The official "I actually have a new EVSE installed" thread

Boomer23 said:

I have to say that precautions like that seem very silly to me after having gone through the install today. ... Did you see anything during your installation that could have caved in one of the guys' heads of they didn't wear a hard hat?

Click to expand...

The garage door track could easily slice your head open if you are on a ladder and not careful. As I see it, after the accident, it all comes down to "How could this accident have been prevented." Personally I did not wear a hard hat when I pulled in the 100' branch circuit for my spa but that was my responsibility as I was the homeowner and contractor so I see what you mean. In the case of a contractor performing working in someones facility, not a bad thing to do. Beside, some insurance companies (or in this case ECOtaility) may have required it.

Malcolm

I know each utility company has different rates but do we have an idea of how much it will cost for a standard overnight charge? I have heard all kinds of amounts. Thanks.

Multiply the amount of battery pack you used times your utility charge rate. The pack holds 24 kilowatt-hours, and around here, we pay about $0.16 per kwh, so a full charge will be $3.84. If your power costs closer to the national average, about 12 cents per kwh, it'd cost you $2.88 to recharge a fully discharged Leaf battery pack. Less than that, if you haven't drained the battery.

Don said:

I know each utility company has different rates but do we have an idea of how much it will cost for a standard overnight charge? I have heard all kinds of amounts. Thanks.

Click to expand...

If you drive a thousand miles a month, that's an average of only about 33 miles/day, maybe 8 to 10 kWh/night at the wall, depending on how you drive. I think most overnight charge rates are going to be between 5 and 20 cents/kWh giving a range of $0.40 to $2.00 per night as an average. The biggest variable there is your electricity rate, and you should know yours; you may even be able to switch plans to optimize it.

Naturally if you drive a lot more, or a lot less, than a thousand miles a month you have to scale those numbers. Also, naturally, those are averages - some nights you will get home with the battery nearly empty and use two or even three times the average amount.

OK, I now have one installed & can chime in here. Here's the background & experience (advanced warning, will be a bit long).

I won't be ordering my LEAF until next year, but due to my tax situation, even if the EVSE tax credit is extended for 2011, I won't be able to use it. So, silly me, I thought Nissan would be willing to help their customers and install the EVSE this year. I put in the request and never did hear back from them. It was only until I called them and asked them what the status of my request was that I was told it had been denied. The reason given was that Nissan decided to focus their limited installers on people actually ordering LEAFs this year. Understandable, but I also think avoidable with proper planning by Nissan and AV. This was in November.

So, I started looking into alternatives and hooked up with Nathaniel Villarreal of Captive Fuel http://www.captivefuels.com/home He was quick to come on over on short notice and prepare a quote, which, of course, was significantly less than the quote I had received from Nissan/AV. The next issue was to actually find someone who was actually shipping EVSEs this year. The only ones I could find were Coulomb and EV Charge America. I did contact Clipper Creek & got one quick e-mail but never did get a quote form them. I'm afraid that from what I could tell, EV Charge America didn't have much of a history and I know Coulomb, even though they are a start up, has significant backing and are likely to still be around in several years. So, even though the Coulumb EVSE seems over priced and over built for my needs, since I could cover half the cost through the tax credit, I decided to go with the Coulomb EVSE.

So, (sigh), here are the costs for the install.

Install - put in approx 100 ft of Romex cable from breaker box on outside of house in back underneath house to garage & application to PG&E $830
CT 500 EVSE - $2071 (including tax & shipping)
City of Milpitas Permit - $199.25

I know that if I waited until next year, even after the tax break, for the same amount of cash outlay I could have had an AV EVSE or similar installed for the same or perhaps a bit lower price. I'm justifying this to myself by thinking by going ahead and getting the Coulomb EVSE now, I'm able to afford a top of the line unit

Note that I decided not to put in a sub-panel & meter for the car and thus have to go to to the E9A schedule. I don't have air conditioning and our electricity use is pretty minimal, so I think I can live with it. Supposedly the Coulomb EVSE has an "utility grade" meter built into it but I doubt if PG&E will read off of it.

Some notes from the experience so far.

- Had to badger Coulomb's distributor to get basic things such as payment receipt and shipping information. They should hook up with Amazon.

- Inspection for permit was interestng. There was a hiccup when the inspector asked for UL 2202 certification which wasn't listed in the installation manual. The tech support team at Coulomb got the guy who works on their certification on the line and it turns out that the Milpitas regulations were a bit outdated. UL 2202 is the certification for an actual charger which directly charges the battery on the car. Since it is an EVSE, the correct certification is UL 2594. Kudos for the Coulomb team and hopefully Milpitas LEAFers can thank me for getting the city regs updated. Definitely early days here.

Regarding the CT-500, it seems to be a very well built rugged unit made with heavy duty “metalized” plastic & a well armored cord & a holster for stowing the business end of the coupler. Rather than an EVSE for a single family residential home, it looks like it really was designed for more comerical applications such as a car port charger for an apartment complex. I showed it to a buddy of mine who is a meter tech for PG&E and he said it looks well built.

It comes with a CDMA connection & 2 years free connection. Interestingly, the picture of the devices shows 2 antennas but it only came with 1. As far as I know, the connection allows automatic software updates over the air, but not sure what else it does yet. And at this point, what I find most interesting about the device is that it comes with a full fledged installation manual, but no real “proper care and feeding of your new expensive device” manual. Just comes with a one page card showing how to charge the vehicle.

One thing is with all the new EVSEs coming online next year, I’m willing to bet Coulomb will be dropping their prices to remain competitive, so you might want to consider them as an alternative.

Will post more once I actually get the car & try charging it. In the meantime, it’s back to watching the 49ers loose (barely at this point) & commercials showing just how patriotic it is to drive big gas guzzling ICE cars.

Interesting info, Phil!

I think you have one of the first (only?) Coulomb installation. Can you post a picture of it?

There's one public Coulomb station here in San Diego run by AMSOLAR, but it's apparently just a 120v outlet. :?:

GroundLoop said:

Interesting info, Phil!

I think you have one of the first (only?) Coulomb installation. Can you post a picture of it?

There's one public Coulomb station here in San Diego run by AMSOLAR, but it's apparently just a 120v outlet. :?:

Click to expand...

Of course the one I have is a Level 2 charger.

OK, here goes.



Note the lower plate has been removed for the inspection.

Boomer23 said:

sparky said:

@Boomer23, I have two TED MTUs. One set monitors my solar and the other my house.
Two issues: The TED network device aka "Gateway", is highly susceptible to noise from other digital devices like computers, DVRs or even CFL bulbs. So, in my older home I had a problem finding an outlet that was reliable as well as accessible by 10-baseT to my router.
Also, my panel did not have accessible incoming conductors. That is, from the meter to the panel there was a direct connection via bussbar, not say 000, wire. Thus, there was no way to wrap the MTU connectors around the bussbar to get an input current reading. I ended up separating the wires coming out of the circuit breakers according to which 240V leg they were on and encircling each group with the MTU connectors. Once these two things were done, the TED worked perfectly and has ever since. Also, Google Powermeter has been a nice addition.
Good luck!

Click to expand...

Hi sparky (and EVDRIVER, if you're monitoring).

I'm up and running with a TED 5003. One MTU for my main utility feed, one MTU for my solar inverter backfeed, and one for my EVSE circuit. I found a good outlet for my gateway that was actually in my home office, so I just had to buy a longer network cable to my router.

The big problem is that in my new power panel, the main feeds from the meter to the main breakers are split into dual parallel feeds. So I have two red and two black wires coming to my main breaker. They are physically separated (alternated) enough that I can't clamp one CT around both red or both black legs. The best I can do is to clamp one CT around one red leg and one CT around one black leg. That doesn't do the whole job. Since I'm sure my utility won't let me put CTs around their feed wires before the meter, I have to get creative. I don't think I can gather the wires from each leg like sparky did.

On the TED forum, one guy suggested getting an extra set of CTs and wiring them in series to the first set, so that MTU1 has four CTs on it, with one CT clamped around each of the four incoming legs.

Do you have any idea whether this will work?
Thanks!

Click to expand...

How about using two sets of MTUs? E.g. MTU/CT1 around one set of red/black legs, and MTU/CT2 around the second set of red/black legs.

Then set both MTU1 and MTU2 to load (or adjusted load if you have solar). I think the software would add up MTU1 and MTU2.

This will cost you another $100 or so for an additional MTU/CT set. But you can first test it and see if it works.

greenleaf said:

Boomer23 said:

sparky said:

The big problem is that in my new power panel, the main feeds from the meter to the main breakers are split into dual parallel feeds.

On the TED forum, one guy suggested getting an extra set of CTs and wiring them in series to the first set, so that MTU1 has four CTs on it, with one CT clamped around each of the four incoming legs.

Do you have any idea whether this will work?
Thanks!

Click to expand...

How about using two sets of MTUs? E.g. MTU/CT1 around one set of red/black legs, and MTU/CT2 around the second set of red/black legs.

Then set both MTU1 and MTU2 to load (or adjusted load if you have solar). I think the software would add up MTU1 and MTU2.

This will cost you another $100 or so for an additional MTU/CT set. But you can first test it and see if it works.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Thanks for your response, greenleaf.

I called TED support and they suggested something similar to your idea. But they also said that I could accomplish essentially the same thing by having the TED software multiply the MTU1 readings by 2 in the MTU calibration option. Assuming that the current coming into the two legs from the meter is equally split, this should be a fairly accurate, and cost free solution. I ran the idea past garygid, my local EE consultant, and he thought it should work (thanks gary). I tried it and it seems to be working well. I did have to update the TED firmware to get the option to change the MTU calibration, but that went well also, though my TED gateway got a bit touchy after the update.

Boomer23 said:

Thanks for your response, greenleaf.

I called TED support and they suggested something similar to your idea. But they also said that I could accomplish essentially the same thing by having the TED software multiply the MTU1 readings by 2 in the MTU calibration option. Assuming that the current coming into the two legs from the meter is equally split, this should be a fairly accurate, and cost free solution. I ran the idea past garygid, my local EE consultant, and he thought it should work (thanks gary). I tried it and it seems to be working well. I did have to update the TED firmware to get the option to change the MTU calibration, but that went well also, though my TED gateway got a bit touchy after the update.

Click to expand...

Oh, I guess that would work as well, assuming the current from the two legs are evenly split.

It took 9 hours in the pouring rain, but my EVSE is installed! I will post pictures tomorrow, I need to borrow a camera. Basically they had to get it connected to the breaker in my hallway. They put 8 holes in my wall, drilled down into my storage unit below my apartment and then mounted the unit into the wall in front of my parking spot. My cat was freaked out all day from the noise and I almost caught her escaping through one of the holes in the wall. Now she's passed out snoring because she didn't catch any cat naps today with all the activity. All the holes are patched up and I just need to get them painted over. Tomorrow the inspector comes and hopefully will sign off. It looks really good and my Leaf can't get here soon enough!

malloryk said:

It took 9 hours in the pouring rain, but my EVSE is installed! I will post pictures tomorrow, I need to borrow a camera. Basically they had to get it connected to the breaker in my hallway. They put 8 holes in my wall, drilled down into my storage unit below my apartment and then mounted the unit into the wall in front of my parking spot. My cat was freaked out all day from the noise and I almost caught her escaping through one of the holes in the wall. Now she's passed out snoring because she didn't catch any cat naps today with all the activity. All the holes are patched up and I just need to get them painted over. Tomorrow the inspector comes and hopefully will sign off. It looks really good and my Leaf can't get here soon enough!

Click to expand...

Hey Mal, congratulations!

This is really an accomplishment. You're a true EV pioneer. I know that it's difficult enough to get cooperation for capital upgrades to property when you own your own condo unit. But as a renter, you, and your landlord, deserve a lot of credit. I know that you are in a great, progressive environment, in Santa Monica, probably one of the best in the nation. So your neighbors in the city are also participants in your success. But you are the bomb for being so persistent and positive throughout the process.

You should start a blog about your experiences so far, and about living as a renter in Santa Monica with one of the first LEAFs. Lots of folks, as well as Nissan and a lot of other manufacturers, will be watching your experiences closely.

Great, Mallory! Happy for you and would like to come over and see it....if you want to PM me I would have time this next week...nothing like inviting myself. :lol:

thanks Boomer for those kind words! I've been thinking about blogging about this experience. I should've been this whole time but this forum has been filling that need to share my experience with other people going through the same thing as well as learn from all of you. I'm lucky because I really have an awesome property manager who lives in my building and takes care of everything. She was my liason with the owner whom I've never met but I hear is "into conservation." And is now interested in purchasing an EV of her own! She appreciated all the research and information I put into the letter I wrote pleading my case. They were very thoughtful in their decision and honestly, that was enough for me. The fact that they didn't just dismiss me immediately and tell me no. I also wanted to show people that even if you're a renter, it's not out of the question to own an EV. You just have to keep moving forward, do your research, be patient and flexible, and when it all works out, be grateful! We're all pioneers on this forum and I'm excited to embark on this adventure with all of you!

malloryk said:

I also wanted to show people that even if you're a renter, it's not out of the question to own an EV. You just have to keep moving forward, do your research, be patient and flexible, and when it all works out, be grateful! We're all pioneers on this forum and I'm excited to embark on this adventure with all of you!

Click to expand...

This is what I'm saying, you're da bomb!

you are! You've got solar! I guess that's my next challenge, getting solar panels installed! :lol:

malloryk said:

you are! You've got solar! I guess that's my next challenge, getting solar panels installed! :lol:

Click to expand...

Good luck! Hopefully community solar becomes possible in CA as I think that would make owning a bit of PV possible for a lot of renters and people with suboptimal roofs.

Mallory...that is very cool! Glad your cat didn't get into the walls and get herself accidentally walled-up....that would have been a nightmare.

malloryk said:

I also wanted to show people that even if you're a renter, it's not out of the question to own an EV.

Click to expand...

Hey, I'm a renter, too. When I told the lady I rent from I wanted to get an EV, she said "congratulations" and gave me the name of the electrician she uses. I'll probably not see my LEAF for another year since I'm geographically disadvantaged (Pensylvania), but I don't think I'll have a problem once it gets here. Good luck with yours!

mal...,
When you have time, you should post a (perhaps edited) copy of your "pleading" letter(s) so that others will have a constructive example to follow.
Congrats, Gary