Home Charging Installation Risks and Advice

foreign ladies and gentlemen we we have a different kind of a program here today uh this is serious stuff um today I've got uh dick armisher um and I've got JW and they're going to talk to us a little bit about a real situation in your home if you have home charging uh so first off I'm going to ask dick to just give you a little background and how he got involved with this and uh and then we're going to pass it over to JW and uh then JW is going to give you a little background tell you a little bit about himself and then we're going to dive into something that everybody should know about if you have a home charger so dick wants you to kick it off well I'm a mechanical engineer I worked many years for General Motors a Powertrain and also in racing uh really have a gasoline in my veins but uh 2019 I bought a Tesla Model 3 and I needed home charging and uh ran into JW here who did my home charger installation also with a second meter because of the way DTE here in Michigan Works and I've maintained communication with JW over that time and he's told me about some of the things that he's found here and and I told Sandy and and JW wants to talk about him good uh my name is JW my background is uh in industrial manufacturing and automation controls uh through the years I've learned the exposure of a high current uh failures and potential dangers that present itself if not properly installed um moving forward through the years I've went on my own of my own business as an owner operator I'm a master electrician uh our background also Nails um technology uh construction as well but so moving forward into the EV business uh back in 2018 when it was still uh nor so come out of the ground I uh suited up with the uh the utility company here locally and also some other uh Man car manufacturers on their uh on their sites so now we're installing car chargers in people's homes we're installing people's uh Chargers in the front of their house uh and also at their commercial buildings so through the years we have discovered uh failures and products and none of the equipment that we are installing uh says EV rated but the manufacturers say it's uh comparable to installing the equipment for Ev Chargers well I'm uh after seeing this I'm a little bit concerned so um what what you've got here this is a breaker this is a 60 amp breaker and this is a housing that goes inside your box so normally what I'd expect when I come take this thing to Pieces is nothing it shouldn't show anything but when I saw this this puddle of melted plastic I became slightly concerned this is not what you're supposed to see there's no way in hell that uh that that the breakers should have kicked out it didn't um it um it basically is glued in inside each other now this is almost like it well you can see it was welded and now it's kind of like I broke it free but this is not good and JW has definitely scared The Living Daylights out of me with some of the stuff that he's been bumping into fire after fire after fire um uh these are not happy situations that that JW is going to show us and and and and quite frankly like I say um well I'll let you do the talking I I don't want to I I can't hardly believe my eyes go ahead so this is a product there's many manufacturers out there and on the Home Centers that's where a lot of these uh these are not by the way uh this product I'm showing you um is from like a uh this installation here was off of a Porsche Ty cam uh mobile charger the plug was never pulled out in recessed it was a fixed uh charger so uh eight months later he called me up and said um I've got a problem in my charger it's only charging four amps now the poles to 32. so I immediately knew because of I I've been becoming more exposed to the the failures of the plugs with the with the situation was I asked him is there any odor or smoke he says I smell a small uh faint odor of something burning I said okay go ahead shut it off and then I'll be there as soon as possible and I was there with the next morning so I pulled out and then we came across the where the actual thermal event was happening on a electrical conductor side hot side we call it and this is where you can see the orientation the plug was uh so it was melting overheating and it just dripping down now this is a to me this is a minor event I've seen worse where the actual plug has been fully 100 compromised where it's just fully uh melted or yeah melted his word so um all the installations um this one so I knew of these uh the high current failures that are very possible I would say I installed uh through the years since 2018 maybe less than 20. I knew what the failures I stayed away from them the possibilities of failures so but they're always close to me with monitoring their conditions so uh because I just knew these things could not handle the long-term heating process of an everyday charger uh with these uh evses now granted you got to keep in mind people are still learning uh how to charge their car so they're charging their cars every time it works these things are exercise every day until they finally become satisfied they can actually do four charges per week or per month to give them a full charge for their whole uh travel for the for the month so once they get over that learning curve then they realize they can scale back and just charge once you know on a weekend or every Wednesday so that satisfies their travel needs but for some but for others I mean you're charging all night so that you can get back and forth to work right now uh and the other thing is I don't charge uh to 100 never it's uh it it it's it's hard on the battery so I saw I cycle from 20 to 80. my rivian if it gets to 80 just okay the plug might be in the in the car but nothing happens it's just sitting there um resting um um but these things these things like you said this it says right on it this is for uh this is for uh what do you call flush mount range outlet okay this one here is still in the bag uh but this does not say this is good for and it says 50 amp 125 volts so um this is this is not I I think that I think we've got a little bit of a problem here I I could be wrong but this doesn't strike me as being something that's going to have 100 duty cycle and uh if that's the case and we're using something that's good for your dryer but maybe not for your car then maybe somebody should start waking up and getting involved and by the way these ones okay this these are these are kind of concerning um he's got several of them here that uh that and it doesn't matter which brand you look at although you said there's one that uh that it's big light right Hubble I believe is uh Bake Light it's a lot more money though so people don't tend to choose it because of the price difference well I'm telling you what um when I get home I don't know which I think I've got mine as a direct line but I could be wrong that's your best bet anyways I I don't see a reason for putting a second plug in so if you've got a a situation where somebody says oh well we'll just put in a plug maybe you want to have it direct uh Direct Connect and then maybe you don't get a problem but uh Bakelite is an old-fashioned kind of plastic that doesn't burn it doesn't melt or burn it just it's uh but it's old and expensive and slow process but even with these kinds of products here and like I said it feels greasy enough to be man in a nylon and that's fine that's a good under hood temperature but for a good under hood temperature products like intake manifolds and whatnot but um when I'm doing an intake manifold on a car and I know that it's going to be having to pass a phoenix test I'm not even going to think about it it's going to have a fire retardant in it it's going to have uh maybe glass but for sure I'm going to put talc in it these don't feel like that so I don't know what these are made out of because there's no markings on it and I'm we don't have time for doing the check-in and whatnot but I can tell you right now that if it was up to me and I was going to put something in I definitely wouldn't put in the 15 one I'd be looking at the one that's 100 bucks because you know what burning your house down and that's where we get to this burning your house down could be a real problem some people don't like that when your house burns down one other thing about the 1450 Sandy is I know owners that they never went to a purchased wall charger you know they're simply using the mobile charger that they got from the manufacturer when they bought the vehicle so they need this in the house because the mobile charger I didn't even think of that has the plug the pigtail on the end of it and they're simply and they may just be leaving it in the garage but they also may be pulling it out putting it in their trunk and taking it with them when they they go on a trip and they never actually put a hardwired or a wall mounted a plugged charger on that that stays plugged in okay so I did not do that I uh that I saw those things and I looked at them and I thought hmm well you know you roll the bones and I'm not really uh I make bets but I don't gamble okay so that's kind of like and I if I make a bet I know I'm gonna win with this I I forgot all about that not that that just shows you maybe I'm a some kind of elitist or something but I I didn't even waste my time I bought a Tesla wall charger and stuck it on and away it went so I'm thinking direct but this thing okay so let's let's go to the the next level which is that junction box which really terrified me when I when I saw this so this is a uh yeah thank you so this uh so uh this was installed a for a charge point home Flex charger uh the installation went in uh about 12 13 months ago everything was working really well I get the phone call from a customer saying they will open the garage door went in for work and they had a big smoke uh smoke event in the garage from this device so basically what happened overheated and then so I'll show you the the failures yeah but let's let's go first okay this is a junction box okay this is a junction box this is not a connector this is something a lot more dramatic because if you can't shut this damn thing off uh then it just keeps on pulling electricity so now this is what this was uh you said Somebody's uh your first one was some some lady that yeah yeah the Porsche so uh I don't think I'd I'd like to have my poor sketch on fire and I definitely I definitely uh don't think I want my garage or house on fire but this this is at a different level this this really uh scares the lights out of me so again so this job here was approved by the local city inspector um after that the job was a green sticker and it was working really well so then the uh I'll get my gloves out so this thing is nasty so this product here was in use in the garage just close to the EV charger the charge Point chargeback charger is a great charger work well but so it came in I opened it up slowly to see what what failed because we had smoke already uh smoke was already done just but it marked the wall got it anyway so this here okay so um for those of you who don't know what that was it didn't look like that originally and I'm telling you what I have been in uh I've had a number of houses I've I've done houses I have never seen anything come out looking like this I mean this is just so nasty I cannot believe my eyes this used to be the cover plate and connector and the connector and you can see that this has had a bad afternoon I don't I really don't understand how this could possibly happen uh all I can tell you is that um we need we need some people to start looking hard at um at how these installations are and whatnot I I'm telling you I I've just never seen anything like it never you can see how the heat is yeah yeah look at look at the trail just just yeah that's your wires it just never stopped well it wouldn't shut off I mean this is uh 60 amps cranking through of heat 60 amps is a lot of uh it's a lot of heat that's a lot of heat so the whole deal here is that Monroe and Associates we we try our best to tell you what's going on inside cars and stuff like that inside the electric vehicles but we haven't done is uh is looked at this type of a situation where this is going from your house to the car and now I'm starting to wonder about you know some of these fires that people have had and they blame the they instantly blame the Tesla or the or the bolt or whatever that that caught on fire now I'm starting to wonder about it I'm starting to wonder if um what we've got here isn't isn't rated or or ready for the EV Marketplace and I can guarantee you after looking at what I'm seeing here with these these little connectors this this is not the this this should be used for a dryer and that I I can see I mean I've done maybe what we need here is uh is another connector and maybe the Bakelite one what would you say that name was a Hubble Hubble there's one other brand I think that was the Bryant brand yeah that's actually made by the by the same company yeah yeah but uh but putting in a 15 connector 100 bucks get the and by the way um the the reason that JW is here is because he knows what the hell he's doing he's certified he's gone to school he's got all his journeyman tickets he's got uh the degrees and why not to make things uh right don't let your brother-in-law who read a book one time install these things this is a new age okay putting in for a dryer I don't you know like I said it's not that difficult but putting in for EVS we have to start thinking about uh I mean we got to start thinking about these kinds of disasters that and this was done by an electrician this isn't probably the electrician's fault this is this is 100 duty cycle when this is probably rated for 10 a 10 duty cycle I would guess how long is your dryer on once a week and for an hour or something probably not even 10. so we've gotta we have to have stuff that's going to be EV rated that goes into your house now why did we do this how many years you've been kicking this can three years three years and how many people have listened nobody yeah so maybe maybe just maybe uh there'll be some folks that are in the right position that can make something happen but um I know that if that right person is interested in uh in examining this stuff and talking to the expert then we'll put JW's uh information on the bottom here and you can contact him directly because I'm not smart enough okay so JW um you just handed me your wish list um can you kind of like run through that quickly so that uh maybe this will be a starting point for the people who can make something happen make it happen so go ahead yep so um this has been put together uh through my experience installing and also uh seeing other people's failures on local social media uh boards but uh my main concern is I would like to see a load Center built with a separate lower location of the uh for Ev breaker only and the breaker itself has to be specially designed for Ev only so it understands the robust power and current flow as I go so it reduces the failure and you're getting a little picture there when we just flip that around yeah okay all right so I can work off this one here so what he's talking about is so this would be your main junction box so you're probably going to have like a 400 amp service or something like that and then down here you've got yourself the separate circuit that's going to go for an EV so all the rest of this stuff is made for light bulbs and uh and maybe your dryer this is going to be for a constant duty cycle a 100 duty cycle that that it should have that would be a bolt-on bolt-on uh circuit breaker yeah so again we'll start from the top uh again uh first thing to redesign a power panel coming forward because EVS are here to stay they're not going away so this will be implemented right away Uh custom build a circuit breaker that's robust for the EV current only all products for Ev shall be bolt on no snap-ins like this here where's the snap in product this is a Snap-On product here and this is a snap in too as we're pushing a plug into a receptacle same consideration circuit breaker stacking uh in power panels or load centers so basically what to minimize it to 40 amps Max we don't want to Stack these uh 100 duty cycle Breakers in between existing house loads because the heat has to go somewhere so it's going to go load share to the circuit breakers and also to the the bus I've seen two to where it's actually compromised the the bus and also had a thermal event on shared or neighboring circuit breakers so so this circuit breaker could actually affect the rest of the house yeah it could shut down your whole panel yeah compromise the whole panel 100 and if it compromises the whole panel then you could have uh like a major major event um which just means your house burnt down yep yeah so then um this product here should be delisted or banned for Ev Chargers from this failure points I've seen and then also in the NEC side I would like to see them move the continuous rating uh currently it's 125 of the value to move it to 130 percent that would give it uh additional thermal properties for uh reduction of heat uh low or heat heat sharing or BTUs right yeah that's what we're talking about here so uh circuit breaker and should be a knife like a commercial unit a knife disconnect a knife disconnect yes um and then for the condos and for the apartments this is where the HOA managers and and the property managers need to stop and think about this and do some research to where you've got uh complexes that have you know 10 10 Apartments per building or plus and now you're going to add a a car charger to that unit so they would uh install through wallbox which I got a nice management system they have this management system that goes between the EV charger and the power box so what happens is it's called load management so let's say you're charging your vehicle then all of a sudden your air conditioner kicks on you decide to turn your oven on and now you got a high load capacity going through your power panel and what this device does it monitors that setting and then it would shut down your EV car charger to where it allows the house priority to maintain while being used and then once it's switched off it'll go back to turn it on your your charger to charge the vehicle but um and then the uh the other one is mounting of the equipment so this should be on a fire rated wall I would not recommend mounting this directly to a rough surface unfinished garage wall and then also basically on the electrician side uh we're always asked to fill in the holes there's mounting holes and there's other manufacturing holes uh to just fill them with fire stopping for the stop the event of a accident draw during an event so um that's and then again we always use a you know we recommend always using a torque wrench to torque rest settings all torque wrench settings are torque specs are on the actual product or on the instructions on manufacturer it actually is a code item to where you have to spec it out and tighten down the the Fastener to the wire that's really about it so the one thing about torque I used to be that I was for a while the co-captain for sealing and fasting for Ford inch powertrain and the reason we went to torque monitoring was so that we knew that the clamp load would be proper um just taking a a screw or a screwdriver and reefing it down by hand really doesn't tell you much of anything so if you've got some older guy or maybe um maybe a 90 pound person screwing it down you're going to get one torque if you have um if you have someone else doing the job and their baby a baby gorilla kind of person they're going to give you a different sort of a clamp load if you crush the wires too much that's bad if you don't crush the wire enough it's too bad one of the things that one of the things that I liked about some of the connectors are you shove them in and but not for these These are big these are not these should all be torque torque monitored and that means that you've got a little bar and when you click it down it'll either crack it'll it'll make a cracking noise or it'll um or it'll have a gauge which is even better I'm a big fan of electronic torque monitoring so that's the best you can get and that way you know that the job has been done the way it was engineered to be done not or that seems okay that one's going to give you Arcane and the other one will squirt the parts we'll escort the wires to pieces so anyway um I I'm glad this is very handy very helpful uh to get people started I do think that this has to be looked at and some of these things have to be marked don't use this for your EV and if this is happening here I'd like to know a lot more why that happened than anything else I it's that Gap foreign no it didn't Arc because it would have it would have blasted the copper bright so I don't know what's going on all I can tell you is somebody's smarter than us somebody with in the right Stripes needs to get involved um and I'm gonna shut it down now thanks very much for watching um like I say this is a little different but I think it's kind of really really important that that we we don't we we don't ignore this stuff three years are you kidding me anyhow um thanks for watching um and we'll we'll be back at you uh uh in a while thanks a lot bye-bye bye [Music] thank you

Channel: Munro Live

Views: 128,842

Keywords: EV, BEV, Sandy Munro, Munro, Electric Vehicle, Benchmarking, Electric, Insight, Lean Design, Design, Comparison, MunroLive, MunroLive.com, ElectricCars, Review, Car Review, 2021, Automotive, Automotive Review, Teardown Titan, 2022, Teardown, Electric Car, Electric Truck, Munro Live, monroe live, Sandy Monroe, Monroe, Charging, Home Charging

Id: tDp9PhPJhUI

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/paulwesterberg]

The 14-50 outlet that melted, which they bleep out in the video, is a Leviton 14-50 which is a shit outlet linked to many failure events when used for EV charging, commonly sold at Home Depot, Amazon etc. It shouldn't be legal to sell let alone used for a high load application like EV charging. See this video for a comparison to higher quality outlets.

[u/TheSilasm8]

I think the tldw is that NEMA sockets are found to be overheating and melting. Installing a NEMA socket that's intended for a clothes dryer is a bad idea. A car will typically charge at a much higher amperage for a much longer amount of time and therefore could cause a fire.

Takeaways: Make sure your electrician doesn't cheap out on the socket. They recommend mounting the socket and charger on a fire rated wall as well. They also recognized the need for a rating system to identify parts that can be used with charging cars.

[u/razies]

Man, as non-American these high-Amp NEMA plugs always disturb me...

You really want to send 40A through a connector that has more or less unprotected prongs? It's quite unfortunate that NA has no proper 3-phase power.

[u/Salmundo]

I’ll put my hand up and recommend hardwired installations once again.

[u/ml2000id]

This issue should be all over the media. Thanks for bringing up this issue.

[u/Electric-cars65]

Pretty easy for a Chinese company to fake a certification stamp

[u/byerss]

I definitely do not agree with their idea that we need specific "EV Rated" equipment. That is just dumb.

If something is UL listed and rated for 50A and it cannot handle an 80% continuous current without melting, THEN IT DOES NOT MEET ITS RATED SPEC. End of story.

What we need to be asking ourselves is why supposedly UL listed 50A equipment is melting under 80% load of continuous use. Is the UL testing not stringent enough that captures 8+ hours of use over the long-term?

[u/kdegraaf]

The "master electrician" took a credibility hit (IMHO) at 6:46-7:12.

Plugging in every night and being full every morning is one of the major benefits of EVs. In fact, it's the explicit recommendation of the leading manufacturer.

This guy says that those of us who do that are "still learning how to charge [our] cars" and "once [we] get over the learning curve", we'll just charge every Wednesday. If that's what he wants to do, because he can't break out of the go-to-the-gas-station-every-week mental model, cool, but don't smugly opine that those of us who are doing it right are doing it wrong.

[u/tech01x]

Between the industrial grade plug (which may still fail in 3-4 years) and the GFCI breaker, it seems getting a hard wired EVSE with built in GFCI is the way to go.