Sorry this is long....
Some questions about the HPWC wiring and it's cable. I'm about to do a repair on three chargers we have installed at a commercial location. People kept pulling the charge cables out to full length and now the cables are slowly pulling out of the bottom of the units. I killed the power to one at the breaker, took the HPWC apart and re-wedged the rubber outer cover back inside the unit, and cranked down the holder again to hold it in place. (see pics). In the 3rd pic you can see the holder for the hose that is missing the hose. The wires themselves seem ok on the first one I serviced, just the rubber outer casing was pulled down. The other two are a little more worn...
Does anyone have a description of the cables inside the charge cable? On one of the HPWC I haven't worked on yet it appears that one of the smaller cables has either ripped out or wasn't connected to anything in the first place. (really small, like a single cable inside ethernet cable small). The charger itself still seems to work fine even though that one cable is not connected. I don't have a pic of the ripped out cable handy but I will try and get one next time I am over there finishing the repair. What my plan was to solve the rip out problem was to get a short length of PVC pipe, cut it in half lengthwise, and use hose clamps to hold the cable down against the pedestal under the 1/2 PVC pipe so it wouldn't crimp the cable. That way the strain would be at the PVC part and not where the charge cable goes into the HPWC unit, preventing it from pulling out.
The other thing I noticed: At this location there are three HPWC on what I thought was a single 100amp circuit but with com cable between them to share the load. I know each charger is capable of outputting 80amps individually, I've tested each one on their own. Also they output less when two or more cars are plugged into them at the same time, acting exactly as you would expect for a load-sharing setup.
When I went to kill the power to the chargers for my initial repair, I noticed that the sub-panel feeding the three chargers actually has three 100amp circuit breakers installed, and you can manually kill the power to each HPWC individually. This as opposed to the normal load sharing setup where a sub-panel's single 100amp circuit feeds a
single junction box that in turn feeds 2-4 chargers depending on your setup.
When it was initially installed I know the electrician said they pulled a much beefier cable then was needed from the main panel to the sub panel both because of distance (sub panel is probably 100-150' away from the main panel) and because they wanted some extra overhead in the event they might want to add a additional 40amp J1772 charger later. I had thought they pulled whatever was needed for 150 total amps, but it looks like they pulled enough for 300amps? Tomorrow I'll try and get a peek at the main circuit breaker that feeds to the sub-panel, that should clear up just how much juice is going to the sub-panel.
If there is 300amps going to the sub-panel, could I just unhook the control wire and change the settings on each HPWC to go at 80amps each instead of load sharing the 100 amps? It appears that while the HPWC are set up properly to load share, they don't need to as each charger might have the proper 100amp feed going to it.
My final question is one pedestal has two chargers on it, the other just has one. The one with 2 chargers on it is fed from a single conduit (The wiring for each HPWC shares the conduit), the pedestal that only has one HPWC is fed by its own separate conduit. The chargers are anywhere from 5-15' from the sub-panel. The wire to each HPWC is clearly rated to handle 80amps as when one car is plugged in it pulls that just fine. If it turns out that I have 300amps overhead at the sub-panel level, and each HPWC could in theory just work as stand alone 80 amp chargers, is there any issue having two of them feeding 80amps each through the same conduit (but separate wiring)? Or should if anything the one HPWC on it's own just be converted to 80amp solo and the two sharing a pedestal become a load sharing 80amp total. (up to 80 when single use, 40 each when both are in use) to minimize heat from the cabling.) I'd just have to see which HPWC is set as the master.
Hopefully this makes sense.