dhrivnak
Active Member
One ca EASILY as a plug to the wall connector and just dial back to 40 amps for the codes.
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You gotta be kidding me. Electricians won't add a Tesla wall connector on the backup side of ESS
- Thread starter holeydonut
- Start date
Yeah, 6/3 romex is easy enough. But happy wife happy life. She's already super pissed about shitty this PV+ESS installation has transpired.
She blames me for the delays. I blame Sunrun. Sunrun blames PG&E. PG&E blames the CPUC. CPUC blames California's Department of Planning and Research.
Anyway, I'd rather a licensed electrician do it and get the right permit from the county since it seems the county doesn't buy the concept of "easy-peasy" de-rating the HPWC to 40A (50A OCPD).
Wrap It!
There used to be a HPWC available with a NEMA 14-50 plug attached.
If you want to pull the permit for a NEMA 14-50 outlet as an owner builder PM me, and I will do the CAD design work. Then you can hire whatever electrician you want and be fully permitted. The limitation will be charge rate, you will only get 66% of what the car is capable of. This is still fine for most people, and you would use the UMC.
I tried that angle with an owner/builder permit. The Gen 3 HPWC maxes out with a 60A OCPD, so the guy doing the permits said he wasn't keen on approving the lower 40A-draw / 50A-OCPD permit knowing it was super easy to just upscale it later.
Even if I provided the full CAD to give some triplicate 11x17" line diagrams showing a 60A OCPD and some 6/3 romex... Contra Costa County permitting has a section that demands proof of workers compensation insurance for any agent that is brought in to do the work on an owner/builder permit.
Their application implies that If the person being brought in on an owner/builder permit that is CA licensed with their own insurance, they are in violation of their CA license since they are knowingly working on an owner/builder permit. The number of warnings/checkboxes make me not want to deal with this as owner/builder even though I feel like 99% of people would just go ahead and do it anyway.
I just need to find a normal licensed electrician and pay them fair market rates to do some goddamn work that happens to involve a Tesla Powerwall whole home backup. It's not actually my intention to bend rules or jerry-rg something. But I am pausing this effort to fix my shed and my fence (in accordance with the HOA rules!). That'll be less nerve-racking.
I think some folks may think I'm trying to get cute with the process; but in reality I do things above board. I fixed the electrician's NEC load calc with my nameplate watts/VA to make sure I really was within the safety boundary of the 200A service. I am actually ok paying for permitting and inspection with CoCo. And that's why I'm the dumbass who actually read their NEMMT interconnection agreement and am buying up my insurance to honor the stupid terms.
Well, if you aren't willing to check the boxes you wont get a 50A NEMA 14-50 permit either.
Keep calling until some contractor wants your money. I'd honestly not even mention the Powerwalls in the initial phone calls to contractors, because they do not affect the car charger scope of work.
Keep calling until some contractor wants your money. I'd honestly not even mention the Powerwalls in the initial phone calls to contractors, because they do not affect the car charger scope of work.
CrazyRabbit
Active Member
i respectfully disagree. look at the upr left top four. first one has air conditioning, tub and water closet and its 240 tripping buddy is just air conditioning. the first one should be only air conditioning ONLY. then middle two, which trip together, are all 120v loads.
Maybe it would make you feel better if I had labeled it "thermostat" instead of air conditioning (those top breakers are not 240). The actual AC is further down, on its own breakers.
CrazyRabbit
Active Member
the top breaker
top breakers are bonded together to trip in pairs. get the extra hardware removed...
top breakers are bonded together to trip in pairs. get the extra hardware removed...
They are bonded together to trip in pairs because of something to do with the neutral. They are not 240v. This install was actually done by one of teslas master electricians (one who teaches their other installers how to install), and who was the electrician on the very first residential powerwall, and has since done 100s. I am confident it is installed to code, and correctly.
I am not just saying "master electrician" because he teaches, he was a master electrician, not a journeyman, and has been working for tesla as an electrician since before powerwall 1s were released.
The top right ones are set in pairs too, but those outlets are also not 240v.
Just to clarify, common trip is an internal connection and implies common disconnect when manually operated. The purpose of a handle tie is to take two independent breakers and make them common disconnect when manually operated. They still may trip independently.
Cheers, Wayne
That makes sense. I just know that the breakers were not this way in my old panel but when they re wired it, some things were combined in pairs that were not combined before. They told me something about the new codes and my neutral wire. but by that point I had already chatted with them and knew that the lead installer was a master electrician, so I just trusted they were doing it "right" and to code.
Ill stop derailing this thread now
Yes, the requirement for common manual disconnect on breakers serving a MWBC (where two circuits on opposite legs share a common neutral) is less than a decade old, I believe.
Cheers, Wayne
Cheers, Wayne
And long overdue in my opinion. It is safer for the person working on the circuit who doesn't, or can't, know that a common neutral is used on the circuit in question.
Personally, I would be very happy that the electrician cleaned things up for you.
All the best,
BG
Wow so someone could turn off a breaker thinking they de-activated the hot side, but then still get an unpleasant surprise since the neutral is being shared on another circuit?
I wonder if it's relatively easy to check to see if a common neutral is being used for two circuits...
That's right, and that's the safety reasoning behind the requirement. Experienced electricians at the time the requirement was passed often had the reaction "if you don't know how to deal with an MWBC, you shouldn't be working on the wiring." And the downside is that the requirement has lead to a reduction in the use of MWBCs (you can't combine circuits into an MWBC when you need/want individual control of the circuits). So that has led to the use of somewhat more copper and somewhat more thermal heating due to voltage drop.
Not taking a position, just pointing out that there are arguments both ways.
Cheers, Wayne
CrazyRabbit
Active Member
I've never seen MWBC, now i'm educated. But i hope for your sake that all your wiring in your walls is 12 gauge wire that are tied to these MWBC with 20 amp breakers.
interesting discussion of MWBC: Close call with MWBC
interesting discussion of MWBC: Close call with MWBC
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Then the EV charger is not visible to the Gateway 2. So stored Powerwall energy couldn't make its way to the charger.
I tried to oversize my PV system in anticipation of a future EV. Off-peak (overnight) rates on PG&E's EV2A plan to charge an EV are $0.17... which is 28% above the national average.
But that's where NEM will keep that balance.... Your solar output in day time can still compensate the charging at night after 12am.
The only downside doing that is you won't be charging your Tesla at night during a power outage.
I hope after my 100's of posts crapping on PG&E, it's clear I don't like them. This includes their BS gaslighting to shift blame to rate payers... But more importantly their NEM policies, TOU policies, or general management is set up to screw average homeowners over time.
I don't want my generated energy touching their grid, and I hope to take as little from them as possible so they can't influence me down the road. They've already tried 3 times to put huge roadblocks in my attempt to go green, just imagine what they will do after my system is online.
For example, go back in time 4 years to 2016 and compare the EVA/EVB rates to today's EV2A rates (before the upcoming rate hike). Off-peak EV rates have gone from $0.12 to $0.17 per kWh. That's over 50% increase. Plus PG&E has modified the "peak" times to undercut daytime production and skew in favor of dusk to midnight. So a homeowner who got EV and Solar installed in 2016 will experience a huge savings compared to a new EV+Solar customer today since new folks aren't grandfathered into the old TOU rates.
And as I posted in the other thread, PG&E is about to increase residential rates by over 10%. PG&E has stated many times that customers with EV's and Solar are "wealthy" so they're going to attack (raise) the EV rates more aggressively than normal and CARE and FERA subsidized rates. It's not far-fetched to assume a monster spike to EV rates (especially off-peak and dusk-to-midnight) in the next few years since the CPUC has historically granted PG&E whatever rate increases they want as long as the CARE/FERA population was protected.
For reference, the Summer TOU-CARES rate in 2016 compared to the Summer TOU-C (with D-CARES) discount rate today show only a +2% increase over the last 4 years.
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