speed based on the rest of the house’s demand. High power chargers are nice sometimes, but most of the time people’s cars are parked at home for 12+ hours per day and they’re only driving a few km to work and back each day.
I do wonder what this means for businesses that offer powered parking stalls. Having someone charge their vehicle at work could be an extra few hundred per year per stall.
Why doesn’t your house meet the requirements out of curiosity? I think most dryer outlets are 220 and I’ve been told if you can run a dryer you can charge a car. My parents just use the standard 110v outlet and are happy.
My panel is full. I'd have to have a new outlet at 220v added and upgrade the panel. Can you charge two cars on the same circuit?
Yes you can charge two cars on one circuit, you just need a more advanced charger that can either load balance between two connectors simultaneously or switch between them when one's completed. It's probably cheaper to just have a single normal charger and alternate days they're plugged in though. That's what we expect to do once we switch our second vehicle over to EV in the next few years.
Ahhhh. I didn’t think of that. Having an electrician out is never cheap.
I've owned a car for 3 years and I have 0 desire for a fast home charger (my garage already has a 240V plug, I just don't care enough to pay for the wall wart it needs). overnight in a standard outlet is more than enough to handle usual driving. I only need the range for road trips, in which I'm using public chargers anyways.
How many km do you drive a day?
A 120v outlet will do more than the average Canadian commutes daily.
It could still be an issue with winter charging for places that don't have a garage when it hits -10c or so.
For colder places with no garage, I think a nema 5-20 outlet would be enough to overcome that, and most houses will have the wiring for that already in place. You might just need to upgrade the breaker in the box which would be cheap. You'd need an electrician to be sure, but if the house already has the wiring and box supports a 20amp vs 15amp breaker it it'd be under $100 vs getting a 50amp service set up for L2 charging.
We really don't need L2 chargers at every home to make this work.
On an average day, I probably drive less than 20km. However, I'm frequently making trips about 300km out of the city with family. When I'm staying out that way I don't have a garage to park in. There is zero public transit and I don't think I've seen a single EV out that way.
That's what fast chargers are for though.
That has nothing to do with if your home needs a L2 charger and the expensive upgrade to do it.
That's a different problem. (Edit we need more fast chargers for trips)
I think it's worth another reply to mention, while I think you'd be fine on 120v and most people could probably cheaply upgrade to a nema 5-20 outlet and 20amp breaker switch if they needed a bit more daily charge, neither of those are as efficient as charging at 240v.
I charge my car on 120v and it's about 80% efficient and drops off as it getd really cold. I think 240v is 90-95% efficient.
If we have millions of people charging their cars on 120v as that's all they need and it's the cheapest option for them, that's a lot of wasted electricity.
So really long term we probably do want people to make the upgrades to their boxes and wire in a new outlet as it'll help us reduce our power consumption. Hopefully they'll be a lot of incentives available for people to make the upgrade.
It would be like the big push from incandescent to fluorescent or led house lighting. Semi low hanging fruit to reduce power consumption by upgrading to something more efficient.