How To Install An EV Car Charger | Easier Than You Think!

how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday home repairs and today I'm going to walk you through the installation process of an EV car charger at your home specifically for me I'm going with the Generation 3 level two charger from Tesla to match up with the Tesla that I just got now installing this at home for me is a no-brainer it's about $500 in material cost and I will save that in cost to charge my car within the first month or two because it is five times cheaper per kilowatt hour for me to charge at home so I'll go over those numbers and also just let you know what to expect if you're installing a charger like this at your own home and then if you are going to take on this project DIY just make sure you're checking your local electrical code as different states and different municipalities will be enforcing different years of the NC coat so my installation might be different than what's being enforced in your area so let's go ahead and jump into it and show you how easy these installations can actually be so I have two panels here one is my main panel and the smaller one I'm opening up is 100 amp sub panel so I'll rock that cover away from the panel itself make sure it doesn't fall back in and I'll also turn off the 100 amp breaker feeding that sub panel and check with my non-c contct voltage tester to make sure we don't have power then I'm going to actually knock out this knockout right here I'll take that inner spot out but you also need to get the outer ring because I'm going to use a 3/4 inch cable clamp to hold the RX coming up through that sub pan so go ahead and get that last piece out of there and you can see here is the wall stud on the left hand side of that subpanel also be mounting this connector wall plate so opening up the wall connector here you have the main unit with the cord attached but then on the back side if you flip it over you'll have the mounting plate this also is going to have our screw terminals so that is the piece you need to get out and that's what you're going to mount on the wall and wire up now when it comes to the mounting plate you have a lot of different options for mounting you could bring conduit in the bottom you could bring conduit in the top for me we're going to keep that 62 RX inside this wall cabin running from that subpanel I'm going to mount this unit at about 48 in off the ground I'm going to secure one screw up top one screw down below on the left hand side securing it right into the stud and then I'm going to drill out this predefined area so I can get a 3/4 inch cable clamp to hold on to the RX coming through looping into our three screw terminals which are going to be two hot conductors and one ground just know from your own application you might have a ton more cost because I'm only running about five or 6 feet of 62 RX so I was able to purchase it by the foot down at my Lowe's and Home Depot also has this in my area so my cable cost was only about 30 bucks if you're going 50 75 or even further from your panel to where you want the actual connector the cost could be way higher so just keep that in mind and also six gauge might not cut it for you depending on the length of run and also just check your local area maybe check with your local inspector I'm not going to have really line losses here so I'm not concerned about that and I also know a 60 amp breaker actually is only going to pull a Max of 40 amp amps during charging so let's go ahead and get this installed on the wall and start routing our wire showing you a little bit of trick on those cable clamps with limited access how do you actually secure those things up now I use a 1 and 1/8 stepper bit to go ahead and drill out this hole just need to open it up a little bit more making sure that connector can go through the back then once I have that I'll go ahead and temporarily mount this plate marking that center of the hole and then moving it out of the way so I can drill a 2inch hole in the drywall this gives me extra clearance for the cable clamp on the back but here's the little trick you need to pre-install the cable clamp tighten it in the Rox so you can pull it up through into the sub panel and get that to lock into place that's key because you can't tighten it down if you don't do that process then on the other end we'll do something similar connecting that connector and then we'll start to make sure everything's level with a little bit of a flat surface there syncing our second mounting screw and securing things up now with everything securely mounted and our wire till length we can start to get these wires landed in the screw terminals we'll start off with this bare ground circling it over and then best practice for tighten the screw terminals would be to have a torque screwdriver this is a cheap one off of Amazon you can check the link in the description and Tesla comes with a bit to actually tighten the terminals and then you're able to adjust it to the 50 in pounds as called out from the Tesla specs and it's actually printed on that mounting plate and with things like this are going to pull such a high load this one should be going up to 48 amps at 240 volts you really do want to make sure those terminals are torqued down to the the specifications from the manufacturer and when you have stranded wire like these two conductors make sure you work that cable back and forth and do several rounds of making shirts at the set torque which is 50 inch pounds on this one I'll put some red tape on that white conductor clearly denoting that that is a hot conductor not a neutral wire and then I'll use the zip tie here for some wire management to get everything set now moving up to the sub panel we'll go ahead and take the cover off the RX and start to land our wires as well we'll start off with the bare ground here and this is a subpanel so my neutrals and grounds are separate we will not have a neutral for the circuit but just to note at a sub panel we keep neutrals and ground separate Landing that 60 amp squ dqo breaker we'll go ahead and strip off that first hot conductor torquing that down to 45 inch pounds and again working the wire back and forth and doing a few iterations and getting our white conductor with some red tape again and Landing that last hot conductor into the breaker so now we're in a good spot to go ahead and test our circuit we should have all the wires in place so I go ahead and flip my 100 amp that's going to feed our subpanel I'll go ahead and flip our 60 amp so now I should be live to our circuit again we have exposed screw terminal so be a little bit careful and then I have that multimeter set to voltage reading out AC so if I go across my two phases here I am expecting to get 240 volts which 236 is close enough for me now knowing that the breaker is giving that let's go ahead down to our mounting plate and our screw terminals down here checking again that we're seeing something similar and we are at 236 so it looks like the wiring should be set here now let's go ahead and get everything mounted up plugged into the Tesla and see if we're able to pull over 11 kilowatts which is what we should be able to do at 48 amps and that's about as good as you can get for a Tesla at home and if you start pulling lower than that just know that's really going to impact how long it's going to take to charge your Tesla it's not going to charge in minutes at your house is how many hours would that take to charge so let's run a test so you can adjust your expectations should I be getting a charger at home what about a supercharger what's the difference it's good information to know if you're currently considering an EV or considering that in the future now buttoning things back up before the test let's get the cover back on our sub panel or maybe your main panel tighten up those four mounting screws and then we'll put the actual unit on the wall plate it's very important you have four mount screws two on the top two on the bottom you want to make sure those are threaded and tightened down because the Spade terminals actually connect up with the screw terminals from the mounting plate to the unit so those four screws are what going to make sure you have a solid connection and there you can see all the cable wrapped up now the unit is configured to my Wi-Fi and ready to go so let's test it out you just take the connector I'll need a little bit of slack here to get over to the cybertruck you'll just get the connector close to press the button the door will open and then you will hear things kind of Click over from a relay standpoint when it's starting to charge so let's check inside to see if we're getting 11 kilow and don't forget if you guys need any reference links for the products or tools we use down in the description below the video we'll link all those out for you now looking at our screen here we are charging that's a good thing right we are getting a 11 Kow so we are pulling the 48 amps that's going to be the maximum it's 80% of the allowable 60 amps of that breaker so that is what we're going to pull and this I'm very happy with this is a very capable charger now just level setting your expectations right I am getting a little less than 10% of battery charge per one hour of charging so at home your charging is much much slower than say a supercharger where I would be pulling 80 to 120 maybe even more kilow depending on where I'm at in My overall battery percentage but the big benefit for home every kilowatt hour that I add to the battery is only8 cents if I'm pulling from the Grid or I have quite a few solar panels on my home so it could be free from home compared to if I'm at a supercharger I'm paying about 40 cents to 43 cents per kilowatt hour so that really adds up an easily pce for installing this charger at home especially when you can do a DIY now hopefully that helped you guys out one other tip we have that specialty bit which I would inherently just lose so I tape that on the side of the wall connector just in case I need to service this in the future the bit is right there I'm not going to have any problems taking this unit off or tightening down those screw terminals now if you have a little different use case you might need a 240 volt Nema 1450 Outlet installed I have two different videos can help you there this one up top is a very simplified inst ation very inexpensive and quick to do and then this video down at the bottom this is going to be a little bit more involved where we're actually running conduit throughout the garage to get that outlet at a separate location with respect to our electrical panel so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on one of those next ones take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 21,152

Keywords: tesla wall connector installation, ev car charger installation, diy ev car charger, install your own ev charger, everyday home repairs, diy electrical

Id: AU54iaVoWvA

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024