depending on your location-laws you can DIY upgrades or have a friend do work for cheep. Ben Shalstrom has some great you tubes, BUT be aware + respectful when doing electrical work. had a local experienced friend do 100A service years ago + i ran the house wiring into the panel as he instructed. i live alone so only ME using power at any single time, 60A subpanel in garage 220 air comp + lights + whatever + again while I am there house is basically dormant. ran underground to garage so NO separate bill-commercial for it. 110 is not efficient BUT safer + europe i believe is mostly all 220!! as always it depends on $$$$ + IMO electric vehicles are WASTE when typical internal combustion engines do the same!!
110 charging in the real world
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
My Audi e-tron took 4 days to get a reasonable charge after driving it home on 110. It MIGHT be OK for short around town driving, but if you do any trips of distance, you will be forever trying to recoup that.
I have a tenant who doesn't even charge in the apartment and solely rely on supercharger network and office charging, he seems to be fine.
My home has illegal 40 amp pre war wiring
And if I wanted 16 amp l2 is doable even with only 40 amps, the joys of rent
That said I’m going on 2 decades of 110 volt charging.
My antique only ever supported 110v and my aged volt does fine 95% on l1 also
I used to be able to charge at work and at home on 110vac
That was literally more helpful than 220 at home and extremely convenient, sad I lost access to that at work but at least I can work from home some days to make up the difference.
If I had a Bolt I did the math and I could support all my daily activities and my long weekend trips all on 110vac so long as I could charge at work.
Weekend trips outside the norm could be doable some of the time but would likely drive a public charging need or 220 need
The REA (rural electrification administration) standard was 60 amp service, circa 1935, from what I read.
https://www.harrisonrea.com/history.html
My house is from the 1860’s
Many of the houses the REA installed the 60A panels in were that old or older. They installed electricity in rural areas in existing homes that had never had electricity before.
If your electric meter is plugged into a round meter base that is the same size as the bottom of the meter, that is a REA standard 60 amp installation. Box type meter bases where the meter sticks out of the front of the box are higher amps.
Only a few weeks of experience with charging my Model Y on 120v. It does not recoup what. I drive for work overnight so by the end of the week I’m getting low. I’m currently getting bids for some electrical work including a subpanel in one of the garages so I’ll have that remedied soon.
My daily commute is 52 miles if I don’t leave for lunch or go anywhere else. I get most, but not all of that back each night. If I had a shorter commute like 10 miles a day I wouldn’t even bother getting the 240v options installed.
My daily commute is 52 miles if I don’t leave for lunch or go anywhere else. I get most, but not all of that back each night. If I had a shorter commute like 10 miles a day I wouldn’t even bother getting the 240v options installed.
You're a newbie. Give it time, grasshopper.
Remember, go big or go home... All good.
JHZR2
Staff member
IME in Europe and here, 15A (max) capable 110 chargers are available but slow. Iirc they usually will pull 12-13A to avoid stressing a standard 15A circuit. That isn’t a lot of power… thus not a lot of kWh even if charged for a while.
It works in a pinch. We used it with a model 3 we goofed around with for a day. It let us get the car back to the rental agency but it wasn’t fast. Just far cheaper than the ripoff Tesla super chargers.
It works in a pinch. We used it with a model 3 we goofed around with for a day. It let us get the car back to the rental agency but it wasn’t fast. Just far cheaper than the ripoff Tesla super chargers.
I wouldn't bother charging with 120. What I would do is locate how many plugs there are in the garage that are connected to the same circuit you are using to charge the car with. You don't have to change the wiring if you don't increase the amperage but you can swap the breaker out for a 240 volt one but keep the same 15 amp limit and change the outlet to a 6-15. You can charge a little over twice as fast because sure you're getting twice the voltage and twice the wattage but the efficiency is like 10% higher or thereabouts. I would block off the other outlets if I'm worried about people using them without checking to see if the electronics are dual voltage. Fishing wires isn't as straight forward as some think and that gets difficult to explain since there's typically a junction box to many outlets and some don't wanna mess with that since that's where fire risks actually start to arise if you don't know what you're doing. A simple breaker and equal amperage outlet swap is borderline impossible for an average man of average handy skills to screw up.
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Probably was. It was long ago and far away.
My folks have 10 Guage wire running to an outlet string in various bedrooms, guess what the breaker is?
Are you talking about swapping connection wiring so one of the dedicated plug would be 2 phases thus 240V? or are you running a cord from another place in the house so you can "splice" a 240V 2 phase from 2 wall outlet?
Yeah in my Volt I gain about 4MPH on 12A Level 1 charging.
At Level 2 I gain about 10MPH. Which sucks but the onboard charger is only 3KW anyway. Wish it did support a bit faster charging. Most public J1772 chargers are at least 6KW.
No DCFC support on this one obviously.
At Level 2 I gain about 10MPH. Which sucks but the onboard charger is only 3KW anyway. Wish it did support a bit faster charging. Most public J1772 chargers are at least 6KW.
No DCFC support on this one obviously.
No, you can replace the single pole breaker in the panel for an identical amperage double pole breaker. In this case being a 15a for safety. That simply doubles the voltage but keeps the same amperage which still doubles the wattage capable of being delivered because a lot of people don't know but the power that goes into your home is 240v but it gets split in half to 120 by a single pole breaker. But increasing the voltage and not the amperage is a free way of transmitting twice the wattage with the same awg. It's why powerlines are relatively skinny but can deliver a wallop of kilowatts. They are typically in the hundreds of thousands of volts but at a low amperage which then gets dropped down more and more the farther from the power station and closer to where it's to be supplied.
But there is a way to splice two completely separate 120v circuits back into 240v but that's kind of silly to me. But i can see myself doing that if i wanted some non obtrusive way of charging an EV or powering some kind of 240v appliance at a rental home with a dedicated laundry room and thus no 240v power in the garage without getting in trouble with the landlord.
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