Source?

schmookeeg 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I have a dryer outlet that caught fire charging our little i3. I'm not sure why GP said "some countries" -- I'm in the US. The heat warped the plastic just enough to bridge one leg of the power socket to ground. It got pretty melty before the house breaker stopped things.

The torched outlet was installed specifically to charge prior homeowner's EV and was only 3 years old.

I moved to an EV-rated 50A outlet which can handle the duty cycle. We have charged two EVs off of it and so far so good. It has a cute little green logo on it and costs 5x as much as a typical NEMA plug. :) Weighs about 5x as much too and grips the grizzl-e plug very tightly and with much larger contact areas.

I'm a believer.

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vel0city 4 days ago | parent [-]

What was the specific connector for that "dryer outlet"? Was it an L6-30 30A receptacle that was constantly getting nearly 30A of load, or a cheaply made 14-50 outlet?

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seltzered_ 4 days ago | parent [-]

The youtube channel 'State of Charge' has a number of videos talking about cheap connectors and/or lower spec connectors catching fire. Happens even on setups where people had a dedicated level 2 ev charger outlet (NEMA 14-50 , aka dryer outlet) but the installer used a connector not rated for enough current. See https://youtu.be/fzgxKChqjtc to start.

One needs to do one or possibly a combination of:

- Set the pin setting on a home charger for a lower current output. Theres also portable chargers with programmable current limiting, which I find more flexible.

- Replace with a better outlet/wiring setup. Many advocate for a hardwired setup over using an outlet.

	▲	vel0city 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> NEMA 14-50 , aka dryer outlet The reason why I was asking for the outlet is precisely because "dryer outlet" can mean a lot of different things. Dryers in the US usually don't even come with cords out of the box because people may have a few different plugs. Does it have a neutral? Is it 30A or 50A? All possibilities for a "dryer outlet".

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msh 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

https://aminacharging.com/articles/can-i-charge-my-car-in-a-...

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barbazoo 5 days ago | parent [-]

> And since your car needs so much power stored in its battery to drive, it will probably pull more power than any other electrical appliance in your home.

Probably? No, it pulls less than my dryer which runs at 240V15A I think but also just the same as my 1500W space heater. You can totally control how much power the charger should draw.

> With that much power, there’s a risk of overheating and fire. Unlike a dedicated EV charger, a socket is simply not equipped to handle the amount of electricity needed to charge a car battery.

Wrong assumption leads to wrong conclusion. Any charger you can physically plug in will work in a house that's wired up to standard.

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msh 5 days ago | parent [-]

Your dryer will load the socket for far less time than a car charger and will probably not use 15A for the entire drying cycle.

It’s the long charge time that leads to heat buildup, not the max amp.

Where I am from standard outlets can deliver 16A but are not rated for more than 6A if the load is longer than 2 hours.

	▲	barbazoo 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Here it's 15A and the charger itself actually tops out at 12A as is common. Perhaps that being common is how to avoid fires. I'm actually not sure now if that's a law or just best practice here.