Anyone had to deal with Permit inspector in Oakland,CA ?

Part of installing the Level 2 charger requires a Oakland city inspector to check the work.
My electrical panel is fine but no longer to code. If a city inspector comes I run the risk to be required to upgrade the panel which could lead to more than $5K of charges for really no value.
Anyone faced a same challenge ?

elguillermo said:

Part of installing the Level 2 charger requires a Oakland city inspector to check the work.
My electrical panel is fine but no longer to code. If a city inspector comes I run the risk to be required to upgrade the panel which could lead to more than $5K of charges for really no value.
Anyone faced a same challenge ?

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What about your panel isn't up to current code? I have 100 Amp service. My Blink was installed by Napa Electric. The city inspector came promptly, signed off on the permit, and was gone within five minutes. Most of that time was spent talking to me about the LEAF. You'll need to be more specific about the nonconforming aspect of your current panel/service to get a meaningful answer to your question. Why don't you just call the Building Department and ask them? In addition, you're required to notify PG&E so it can determine whether the transformer(s) on your street can handle the additional load.

My pannel is original from 1975 and the electrician installing my Blink didn't seem to fear anything from an inspection. Either it's up to code or it will be grandfathered in and only the new work needs to adhere to new code. I'm thinking the latter.

From the experience of purchasing my house, I learned from the inspector that code typically (I'm no expert) applies to changes and new work. Original work and old work needs to meet code from their day.

Not really the answer you were looking for, but that's my experience.

oakwcj said:

...In addition, you're required to notify PG&E so it can determine whether the transformer(s) on your street can handle the additional load.

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That's interesting, I had not heard that. I will definitely reach out to PG&E and see.

I did upgrade to 200 amp service in Oakland to give myself more options. PG&E had to sign off approval--no real problems. Oakland inspector signed off on Blink installation (and 200 amp upgrade) with no problems. He was very interested in Leaf. I don't think you have much to worry about. Our house was built pre-WWII.

First, thanks all of you for your answers. I'll provide an update in case my experience can help anyone else out there.

So Campbell Electric came to my place to install the EV charger. When they looked at my panel, they refused to install saying that it already had too many breakers and might not pass inspection (in which case they would not get paid). They suggested I upgrade to 200 Amps service and recommended I called another Electrician (because they would have had to charge higher labor rate since they are part of the Federal program to install EV charger).

I thought I might need a new trench and all, but after calling PG&E, it appears that I already have 200 amps coming to the box outside my home but not to my panel.

My house is from the 1950s and the previous owner has done a lot of electrical work himself without requesting city permits. For nearly every new outlet, he was creating a new circuit going to a breaker on a panel. So I have a lot of breakers on my panel. Breakers, panel, box where the power comes in are no longer compliant with code. So the moment I touch any of these components for a service upgrade, I would have to bring everything into compliance. All the quotes I got were for roughly $7 K, not including repatching drywall and stucco.

One electrician suggested I could just upgrade to 125 amps my main breaker for a few hundred bucks.

This morning I went to the city of Oakland and reviewed with an Electrical Inspector whether they would OK the installation of the charger with a 125 amps panel and the guy did not see any objection - just recommended to run a load analysis based on all the items I have in the house.

So this is the course I am going to follow. I'll post updates to let you know if it works !

elguillermo said:

My house is from the 1950s and the previous owner has done a lot of electrical work himself without requesting city permits. For nearly every new outlet, he was creating a new circuit going to a breaker on a panel.

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Well, better that than the usual situation where the previous owner daisy chains 20 outlets using old extension cords stapled under the baseboards, all off of one breaker!

Final update:

The Oakland inspector came to my house and approved the install. He check the overall install and unscrewed the panel to ensure the breaker was properly wired. That was it.

Ultimately, I discovered that the first guy who came to evaluate my house did not know what he was talking about. I could have run everything on my current 100 amps main breaker.

Hopefully my experience can help some of you out there.

Glad it went well. For reference, I have a detached garage and the electrician ran conduit from inside the garage, out the back of my garage, down into the dirt, under the sidewalk, up to the wall outside my house, through the crawl space and up to the breaker box inside the house.

The inspector from Walnut Creek came to my house, looked at the Blink unit, saw the conduit run through the wall of the garage door, saw it in the exposed trench and go into the crawl space and said, "looks good." Signed it without looking at the panel at all.

elguillermo said:

Final update:

The Oakland inspector came to my house and approved the install. He check the overall install and unscrewed the panel to ensure the breaker was properly wired. That was it.

Ultimately, I discovered that the first guy who came to evaluate my house did not know what he was talking about. I could have run everything on my current 100 amps main breaker.

Hopefully my experience can help some of you out there.

Click to expand...

Of course you can! You can have 100s of amps of breakers all fed by 100Amp main. Each breaker protects the wire after it so it will flip before the wire draws too much current and overheats. So if 8 20A breakers have "on" items all actively drawing 19 Amps, none will flip but the main will because you are drawing over 100 amps through it. That is what it is designed to do. It is protecting the incoming wire.

But you have to remember that homes are wired for 240V so while there are some things (e.g. electric ranges, central air, electric dryer, 240V leaf charger) that use both sides, the rest of the breakers use only one side so those 8 20A breakers drawing 19A each would not trip the 100A main if 3 of them were on the opposite half of the service connection because they only use 120V.

Even more than that, not all items draw full current all the time. A 50A range probably never draws anywhere near that even with all burners full blast along with the oven. Similarly the A/C might draw close to its rated breaker only when starting up but much lower when running. And all those lights, motors, etc in the house are never all on at the same time or drawing their maximum current.

And even more than more than that, while electric use may be higher because we have more electric items than we used to, the use of fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficient items everywhere was never envisioned by designers of years past. For example, one 15A breaker in my house covers kitchen and hall lights but with fluorescents everywhere, I only draw 80W +80W +80W +20W +20W +20W +20W +20W = less than 4Amps because all the incandescents are gone. If you replaced your central A/C with one of the same capacity as was originally in the house, you are using far less than the original 30A 240V breaker had to support when installed.