Just Purchased 2018 Leaf SV with 20K

duplicate post

^^ I don't doubt that is a nice solution, but it might be an expensive one. It also presumes that his electrical panel can support the load without an upgrade.

OP will have to balance cost with desired charging speed

His current 30 Amp circuit supports ~ 5 kW charging as is -- about 20 miles of EV range an hour. That is almost certainly well within his car usage demands so he should understand that nothing is forcing him to upgrade the wiring (and perhaps more). He has a choice.

If he decides to keep his wiring, he will either use the EVSE he already has or buy another, but one way or another the EVSE will be max rated for a 30 Amp breaker and have a 3 prong plug*. I gather that dryer circuits are two hot wires and a neutral. Since the EVSE plug is two hot wires and a ground wire, that will have to be resolved

- I've read that some 14-30 EVSE play games with the neutral and ground, sometimes leaving the neutral prong unconnected; at other times tying the neutral and ground together. This is above my pay grade, other than realizing that the circuit has to be consistent, meaning that the connections in the panel match the plug. The underlying gotcha here is that 10-30 is a legacy standard that is not allowed for new installations. So no EVSE 10-30 plugs, and a requirement to use the non-energized wire as a ground in 3 wire circuits where EV charging is concerned.

donaldus said:

Brought my 2018 Leaf SV home today. Called electrician to install 240v charger included in the deal. My first ev, also have an Endurance on order, so the Leaf is the “testbed” for this old guy!

Click to expand...

I think only one person said congrats before the thread got sidetracked.

Congrats!

I have a 2018 and while not perfect by any means, it is a great car for certain use cases.
Its real weakness (besides maybe range) is the issues with repeated DC fast charges.
I live in a hot area and knew that, so I never planned to travel with it. Daily driver in town car.

Congrats again!

Some models of wall-mounted chargers (oh wait, I'm so sorry - 240V EVSEs) allow dip switch setting of the max output current, 16a (20 amp service), 24a (30 amp service), etc.

Did anyone have code official confusion by installing a smaller feed circuit? (they are probably trained everything requires a 50 amp service).

FYI, these are continuous duty devices, so the dedicated feed circuit must be 125% of the output rating. Here's a chart from the Chargepoint Manual:

Circuit Rating Max Load Estimated Range per Hour Plug-in Hardwire
50 A 40 A 30 miles/48 km yes yes
40 A 32 A 25 miles/40 km yes yes
30 A 24 A 18 miles/29 km no yes
20 A 16 A 12 miles/19 km no yes

Comparison: 120V Level 1 Recall somewhere around 4 miles of range per hour

I'm not a NEC expert but I would assume than any device with a 50A rated plug requires a 50A circuit. Hard-wired units could be different if as in this case, switches could be flipped to set different amperage ratings but I have no idea how that would be handled. Honestly, if it was my house and I owned the EVSE and set the switches myself, I'd just put a sign on it to indicate the max setting and leave it like that. Whether that would satisfy an inspector I don't know.