Wife thinks next vehicle should be an EV.

[JeffKeryk]

Maybe a bit of luck but I’d be inclined to say you did the research, pulled the trigger, and now get to enjoy the benefits of your decision.
I imagine it’s immensely satisfying charging an EV at home with your own solar.

All true; I looked into solar for perhaps 3 years before inking the deal in early 2018. I thought we might buy an EV one day in future years, but ended up taking delivery in Dec 2018. I did buy more solar production than what was recommended because I did not want to have a big energy bill after buying the expensive solar project. So yes, I did my due diligence.

The real luck came in as I certainly could not have predicted the rise in energy costs here in CA. Nor did I know NEM2 would be replaced with NEM3 which makes the solar value calculation far less beneficial.

 

[OVERKILL]

Maybe a bit of luck but I’d be inclined to say you did the research, pulled the trigger, and now get to enjoy the benefits of your decision.
I imagine it’s immensely satisfying charging an EV at home with your own solar.

I mean, he's reaping the rewards of the insane NEM contracts that Cali was rolling out (at the ratepayer's expense), which is why they have the most expensive electricity in North America. That deal is no longer available, NEM 3 is $0.04/kWh, or almost 10x less than Jeff gets.

 

[KevinMalone]

Are you right up against the limit with your current electrical service?

You can get 120v heat pump water heaters now, which work well if you don’t have high demand. Even a 240v model can be put in on a 25 amp breaker. You can control the timing of your charging so you might find it better to have a decent sized L2 charger and charge overnight instead of using L1.

My load calculation puts us at 122A on 100A service and 125A panel so it's very tight. We were at 98A prior to switching from a gas furnace to a central heat pump (230V 25A).

The current plan is to replace our washer (120V 7A) and dryer (240V 28A) with a heat pump combo unit (120V 12A), which would drop us to 112A and free up 240V 30A for either a heat pump water heater or L2 charging. I had considered L2 charging overnight but my panel doesn't have any more room after I installed a whole home SPD to protect the heat pump. I guess the worst case is that if we do get the heat pump water heater and L1 doesn't cut it, I could ditch the whole home SPD and install one at the heat pump disconnect instead in order to add L2 overnight charging.

Many different ways to skin a cat... Just theorycrafting and back of a napkin math so far. The main goal is to avoid a service and panel upgrade to minimize costs. Similar houses in the neighbourhood were forced to install a secondary pole and trench to the house when upgrading to 200A service. I'm hearing that this costs ~$15k CAD, which would be a non-starter.

Thanks for the tip on the 120V heat pump water heaters. I had assumed they wouldn't be adequate but it seems that their first hour rating is very similar to the 240V systems.