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Getting a home charger installed

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So i had an electrician go out to my house and say they may not be able to install a home charger due to the main panel not having enough voltage. Said he had to contact an engineer. Sound correct? Also my wife was there to relay his info to me so who knows if she repeated it right
 
Old houses may only have 120V and not 240V. That's not enough voltage. I think in this case, utility needs to set up an additional wire for 240V availability.

Most likely they mean your main panel has used up all the Amperes and you need a new one with more Amperes like 100A or 200A...
Yeah, it would be pretty unusual to not have 240v. Not having enough amperage is a much more common problem.
 
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Another option is doing NEMA 14-50. It uses two 120V, 50AMP breakers to get the 240 V. If your panel currently is maxed out and cannot support the extra load, then your panel would need to be upgraded. I am no electrician, but this is what the electrician that installed my NEMA 14-50 told me.
 
Another option is doing NEMA 14-50. It uses two 120V, 50AMP breakers to get the 240 V. If your panel currently is maxed out and cannot support the extra load, then your panel would need to be upgraded. I am no electrician, but this is what the electrician that installed my NEMA 14-50 told me.

It's actually only one 50 amp breaker. It's bridged over 2 positions for the 240V.
 
It's actually only one 50 amp breaker. It's bridged over 2 positions for the 240V.

You are half right.. Two bridged 50 amp breakers to get 240v. See pic below.
 

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Old houses may only have 120V and not 240V. That's not enough voltage. I think in this case, utility needs to set up an additional wire for 240V availability.

Most likely they mean your main panel has used up all the Amperes and you need a new one with more Amperes like 100A or 200A...
Agreed, they most likely are taking about the max amperage of your system. With everything you may be running at once, your systems needs to have enough to not overload.
 
lol.. how is there not enough amperage there, it looks empty? Whats with the 4 pole 200 amp main? Dang Canadians ;)

I'm guessing this is about my panel photos... We've not had an electrician come by yet, I was asking just for my own knowledge - which is presently non-existent when it comes to this topic, so I'm afraid I don't know what's up with the 4 pole 200 amp main (adds that to list of things to Google). Hopefully it's not a bad thing... I think all I need is a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed for charging in our driveway.
 
Yeah, I see 200 amps too. That's what I upgraded to last year, when I put in my 14-50. I think I had more load on my prior 125 amp service than you have right now. You should have ample headroom, unless there's some local code that prevents it.

The apparent 4-pole mains is just a pair of wires in parallel, sharing the load to drive each phase. My new Square-D panel does the same thing. Still just the normal "split-phase" 240/120 volt busses, like everyone else has. Nothing unusual, nor grounds for concern.
 
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That is a 240V panel. You can tell by the A and B labels. Double breakers that are on A and B are 240V breakers.
Actually, looking at the image again, I've given you bad information. Your panel is labelled differently than mine. It looks like a single A/B group are on the same phase, while adjacent A/B groups are on different phases. So 1(A/B) are on one phase while 3(A/B) are the opposite phase. Still a 240V panel though.
 
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