Introduction/need advice on positioning EVSE in Garage

Hello all, I'm in Chapel Hill, NC and hoping to receive my 2012 Leaf next week or the week after. I am planning to get an electrician friend to install a Level-2 EVSE in my garage but he's never installed an EVSE before so he doesn't have any experience in terms of finding the optimal position in the garage (subject of course to the limitations of where he can easily route a 240V circuit).

The only advice I have seen is from a DOE pamphlet which warns against placing the EVSE on the front wall of the garage where the car could run into it. Instead the pamphlet suggests placing the EVSE on a side wall to minimize trip hazards, etc. The problem I have is that my Leaf will occupy the center stall of a 3-car garage, and eventually it may move to the right-hand stall. I can't easily run a 240V circuit to the right-hand wall, so my choices are front wall or left-hand wall. The distance from the left wall to the right bay is almost 25' so that doesn't seem optimal. The best spot for the EVSE would seem to be on the front wall, just to the right of the entrance door into the house (which itself is centered in front of the middle bay). I can easily place the EVSE high enough on the wall so that the car couldn't possibly run into it.

So for my application, the front wall seems the best choice ... from that spot I could pretty easily reach a car in any of the three bays, assuming the cars' charging ports are all near the front like the Leaf. But I just can't get past the DOE pamphlet showing a big red "x" for placing the charger on the front wall. I guess another issue with using the front wall is that the charger cable will barely reach outside the garage, but I think I can live with that.

Any words of advice? note that my breaker panel is on the opposite side of the house from the garage, so locating the EVSE close to the panel is not a consideration.

Thanks!

Ignore the red "X", you seem to have a good grasp of the options.
Front, to the right of the door sounds good. Consider between the center slot and the right slot (+/- a few feet) depending upon the walking clearance needed in front of the center car.

Also, consider runing the charging-cord overhead, up over a hook, out away from the front wall and over a 2nd hook, and dangle down to the LEAF's charging port. Then, you have no walkway obstruction.

When charging the center car, take care so that one will not trip over, step on, etc. the cord when going to (or from, with packages) the car in the right stall.

Welcome to the Forest of LEAFs.

I put my EVSE right on the back wall of the garage in the center. That way no matter which side I park my Leaf on, I can easily reach the charge port. I also installed it about the height of my torso.

My L2 charger is at the front of the garage so that I can either charge with the Leaf inside the garage OR outside the garage. If you place it on the rear wall then you're pretty much limited to charging it inside the garage. I want the fexibility to do either, as the cord is somewhat short.

Recommend you get in on the Duke Energy Plug-In Vehicle Charging Station program ASAP. It will be either free or SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the AeroVironment L2 charger

That's kinda funny actually! If I were to mount my charging station in the "prohibited" spot, I'd have to drive through a bicycle, a suitcase, a garbage can, my table saw, and at least temporarily 2 boxes of fine china before I'd risk hitting the charging station. Oh, and not to mention the charging station is above the level of my car to start with! I'd say you could safely ignore the warning unless you think you're really going to have problems with the LEAFs shifter puck having reverse move forward and drive move back!

Thanks all for the great tips and reassurance. Not that it matters, but by "front wall" I meant the wall at the entrance to the house, not the wall where the garage doors are located. Sounds like some of you are calling the wall between the garage and the house the "back wall".

Regarding the suggestion to sign up with Duke Power, that would be awesome except that unfortunately my utility is Piedmont Electric Co-Op (I'm outside of town). I called Piedmont to ask if they had a home PEV charging program and I heard crickets, followed by muttering that Duke and Progress have a different business model and that Piedmont has no such plans :-(

At any rate I definitely will not go with AeroVironment, hence the request for semi-DIY advice.

Cheers!

I put mine on the side of a cabinet in the center of the back of my garage. It is well protected there, out of the way, and can easily reach the car anywhere in the garage.

Yeah, ignore the diagram and put it at the head of the middle parking space. That should hopefuly allow you to reach all three spots even if a future EV has it's inlet on the side. Since they are typically mounted at eye level, there's just about zero chance of bumping it.

P.S. I'd call that the back wall as well. The front of the garage has always meant the end with the big door to me.

I'm thinking of putting mine in the center of the far wall as well, and then using some sort of sling mechanism to suspend the cable and plug from the ceiling so that it can come down vertically to the car's port, instead of being a semi-permanent tripping hazard. But we'll see what the electrician says.

LeafyInNC said:

The only advice I have seen is from a DOE pamphlet which warns against placing the EVSE on the front wall of the garage where the car could run into it.!

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That is nonsense. Just mount the box above where the bumper might hit. Mine is ~5' off the floor.... how would a LEAF hit that :roll:

Which EVSE are you installing?
Are you considering installing multiply drop point connections for a plug-in EVSE? The GE Wattstation (NEMA 6-50) and Leviton (NEMA L6-30 ?) are the plug-in type EVSE .

jannen said:

Which EVSE are you installing?
Are you considering installing multiply drop point connections for a plug-in EVSE? The GE Wattstation (NEMA 6-50) and Leviton (NEMA L6-30 ?) are the plug-in type EVSE .

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I'm installing the upgraded Nissan EVSE (see http://www.evseupgrade.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for details). It requires a NEMA L6-20 plug so I'll be using an adapter and installing a NEMA L14-30 in the wall. If I ever upgrade to the GE Wattstation or similar, I will probably do minor rewiring and use a hard-wired EVSE.

The electrician who installed mine suggested the side wall in case I want to park the car outside and still have the cable reach the car. Neither he nor the city inspector had any objections to the charger on the back (or front) wall - if I crash into that, the car will be in the family room, and the EVSE will be the least of my worries.

But with a 3 car garage, hopefully you'll never need to recharge the car outside anyway, so the spot you picked sounds good.

FWIW I put mine on the side wall of the garage so it reaches either when the car is in the garage or just outside. It has turned out to be quite handy as occasionally our garage gets consumed for days at a time by one project or another (like boxes of Christmas decorations) and I can't get the car in. Also I want to be able to reach the driveway for when you all come over to visit :lol:

This arrangement worked well with the Schneider since there's no reason the cable hanger has to be right by the box, as there is no holster for the nozzle.

Thanks again for all of the opinions. Actually I may want to charge the car outdoors at some point, but nonetheless I've decided I'm going to put the charger on the front wall (the wall at the opposite end from the doors), since with my 3-car garage it would be a pain stretching the cord from the left side wall to the front of a car parked in the right-hand spot, and there is no easy way to mount the charger on the right wall.

As far as reaching outside, I've decided to go with an L14-30 socket on the wall, and I will use that with adapter to the L6-20 required by the EVSE upgrade. That way I can use the L14-30 extension cable that I already have for my generator to extend the EVSE outdoors when needed and it should all hold together securely since all of the connectors are twist lock.

Now that I think about it, I should also be able to charge the car via my generator's L14-30 socket in a pinch ... a free bonus!

it is possible to get a longer cord. But as they come attached to the unit, you must order and wait.
I was concerned about mounting and where, until my partner reminded me that I could pull in or back in, and that eliminates all the worrying about the exact right spot.
with the backup camera, which has won my heart, it is a cake walk to get into my narrow drive backwards.

Nubo said:

I'm thinking of putting mine in the center of the far wall as well, and then using some sort of sling mechanism to suspend the cable and plug from the ceiling so that it can come down vertically to the car's port, instead of being a semi-permanent tripping hazard. But we'll see what the electrician says.

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Well, the electrician was ok with it, but I hadn't taken some factors into account. First, the supply cord comes out of the bottom of the unit so has to make a 180 to run up to the ceiling. Second, the cord is very thick and I wouldn't want to force too small of a radius in the turns. So while 18 ft. works with a string, it comes up just a bit short with the EVSE cable when accounting for the turns. Will locate it off to the side so it's not much in anyone's way except mine .

There are overhead reels for power cords (using internal slip rings, afaik) and I wonder if it would be legit to feed the EVSE output into one of those and attach the j1772 plug at the end, but not worth the hassle at this point. I think it's a feature that EVSE makers should be looking into though. A semi-permanent tripping hazard in a garage isn't a great idea.