Skip to content

The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26]

Technology
134 66 275
  • I watched the video and it seems to make good points, but no matter how many times I see something related to US power circuits it just feels so ... antique? I have 3x25A fuses on the house and several 3x16A outlets around so getting 11kW out is just a matter of plugging in a socket.

    Obviously it would be a good thing to have controls so that water heater, floor heating or sauna stove aren't all on together but I think I've replaced a single 25A fuse over 10 years we've lived on this house and I'm pretty sure that was caused by a small(ish) surge on the grid and not our load.

    What they do here for (a good amount of) home car chargers is read out the electricity meter using their serial port and dynamically adjust the charge current to never take more than those 3x25A.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    It's not fucking overkill. There's no such thing.

    I'm really disappointed with the video. That dude usually knows his shit, but he's way off the mark here. It's just plain wrong.

    Getting a smaller charger might save a few hundred, but it will also increase your chances of burning the house down. Good fucking advise, huh.

    Fuck that. You'll always want to charge as fast as your main circuit breaker will allow.

  • you are assuming functional infrastructure, not everywhere has that.

    Gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that people living in a cabin where the electricity only works a few hours a week aren't going to buy an electric car.

    As for access to public chargers... I just spent the weekend in a rural area and had no problem finding a charger within 20 miles of me.

  • I think “might be overkill” would be a better title and position than “usually overkill.”

    It factually is not.

    most people would fall behind anytime they drive further than the average number of miles.

    Assume you drive it all the way to empty, then park it and plug it back in at 7PM. Leave it for 12 hours until you leave again in the morning at 7AM. A typical small EV will charge at ~5MPH on a 110V, 1.2kW connection (faster on a 20A circuit). So 5MPH x 12 hours means you already have 60 miles of range again for the next day. And I would say that's a pretty extreme scenario.

    Realistically you would never drive it to 0% and you would probably leave it parked longer than 12 hours.

    I use L1 almost exclusively, BTW.

    Probably if you have a Hummer or something you might want something a bit faster.

    Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a "usually" basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy's house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I'm maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

    Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.

  • Congrats on finding a solution that works for you. I have a short commute (16 miles round trip) and was OK to use L1 charging on a "usually" basis. However, I do more things in my life than just going to work and back. After work I might drive another 90 miles round trip to meet some friends at a brewery. Or I might drive only a couple miles to a buddy's house and not get home until 11pm, so I now only have 7 hours to charge at L1 instead of 12 hours. And on weekends when I'm maybe driving a couple hours to hike in the desert and come back, I now have 16 hours to charge for work on Monday after driving 210 miles round trip.

    Switching from L1 to L2 charging at home made driving an EV go from a daily chore to something I almost never thought about.

    This is not about me or you, this is "usually".

  • I'm not sure what you mean by this. Any modern US house would have a similar capability, it's just older homes that would struggle since there would never be a need for such high power devices in a garage.

    Most older garages would only need enough power to run a single lightbulb, if it was slightly newer, maybe a low power automatic garage door opener.

    It's the same in any country with buildings over 100 years old.

    Yep – US also doesn't generally do residential three-phase unlike many countries in the EU. A lot of garages around here have 3x16A 230V, not (only) due to the power requirements but because having three phases allows for simplest induction motors for things like blowers and circular saws. When you have three phases having a proper outlet in the garage starts making sense.

    Around here (Finland more specifically) we have three-phase even in most apartments. My two bedroom apartment has a 3x25A main breaker, and two devices on 3x16A circuit's – the sauna stove and oven+stovetop. Most single-family homes have 3x25A or 3x36A as well.

    US households are missing out on a lot of things due to their split-phase system.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    One thing I really don't get in the discussion around EVs and charging is, why are people so afraid of tripping the main breaker? If you have a total of e.g. 17 kW available and happen to go over, just reset the main breaker (or replace it in case it's still a traditional one). It's there precisely so that you wouldn't need to care about overloading the connection.

    In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US) while using the available power to

    • heat/cool a single family home (in -20 °C weather mind you)
    • run all appliances (including the oven, stove, dryer etc.)
    • heat up a sauna
    • charge an EV
    • whatever else you typically would want to plug in, kettles and such

    While it's true you can trip the main breaker if you have everything on at the same time, typically it never happens even if there are no lockouts in place preventing overuse. And it's not like tripping it causes any permanent harm.

    Why is an electrical service upgrade constantly brought up as a solution when any home with >15 kW of available power won't need it? Is it against code to purposefully overcommit your mains in the US or something?

    Edit: there were valid concerns raised over how long-lived the breakers are (probably won't be rated for tens of fault-condition related trips), also that these smaller service specs aren't as common as I've gathered from the media. That might have something to do with this at least. Thanks for the replies – it's been an interesting discussion.

  • It's not fucking overkill. There's no such thing.

    I'm really disappointed with the video. That dude usually knows his shit, but he's way off the mark here. It's just plain wrong.

    Getting a smaller charger might save a few hundred, but it will also increase your chances of burning the house down. Good fucking advise, huh.

    Fuck that. You'll always want to charge as fast as your main circuit breaker will allow.

    Yeah, running a 240V 50A outlet in a garage in most homes would be fairly cheap, since it's usually not going very far from the main panel. So might as well do it if you're already spending a huge chunk of change on an electric car.

    The last time we hired an electrician to run about 30 feet from a panel to a new 50A sub-panel across the shop for a project was around $800 IIRC.

  • Hell, depending on local codes, you might get away with slapping in a nema 6-20 receptacle to make it even easier…

    If you do a receptacle, you've got to then do a GFCI. Check out the price difference between a GFCI breaker and one that isn't. If you hardware the EVSE, you don't need GFCI because GFCI is built into nearly all EVSE. If we're doing this exercise to keep low costs, adding GFCI outside of the EVSE jacks up the price.

    Are they somehow more expensive in the US? 40A 230V rated ones cost something like 30-50 € around here which doesn't feel that expensive to me. I'll admit it's considerably more expensive (~4x the price) than a standard breaker, but it's still more like a rounding error in overall costs.

    Although EVSE's projection doesn't require you to periodically trip the GFCI so it doesn't get stuck, which is a major plus.

  • Yeah, running a 240V 50A outlet in a garage in most homes would be fairly cheap, since it's usually not going very far from the main panel. So might as well do it if you're already spending a huge chunk of change on an electric car.

    The last time we hired an electrician to run about 30 feet from a panel to a new 50A sub-panel across the shop for a project was around $800 IIRC.

    I don't disagree with this, but we have a detached garage and got quoted over $6k to retrench an upgraded line to it. I know he mentioned this condition in the video, but our driveway is so tight it would be an obstacle to put a charger just on the outside of the house.

    In the meantime, we started using a regular outlet in the garage with the basic charger that came with our Ioniq and after 2 years have never needed anything more. Never even used a public charger.

  • One thing I really don't get in the discussion around EVs and charging is, why are people so afraid of tripping the main breaker? If you have a total of e.g. 17 kW available and happen to go over, just reset the main breaker (or replace it in case it's still a traditional one). It's there precisely so that you wouldn't need to care about overloading the connection.

    In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US) while using the available power to

    • heat/cool a single family home (in -20 °C weather mind you)
    • run all appliances (including the oven, stove, dryer etc.)
    • heat up a sauna
    • charge an EV
    • whatever else you typically would want to plug in, kettles and such

    While it's true you can trip the main breaker if you have everything on at the same time, typically it never happens even if there are no lockouts in place preventing overuse. And it's not like tripping it causes any permanent harm.

    Why is an electrical service upgrade constantly brought up as a solution when any home with >15 kW of available power won't need it? Is it against code to purposefully overcommit your mains in the US or something?

    Edit: there were valid concerns raised over how long-lived the breakers are (probably won't be rated for tens of fault-condition related trips), also that these smaller service specs aren't as common as I've gathered from the media. That might have something to do with this at least. Thanks for the replies – it's been an interesting discussion.

    The way that it works in most countries is that the breakers are per circuit in your wall. The breakers trip in order to prevent that single circuit from overheating and starting a fire in your walls.

    Let’s say you have a wire that’s rated for 16amps. More than that and it becomes a fire risk just threw overheating. @230v that gives you 3680w per circuit.

    If you have your industrial microwave, water heater, and car charger all going at the same time on that same circuit. This will draw way more than 3680w and thus would go over that 16a limit.

    The breakers trips once you go over that 16a limit for safety. It’s a good thing. This all being said no sane electrician would put those three things on the same circuit. lol.

    Circuit breakers are actually what enable you to safely over provision. Without them fires would just be a matter of time.

    I know it works this way in the U.S. and Germany at least.

  • Yep – US also doesn't generally do residential three-phase unlike many countries in the EU. A lot of garages around here have 3x16A 230V, not (only) due to the power requirements but because having three phases allows for simplest induction motors for things like blowers and circular saws. When you have three phases having a proper outlet in the garage starts making sense.

    Around here (Finland more specifically) we have three-phase even in most apartments. My two bedroom apartment has a 3x25A main breaker, and two devices on 3x16A circuit's – the sauna stove and oven+stovetop. Most single-family homes have 3x25A or 3x36A as well.

    US households are missing out on a lot of things due to their split-phase system.

    Ohh! I spent some time in the U.S. and there are 230v mains available. They just have special plugs. All homes have 230v. It’s just not available through the shocked face plug.

  • Ohh! I spent some time in the U.S. and there are 230v mains available. They just have special plugs. All homes have 230v. It’s just not available through the shocked face plug.

    I might've been unclear, I don't mean 230 V by itself, but three-phase distribution. The standard socket is labeled either 3x16A 230V alternatively labeled 380V 16A. Typically uses an IEC 60309 plug that looks like this:


    (Source: https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/IEC60309_2.html)

    Three phase has other benefits besides just more power, the US has it with their lower voltage as well, but typically reserved just for larger buildings.

  • The way that it works in most countries is that the breakers are per circuit in your wall. The breakers trip in order to prevent that single circuit from overheating and starting a fire in your walls.

    Let’s say you have a wire that’s rated for 16amps. More than that and it becomes a fire risk just threw overheating. @230v that gives you 3680w per circuit.

    If you have your industrial microwave, water heater, and car charger all going at the same time on that same circuit. This will draw way more than 3680w and thus would go over that 16a limit.

    The breakers trips once you go over that 16a limit for safety. It’s a good thing. This all being said no sane electrician would put those three things on the same circuit. lol.

    Circuit breakers are actually what enable you to safely over provision. Without them fires would just be a matter of time.

    I know it works this way in the U.S. and Germany at least.

    Not talking about the circuits, but the main electrical connection to the grid. To me it often seems like there's reluctance in overcommitting overprovisioning that capacity: as an example, four 16A circuits on a 25A main breaker. Here that's quite common, but even in Tech connections videos I've seen him bring up smart electric cabinets or automatic load monitoring when putting enough capacity on the mains to possibly go over.

    What I'm asking is, why bother? If you trip the mains by having too much load, just reset the breaker and be done with it. No need to automate things to not run into that situation, one will learn to not have the oven on while charging the car full blast. No need to gimp the charger amperage since you're running a new circuit anyway, and it's not like it's much different running a 20A circuit vs a 40A one. If that's 70% of your total available capacity, it doesn't matter – worst you have to do is walk downstairs and flip a switch.

  • My wife had to try charging on a 120V outlet last winter. The plug couldn't even keep up with the battery heating requirements to actually start charging; the battery percentage was going DOWN while plugged in. It was -25°C outside though, so it's a specific situation, but it's actually why she had to try to charge; it's a trip we can easily do without charging in the summer.

    Car specific maybe? I was able to charge at -30C outside from a 120V outlet last winter.

  • I agree with this youtube comment:

    As an electrician (in Australia), I agree with your basic premise. However, if you are asking me to install an EV charger, unless you tell me “I want it to charge slowly with a limited current capacity”, I am going to assume it is to charge an EV under ALL situations - fast to slow, for whoever may drive one today or in the future, even with a potential new homeowner. We generally do our work with the priority order (1) safety - nobody gets an electric shock and nothing catches fire; (2) avoidance of nuisance i.e. the thing you just installed doesn’t work and keeps tripping the breaker 😑 (3) avoiding needing replacement electrical work for at least 25 - 50 years

    Also I live in a townhouse with no garage. Our charger is between the neighborhood sidewalk and our parking spaces, so I'd prefer keeping it plugged in as little as possible to minimize any issues with foot traffic (neighbors, delivery people, garbage pickup, etc). I've seen other townhouse EV owners literally run an extension cable over the sidewalk to do an L1 charge for their EV and that's just asking for trouble.

    He did say that it's different if you don't own your own garage or live in a townhouse

  • Any AC load you can throw at an EV is effectively “slow charging”.
    My car supports a maximum of 9.6kw from an AC charger, but up to 150kw from DC fast chargers. Even with the fast charging, its not like a phone, it has active thermal management which will cool the battery and slow down the charging if it gets too hot. phones don’t really have that and is mainly why they degrade faster if quick charged.

    Can you source that?

  • What electric vehicle gets 5 miles/1.2kWh?

    Most of the small ones.

    You guys really should do some reading before you downvote things you don't understand

  • Not talking about the circuits, but the main electrical connection to the grid. To me it often seems like there's reluctance in overcommitting overprovisioning that capacity: as an example, four 16A circuits on a 25A main breaker. Here that's quite common, but even in Tech connections videos I've seen him bring up smart electric cabinets or automatic load monitoring when putting enough capacity on the mains to possibly go over.

    What I'm asking is, why bother? If you trip the mains by having too much load, just reset the breaker and be done with it. No need to automate things to not run into that situation, one will learn to not have the oven on while charging the car full blast. No need to gimp the charger amperage since you're running a new circuit anyway, and it's not like it's much different running a 20A circuit vs a 40A one. If that's 70% of your total available capacity, it doesn't matter – worst you have to do is walk downstairs and flip a switch.

    ADHD guy here.

    Wondering if these are reasons but need someone knowledgable to answer

    • does the mains breaker have a limited amount of resets / duty cycle?
    • is it bad for the whole house to trip sometimes? For me having to reset electronics, potential data loss etc makes it annoying.
    • is there a potential for surging when the mains is flicked back on from everything starting simultaneously?
  • Fuses sound antique compared to resettable circuit breakers. Though, if I remember correctly, your outlets have resettable breakers? Anyway, part of the wattage deficiency comes from the voltage being half of Europe's. The wires are similarly sized so they hit about the same max amperage (largely 15a for most circuits, 20a frequently in kitchens/garages/exterior outlets, 100-250a main breaker for the house) but halving the voltage halves the wattage available

    Though, if I remember correctly, your outlets have resettable breakers?

    Here in Finland we don't have breakers on outlets themselves, they're all on electrical panel. But we have 'automatic fuses' which you can reset, they're just referred as 'fuse' almost always. Also, as our house is older, the 25A main fuses are actual porcelain ones, but new ones obviously have those automated too. Similarily, nearly all of the fault current protectors are on electrical panel instead of individual outlets.

    And in here nearly all fuses for lights, sockets and everything are either 10 or 16A with bigger main breakers, normally 3x25A for individual houses.

  • The effects of AI on firms and workers

    Technology technology
    4
    1
    12 Stimmen
    4 Beiträge
    23 Aufrufe
    brobot9000@lemmy.worldB
    Your response is: want to be more productive? Replace the CEO and pointless middle management with Ai! Image how much money the shareholders would save!
  • 34 Stimmen
    1 Beiträge
    9 Aufrufe
    Niemand hat geantwortet
  • 41 Stimmen
    3 Beiträge
    19 Aufrufe
    M
    Does anybody know of a resource that's compiled known to be affected system or motherboard models using this specific BMC? Eclypsium said the line of vulnerable AMI MegaRAC devices uses an interface known as Redfish. Server makers known to use these products include AMD, Ampere Computing, ASRock, ARM, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, Huawei, Nvidia, Supermicro, and Qualcomm. Some, but not all, of these vendors have released patches for their wares.
  • Using Signal groups for activism

    Technology technology
    37
    1
    204 Stimmen
    37 Beiträge
    137 Aufrufe
    ulrich@feddit.orgU
    You're using a messaging app that was built with the express intent of being private and encrypted. Yes. You're asking why you can't have a right to privacy when you use your real name as your display handle in order to hide your phone number. I didn't ask anything. I stated it definitively. If you then use personal details as your screen name, you can't get mad at the app for not hiding your personal details. I've already explained this. I am not mad. I am telling you why it's a bad product for activism. Chatting with your friends and clients isn't what this app is for. That's...exactly what it's for. And I don't know where you got the idea that it's not. It's absurd. Certainly Snowden never said anything of the sort. Signal themselves never said anything of the sort. There are other apps for that. Of course there are. They're varying degrees of not private, secure, or easy to use.
  • Is Matrix cooked?

    Technology technology
    54
    100 Stimmen
    54 Beiträge
    177 Aufrufe
    W
    Didn't know it only applied to UWP apps on Windows. That does seem like a pretty big problem then. it is mostly for compatibility reasons. no win32 programs are equipped to handle such granular permissions and sandboxing, they are all made with the assumption that they have access to whatever they need (other than other users' resources and things that require elevation). if Microsoft would have made that limitation to every kind of software, that Windows version would have probably been a failure in popularity because lots of software would have broken. I think S editions of windows is how they tried to go in that direction, with a more drastic way of simply just dropping support for 3rd party win32 programs. I don't still have a Mac readily available to test with but afaik it is any application that uses Apple's packaging format. ok, so if you run linux or windows utils in a compatibility layer, they still have less of a limited access? by which I mean graphical utilities. just tried with firefox, for macos it wanted to give me an .iso file (???) if so, it seems apple is doing roughly the same as microsoft with uwp and the appx format, and linux with flatpak: it's a choice for the user
  • 559 Stimmen
    99 Beiträge
    285 Aufrufe
    N
    In this year of 2025? No. But it still is basically setting oneself for failure from the perspective of Graphene, IMO. Like, the strongest protection in the world (assuming Graphene even is, which is quite a tall order statement) is useless if it only works on the mornings of a Tuesday that falls in a prime number day that has a blue moon and where there are no ATP tennis matches going on. Everyone else is, like, living in the real world, and the uniqueness of your scenario is going to go down the drain once your users get presented with a $5 wrench, or even cheaper: a waterboard. Because cops, let alone ICE, are not going to stop to ask you if they can make you more comfortable with your privacy being violated.
  • 43 Stimmen
    1 Beiträge
    11 Aufrufe
    Niemand hat geantwortet
  • Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

    Technology technology
    1
    1
    0 Stimmen
    1 Beiträge
    10 Aufrufe
    Niemand hat geantwortet