Remix.run Logo
linkregister 13 hours ago

It's a myth that EV charging requires an upgrade to a 100 amp connection. Scheduling charging to times when you're not using appliances will still result in a charged vehicle by morning.

The Youtube channel Technology Connections has an interesting video where it describes a successful transition to a fully-electric house while remaining on a 50 amp electrical connection. (it requires a smart circuit breaker)

hedora 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We have a F-150 lightning, and charge it on a 12A, 120V charger. It’s fine for 6-10 trips a week. If I commuted in it to an office without a charger it wouldn’t be fine, but a smaller commuter car would be. (The truck gets 2.5 miles/kWh, commuter cars are at 4-5).

I’m sure we are outliers, but still.

Put another way: growing up with incandescent bulbs, I remember light switches that would turn on 6-8 lamp track lights. That’s half the current our EV charger draws. We had a space heater that drew more than our EV charger currently does.

Houses and neighborhoods are still built with electrical systems provisioned for pre-LED, pre-induction/heatpump workloads. They certainly have enough slack for everyone to plug in a level one or two charger simultaneously.

reverius42 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I wonder if the household share of grid power has gone down faster than total power has gone up, and that's why people are worried about EVs taking out the power grid even when everyone's individual house seems to handle it easily enough.

elihu 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's true enough at the level of individual households. If the whole neighborhood switches to EVs, the power grid in general might not be built to handle it.

(Personally I don't expect this will be that big a deal, since switching to EVs is something that happens one household at a time over many years. So, it shouldn't come as a sudden shock, and its something the utilities can make long term plans about. It just means power utilities need to be on the ball about not putting off infrastructure upgrades, and it means somewhat higher electricity prices for residential customers.)