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Life on a 110 Outlet. My thoughts.

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My HPWC died recently, just as a friend was taking delivery of a Model S. So I've had to wait over six weeks for a new (free) HPWC to arrive. I have a 30 mile commute plus errands in the evening, and I'll get 3-4 mph off the 110. My 90D now gives 251 miles at 90%.

This has been way easier than I expected.

I've had to go to a Level 2 charger maybe once a week. I've used the local supercharger twice for road trips. My new HPWC arrives tomorrow, but it's been less stressful than I expected.

My big concern is, that as more Teslas are on the road, more people are going to opt for 110 charging at home to avoid the cost of an electrician, putting a further strain on the Supercharger network.

Does anyone know if this is a trend for Model 3 buyers? I know apartment dwellers may be forced to using urban chargers. I wonder how many homeowners are doing the same thing. Any data?
 
I think one part of the equation you are not considering is not all cars have unlimited free supercharging.

There is a thread on Tesla's own forum where they are talking about reusing wiring at a Condo and swapping the breaker and outlet to 240volt 6-15 good for 11miles on a M3, 7 on MS 5 for a MX.
If it is 12gauge could do 6-20 outlet and get 15/11/8miles depending on which vehicle.

Bet the average person can do that swap themselves and be in all of $70 including the adapter. Be a lot cheaper than getting a coffee or meal once twice a week while supercharging.
 
There is a thread on Tesla's own forum where they are talking about reusing wiring at a Condo and swapping the breaker and outlet to 240volt 6-15 good for 11miles on a M3, 7 on MS 5 for a MX.
If it is 12gauge could do 6-20 outlet and get 15/11/8miles depending on which vehicle.

Yep. A HPWC is AWESOME, a 14-50 is great... but all most people really need is L2 even if it's only 12A and any electrician should be able to convert a NEMA 5-15 outlet to a 6-20. Even 208v @ 12A is ~2.5kW. Can't get a full charge overnight but it's enough to recover from a ~90 mile commute.
 
Yes, it is amazing how many people fight the range anxiety by putting in the biggest, baddest charging solution available, when for the vast majority of people, 110V is a great solution. The battery is getting a slow charge, which by most standards is the best way to do it.
In general, you only need enough charging to offset your daily commute. If additional charging is needed on the weekend, that when you can use the other chargers, dependent on your location.
 
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Certainly charging at 110 can be suitable for many people; however, one of the problems with charging at 110 is that a higher percentage of the charging current is wasted as heat loss. At some point, you've wasted more energy in charging loss than the cost of a NEMA 14-50 might have been.

Someone can probably chime in and quantify the comparison in charging loss between 110V/12A and 240V/40A charging.
 
Without doing the math my understanding is there is 400watts of static overhead when charging.

Far as savings it will depend on a lot of factors, if it is warm enough that high amperage charging causes the battery to need cooling that would be wasteful. In my case near Green Bay a 30amp 240volt outlet seems a bit small to deal with battery warming, charging, interior warming. Morning warmup of battery and interior can actually consume a few miles while plugged in and winter energy use doubles with a short commute.

Wall charger is on the way, will likely install at 60-80amp but set the car to 20-30 in summer and maybe 50 in winter.
 
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Someone can probably chime in and quantify the comparison in charging loss between 110V/12A and 240V/40A charging.

~10%. And if it's below freezing 110v/12A will barely keep the pack warm enough to charge so you won't get much if anything and ~100% of the energy be expended just keeping the pack warm... ~240v is definitely worth the upgrade. 'Need' is a strong word and it's better than nothing but you SHOULD definitely have L2 at home...
 
I love my dual charger, as I’ll occasionally make a 200 mile trip and need a quick charge to get me around town for the evening.

But this experience has definitely taught me I don’t need 80amps all the time.

Is it possible that running 80 amps possibly led to the shortened life span for my first HPWC?
 
We moved from AZ to OH just over a year ago. I had a NEMA 14-50 in AZ, and planned to get an HPWC in the new house. But I still haven't had an electrician out to do the wiring/install -- the garage in OH has 5-20 outlets, and I already had that adapter. L1 charging has worked fine for us -- I get about 5.5 miles added per hour of charge, which is more than enough to replace my ~45 mile round trip commute overnight. Even in winter, when energy use goes up, I was able to replace ~90% of my commute miles on the coldest days.

I have had 2-3 times where I've needed to hit the Supercharger for a 15-20 min to get a boost charge (one time, I forgot to plug the car in one Friday night, and we decided to run some extra errands on the weekend, so we just hit the SC as we headed out on those errands). The Supercharger is about a mile off my commute path, so its an easy backup if needed.

Note that we don't have a time-of-use option with our electric utility in OH -- which helps. In AZ, we had a TOU plan, so had much less expensive rates from 9pm to 9am and all weekend, so I very rarely charged during the high rate times. That's where having L2 charging at home really helps...
 
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Wall charger is on the way, will likely install at 60-80amp but set the car to 20-30 in summer and maybe 50 in winter.

That's basically what I do for the same reason. I have a carport so the car is outside and in the mornings I would prefer to use the grid to warm the car instead of the battery. The heater is ~10kW so I just dial up the charge rate to 50A in the winter. 20A is plenty for charging and AC in the summer.
 
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Still 120v. Still a ~10% penalty for 120v vs ~240v. If you have a NEMA 5-20 it's worth repurposing the wire to a 6-20. Turn the N in to a L and you double the charge rate and use ~10% less energy.

well sure, if you wanna go down that route and poke holes in my comment. There are plenty of places where repurposing a 120V to 240V outlet is not feasible or possible. I was simply stating a 5-20 charging solution is going to yield a decent charge advantage over 5-15.
 
I love my dual charger, as I’ll occasionally make a 200 mile trip and need a quick charge to get me around town for the evening.

But this experience has definitely taught me I don’t need 80amps all the time.

Is it possible that running 80 amps possibly led to the shortened life span for my first HPWC?

I don’t think there’s an intrinsic problem with hooking up an HPWC at 80 amps. I ran an 80 amp HPWC for five years with perfect performance from the HPWC. Like you, I only charged at 80 amps when necessary, which for me meant we had driven around town all day and then needed a quick charge to dash to Austin. I since replaced the one with two of them, load sharing the same 100 amp circuit, and sold my original HPWC to a friend.
 
As discussed a NEMA 6-20 would be a super easy upgrade.

Still 120v. Still a ~10% penalty for 120v vs ~240v. If you have a NEMA 5-20 it's worth repurposing the wire to a 6-20. Turn the N in to a L and you double the charge rate and use ~10% less energy.

Unfortunately, the 5-20 circuit in my garage has 2 outlets, and I need the other outlet to have 120...
 
It's even easier to charge from standard outlets in countries with 240V household voltage.
Pretty much all of Europe and Asia are 240V. Here in Australia the standard outlet is 240V at 10A, so 2.4kW.
I still like my HPWC, but had no trouble during the few months before I installed it.
 
240V at 24A gives, IIRC, the best charging efficiency, which requires a 30A circuit.

But in terms of practicality it comes down to the miles you need, electricity prices and climate.
If you have a flat rate at reasonable price then you can plug in and charge any time.

120V at 12A charging is 1.44kW. If we're conservative and say 80% efficiency, that's 1.152kW to the battery. If we're again conservative and say just 3mi/kWh that's 3.456mph.
Let's be conservative again and say that your car is plugged in 7pm to 7am weekdays, to 10am Saturday morning and 12 hours on Sunday.
That's 7 + 5 * 12 + 3 + 12 = 82 hours of charging.
82 * 3.456 = 283.92 mpw (miles per week)
283.92 mpw * (365.25dpy/7dpw) = 14814.54 miles per year, which is a pretty good amount.

Of course, that charging is miles per week, and not all weeks are the same, so you'll need to use public chargers, but as long as your _typical_ week falls comfortably within your weekly charging limit it can work.

Also, when it comes to 120V charging, the battery buffer is a significant factor. There is an irony that the larger buffer of long-range electrics makes them _more_ practical to charge on 120V at 12A and more comfortable using relatively low amperage 240V.

For example, If you can get 45 miles of charging every weekday night, and 90 miles each day of the weekend and you commute 80 miles per day, your battery will lose 35 miles of charge per weekday, so you'd need a buffer of at least 175 miles for your working week. In mild climates this could be done solely using home charging with a long-range electric, but not with a short-range electric. Even if it's a bit tight, in general long-range electrics charge at higher power on DC then short-range electrics, so any supplementary public charging is also likely to take less time.
 
240V@24 gives, IIRC, the best charging efficiency, which requires a 30A circuit.

But in terms of practicality it comes down to the miles you need, electricity prices and climate.
If you have a flat rate at reasonable price then you can plug in and charge any time.

120V@12A charging is 1.44kW. If we're conservative and say 80% efficiency, that's 1.152kW to the battery. If we're again conservative and say just 3mi/kWh that's 3.456mph.
Let's be conservative again and say that your car is plugged in 7pm to 7am weekdays, to 10am Saturday morning and 12 hours on Sunday.
That's 7 + 5 * 12 + 3 + 12 = 82 hours of charging.
82 * 3.456 = 283.92 mpw (miles per week)
283.92 mpw * (365.25dpy/7dpw) = 14814.54 miles per year, which is a pretty good amount.

Of course, that charging is miles per week, and not all weeks are the same, so you'll need to use public chargers, but as long as your _typical_ week falls comfortably within your weekly charging limit it can work.

Also, when it comes to 120V charging, the battery buffer is a significant factor. There is an irony that the larger buffer of long-range electrics makes them _more_ practical to charge on 120V or other relatively low power.

For example, If you can get 45 miles of charging every weekday night, and 90 miles each day of the weekend and you commute 80 miles per day, your battery will lose 35 miles of charge per weekday, so you'd need a buffer of at least 175 miles for your working week. In mild climates this could be done solely using home charging with a long-range electric, but not with a short-range electric.
On the other hand, EVs with bigger batteries often charges slower on 120V than EVs with smaller batteries. I think they have spent some effort fixing this with Model 3 though.