Did that include the breker and connection of the charging station? If so, I'd say you got a pretty good deal. The wire and breaker should be on the order of $200.
110 charging in the real world
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Yeah, 50A breaker, 60' of #6 and NEMA 15-40 recepticle. Ran it under the house. He wired it so I could easily remove the recepticle and direct wire the Tesla Wall Charger. I am currently using the Tesla Mobile Charger; I have the 120v and 3 prong old dryer plugs as well. My car will pull max 32A, so the wall charger does not offer much. This works great for our use.
Most electricians are running aluminum for level 2 chargers due to the cost of copper. If the level 2 charger's terminals aren't rated for aluminum, they go into an AC disconnect switch with the aluminum and then run a short piece of copper from the disconnect to the level 2 charger.
I used aluminum for the feed to my garage sub-panel.
This heavy gauge AA8000 series alloy aluminum wire is not the same as the wiring that was installed decades ago and which caused fires.
I used aluminum for the feed to my garage sub-panel.
This heavy gauge AA8000 series alloy aluminum wire is not the same as the wiring that was installed decades ago and which caused fires.
The bridge toll is probably your highest cost item on that drive LOL.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yes, the charging in "mph" thing drives me absolutely nuts, kWh is the correct unit.
I really think this is only done because it's a measurement that makes a bit of sense for people who have never really considered kWh. When it becomes more common like gasoline/petrol then this will probably be the preferred way across the board.
Meh, MPH of range acquired is far more useful though.
What does the solar panel set up cost per month?
Exactly. On the road, you see remaining range in miles.
I paid cash for the solar installation; maybe $17K after tax credit; I would have to look it up as that was March 2018.
I am on PG&E NEM 2. Our solar is grid tied; there are 2 costs: $9 to $10 per month for grid use and a yearly true up. I have never had a true up, but I've heard of people who undersized their project and have $300 or even $700 annual true ups. Oops!
I am not really sure how they calculate the grid use; I have had bills as high as $12 and as low as $0. Usually $9 something.
No garage so would have to run a dedicated line from the panel about 25 feet through the basement to the wall next to the driveway. Assuming I have enough service to make that a dedicated Level 2 charge line do most of you hardwire in the charger or do you install a NEMA 14-50R weatherproof box and use a plug in charger? Does anyone from up north have experience using an EV all winter that must live in a driveway? Every winter there would be times when the car would sit outside in below zero weather for extended periods.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
It's the same as dealing with a gas pump and not being concerned with how many gallons you purchased, but how many "mph" it filled your vehicle at, it's abuse of a unit whose purpose is to convey rate of motion. You don't charge in "miles", the battery doesn't hold "miles", it's a literary and mathematical abomination that has entered the common vernacular because dumbing it down was easier than people learning the bloody unit their home electricity consumption is measured in and how it related to EV range.
You know what your range is, whether the vehicle is gas or electric, and you know what you've purchased, whether that's gallons, litres or kWh. If your vehicle has a 94kWh battery (like your car has a 20 gallon tank), it doesn't require a PhD in mathematics to figure out roughly how far you can go.
A corollary would be like claiming a powder dispenser loads shells in fps. "Yeah bro, I was loading up some .338LM and my new Hornady press got me loading Retumbo at 300fps". That's exactly how it sounds in use.
Maybe I've watched Idiocracy too many times, but the scene where you can buy a latte with a happy ending comes to mind here.
I have no idea what a powder dispenser or 338LM is but I do know how many miles, approximately, I can drive, after plugging in my car for an hour.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
You do that on gas cars too, but we don't go to the gas pump and claim we are filling our tank in miles per hour.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yes, and I know how far I can drive if I put 40 litres in my Jeep, it doesn't require me to abuse a unit of motion in order to know or convey that.
I used a gun metaphor since the majority of the membership is American and most of you seem to understand that subject when I make a comparison. I guess that's not the case for you, lol.
I'm one of those weirdos that just leaves it on percentage of charge.
@OVERKILL the vast majority have no idea how to calculate remaining range or understand charging quantity. I don't. Good or bad, the MPH is something people understand.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
With all due respect, that's panning people, broadly, as imbeciles. You are a smart guy, I do not accept the fact that you don't understand this. Jane and Joe Average generally understand the concept of gallons and litres as a measure of volume, and, can generally infer from how many gallons they put in their vehicle, how many miles they should be able to go.
You understand gallons as a unit of measure, correct? kWh, in the context of a battery, is basically the same concept.
Like my Jeep has an 88L tank, a BMW with a 94kWh battery is conceptually the same for the sake of this discussion. I can get roughly 500km of highway-biased driving out of 3/4 of a tank, the BMW can get x number of km out of 3/4 of a full 94kWh charge.
My Jeep tells me how many km I have for range, and I know that's going to have a fudge factor based on how I drive
The BMW tells you how many km you have for range, and you know there's going to be a fudge factor based on how you drive
Both of these are representative; are inferred from the available volume of stored energy available, as to how much range is available.
Like my Jeep gets 10mpg driving in town and 15 driving mixed-highway, the BMW will go a certain # of miles per kWh in town and a different figure on the highway.
Like with gasoline and diesel vehicles, the efficiency varies wildly from one vehicle and powertrain combo to another. But, these fundamental units of measure don't change. Vehicle A will get a different # of miles per kWh than Vehicle B, just like different vehicles have different fuel economy figures.
So, when I put 20 litres into my Jeep and it gives me 1/2 a tank, I have a reasonably good idea how far I can go and the range available displayed will be generally pretty close to that.
When you put 20kWh into the BMW and it gives you 1/2 a charge, you'd have a reasonably good idea how far you can go and the range displayed will be generally pretty close to that.
When you "square peg round hole" a wholly unrelated unit of measure into this situation, it loses its universal correctness. Miles travelled per hour is an understood rate of travel, and doesn't meaningfully change whether you are in the Bahamas or the arctic, whether you are driving a Kenworth or a Yugo. But, when you cram it into this scenario, all of a sudden that's cast into the ether as now "miles per hour" is wholly redefined as a variable, with dependants, such as state of charge, battery pre-conditioning, brand and model of vehicle, powertrain...etc. It could represent a charge rate of 10kW on a Tesla and 12kW on a BMW or 2kW on a Nissan Leaf, and it's never the exact same because of all of those dependents. It's a fundamental misuse of a unit of measure that already has a definition.
The disconnect here seems to stem from the fact that EV's take a lot longer to charge/fuel than gasoline cars, so where folks don't really care how many gallons per second the fuel pump is, knowing how "fast" the charger is, is useful. But instead of encouraging people to understand the rather basic electrical terminology, like they already understand gallons or litres, somebody decided it would be easier to just butcher an existing and defined unit of measure and shoehorn it in there.
Ultimately, if Bob pulls up to a 20kW charger and his vehicle has a pretty flat charge curve, he can expect to get 10kWh of capacity in 30 minutes. Like buying fuel, the charger (pump) will show how many kWh (gallons/litres) he ended up purchasing and what he paid for those kWh (gallons/litres). If that bumps him up to 50% state of charge (half a tank) then he'll have a pretty good idea of how far he can go, and the vehicle is going to tell him anyway, just like gas cars do. There's no reason to butcher mph here when you understand the base units.
This is going to become doubly important as more and more people buy EV's and charge at home. Your hydro bill isn't in miles, you pay for kWh, the same unit your EV stores power in. If you drive 500 miles a month and your EV gets 3.2 miles per kWh, then you can figure you'll use at least 156kWh to charge your EV (you'll use more due to losses, this will become apparent).
As we move toward more electrification, broadly, understanding and using electrical units should be second nature. We already see horrible misuse of electrical units by the media, we need to be encouraging knowledge on the subject, not celebrating and embracing ignorance through ridiculous workarounds.
It definitely is the easier way to converse about it. My wife gets into the details of kWh/mile or whatever the mpg equivalent is and I glaze over. I know I would understand it if I tried, but considering I've never taken the car by myself for a long enough trip to require charging, it just hasn't clicked yet. I think it will take until I daily an EV and then I'll get super nerdy about the efficiency. I always track my car's efficiency. With the Tesla I feel like I just go completely stupid and my oblivious nature to it is freeing. It's really my around town runabout on my days off and I've never given it a thought.
I really am itching to get a Model 3 Performance. I'll figure it out when I finally do that.
From what I've seen most people use a plug-in charger.
The type of outlet you can install, and the charger you get for that outlet, depends on your service capacity.
From what you've said so far, I don't think a NEMA 14-50R (which is a 50 amp outlet) will work on your service.
A NEMA 14-30R (30 amp) possibly could. A NEMA 6-20R (20 amp) almost definitely could. Pictures of your meter box and the fuse or circuit breaker panel would be helpful.
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