Is there a 208 WYE 3 phase charging option?

[maverick3n1]

I'm looking at getting a Model 3 performance and I will primarily be charging it at my restaurant. For load balancing reasons, I'd much rather run a 3 phase 208 4 wire 30 amp line off of my panel, than a single phase 208 50 amp and have a large load imbalance on the panel while charging. I'm currently under constructions and am finalizing my load balancing sheets for permits etc, and if I factor this in at single phase, my load balance will be dramatically off any time I'm not charging the vehicle. If I don't factor it in, then it will be grossly imbalanced while it is charging.

Unfortunately, whenever calling in, I always get referred to the sales team, and they wouldn't understand 3 phase vs single phase if you tried to explain it to them.

 

[mblakele]

Here's what the HPWC installation guide says:

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default...nstallation_manual_80A_en_US.pdf?201612081439

208V 3-Phase Wye-Connected

With a Wye-connected secondary, any two of the legs can be used to provide 208V to the Wall Connector. For example, L1 and L2, or L1 and L3, or L2 and L3. The two used phases must each measure 120V to neutral.

Note: A current-carrying neutral is not required.

Caution: The unused leg (L3 in the illustration) must remain open. Do not connect to a neutral bar, or to earth ground.

Caution: The center point of the three phases (normally used as neutral) must be grounded to earth at only one point. This is usually at the breaker panel.​

 

[iluvmacs]

No, because there is no 3-phase connector option to the car in North America. That is used in other markets, such as the EU.

 

[mongo]

I'm looking at getting a Model 3 performance and I will primarily be charging it at my restaurant. For load balancing reasons, I'd much rather run a 3 phase 208 4 wire 30 amp line off of my panel, than a single phase 208 50 amp and have a large load imbalance on the panel while charging. I'm currently under constructions and am finalizing my load balancing sheets for permits etc, and if I factor this in at single phase, my load balance will be dramatically off any time I'm not charging the vehicle. If I don't factor it in, then it will be grossly imbalanced while it is charging.

Unfortunately, whenever calling in, I always get referred to the sales team, and they wouldn't understand 3 phase vs single phase if you tried to explain it to them.

Have you calculated the charge rate you need based on commute and time spent at the restaurant? Perhaps setting it up as a 30Amp circuit (24 Amp load 5kW charge * 8 hours = 40kWh = 120 miles or so) and designing the phases as if it were a 12 Amp load to balance the unevenness would work for you.

Or you factor it as the 40amp max load it is, split that in half and design with that phase +/- 20 amps from balanced.

 

[maverick3n1]

Mblakele, that wiring method is single phase, not 3phase.

Iluvmacs, that’s what I was seeing on posts from 2016 and 2017 and I had hoped it would change. If they can charge 3 phase in Europe, but not here, is that merely a matter of getting the correct charging adapter to do 3 phase here, or do the US versions of the fuel cell management built into the car, not actually have the ability to adapt to 3 phase?

Mongo,

My standard mileage will likely be about 45 miles round trip, provided I don’t need to make any pit stops, but that could easily change as I start getting back into focusing on catering and driving to various client homes etc. I’ve gone as much as 200 miles in a single day, though not frequently, it does happen.

Since I won’t be charging at my house for the most part, and when I do, I will be plugging into a 20 amp 110v outlet so it will be more of a trickle charge, I want to make sure I always keep her topped off for unexpected trips.

 

[mongo]

Mblakele, that wiring method is single phase, not 3phase.

Iluvmacs, that’s what I was seeing on posts from 2016 and 2017 and I had hoped it would change. If they can charge 3 phase in Europe, but not here, is that merely a matter of getting the correct charging adapter to do 3 phase here, or do the US versions of the fuel cell management built into the car, not actually have the ability to adapt to 3 phase?

Mongo,

My standard mileage will likely be about 45 miles round trip, provided I don’t need to make any pit stops, but that could easily change as I start getting back into focusing on catering and driving to various client homes etc. I’ve gone as much as 200 miles in a single day, though not frequently, it does happen.

Since I won’t be charging at my house for the most part, and when I do, I will be plugging into a 20 amp 110v outlet so it will be more of a trickle charge, I want to make sure I always keep her topped off for unexpected trips.

The charger in the vehicle is different in Europe. The wall unit is a big relay, gfci, and control signal to let the car know the current limit.

Would it help to set the charge current to a lower limit most of the time and crank it up only when needed? I'm unfamiliar with power/ equipment costs in your situation.

 

[maverick3n1]

Mongo,

I'm assuming even with a 50amp 208v connection, you can potentially set software based limits on how fast it draws electricity in the car settings? Perhaps this is my solution. Maybe I can tell it to charge the battery to full over a 10 hour period knowing I will be at the restaurant for 12+ hours one day, and the next day I pull up, and know I will be driving all day, tell it to charge the battery in 3 hours, starting from plugin?

As for power costs, I'm in So-Cal, and commercial vs residential is a HUGE difference in how electricity costs work. In my house, I could draw 2,000 Kwh over a month and have a $500 bill. At the restaurant however, I could turn on power for a single hour and draw a total of 50Kwh, and turn the electricity off for the rest of the entire month, and be stuck with a $1500 bill for that single hour of use. Residential is billed purely on use. The more you use, the more you pay. They also have tier programs so lower amounts of electricity pay a lower rate, and as you draw more throughout the month, you get passed the initial tier A, and work to Tier B, C, and D. Each tier having a higher price per Kwh.

This is why I want to use the restaurant electricity to charge my car. I have enough solar to damn near eliminate my electric bill at home. That said, they don't give nearly as much credit for overgenerated electricity as delivered. If after an entire year, I use a total of 20,000 Kwh, but I generated 22,000 Kwh, I may still have a bill, because the time I drew electricity from the power company was during their "updated" peak use time based on the fact that everyone who decided to go solar as they complained "We shut down the last nuclear power plant at San Onofre, CA, and we are paying an arm and a leg to buy it from AZ, so please help us compensate for electricity or we will have brown outs!" suddenly turned into "We aren't making enough money to pay our costs since everyone went solar, and now we want to charge them delivery fees to use our power lines" even though we know that AZ Power suppliers didn't charge them per KWH delivery fees.

Outside of that BS, basically, when it comes to commercial electricity, the big expense isn't your usage, but supply and demand costs. As I said, I could use electricity for a single hour and have a $1500 electric bill for 50kwh. Commercial concepts are "What is the most amount of power we have to potentially make available to this restaurant? 50KWH? Ok. So to Guarantee we have 50kwh available to you at any given time of day or night, we need this $1400 fee. So the bill ends up being $100 in usage and $1400 in guarantee fees.

There's an introduction to the bullshit that is Commercial Electrical!

 

[MP3Mike]

If they can charge 3 phase in Europe, but not here, is that merely a matter of getting the correct charging adapter to do 3 phase here, or do the US versions of the fuel cell management built into the car, not actually have the ability to adapt to 3 phase?

The EU spec Model 3s have a different charger, different charge port, and different wiring. The NA Model 3 doesn't have the port/wiring to support 3-phase charging even if the charger itself did.

 

[SageBrush]

basically, when it comes to commercial electricity, the big expense isn't your usage, but supply and demand costs.

You are hard to follow but it sounds like you are trying to avoid demand charges at the business.
If you limit the charging amperage to 20 Amps you will have ~ 4kW, or about 15 miles an hour.

WAG:
$15 a kW demand charges, so $60 a month demand charges. (Nothing at all to do with supply)
8 hours charging a day at the business
24 days a month
> 24 * 8 * 4 = 768 kWh charged for 6000 pennies, so 7.8 cents a kWh in demand charges + the commercial per kwh rate.

That does not sound bad, but tell me again why you do not put in a beefier connection at home ?

 

[mongo]

Mongo,

I'm assuming even with a 50amp 208v connection, you can potentially set software based limits on how fast it draws electricity in the car settings? Perhaps this is my solution. Maybe I can tell it to charge the battery to full over a 10 hour period knowing I will be at the restaurant for 12+ hours one day, and the next day I pull up, and know I will be driving all day, tell it to charge the battery in 3 hours, starting from plugin?

As for power costs, I'm in So-Cal, and commercial vs residential is a HUGE difference in how electricity costs work. In my house, I could draw 2,000 Kwh over a month and have a $500 bill. At the restaurant however, I could turn on power for a single hour and draw a total of 50Kwh, and turn the electricity off for the rest of the entire month, and be stuck with a $1500 bill for that single hour of use. Residential is billed purely on use. The more you use, the more you pay. They also have tier programs so lower amounts of electricity pay a lower rate, and as you draw more throughout the month, you get passed the initial tier A, and work to Tier B, C, and D. Each tier having a higher price per Kwh.

This is why I want to use the restaurant electricity to charge my car. I have enough solar to damn near eliminate my electric bill at home. That said, they don't give nearly as much credit for overgenerated electricity as delivered. If after an entire year, I use a total of 20,000 Kwh, but I generated 22,000 Kwh, I may still have a bill, because the time I drew electricity from the power company was during their "updated" peak use time based on the fact that everyone who decided to go solar as they complained "We shut down the last nuclear power plant at San Onofre, CA, and we are paying an arm and a leg to buy it from AZ, so please help us compensate for electricity or we will have brown outs!" suddenly turned into "We aren't making enough money to pay our costs since everyone went solar, and now we want to charge them delivery fees to use our power lines" even though we know that AZ Power suppliers didn't charge them per KWH delivery fees.

Outside of that BS, basically, when it comes to commercial electricity, the big expense isn't your usage, but supply and demand costs. As I said, I could use electricity for a single hour and have a $1500 electric bill for 50kwh. Commercial concepts are "What is the most amount of power we have to potentially make available to this restaurant? 50KWH? Ok. So to Guarantee we have 50kwh available to you at any given time of day or night, we need this $1400 fee. So the bill ends up being $100 in usage and $1400 in guarantee fees.

There's an introduction to the bullshit that is Commercial Electrical!

Ok, so is the critical number the highest draw from a single phase?

With a 50 amp circuit, the car will only pull 40 amps max due to being a continuous load. Setting it to a lower value will not help if you ever use it at the full power due to demand charges. So pick your max charge rate and have the loads balanced for that number. It's the only way to minimize the peak phase demand.
You could also get a 3 phase current monitor to see what the usage is before you start charging.

Also, 208 is your phase to phase voltage (120 line to neutral), correct? So the charger impacts 2 of the 3 phases (even yhough it is single phase input).

 

[Rocky_H]

@maverick3n1 It's these two specific technical reasons why it can't work on North American Tesla cars:

No, because there is no 3-phase connector option to the car in North America. That is used in other markets, such as the EU.

Starting from the outside-in, this is the first problem. The charging plug handles and the charge port on the car only use two pins for the incoming charging voltage in the charging connection. You can't pass three phase power on only two wires. So they can only pass one AC voltage potential between those two pins.

The Type 2 connector in Europe (also called Mennekes) has more wires and pins, so it can pass three separate phases through its connector.

The charger in the vehicle is different in Europe.

And that's the other factor. They have a differently built onboard charger that they include in the cars in the European market that can use three phase power.

 

[yuhong]

I wonder if you mean that the transformer is 50kVA. 208V at 30a would be 6kW.

 

[EfficientWatts]

if only Tesla ever added CCS support for NA cars, then you could get a 3Ph 208V DC charger.

With the launch in Japan around the corner though, we'll see if they release some sort of chademo adapter for NA cars.

But of course going DC would be expensive (looks like 10K+ online). The 10k ones are also spec-ed to 25kW, though perhaps you could configure them set a lower limit.

(There are lowered power ones but this was the cheapest one that had a 3ph 208V option)

 

[XHabjab]

I'm looking at getting a Model 3 performance and I will primarily be charging it at my restaurant. For load balancing reasons, I'd much rather run a 3 phase 208 4 wire 30 amp line off of my panel, than a single phase 208 50 amp and have a large load imbalance on the panel while charging. I'm currently under constructions and am finalizing my load balancing sheets for permits etc, and if I factor this in at single phase, my load balance will be dramatically off any time I'm not charging the vehicle. If I don't factor it in, then it will be grossly imbalanced while it is charging.

Unfortunately, whenever calling in, I always get referred to the sales team, and they wouldn't understand 3 phase vs single phase if you tried to explain it to them.

You don't have your power choices quite correct.

A 208V 3 phase service would give you 120V line to neutral. If the breaker(s) are 30A, that gives you either 208V 30A (2 hot lines to the HPWC) or 120V 30A (1 line + neutral to the HPWC). You probably want the 208V service, which loads 2 of the 3 phase lines.

There are numerous other options to use that third phase circuit. Too complicated to describe here without a lot of blah blah that people will misinform and argue about.

 

[eladts]

if only Tesla ever added CCS support for NA cars, then you could get a 3Ph 208V DC charger.

With the launch in Japan around the corner though, we'll see if they release some sort of chademo adapter for NA cars.

But of course going DC would be expensive (looks like 10K+ online). The 10k ones are also spec-ed to 25kW, though perhaps you could configure them set a lower limit.

(There are lowered power ones but this was the cheapest one that had a 3ph 208V option)

Nope. CCS1 is just J1722 for AC which does not support three-phase.

 

[EfficientWatts]

Nope. CCS1 is just J1722 for AC which does not support three-phase.

No, CCS1 is Combined Charging System, Type 1, which is DC charging, of which the majority uses 3 phase power as input to the charger. There are 1ph options but it costs more and probably not as efficient. There are also some models that runs off of 208Y/120V.

FYI with added support for Chademo for NA cars (with the adapter) with a future software update you can buy a chademo charger that is compatible with 208Y/120V (example: BTCPower). Might want to look into this @maverick3n1. (That example is a huge one but there are some comptact wallboxes that may better fit your needs)

 

[eladts]

No, CCS1 is Combined Charging System, Type 1, which is DC charging, of which the majority uses 3 phase power as input to the charger. There are 1ph options but it costs more and probably not as efficient. There are also some models that runs off of 208Y/120V.

FYI with added support for Chademo for NA cars (with the adapter) with a future software update you can buy a chademo charger that is compatible with 208Y/120V (example: BTCPower). Might want to look into this @maverick3n1. (That example is a huge one but there are some comptact wallboxes that may better fit your needs)

Sorry for my misunderstanding. However, spending $10K for a DC charger just to get 50% more power (three-phase 208/120V vs two-phase that is supported for L2 in NA doesn't make much sense. Also, note that you can convert three-phase service to as split-phase one and use all the power using the Leyton 3-2 Transformer Configuration. This certainly won't be cheap but it may be cheaper than an L3 charger.

 

[SageBrush]

CCS1 is Combined Charging System, Type 1, which is DC charging, of which the majority uses 3 phase power as input to the charger

What is the input voltage to the charger ? Sorry for the newb question but I'm having trouble connecting the dots between 208v 3 phase and DC charging at 50 - 150 kW. If my arithmetic is correct then even 400 volt 3 phase (230 volt per line) would require 125 Amps per 50 kW output

 

[EfficientWatts]

What is the input voltage to the charger ? Sorry for the newb question but I'm having trouble connecting the dots between 208v 3 phase and DC charging at 50 - 150 kW. If my arithmetic is correct then even 400 volt 3 phase (230 volt per line) would require 125 Amps per 50 kW output

For 3 phase power ampa is calculated as power / 3 / L-N voltage. So for 400 v it would actually be 50kW/ 3 / 230V = around 72.5 amps per line. For 208 you'll need 50kW / 3 / 120V = around 139 amps per line.

Sorry for my misunderstanding. However, spending $10K for a DC charger just to get 50% more power (three-phase 208/120V vs two-phase that is supported for L2 in NA doesn't make much sense. Also, note that you can convert three-phase service to as split-phase one and use all the power using the Leyton 3-2 Transformer Configuration. This certainly won't be cheap but it may be cheaper than an L3 charger.

Yea it doesn't make sense for most use cases as DC chargers are expensive and you'll be parked there for a good while. That being said there are cheaper options than that 10k one, and maybe there is something about commercial demand charges or commercial rates that could make it worth it with a cheaper charger (I don't know much about this tbh).

 

[SageBrush]

For 3 phase power ampa is calculated as power / 3 / L-N voltage. So for 400 v it would actually be 50kW/ 3 / 230V = around 72.5 amps per line. For 208 you'll need 50kW / 3 / 120V = around 139 amps per line.

Your arithmetic checks out (once I parsed the lack of parentheses) although I don't understand why.

I'm under the impression that L-L of V voltage each in a 3 phase config have an RMS voltage of V*sqrt(3)