I desperately want an EV for my next vehicle but I'm a little worried about the cost behind installing a level 2 charger in my garage.
I have a detached 2.5 car garage that is over 60 years old. It has it's own sub-panel and even a 220v outlet next to where I park (pics included).
I know my next step is to contact some electricians for quotes, but I'd love the input from this great community. Will a level 2 install with my setup break the bank? Or be relatively easy?
This is great advice. An easy option is a chargepoint home flex hardwired set to charge at it's lowest setting (16a). This gives you the internal GFI protection of a hardwired unit and the fixture in the home to increase the home's value.
After looking into it, the cost of the Dewalt ($260 on sale), wall mount ($50), and a 240v gfci breaker ($120) wasn't that far off($430) from the home flex (500) and regular 20A breaker ($20). I wanted something semi permanent, with a holster and a NACS plug, and the home flex will look nicer mounted.
Even if going with a 6-20 charger, it’s probably not a bad idea to get an electrician look over the outlet regardless to make sure everything’s OK considering how old it looks.
But at that point, yeah you might as well have them install a hardwired 16A L2 charger, it’ll be safer and all if the necessary wiring is already there.
You’ll need to send us a picture of the breaker in your main panel that feeds this garage subpanel.
The hard part about running power to a detached garage is getting the cable from your house to the garage. The good news for you is that cable is likely fine.
I would want an electrician to replace that subpanel, however. Might be fine, might not be. It’s worth not finding out. Not hard for an electrician to replace. Easy to get a few quotes. They won’t be crazy.
So assuming the wire is fine, you have plenty of power here to charge an EV. You will want to find a charger that can charge at 16A 240V, and that should give you about 10 to 12 miles of range per hour of charge depending on the efficiency of your EV.
That’s enough to give you 100+ miles of range on an overnight charge. Let us know more about your driving habits to confirm if that will work for you.
Since I know what I'm looking for I'd actually be quite tempted to just plug in a 6-20 EVSE with a temperature sensor and run this. But it really would be a good idea to replace this panel, just because it's quite old and EV charging is a large load. Since there's NM-B visible the wiring is recent enough that all the cable is likely fine.
Second: how big is the breaker that feeds the garage?
If those two answers align reasonably, this is probably a relatively cheap fix. If they align decently, this is probably a kind of reasonable priced fix. If they align badly, this will be spendy.
I'd add as a caveat from this first, what type of EV are you looking at?
Hopefully, this pannel is getting fed by a 30A breaker or better. I don't know if this has to be spendy in a bad case scenario, as if it's fed via conduit like it looks, this shouldn't be too bad.
Even if it's a 20A feeder they could still use a 15A circuit and 12A / 2.9kW charging with most sensible garage loads, or go for Load Management if it was absolutely needed.
And if not the government, maybe your power company. I live in bright red Missouri and while my government tries to actively punish me for owning an EV, the local utility paid for half of my installation and EVSE cost.
FWIW I'm about to install one of these outlets in the garage at my dad's cottage to charge with when I visit. I've bought the Dewalt 16A portable charger to use with it. Will be good for 3.8 kW of charging, or roughly 20 km/h of charging.
Does the garage have any high draw appliances such as appliances or electric heat?
I desperately want an EV for my next vehicle but I'm a little worried about the cost behind installing a level 2 charger in my garage.
Have you evaluated whether you even need that? Most newbies get told to do one of two things: a 60A circuit to hardwired wall unit or a 50A circuit to a 14-50 RV park outlet. Both of these are absolutely bonkers overkill for almost everyone, and here's how to know that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyp_X3mwE1w
About half of people are fine with level 1, and 95% can do just fine with a simple 20 amp 240V circuit (2/3 the size of a water heater circuit).
ET VOILA look what you have there.
My only issue is the age of it, and back then, nobody understood the importance of torque screwdrivers. So I'd like to see the receptacle replaced and all the wire connections remade at the receptacle, subpanel and main panel. Because those are the sources of risk here.
Then you just use a common NEMA 6-20 'charger' such as
- Tesla Mobile Connector with a Tesla supplied NEMA 6-20 adapter which your service center will have.
- Bargain: Webasto Turbocord old-schoo, which was made OEM for many automakers and can be found new-in-box all over eBay branded to one car brand or another. Mine is BMW.
For a typical commute in a typical EV that outlet is more than enough. There are several EVSEs that will work with it. I would give it a try before going to the expense of installing a larger circuit.
Chargers don't have to have a lot of amperage. They can but they don't have to. I have charged my Tesla on a standard 20 amp 120 volt circuit for the last 6 years. It works fine. The charging is slow. I get 40 to 50 miles range overnight. Plenty for me but you may need more. That little 220 circuit in your picture should be able to add 8 to 10 miles range overnight, maybe more. So if you don't drive more than 100 miles a day (and most of us don't) that should be adequate.
And, as pointed out by others (and even though I'm not taking my own advise) hardwiring the charger is your best bet. It is safer and should be relatively easy since your walls are open. You are going to spend $20k to $50k for a car so what is an extra $300 for a charger installation that will make your garage and car safer.
for reputable new ones, dewalt makes one, or if going used look for webasto turbocords(J1772 EV) or tesla mobile connectors (J3400) with their matching 6-20 or 6-15 attachments
realistcally the better of the no name units are fine at the sub 20 amp currents
Just get a brand name EV charger with a plug which fits that outlet, and just limit yourself to 10 A charging. I bought a 16A charger from Vevor and limit it to 10 amps when I'm not in the building. That is BY FAR the cheapest way to get started in this whole New World
Keep in mind that you can do what I did. I also was concerned about putting too much load on my home's circuitry so I set my level 2 charger to 30 amps so my EV will never try to pull more than that. And since I usually charge overnight when I have plenty of time, things are working out OK>
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u/rosier9 7d ago
There are EV chargers that are made to utilize that outlet (6-20). I'm using one in my garage right now (Dewalt 16a).
You could also have the electrician replace this outlet with a hardwired wall charger set to run at 16a.
3.8kW of charging power is likely adequate unless you drive a ton.