So a lot of people have an older home with a small service (60A-120A) which typically means that you have to piggy-back onto an existing circuit, like your dryer or oven. So you buy something like a Dryer Buddy (Dryer Buddy Plus AUTO – BSA Electronics) or something similar to take care of the issue of tripping your breaker. But now your car doesn’t charge if your dryer is on.
Question: Would anyone be interested in a device that regulates the car charging level so that it’s always charging some amount, even if your appliance is on?
So if your dryer current draw is like 15A on a 30A circuit, your car can still charge the remaining 8-10A or so. You could hook up a current clamp to the dryer and talk to EVSE to regulate the power draw.
Power draws at variable amounts so trying to regulate 2 different units on the same circuit to optimize draw is pretty scary. (A dryer draws X during tumble but X+Y during heating in an electric dryer)
The left over amperage is so minimal that you could just use a normal 110 plug during those times.
Dryer buddy is safe, who’s doing drying at 1am? That’s the best time to charge your car.
Drying is roughly 1 hr of the day. So you are trying to save what? 6 miles of charge? When then translates to 3miles of charge after splitting the amperage.
I agree. I had our electrician install a 14-50 NEMA plug (6gage wire, 50 amp breaker) in our garage yesterday. Then plugged in the ChargePoint ESVE.
Now, we just need a BEV.
Our VW ID.4 is “scheduled” for June 2022.
CharlesRs:
I think you may get a level 2 charger as the [charging speed is around 5 to 7 times higher]) than level 1. Nowadays, there are many EV charger available and it seems we can look at some e-commerce stores.
It looks good. But what’s the actual charging time? Can the EV be fully charged within 2 hours? I know it depends on the battery capacity, yet I wish to know the ballpark figure. Thanks.
Agreed it’s slow, but you could still support a decent commute assuming to charge 14h x 5 weekdays and 22h x 2 weekends. That’s roughly 400mi/wk or a 20k mile year of commuting. We only charge our Bolt once a week on the weekend at 110V and have never had to use a faster charger since this is not our road-trip car.
Guess the point I try to make to people considering BEVs for the first one is full charge time on 110v is irrelevant. It’s really if it can support your driving habits in commuting situations and I would think it can for most people.
I’d get a charger if I owned, but as a renter (car and house) I do just fine on 110v. Others facing an expense panel upgrade for a charger should also take a close look of charging at 110v can be sufficient.
There was a discussion that popped up today on the 4xe FB group regarding someone that was having an arc flash issue going on with his Jeep while charging. A very unsafe situation if legit. He had the same unheard of issue come up on a second 4xe that seemed to persist.
Turns out he is using a Mustart brand EVSE, commonly sold on Amazon. There are a handful of other threads in the 4xe community talking about melted charging ports. They all appear to also be using the Mustart brand EVSE. Diving deeper, it turns out this is a common problem across multiple EV brands with the Mustart brand EVSEs.
Wallbox user here for past 15 months. No complaints at all. I get 40 amps consistently and the app allows me to set charge timing preferences. If the $1k includes the materials and labor for a NEMA 14-50, it’s a no brainer.
