How To Safely Charge Your Electric Vehicle

[Music] foreign [Music] welcome back today we're going to be talking electric vehicle charging safety and more specifically how to install electric vehicle charging equipment in your home or business safely so you don't have any problems now this is a topic that I've meant to cover for a while here on state of charge but recently Sandy Monroe on Monroe live did a video specifically on this topic about the dangers of Home electric vehicle charging equipment and it reminded me that I hadn't done this and I really wanted to do this for a while I watched Sandy's video which was great and I came away thinking wow this was you know a good job they did a really good job with that but then a funny thing happened the first day I received over 20 emails from my followers that said hey did you watch Sandy's video I'm worried now I'm concerned that my electric vehicle charging equipment isn't safe am I putting my family in danger so far Earth and so on and it didn't stop from there the following days I counted more than 50 emails and messages that my followers sent me saying hey Tom have you seen this yet could you comment on it I'm concerned so I'm doing a follow-up video here today and while I thought Sandy did a wonderful job on it after re-watching it I see how it can scare people and you know you should be scared because if your electric vehicle charging equipment isn't installed properly you could have a problem it could be a very minor problem it could be a very serious problem so what we're going to do here today is explain how you make sure that your electric vehicle charging equipment is installed properly so you don't have any problems and I have an expert coming on that works for a company that has installed more electric vehicle charging equipment in North America than any other company they've installed tens of thousands of chargers for customers here in North America but before we jump into the video first time here at state of charge click that subscribe button and ring the notification Bell so you don't miss any upcoming electric vehicle charging news and reviews here on state of charge this video is sponsored by qmerit North America's largest network of electric vehicle charging station installation professionals I know you may be tempted to install your own EV charging equipment but I urge you to use a licensed professional to do so working with a 240 volt circuit can be extremely dangerous for non-professionals the wiring may look simple but there are many best practices that electricians follow that the average homeowner doesn't know about and it could come back to haunt you something as small as not using the proper gauge wire nuts for the heavy continuous High amperage load of EV charging can potentially lead to a fire so follow the link in the description of this video and a local Q Merit electrician will provide you with a no obligation no hassle free estimate okay so as I said I'm here with Matt Trout from cumerities one of Q merits electricians in the Q Merit Network the kumeric network is a network of electricians throughout the entire country that are specialists in installing electric vehicle charging equipment home energy storage solar anything to do with home electrification needs but they really specialize in electric vehicle charging equipment and that's why I partnered with them here at state of charge quite honestly I had the opportunity to partner with a few different companies I'm not going to mention them mostly within the charging selling charging equipment but I didn't think that would be right I wanted to find the right partner and I was always really interested in safety here and I want to make sure my followers were safe in their house when they're charging their electric vehicles and partnering with kumeric worked for me and this is a great example why we're going to talk about charging safety now as I mentioned Sandy talked about some of the issues that we're starting to see now that a lot of people are charging at home we're starting to see failures in their charging equipment failures in the outlets failures and Connections in disconnects and uh it's it's a real cause for alarm but I want to temper that and say I don't want anybody to be afraid to get an electric vehicle because they're worried that they're going to burn down their house if it's done properly if it's done safely if it's done by somebody that understands electric vehicle charging is different than any other electrical Appliance in your house you're going to be just fine we're going to talk about some of the things here today that you can do to make sure that you're safe and everything is done right now before I jump into this with Matt I want to add that out of Sandy's video I think it was JW Shore he had a an electrician come on and he proposed changes to the code which I think would be very good dedicated bolt-on Breakers in your service panel having special new code changes specific for electric fuel charging and I think that's all great and I hope we move in that direction but we're not there now and I don't want people to wait until the code changes to be able to install their electric vehicle charging so we're going to talk today about what you can do um so Matt let's first talk about Outlets you know when electric vehicle electric vehicles first came out this this latest wave of electric vehicles the earliest evsc or electric vehicle Supply equipment nothing was plugged in I was driving EVS back in 2009 2010 2011 everything was hardwired if it was a high power unit if it wasn't a little 110 plug-in unit and I think Emoto works with the juice box was the first plug-in 40 amp EV charger and I remember when it first came out I said this is fantastic I advise people to get a plug-in unit because it's portable you can move it around and so forth and so on my tone has changed on plug-in units over the last 10 years and this is why and let's talk a little little bit about why hard wiring is better than plug-in units maybe you could extrapolate on that a little bit Yeah so a couple things Outlets as you can see are they're not meant for continuous plugging in plugging out and what happens is the connections get loose so a couple things wrong wire gauge size we've seen we've seen load calculations not be done overheating but when we're talking about just a flat out plug compared to a hard wire the the big difference is plugging in the the plug to the wall and unplugging it and plugging it back in we're getting that loose connection it's not as good as if we had a wire nut connection or a lug connection going straight to to the charger and also not all Nema 1450 Outlets are created equal they're not you know and and you know I don't really want to get into Brands but there are 10 15 Outlets that you could buy at Home Depot uh you know 15 Nema 1450 outlets and then there's hundred dollar Outlets that you can get through an electrical supply contractor and and you know so you know I know I'm a do-it-yourselfer there's so many things I've done in my house that you know um I owned a restaurant for years if I didn't do it myself at my restaurant I would have gone broke if I paid people to fix everything that broke but but electric vehicle charging is different and yes is it that difficult it's three wires okay you know to land on the outlet run a circuit can a do-it-yourselfer do it yes but don't do it because more than likely you're going to get that that 15 Outlet maybe the wire won't be gauge right you're not going to torque these connections down because so much current is going through it especially if you're you're if you live in a cold weather area like I do here my garage gets down to like 40 degrees and then I plug in my chart my car and for five hours it runs and it's heating up to like 110 120 degrees then it cools down to what happens to these connections when they heat up cool down heat up cool down contract you know you're going to get loose connections with it for sure and then arcing and then that's that's what happens especially if you use aluminum wire we're seeing that I one of the things I noticed in Sandy's video all of the things that he had melted were attached to aluminum water and you you have copper wire here and it's and and that's melted yeah so it you know even you know if you don't crimp these things down well it's going to happen too yeah you're gonna have to torque everything to manufacture specifications um and that's the difference between a regular electrician a handyman and then somebody who really specializes in EV installations so EV installations we're going to come out we're going to do a complete load calculation of the home to make sure that the main panel is not going to melt and overheat we're going to make sure of how many amps do we have available what can we put in a lot of chargers nowadays we could actually set the amperage a little bit lower to be able to accommodate it to make it safe so those are the things that we're going to do a little bit differently at the very beginning and then we're going to run the proper wire gauge size we're going to make sure it is copper every single installation is out of copper here um we're going to make sure that all of our connections are torqued to manufacturer specs we're going to make sure that everything is is done properly and up to code and do you use the 15 Outlets we don't we don't I wish our Outlets got cost 15 unfortunately a little bit more yeah um but yeah it's it's a matter of knowing that the so a lot of these Outlets are made for ranges they're they're made for you know that one-time plug-in and kind of you're using it for an hour or two every other day and not a continuous usage where where the the commercial style Outlets will will be able to handle a little bit more but at the same time Nema 1450 Outlets are not really meant to plug and unplug and move around because see those those connections in there get get uh worn out but even if they leave it plugged in I don't think they're meant for the duty cycle of electric vehicle charging they're meant for a dryer a clothes dryer that you run for an Hour 3 times a week or even an electric range you know you might use it every day for a little while but even that's probably during 24 amps you know the these are pulling 40 amps consistently five six hours a night at four five six nights a week and and it's just we're asking these Outlets to do more than what they were designed to do so I mean in that regard I agree with uh Sandy's expert that I had on saying we need to have electric vehicle specific equipment made you know um but in the interim you have to hire somebody that knows what they're doing and and you know why as I said why I partnered with qmeric is that they you know they're all the electricians in the network before they're even accepted into the qmart network they're sent information on on on specific electric vehicle charging stuff my friend Kyle Connor he runs out of spec motoring great guy knows ton about EVS in his house he had an electrician come and in a junction box a year or so later after he was using it it melted the whole box was melted and he had an electrician come now I don't know if the electrician was a specialist with EV charging um you know even if you do everything right there can be failures so but you want to make sure you have somebody that knows what they're doing and in addition to that like even if you hire an electrician that if they're not an EV specialist I can't tell you how many electricians I've seen in the forums the Tesla forms particular Tesla sells the the wall wall connector which is right on the the wall behind Matt here and the wall connector pulls 48 amps a 48 amp hardwired charger not just the wall connector any of them but the the the the wall connect the Tesla connectors most popular one I've seen dozens and dozens of electricians wire it with Romex Wire number six common which is enough to code it's not up to code um you need to run THHN wire for for for number six THHN for that and that's even seasoned electricians don't know that so so um you know I I urge my followers to always get a professional even I mean I I urge them to use kumara but you don't have to use Camaro you use an electrician electoral contract that specializes in EV charging equipment and at least your your halfway you know you're halfway there I mean you have to have disconnects I have disconnects over here I've seen electric vehicles what is it 48 amps or more so anything over 60 amp circuit breaker needs a disconnect 48 amps and large larger than 48 amps and I and I've seen people have uh higher power charging systems sold without the disconnects there you know so pull a permit get a licensed electrician that specializes in stuff and you're going to be you know more than halfway home so but you know overall as I said earlier I used to be a big fan of the Nema 1450s I thought the portability of them were great I recommended people to get them but I've changed now and and I do believe if you're going to have your electric vehicle charging equipment that you use at home I think you should hardwire it it eliminates a point of failure um you know even high quality you Outlets they're not meant for the duty cycle of everyday charging four or five hours extended period of time I can't tell you how many people bought uh uh my followers bought a a 40 amp plug-in unit and then you know a year or two later they're like yeah I thought I was going to unplug it and take it to my summer house I just never did keep the portable unit that either comes with your car or buy a a portable um uh dual voltage 120 volt 240 belt out leave that in your car if you're going to go on the road but have a permanent wall mounted unit on your wall I think that's the best way to go and and you know maybe talk a little bit about that the fact that the the permanently mounted units maybe are the right way to go yeah the the outlets are actually required to have GFCI protection also now on the in the new code so uh it's it's more cost effective to go hardwire you have a better product good Hardware you have at least you don't have as many areas that could fail and so that that's why we really really push hardware systems it's a it's a lot cleaner system there's the GFI protection is built into the actual evse charger uh so it's the the plug wasn't as an awesome option for a lot of people that had Nemo 1450s or Nemo 1030s in their garage already and and it was a real convenience factor of being able to plug in and and uh but as this the code progresses and EV charging progresses it's kind of going away from that plug being being that all go-to situation talk a little bit about the new code really quick you mentioned the GF GFCI so that's for the outlets right that is correct so and and the ish one of the issues that we see is all of these uh the evsc they all have built in GFCI and now you have to have with the new code that just came out this year um you the outlet has to have GFCI you have to have a gfji breaker which is going to be a much more expensive breaker too not only is it more expensive but there's going to be intermittent tripping that's what nuisance tripping right now in between which is it could create a problem I mean we plug our car in we think it's charging we go to sleep we wake up and we've realized that the GFI trip yeah yeah we don't have a full charge in the morning yeah uh you know and you don't need it with a hardwired unit well in the hardware units they have GFI protection but it's automatic so it's automatically going to reset so if it does trip for some reason it will automatically reset by itself where the GFI Breakers and all that will not automatically reset yeah that's what I meant that GF it's if you hardwire it you're allowed to use the the gfcr that's built in but if you put the outlet in but now you've got a a unit that has GFCI protection plugged into an outlet on a circuit breaker that has G just so there could be nuisance tripping happening with that too and this is a new code so and that's another thing that not all the electricians are always up on all of the code a lot of them are a lot of them update themselves but a lot of jurisdictions are not using the code yet either the 2020 code so it is still being a lot of jurisdictions are allowing the the plugs to be put in without GFCI protection right now but it's coming that way it's in the 2020 and AC code yeah and you know that's that's where the it's going for sure all right well listen I really just wanted to sit down and have a quick conversation on this and and the the whole point of it was for me to have my followers understand that it's totally safe to charge your eBay you know don't don't feel like you know your your outlet is is is is going to burn your house down now have we had ish instances like that yes most of the time they were done uh by shabby work do-it-yourselfers people that weren't uh experienced enough to do this if you are concerned call a qualified electrician have them open up your outlet check it out you know they'll turn the circle brick roof it'll torque everything you know I've I've even had um electricians tell me that when you're using electric guitar charging equipment and you're charging through a Nema 1450 after six or eight months of use it's a good idea to to turn the turn the breaker off open it up crank everything down again because you know you you're gonna have gotten some expansion and contraction the screws can back out so I mean there's things you can do but you should monitor your charging equipment you know they'll just install the outlet and then never look at it every now and then turn the breaker off open it up see if there's a arcing if anything looks like it's out of uh you know out of sorts and if you are going to charge level one a lot of people charge Believe It or Not level one 120 volt charging if they don't drive a lot or if they have a plug-in hybrid I always recommend have a brand new circuit run to your garage have an electrician pull a permit brand new circuit don't use the wires that that have been in your house for 30 years on an outlet that got almost no use for 30 years now all of a sudden you're plugging in 12 hours a day it's pulling the maximum current that that Outlook can pull now I know 120 is not the same amount of current that you're pulling on 240 but if you've got 40 year old wires and loose connections through the years now all of a sudden you're asking it to do something that it never had to do before so if you are going to charge 120 um have a new dedicated circuit and put in it's not going to cost that much money we all have great we love our EVS they're the expensive Vehicles don't be cheap when it comes to installing your charging equipment you've got this beautiful 40 50 000 electric vehicle and now you're trying to save 300 and not have the right professional install it in your house please get it done right and if you do you'll be safe and there'll be no problems okay so let's break here and take a look at what my recommendations are for safe home electric vehicle charging if you're going to charge from 120 volt Source yes some people live just fine with their EV charging from a regular 120 volt Outlet specifically plug-in hybrid owners they can charge 120 volt and that'll usually totally recharge the battery overnight without a problem but I even know some Bev owners that charge 120 volt because they don't drive that much daily living on long trips they use DC fast charges but for daily charging they're on 120 volt and it charges the review just fine for first off I recommend you install a new dedicated 120 volt Outlet on a 20 amp circuit when you do that please hire a licensed electrician preferably one that's an EV charging Specialists now if you do use an existing Outlet in your garage make sure the connections are tight you also want to check to see what else is on that circuit because you may have four or five other things on that circuit it's common that electricians when they wire the garage maybe put your garage door openers on that circuit there'll be lights on the circuit and when you plug in your portable 120 volt charging cord even if you're only pulling 12 amps you may overload the circuit that's why I recommend a new dedicated circuit but if you're not going to do that check to see what else is on that circuit open it up make sure all the connections are tight and lastly don't use an extension cord for everyday charging you can use one in a pinch if it's a good high quality commercial grade extension cord but don't use an extension cord for your daily charging if the outlet isn't close enough to where you're going to need to plug in to charge your car you definitely need to install a new outlet that's closer to where the plug on your vehicle is so you don't have to introduce an extension cord into your daily charging regimen okay for 240 volt high speed charging make sure you hire an EV charging specialist That's a licensed electrician and also make sure he pulls a permit so he's checked to make sure he does everything right now make sure your EV charging equipment is safety certified there's a lot of low cost equipment now flooding the market particularly coming in from Asia that is not safety certified don't buy something that has not been inspected and certified by one of the established testing Labs now make sure the electrician performs a load calculation at your house that's very important specifically ask them if they did that because as Matt talked about in the video bad things happen if you don't do that and you end up drawing more than what your service is rated to deliver I recommend hard wiring your charging equipment especially if it's located Outdoors yes there are outdoor rated weatherproof Nema 1450 enclosures but over time you could have problems with them it's just not worth the problems that you could have hardwire your charging equipment you're reducing the chance that you're going to have an issue you're eliminating points of failure now use copper wire not aluminum one of the things I found interesting in Sandy Monroe's video if you take a look at all of the failures that they brought to the table there all of them had aluminum wires connected to the equipment that melted so you know copper is just better yes it's going to cost a little bit more but it's better it doesn't expand and contract as much as aluminum does so the connections won't loosen up as easily as they do when you use aluminum wire I recommend that you use metal boxes on all of the enclosures the outlet boxes if you have any connections the disconnects make sure it's all metal boxes because if there is a problem inside it it won't just melt like plastic boxes do it'll contain the problem inside the metal box now also try to get a direct run from your panel right to your charger or the outlet if you do install an outlet rather than having junction boxes with connections because that's just asking for trouble and adding more points of failure specifically ask your lectures and if you made a direct run and you know tell them that that's what you want you don't want them to have to have a junction box added somewhere unless it's absolutely necessary some installations are very challenging if you don't put in a junction box somewhere number six Romex Wire is insufficient for 48 amp Chargers I'm going to say this a million times because so many people have sent me pictures of their installations that license electricians have done and used number six wire it's against NEC code for 48 amp Chargers charging equipment is called continuous loads if you look up online you might see that number six Romex is okay for a 60 amps circuit but that's not if it's a continuous load continuous loads are loads that are going to be used for more than three hours continuously an electric vehicle charging you could charge as long as 10 hours sometimes so it's considered a continuous load and in that case number six Romex is not good you have to jump down to number four or use thhm wire the code's different in different areas in different states make sure your electrical contractor understands this and knows what the code is where you live now if you want a plug-in unit make sure it's a commercial grade Outlet please don't use a twenty dollar outlet that you bought at Home Depot I can almost guarantee it's going to fail at some point if you do some of the expensive Outlets I know Hubble makes a really good Outlet there's a couple other companies out there that make good high quality outs it's going to cost more than 100 bucks but you're going to be happy it did in the long run trust me make sure the connections are tightly torqued to the manufacturer's specifications here's where we get a lot of failures the electricians don't torque all the connections as tight as they need to be torqued over time they loosen up they Arc they melt you've got a little fire going on inside the box there and you hope that it's contained inside the box and here's the last thing that I like to recommend every six months or so it's not a bad idea if you have an outlet a Nema 1450 Nema 650 Outlet it's not a bad idea power off open the outlet up and just test out those connections make sure they're all still nice and tight and if they're not cranked down on them a little bit and tighten everything back up well thanks for coming on I appreciate it Matt and uh listen uh if you guys have any questions leave them in the comment section of this video and if I can't answer the questions I'll get a hold of Matt and have him answer the questions and uh again as I said earlier if this your first time here at state of charge don't forget click that subscribe button and ring the notification Bell so you don't miss any upcoming content here on state of charge and if you are interested in having qmeric come out take a look at your electric vehicle charging needs there's a link to their website in the description of this video thanks for watching guys [Music] thank you

Channel: State Of Charge

Views: 40,272

Keywords: electric vehicles, electric vehicle, electric vehicle charging, electric cars, ev charging, electric car charging, electric vehicle charging stations, electric vehicle charging at home, electric car, charging, electric vehicle charging system, electric vehicle charging time, electric car charging station, electric vehicle charging station, electric vehicle charging explained, electric vehicles charging bill, electrical vehicle charging station, electric car charger

Id: _JlMOzx44ss

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022