How Many Amps Do You Need For Home EV Charging?

today I'm going to be helping you find an answer to that age-old question how many amps do I need my electric vehicle charger to provide okay it may not be an age-old question but it is a question that a lot of people have today after they get their electric vehicle the next step is okay what charging equipment do I need and I think a lot of people get hung up on exactly how much power do I need it to provide so we're going to be taking a look today at some of the factors you need to consider When selecting your home charging equipment but before we do that I want to take a look at some of the abbreviations and terms that I'm going to be using in the video here today challenge okay first up I'm going to be referring to electric vehicle charging equipment as Chargers but actually in reality the property term is evse which stands for electric vehicle Supply equipment the reason why they're not technically Chargers is because what they do is really just provide electricity safely to your electric vehicle the actual charger is built into the electric vehicle and that's called the onboard charger the onboard charger is a Power Electronics device that's built into every electric vehicle what it does is it converts the AC electric provided by the evsc or what we typically call Chargers from a source such as your residential home to DC Electric which is how the electricity is stored in an electric vehicle's battery pack however I'm going going to refer to the charging equipment as Chargers from here out because that's what most people understand them as and quite honestly I don't think a lot of people are going to be saying oh I need to go buy an evse they're going to say I need to buy an electric car charger so we're going to call them chargers but I just want to make sure everybody understands what the proper term is next up let's talk about the three different levels of charging Level One charging is when you're charging from a 120 volt Source now some people call this 110 you can call it 110 120 it's the same thing here in North America our regular household electric is based on 120 volts so if you're charging from a level one charging Source you're plugged into a regular household Outlet you can do that but it'll take very long to charge your electric vehicle because 120 volt sources don't Supply a lot of electric we'll talk about that a little later now level two charging is when you charge from a 240 volt Source now some people might be concerned and say well if my house has 120 volts I can't charge from 240 volts at home that's not true what your electrician does is he just pairs two circuits basically doubling the voltage he puts them together so then you have 240 volts you already have 240 volt circuits in your home at least most people do common 200 140 volt appliances might be an electric range or a electric clothes dryer so it would be very similar to those appliances when you install a circuit for your EV charging and then finally we're going to talk about level 3 charging now level 3 charging isn't actually the proper term the proper term is DC fast charging but most people refer to it as level 3 charging we're not going to talk about DC fast charging here today because DC fast charging isn't what you would do at home you wouldn't buy a DC fast charger they cost many tens of thousands of dollars you utilize them on road trips to enable long distance travel but what we're talking about here today is how many amps do you need to have in your home charging equipment and for DC fast charging that really isn't relevant okay next let's talk about volts we're going to talk about volts here volts are a measurement of the amount of force of the electricity it's kind of like the speed of the flow of the electrons through the electric circuit next up amps amps are the volume of the electrons in the current now we're going to talk a lot about amps here today because EV Chargers as well as the on-board Chargers in the EVS are typically listed by the number of amps they can deliver or accept respectively next up kilowatt now a kilowatt refers to how much power the charger can deliver as well as how much power the onboard charger in your EV can accept now I know I just said that that's typically listed as amps so there's two ways that you can talk about the power that the charger outputs as well as the onboard charger can take in in amps or in kilowatts the way you get to kilowatts is you multiply the amps by the amount of volts so for instance if you had a 240 volt circuit and a 40 amp charger you'd multiply 240 by 40 which should get 9600 that's 9 600 watts or 9.6 kilowatt so someone would refer to that charger as either a 40 amp charger or a 9.6 kilowatt charger the same goes for the onboard charger they would refer to it as either a 40 amp onboard charger or the charger can accept 9.6 kilowatt next up kilowatt hour think of kilowatt hour as the electric equivalent to gallons of gasoline a gas car has a fuel tank that can store a certain number of gallons of gas and an Eevee has a battery that can store a certain number of kilowatt hour with combustion cars we measure their efficiency in miles per gallon and with EVS we use miles per kilowatt hour pretty simple next up dedicated circuit a dedicated electrical circuit means that there are no other outlets or electrical devices on that circuit EV charging equipment requires a dedicated circuit so only the charger is being used for that circuit it cannot be shared I think the first question a lot of people have is does the charger come with the car and the answer to that question is maybe that's because some electric vehicles do come with portable charging equipment and some don't need to ask your dealer specifically if there's charging equipment included with the vehicle or if it's optional I'm going to take a quick look at some of the charging equipment that comes with electric vehicles this is a standard level one charger this plugs into a regular 120 volt Outlet you could charge 120 level one it's really called a convenience charger because this isn't something that you're probably going to want to charge your electric vehicle with daily now I know some people actually do make Level One charging work for them and if you have a plug-in hybrid this will probably work for you because plug-in hybrids have smaller batteries than fully electric vehicles you might be able to get away with just charging it on level one this type of charger is going to deliver somewhere between one and one and a half kilowatt to the electric vehicle and add somewhere between two and five miles of range for every hour it's charging now we'll take a look at this portable charger here this came with my Ford F-150 Lightning this is called a dual voltage portable charger and that's because it can charge on both level one and level two it gives you adapters to charge from a regular household Outlet as well as from a Nema 1450 which is a 240 volt Outlet when it charges on level one it's basically the same as this charger here it'll deliver somewhere between one and one and a half kilowatt to electric vehicle but when you plug it into a Nema 1450 it'll deliver about seven kilowatt to the electric vehicle and that means it will add somewhere between 15 and 30 miles of range to the EV for every hour you charge now I know it's a big wide spread and even the two to five miles per hour is a big widespread and people ask why is it such a big spread on why can't you give me a more concise number well it's because electric vehicles like any vehicle have different efficiencies there's some gas cars that get 15 miles per gallon and some get 50. it's the same with electric vehicles these units just Supply the electricity to the vehicle then it's up to the vehicle to do the most with it so some EVS use more electricity than others and that's why you have this wide range I know a lot of people particularly Tesla owners Teslas are very efficient vehicles they're used to charging on their home charger and the vehicle some Vehicles tell you how many miles of range per hour you're adding and then they'll plug in a different vehicle and it'll be much lower and they'll say well why is that is this vehicle just not accepting enough electricity no it's accepting the same amount of electricity it's just that it's not quite as efficient as the other vehicle so it won't go quite as far with that same amount of energy okay so as far as these uh portable chargers that come with the vehicle you really have to decide if the amount of range per hour they'll deliver will satisfy your needs I know most people like to keep these in the vehicle the itself so they have it in case they run into an emergency on the road they could pull it out and plug in rather than have it in their garage for daily charging but that's a decision you have to make and hopefully after this video you'll have a better grip on exactly what your needs are for home charging okay so now let's talk about some of the considerations you need to make When selecting what home charging equipment you're going to purchase okay so first let's take a look at the four main questions you need to consider how much power can your electric vehicle accept how many miles do you drive how much power do you have available at your home and what is your budget for all of this so first let's take a look at how much power your EV can accept now I mentioned earlier that electric vehicles have an onboard charger that really dictates how much power they can take in some EVS have a 30 amp on more charger some have a 40 amp onboard charger some have a 48 amp onboard charger some of the new electric vehicles that have really big batteries like the Ford F-150 Lightning the upcoming Chevy Silverado they have 80 amp onboard Chargers really robust because they have very big batteries so they can accept a lot of power so you need to figure out exactly how much power your electric vehicle can take in first before you even start deciding how much power you want to supply it with okay the next thing is how many miles do you drive because the thing about electric vehicles is really doesn't matter how long it takes to recharge the whole car because for most of your daily charging you only need to replace what you use that day if the vehicle has a 300 mile range but you drove it 40 miles today when you come home and plug it in you only have to replenish those 40 miles so you know I think a lot of people look at the worst case situation all of the time and sure if you've got an unlimited budget and you want to just get the best of everything and spend a lot of money sure you could do that but most people are on a budget for this and they want to figure out what fits them just right so you need to take into consideration about how many miles you need to replace every day and that's going to help guide you figure out how much power you need to supply and next you have to consider how much available power your house has to supply the electric vehicle charging equipment your home has a limited amount of power and your service panel may already be full you might not be able to supply that dedicated circuit that the electric vehicle Charger needs an electric vehicle charging pulls a lot of power so it's not like you're just adding another circuit for an outlet you really need to get a licensed electrician to come to your house and perform what they call a load calculation and that'll basically tell you if you have enough available power to add this circuit we highly recommend that you do that before you do anything just have an electrician come out do a load calculation to make sure you can supply the power that your electric vehicle Charger needs and that ties right into the final question you need to ask is what's your budget for this because if you need to do a service upgrade on your house just to add the circuit for your electric vehicle charger that's going to quickly add up to a few thousand dollars so best practice is really to get an electrician to come out your house take take a look at your service do the load calculation and they can tell you how much power you have available which will guide you in how powerful of an electric vehicle charger you purchase most new electric vehicles today have either a 40 amp or 48 amp onboard charger which means the vehicles can accept somewhere between 9.6 kilowatts and 11.5 kilowatts now you don't have to charge your EV at the maximum rate that it can accept now of course the vehicle will charge faster if you do if you charge at a slower rate it's going to charge a little slower but most people are going to have their EVS plugged in overnight anyway and even if you charge it at a lower rate 24 amps 30 amps chances are it's going to be fully charged by the morning unless you're rolled into the garage and the battery was completely empty but chances are the next day you didn't need with it to be a hundred percent charged you probably could be just fine if the vehicle was only 70 or 80 percent charged so I think in many cases people stress out too much about it being a hundred percent charged every day because quite honestly people don't drive the full range that their electric vehicle offers every day and slower charging works just fine so if you are limited by the amount of amps say your house has available I wouldn't stress over it too much unless you know you're a really high mileage driver that drives a lot of miles every day and really needs to fully recharge overnight I prepared a chart to show you exactly how many miles of range you'll recover each hour and with overnight charging depending on the power level of your charger so let's take a look at that now this video as well as all of the videos here on state of charge is sponsored by Q Merit once I've helped you decide which electric vehicle charger you're going to buy then follow the link in the description of my videos and have qmerit install it okay now let's take a look at your EV charging circuits and approximate miles of range per hour added now the First Column there you'll see your circuit breaker this is the power that your circuit breaker needs to be able to provide if we take a look at the first line it's a 100 amp circuit breaker now the maximum output that can put out is 80 amps because when you install electric vehicle charging equipment it's considered a continuous load and the most power that you can continuously draw is 80 percent of what the circuit's maximum rating is so if you have a 100 amp circuit you can deliver 80 amps continuously and if you do the electric vehicle can accept up to 19.2 kilowatt now we arrive at that number by multiplying the amps versus the volts 80 the amps times 240 the volts is 19 200. that's 19 200 Watts a kilowatt is a thousand Watts so it's 19.2 kilowatt if you charge at that speed you can return somewhere between 35 and 75 miles of range per hour to electric vehicle I know that's a wide spread but as we talked about it's because some electric vehicles are much more efficient than others now if you look at overnight charging and this is where it's important here because most people will plug in and have their electric vehicle charging overnight I use 10 hours as the average for some people their electric vehicle is home even longer but as you can see if you were able to charge from an 80 amp Source you'd replenish somewhere between 350 and up to 750 miles of electric driving range now most electric vehicles can't deliver this kind of driving range so basically what I'm saying is here is no matter when you plugged in your EV would be fully charged now if you take a look at the approximate amount of kilowatt hour that would be added overnight to 175 you'd have to have a massive 200kw our battery pack not to be able to completely refill it overnight if you're charging from an 80 amp source and you rolled into your garage completely empty now I'm not going to go over all of these numbers here but let's take a look at some of the common EV charging circuits like a 40 amp circuit now 40 amp circuit the power delivery is 9.6 kilowatt and what you would do there is add somewhere between 18 and 38 miles of range per hour of charging the 18 would be something if you had a Ford F-150 Lightning or a Chevy Silverado EV some of the big heavy EVS that aren't very efficient then once you get up to the Hyundai ioniq sixes or Tesla Model 3s that are very efficient you'd get close to 40 miles of range added per hour and overnight as you can see there somewhere between 175 and 375 miles of range and you'd add 85 kilowatt hours to the battery pack which is larger than what most battery packs are with overnight charge charging now let's say you really don't have a lot of spare capacity in your panel and you can only add a 30 amp circuit for electric vehicle charging you'd have to limit your charging to 24 amps and the power delivery would be 5.7 kilowatt you can see here you'd get somewhere between 10 and 22 miles of range added per hour and overnight it add 100 to 220 miles of range depending on how efficient your EV is and you'd add up to 50 kilowatt hour overnight you have to understand you're not rolling into your garage every day with an empty battery pack at least most people aren't you only have to replenish what you use that day and the average person drives 40 or 50 miles per day so in almost every instance on this chart here you can see with overnight charging even charging at a very low rate you'll fully replenish what you use the day before on an average day sure there's going to be some days that you may not completely top off and if you really needed to go on a long distance trip the next day and you weren't fully charged you could stop at a public DC fast charger and top off for the trip so basically what I wanted to show with this chart here is even with lower powered home charging it'll be adequate for most owners with most electric vehicles what you really have to consider here is how much do you drive every day how efficient is your electric vehicle and what is the available power capacity at your home if you have the capacity it's probably a good idea to install a high powered electric vehicle charging circuit but if you don't and you really don't want to go in for that course right now to do a full service upgrade most people can get by with charging their EVS from lower amperage Chargers and use public charging infrastructure on the occasions where you really need that extra juice to dry further that day so as you can see even with charging at a lower amperage than what your EV can accept with overnight charging chances are you're going to have a fully charged EV in the morning even if your home can't provide the full power that your EV can accept you can charge at a lower rate and chances are you're going to be okay now one thing I will caution you with if that's the case and you let's say your house can only support a 30 amp circuit without having an expensive full-service upgrade I caution you against just installing a 30 amp circuit what I would do personally is yes install a 30 amp circuit breaker and buy charging equipment that can deliver 30 amps but I would oversize the wire to the garage because chances are at some point in the future you may be upgrading that what I would also consider is buying a charger that has adjustable power lowering the power down to 30 30 amp output that is the max that your circuit can provide that way in the future if you do a service upgrade in your house you'll be able to dial that charger all the way up to the full amount and deliver the full amount you have to go out and buy another charger a lot of these Chargers allow you to lower the power either internally through a dip switch or if it's a smart charger and it comes with an app you can lower it in the app so that's definitely a consideration when you buy your home charging equipment another thing I like to talk about is don't go out and buy the cheapest charger that you can get your hands on a lot of people do this they go to Amazon they click on sort by lowest price you end up getting something that isn't going to last very long make sure the charging equipment that you purchase whatever the power level is safety certified it has a good solid warranty some of the real cheap Chargers have a very short warranty and that's telling you something that you know the manufacturer doesn't have confidence in the product it's probably going to burn out and I mean that's the least of your problems if it just fails if it's not safety certified if it's not a safe device you can have a lot of serious problems charging your EV you don't want that to happen so buy a good quality piece of equipment that's safety certified and has a good long warranty I also recommend that you hire a competent electrician now you know there's electricians and there's electricians see if you can get somebody that is really experienced with electric vehicle charging equipment because electric vehicle charging equipment is different than any other electrical Appliance in your house when you're charging your EV you're pulling more power than the rest of your house you may be pulling more power than the rest of your house and your neighbor's house combined that's how much power electric vehicles can take in if you have it set to a high amount and that puts a strain on all the connections and you know people that aren't experienced electric vehicle charging equipment installers might install it you know fine but they don't torque all the connections down down to the manufacturer's specs they might use aluminum wire aluminum wire expands and contracts 30 percent more than copper wire we're starting to see a lot of problems with electric vehicle charging equipment that was installed with aluminum wire a good electrician that understands electric vehicle charging will never use aluminum wire when they're wiring their charger they'll only use copper and they'll also use a proper torque wrench and torque all the connections to the torque that it's supposed to be torqued to now as far as Outlets go I always recommend hardwiring your electric vehicle charging equipment but if you do want to use a plug-in unit make sure your electrician installs an industrial grade Outlet don't go by the corner hardware store outlet for twenty dollars and use that because you will have problems with it I have so many pictures from my followers that sent me of their Outlets burned out because they bought the cheap uh you know Home Depot Nema 1450 outlets and after six months the thing just melted and they're lucky they didn't have have a major fire in their house so hard wiring is best but if you do want to install an outlet make sure you get an industrial grade Outlet they're expensive they're like a hundred dollars and you can buy an outlet for for fifteen dollars that's the same type of outlet but you get what you pay for and also last consideration you do want to perhaps future proof your garage electric vehicles are new for most people and if you're watching this video chances are this is your first electric vehicle news flash it won't be your last so think about the future if your electric vehicle today can only accept 40 amps you don't have to limit yourself to installing a 40 amp charger chances are down the road you're going to have EVS that can accept more power you may even have two EVS in your garage and you're going to want that one power feed to feed two electric vehicles so if you do have the extra capacity in your service panel I would recommend installing a circuit that is much more powerful than the single charger you install today yes it's going to cost a little bit more money but it would cost a lot more money if you had to rip it out in three years and and run a whole nother more powerful circuit down the road so you know satisfy your needs for today but have an eye on the future and you'll save time and a lot of Hassle and aggravation in the future if you future proof your garage today listen I hope you learned something here with the video if you have any questions about amperage and EV charging leave them in the comment section below we do try to answer as many questions as we can and if there's your first time here please don't forget hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any upcoming electric vehicle news and reviews and as always thanks for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: State Of Charge

Views: 348,215

Keywords: ev charging, ev charger, charging, ev, best ev charger, ev charging uk, best ev charging station, level 2 charging, home ev charger, ev charger installation, home charging, ev home charging stations, home ev charging, ev charging point, ev charging station, ev charger for home, ev charging stations, ev charger for tesla, portable ev charging station, best ev charger for home, ev charger review, how to charge an ev, home ev charging stations, ev chargers, tesla charging

Id: edqfXbwDGdw

Length: 26min 8sec (1568 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023