Installing home charger

[SSedan]

I haven't lived in KY driven thru but not in winter. Just looked it up and average January low for Bowling Green is 26f with a high of 44f.

Not the cold you see in what is it Idaho, or what I see near Green Bay but that is plenty cold enough to greatly reduce regen and cause the pack to need warming.
Regen limiting begins at 50ish and below or is the limit lower for the cells in the 3/Y?
Said carport so no temperature protection keeping the pack warm belike a garage.

Is the hot tub on an outlet? If so could it be accessed for the car in a pinch? Maybe try the 5-15 and if it isn't keeping up you could use the hot tub or dryer outlet periodically.

 

[Rocky_H]

Not the cold you see in what is it Idaho, or what I see near Green Bay but that is plenty cold enough to greatly reduce regen and cause the pack to need warming.
Regen limiting begins at 50ish and below or is the limit lower for the cells in the 3/Y?
Said carport so no temperature protection keeping the pack warm belike a garage.

Ah, I see what's going on now. You are thinking of this as a false dichotomy, where there are only two states: "warm" or "cold". But temperature and recharge is a gradually changing scale. The number of amps the battery can safely recharge with is on a long curve, and it's sort of self solving in this case.

You are referring to when regen is limited. Sure, but that recharging power level of max regen is about 50-60kW. That is a huge charging power, along the lines of the Supercharging tapering curve. It really does need to be pretty hot to charge at that level. But 50kW is way more than anyone can recharge with on an AC circuit from a house, so it doesn't have to be nearly that hot.

The 120V 15A outlet is less than 1.5 kW of power. The car doesn't need to be anywhere near 50 degrees Fahrenheit to handle that. It just barely needs to be above freezing, so mid 30's would easily be warm enough to charge from a regular outlet with that low power level. It can easily handle all of that current even with what we consider "cold". And even if it's a little below 30 degrees, it's not that hard to get it above 30 with an hour or so of self warming before it begins charging.

So for these low power situations, if it's nearer to 30 degrees than to 0 degrees, it's not a problem.

 

[SSedan]

I brought up regen limiting as much in the context of increased power usage.
You make a fair point about me overstating warming being needed for a low charge rate.

 

[Vaillant]

I am in a similar situation as you. I ended up putting the charger on the same circuit as the dryer (30 amp) and setting the car to not start charging until 1am, since I’m never doing laundry that late.

This setup has been working well for me for two years.

 

[Sophias_dad]

Can you take a picture of your current panel and any identifying stickers on it?

Can you combine current circuits into less breakers?

I assume the electrician would have brought it up, but it might be possible to install tandem breakers in your panel, getting two circuits in the space of one breaker. Do that to two breakers and you have another 240V spot(that's two tandems, with the center pair linked as a 240)

With 100 amp service, you might well be nearing the load limit on the panel anyway.

120V in winter, especially in Kentucky, will be fine. It becomes a question of how much driving you do. Will the ~48 miles per 12 hour night be enough to support your daily commute? As far as keeping it plugged in all the time, I don't. I'm not sure if that's good or not, but I went 1.5 years charging almost exclusively at work(free) and leaving it unplugged at home. The only reason I stopped was I haven't been physically at work since March.

 

[SSedan]

I am in a similar situation as you. I ended up putting the charger on the same circuit as the dryer (30 amp) and setting the car to not start charging until 1am, since I’m never doing laundry that late.

This setup has been working well for me for two years.

But this isn't a legal/code compliant solution.

 

[burningchrome]

I haven't seen anyone say this: when I went to install mine, I didn't have any space in the breaker box, but I had a bunch of standard size 15 amp breakers where my box can accommodate the narrow or thin 15 amp ones. Check the manual for you box. I bought a new 50 for the charger, four thin ones, and re-organized the box.
Also, I don't have a "real" wall connector, I just installed a NEMA 14-50 plug. Charges at 8kw.

 

[Sophias_dad]

I haven't seen anyone say this: when I went to install mine, I didn't have any space in the breaker box, but I had a bunch of standard size 15 amp breakers where my box can accommodate the narrow or thin 15 amp ones. Check the manual for you box. I bought a new 50 for the charger, four thin ones, and re-organized the box.
Also, I don't have a "real" wall connector, I just installed a NEMA 14-50 plug. Charges at 8kw.

I did, two responses above yours "I assume the electrician would have brought it up, but it might be possible to install tandem breakers in your panel, getting two circuits in the space of one breaker. " et. al. But with only a 100 amp panel, there is likely not lots of remaining capacity anyway.

 

[StanT]

Can you ask your power company to install a 2nd meter right next to your car? (I'm assuming above ground/ pole wiring, below that would be too much pain.) Not sure if that is free/cheaper but then you can just charge up your car completely separate- including bill- and you could even just have that meter on a time based charge (meaning charging at night is super cheap and daytime is more expensive- but the only thing on it would be your car so you can make sure its always super cheap).