Planning to only use 110 outlet

[F14Scott]

Ah yes, there you go. NEMA 6-15 or 6-20 ... same # of wires. Good stuff. I don't know if wires rated for 120V 15A are the same as those for 240V 15A though? If so, you can do what was suggested, change the outlet, leave the wiring, and change the breaker and the hookup at the breaker side and upgrade a 5-15 to a 6-15 and double your fun!


Tesla NEMA 6-15 adapter: Gen 2 NEMA Adapters

The wire is exactly the same. Amps are amps, regardless of voltage. So, whatever is in the wall works. If it's white, it's 14 gauge 15A; yellow = 12 gauge 20A.

But, you must confirm the outlet is the only one on that circuit. Obviously, changing one outlet in a daisy chain to a 6-20 and leaving the rest 120V 5-20s would kill a bunch of appliances and start fires.
Here's the sort of breaker you'd use (for 20amp wire):
Square D by Schneider Electric HOM220GFIC Homeline 20 Amp Two-Pole GFCI Circuit Breaker, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L40PKFK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-WiaDb2K0S0P2

 

[flalvarado@gmail]

Which don't you change your 120 volt outlet to a NEMA 6-20 outlet? If your current outlet is 20 amps and on its own circuit, an electrician should be able to easily do it using the same wires. Tesla sells the plug for it. We've been using it for years. You'll be very happy.

 

[Cdej1972]

Hi everyone! New owner here. Picked up Model 3 on 6/8 and plan to only use my existing 110 outlet in my garage to charge my car. Since I have a total commute of 40 miles 4 days a week I figure I can get about 50 charging miles each night. If I decide to take a long trip there are a number of local Superchargers available get up to 100% before I leave. My question: will I be doing any “damage” to my car’s battery by trickling in a charge for long hours at a low rate? Thanks.

I purchased my 3 on 10 December. I drive 16 miles one way to work 5 days a week and charge every day simply because a plugged in car is a happy car. I have been using a standard 110 outlet for the past 6 months and get 5 miles per hour of charging with absolutely no issues. As for damage, considering there's no warning (no, you will void your warranty if you only use 110 warning that is) stating not to use the 110 for extended periods of time we should be fine. It does get warm in the garage since the cooling fans will kick in to cool the battery, but it never gets above 90 degrees in my garage (I'm in Florida). When I move at the end of the month I'll be using the 50 amp plug installed by my builder and I'll be able to tell the difference in heat generated first hand and share that information with everyone. I hope this helps By the way, Congratulations on your new ride!

 

[pschubert61]

I upgraded to a HPWC, but I travel with the Model S all over so I did not want to be concerned about travel range. Yes, range anxiety. From my point of view the range anxiety has settled so upgrade if you run into problems. I recommend the wall charger but it will be $1000 to buy it and install it.

 

[rich0]

with all due respect, pushing your battery to 0 miles is much easier to do when you know that there is a 240 charger at home. even if you never use it.

I have to agree with this. I was limping along on 120V for the first few weeks until I had a wall charger installed (no easy access to 240V). It DEFINITELY impacted my driving. Anytime I wanted to drive more than 10 miles I had to think a few days ahead. If I had a 150mile round trip planned I had to make sure I was working towards having a mostly-charged battery on that day by being careful in the days leading up to it. After such a trip it was literally days of minimal driving before the battery was full again.

While I made it all work, it really forced me to be super-deliberate about driving when all I want is to be able to just hop in the car and drive.

Now, for a long-distance trip I could have supercharged, but that isn't really a practical solution for a 150 mile round trip, where a supercharger might be 20-40 miles out of the way. There are plenty of superchargers around, but most are 20-100 miles away down a highway and I might not be taking that particular highway that far while still putting in a fair bit of driving during the day. For a road trip I'll obviously pick an appropriate route which isn't a big deal for a long haul.

Now with the home charger I just keep it at 80% during the week, at 90% for the weekends, and at 100% when I have a trip pre-planned.

 

[sublimejackman]

Hi everyone! New owner here. Picked up Model 3 on 6/8 and plan to only use my existing 110 outlet in my garage to charge my car. Since I have a total commute of 40 miles 4 days a week I figure I can get about 50 charging miles each night. If I decide to take a long trip there are a number of local Superchargers available get up to 100% before I leave. My question: will I be doing any “damage” to my car’s battery by trickling in a charge for long hours at a low rate? Thanks.

I'm right down the road from you in Olney. I went last summer with only access to a regular 120v plug. Granted I drove much more than you but man was it a pain. In this area, the Superchargers are always packed, the inside of the car (glass roof) is always 100+ degrees so you need to always be pre-cooling it and running the AC. That's just the summer. Once it gets below 40 degrees, it's just not really possible. The first 30min of driving the battery is at like 60% efficiency, pre-heating the car and battery uses a large amount of power. I'm guessing you either live in a condo/apt or are renting a house? I was living in an apartment and now I'm renting a house. Once I moved, I made an extension cord to the 240v dryer outlet with 10 gauge romex and 30amp plug adapter. It can only charge at 24amps but that's still 18mi/hr. Costs less than $100 and you can get all the materials on Amazon.

 

[BBMc]

Hi everyone! New owner here. Picked up Model 3 on 6/8 and plan to only use my existing 110 outlet in my garage to charge my car. Since I have a total commute of 40 miles 4 days a week I figure I can get about 50 charging miles each night. If I decide to take a long trip there are a number of local Superchargers available get up to 100% before I leave. My question: will I be doing any “damage” to my car’s battery by trickling in a charge for long hours at a low rate? Thanks.

On vacation this year we had access to a 110 outlet which kept us powered up enough to enjoy all of Jacksonville from the beach to my Mom’s house to the Cheesecake Factory to Orange Park. Jacksonville is HUGE but we had no problems at all with the trickler. We were relentless about plugging in, though. It surprised me as I thought we would need to visit the supercharger often.

 

[doghousePVD]

To be clear, are you saying you can take a 2x 5-15 wiring run and re-use the wires for a single 14-50?
[EDIT: I'm not an electrician, but ... the 5-15 outlet just has 3 wires, and the 14-50 has 4 ... so ... are you just not going to wire in the neutral because the Tesla doesn't use it in this scheme? ... this is probably not at all to code ]

That's assuming the wire was over-spec to start with though. And then you have to always crank down the amps on your car to not blow the breaker because the NEMA 14-50 adapter will say it can do 50A (40A continuous) and if you try that the circuit will blow (or a fire will start).

A 14-50 is a 4 wire connection, so one cannot just take the three wire 120 V connection and put in a 14-50. With three wires one could install a 6-50.

A 14-50 is 50 amps (duh!) and needs heavier wiring than typical 12 gauge wiring. One could install a 6-20 outlet, which a 20 amps. It would charge twice as fast as a 5-20, or bit better than double of a 5-15 (standard household outlet).

VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure there is only one outlet on the circuit!!! Any other item on the same circuit will now have 240 Volts, and is dangerous. It is very rare in the US that only a single 120 V outlet is put on a circuit breaker. They almost always linked with several outlets.

lt;dr: Unless you really know what you are doing, don't do this. If you already know what you are doing, you don't need this note.

 

[Robert Payne]

Every home, including ours, with an electric dryer has an existing 240 VAC plug that the standard TESLA charging cable can be adapted to by any certified electrician. Our 2013 Model S gets to 80% easily on 4-5 hours of charging. So... we only need super charging when on trips. Incidentally we went from SC to California and back, 8500 miles, free electricity. Helen & Bob

 

[ColoradoFun]

Congratulations on the new car, I got my new M3 on 5/11 and it is the best car I have ever owned hands down, I love it. I thought I would need a wall charger right away, but so far the 110 outlet has been good for me - so far. I do not drive enough to need a wall charger yet, and have a full charge every morning so far and have only used superchargers twice, both times more testing than need. Being in Colorado I will upgrade before winter to a 50 or 60 amps, looks simple and my local power company will put $250 towards the install. But I have a few questions.

First according to TeslaFI going from ~70% to 80% charge with the 15 amp 120V outlet I am getting 78.1% efficiency, last night I charged at a destination 48 amp wall charger and it reported 79.8% efficiency and supercharging reports 98.7% for me. Is there some other way to measure that would show the loss or is this accurate? The TeslaFi difference between 15 amp and 48 amp seems minimal at best at least now in the summer but I have not looked at how it is calculated. Any research if charging at slower rates or faster is better for the batteries long term?

Second I have been using the 80% charge level and have only gone up to 90% once. If I want to charge to 100% is it better for the battery to do it slowly at home or faster with a wall charger or supercharger? I just want to see what my range is with the full charge since I see it varies by car and driving habits logically.

Finally I have read in many of the forums that if you do not drive much (me since I work from home) then change your daily charge to 70% vs 80% for longer daily commutes. I read about many high mileage cars that primarily used supercharging and have minimal degradation over time. Is there any science to 70% vs. 80% or faster vs. slower charging being better or are owners just guessing and using cell phones as the measure? Since I don't drive many miles I can charge to any % at any amp level, but want to know the effort is actually providing benefit to the car and not just a guess. Till proven otherwise I will change mine to 70%.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

 

[TexasEV]

Every home, including ours, with an electric dryer has an existing 240 VAC plug that the standard TESLA charging cable can be adapted to by any certified electrician.

Not sure what you think the electrician would do. All you need is the 14-30 or 10-30 adapter for your UMC, depending on how old your dryer outlet is.

 

[darth_vad3r]

Every home, including ours, with an electric dryer has an existing 240 VAC plug that the standard TESLA charging cable can be adapted to by any certified electrician. Our 2013 Model S gets to 80% easily on 4-5 hours of charging. So... we only need super charging when on trips. Incidentally we went from SC to California and back, 8500 miles, free electricity. Helen & Bob

Ya, but there’s a dryer plugged into it, so you need a splitter, a Dryer Buddy, or to unplug/replug all the time

And some of us have the dryer on the 3rd floor while the garage is on the 1st anyways

The 6-15 option is interesting to me for the cost of a new receptacle and changes only at the breaker. I have an unused dedicated outlet I can swap out from a 5-15 using this idea. It’s in a bit of a crummy location, but still WAY closer than the dryer plug ... I might need a 6-15 extension cord to make it work.

 

[SteveGardner]

There's a midground between spending ~$1750 buying the supercharger and getting it installed. Just get a local electrician to run a 240 line for you. I bought the outlet on Amazon for about $10 (so I had it ready for the electrician), and he only charged $250 to install it.

The 240 charging rate is about 7 times as fast as the 110 (28 vs. 4).

I'd gotten by with a 11 for the first few months of owning the 3, and it never was a real problem, but with summer here, I'm glad to have overnight charging. For minimal money.

 

[Reid]

That sounds painfully miserable, and possible untenable. But it depends on if you EVER plan to do anything with your car other than commute, if you plan to return directly home after work *every day* so that you can immediately begin trickle charging, etc. I wouldn't want to think "I could go out for dinner after work, but I need to get home for those precious 6 extra miles overnight".

We live in roughly the most temperate climate on the US, and commute 40 miles (okay, maybe 42 miles) each day. Our commute speeds are high, so our range suffers, but between worse-than-rated efficiency, sometimes pre-heating or pre-cooling the car, vampire drain, etc, we probably use 50-60 miles of range per day for that commute. It's pretty common to do worse than 300Wh/mile (car is rated 250, I think) on our way to work, and maybe more like 270 on the way home (slightly slower speeds).

Suddenly the difference between 3 (rated) miles per hour of charge and 4, and the precise voltage your house is receiving, and how much current you can pull off that outlet, start to matter a whole lot.

You're also looking at maybe having to leave your car at home on the weekends to try to recover that range. It just sounds like nonstop anxiety and hassle. I guess it all depends on how close the superchargers are to your house and errands, and whether you mind spending an hour at one each weekend to recover the shortfall you'll likely spend all week building up.

I've charged on 110 a few times, draping extension cords out of VRBO rental windows, leaving the car all day and hitching a ride with friends, etc. It's silly.

But no, you won't hurt anything.

 

[Reid]

Second I have been using the 80% charge level and have only gone up to 90% once. If I want to charge to 100% is it better for the battery to do it slowly at home or faster with a wall charger or supercharger? I just want to see what my range is with the full charge since I see it varies by car and driving habits logically.

Finally I have read in many of the forums that if you do not drive much (me since I work from home) then change your daily charge to 70% vs 80% for longer daily commutes. I read about many high mileage cars that primarily used supercharging and have minimal degradation over time. Is there any science to 70% vs. 80% or faster vs. slower charging being better or are owners just guessing and using cell phones as the measure? Since I don't drive many miles I can charge to any % at any amp level, but want to know the effort is actually providing benefit to the car and not just a guess. Till proven otherwise I will change mine to 70%.

I don't know what the science is, but my dad has a 2 year old Model S with only 14,000 miles on it. He was charging to, I think, 50%, and the car's rated range was declining fairly precipitously. From, I think, 259 miles when new, to somewhere in the 230s. I think it was verging on causing issues on those rare roadtrips. He started charging to 80 or 90% and bit by bit, he started recovering rated range. Quite a lot of it.

I use 90% every charge on our LR 3. I don't plan for it to ever matter. I can handle a couple % this way or that over, say, 100k miles. I'm not going to own the car forever. If I didn't drive much i might lower it to 80, but no lower.

 

[SigNC]

Is there some data points on this? I'm not seeing anywhere near that drop in efficiency comparing home charge (110V) to work charge (240V).

The main difference isn't the efficiency change in going from 120 to 240. It's really that the car being powered on takes ~300 watts or so and that's a large percentage of 120 x 12 aka 1440 watts. The more watts you are able to charge at the less the penalty of having the car "on" is.

 

[smithg13]

One more point: Some 120v circuits are capable of delivering 20 amps rather than 15 (which equates to 16 amps rather than 12 of charging). This can improve the charge speed a little, but you'll need a NEMA 5-20 adapter for the car's stock EVSE, and the plug you use will need to match. (The plug has one T-shaped hole.) Going to 20-amp charging will help more than you might think because a significant amount of the 15 amps goes to powering the car's circuits in real-time, so the extra 33% amperage improves charge speed by more than that. If you want to go this route, be sure that nothing else is using that circuit, since charging will push it to the limit; you don't want to be charging and have a garage door opener or whatnot on the same circuit trip the breaker.

I 100% agree with this. We live in a converted barn that's 260 years old. Our detached garage is too far from the panel to economically justify putting in a high speed outlet. So I bumped up the power from 15-20amp. That increased the charging from 4 to 6 MPH. 33% increase by changing a breaker, outlet, and adapter cable on the charger.

 

[Rocky_H]

I don't know what the science is, but my dad has a 2 year old Model S with only 14,000 miles on it. He was charging to, I think, 50%, and the car's rated range was declining fairly precipitously. From, I think, 259 miles when new, to somewhere in the 230s. I think it was verging on causing issues on those rare roadtrips. He started charging to 80 or 90% and bit by bit, he started recovering rated range. Quite a lot of it.

I use 90% every charge on our LR 3. I don't plan for it to ever matter. I can handle a couple % this way or that over, say, 100k miles. I'm not going to own the car forever. If I didn't drive much i might lower it to 80, but no lower.

That is just drastically misunderstanding what is going on. The car was definitely not actually losing range from using the 50% charge point. There is tons of long term lithium ion battery studies that show that the healthiest thing for the long term life and least degradation of the batteries' capacity is staying near a midpoint state of charge. What was actually going on was that the car's computer was getting a less and less accurate estimation of the amount of energy in the battery. From not exercising it toward a high and low point, it loses visibility to how much range is in there.

So that is always a tradeoff you get to decide on. Running it high and low keeps the estimation tuned in accurately but is worse for the battery, or keeping it in a tight band near midpoint is best for the health of the battery, but gets the estimation dorked up.

 

[Dmagyar]

I’m reading some of these homeowners fixes and I’m concerned about the bad idea of changing breakers from 15 to 20:amps with no idea of the wire capacity. Anyone considering swapping out a 15/1 breaker for a 20/1 breaker had better consider the consequences, call your insurance agent and ask: am I paid up to date on my fire insurance coverage, and then if he thinks it’s a good idea...

 

[Dariushd]

Completely agree with those that say don't stay with your 11ov outlet. It does no damage, but the time you wait for a charge will drive you bananas after a short while. You will get 3-4miles/hour compared to a NEMA at about 30 or a tesla charger at about 40/hr. Also the mileage you get from your car greatly varies on driving style and other factors, so I always say I spend about 1.25-1.5 miles of charge for every mile driven (I drive aggressively an drive over a mountain a few times a week).