NEMA 6-20 charger recommendation for 2017 Leaf

We just purchased a 2017 Leaf. Of course the 110v charger it came with is painfully slow. We have an existing 220v NEMA 6-20 style outlet in our garage. We have baseboard electric heat, and this 220v outlet shares a 20 amp breaker with the baseboards in two rooms. The house was built in 1978 and we've owned it for 23 years and I've never used this NEMA 6-20 outlet, but it is hot and ready to charge. Our panel is of the 1978 era. We have a recent solar installation, and I think our service is 200 amps.

Questions:
1. Is there a recommended Level 2 charger for this scenario? In other words, a NEMA 6-20 plug on a 20 amp breaker.
2. Am I going to run into issues with charging on the same 20 amp breaker as two baseboard heaters?
3. Is there a resource for figuring out all the amps versus kW rating versus charging time stuff?

My wife's coworker has a charging station with a clothes dryer plug type (not sure what type that is) and he's talking about coming here and replacing the outlet, putting in a breaker, etc (we actually don't have any empty breaker blanks) and I just want one we can plug into the existing outlet without messing around. Thanks.

Welcome. You will have to not use the baseboard heaters at all while the car is charging. Since the code limit is 80% of the circuit's rated capacity, you can pull up to 16 amps for the car - but ONLY if there is nothing else beyond an LED light bulb or two using it at the time. I suggest you get either a charging cable or station rated for 16 amps, or an adjustable one with 16 amps as one of the choices. I also suggest that you have the wiring inspected; if it's aluminum, it needs to be properly connected to deal with the heat produced by charging an EV.

Thanks. So, if the 220v outlet is charging the car and one (or both) of the baseboards are on, what happens? It trips the breaker? Or worse? Sorry I don't know much about electricity. The existing outlet has "12AWG/2 Triangle Wire and Cable UL Type NM-B with ground 600 volts" supplying it. I'm fairly sure it's copper. Our original panel is full. As I mentioned, we have relatively new solar and there is a new panel for the solar on the exterior directly opposite the panel in the garage interior, which is next to the existing 220v NEMA 6-20 outlet. We mentioned possibly getting an electric car to the solar installer (two years ago) and I recall her saying we could add a breaker to the panel where the solar connects.

I guess I'll have to get an electrician. I really wanted to just plug in a 16 amp 220 charger, as you said, to the existing outlet and be done with it. But the two baseboards on that circuit are living room and master bedroom. In the winter at night, we wouldn't be able to shut those off in order to charge the car. One possibility is that another 20 amp 220v circuit appears to only be used by the bathroom baseboard, which is only 3' long! We could easily shut that off at night. I'm thinking we could move the 220v garage outlet to that circuit, if that's possible. We have 8 220v breakers occupying pairs of slots in the panel; 5 are used by the baseboards (plus 1 with the 220v garage outlet), and 3 are used by the range (40A), water heater (30A), and clothes dryer (30A). The oven/range is on a 40 amp breaker so perhaps that's another possibility.

Still curious about my question #3 - how do volts, charging kW rating, amps, 30 kWh battery size, all relate to each other versus charging time?

Rather than give that answer in detail, possibly messing it up, I'll answer briefly and let someone with better math skills answer in detail. Basically, you multiply the voltage (usually 240 volts these days) by the amperage to get the wattage. Every thousand watts is a kilowatt. When you take into account storage of watts/kilowatts over time, that's expressed in kilowatt-hours. 1000 watts = 1 kilowatt. `Released or stored over 1 hour, that's a kilowatt-hour. EVs store kilowatt-hours, but when they just use energy or take it in, that rate of 'movement' of kilowatts is expressed as just kilowatts - no hours involved. That confuses people, to put it mildly...

You can purchase an inexpensive EVSE with a 6-20 plug off Amazon(or other places) that will give you 3.8kw charging, by comparison, a standard 120v EVSE like the one that comes with a Leaf will only put out 1.4kw so in your case 240v would give you almost 3x the charging speed. That said as Leftie said and I agree, with a 3.8kw charger on your 20a circuit you will basically have nothing left, at least for high-powered things like a heater, even a 3' heater.
I have this $95(customer return) 16a 3.8kw 240/120v EVSE and really like it, it has the plug type your talking about, it even has adjustable current so may be possible to use something else on the same circuit as long as you don't exceed a total of 16a.
https://www.amazon.com/Anbull-Charger-Portable-Electric-Charging/dp/B09HG8TV8K/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Heres an even cheaper one at $50 that I also own but don't like as much. You'd have to purchase an outlet adapter to work with your 6-20 outlet and I'm not particularly found of the type of outlet converter you'd need. At $50 it's also a customer return and doesn't have a display which I kind of like and itn't adjustable but is inexpensive for sure.. I have reviews on both EVSE for more info. Amazon also sells lots of other inexpensive EVSEs, I just linked a few I have personal experience with.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095GY4WT5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Oh and I don't believe they really used low amperage AU wire in homes much past '75 or maybe '76 so if yours is a '78 you should be fine but I guess it wouldn't hurt to look but I doubt it would have AU.

Forgetting all the math (which is important), I still use my (original) Nissan NEMA 6-20 charger...albeit on a NEMA 14-30 socket with an adapter. My point is: if you can find one of those "old" EVSE's on eBay (or wherever), you're golden...because they never break!
And don't do those baseboard heaters (or whatever they are) on the same outlet.

Thanks again for the help and suggestions. I think I have charge time estimates figured out. The 21 hour estimate for a 110 volt charger was throwing me off. 1 watt = 1 volt at 1 amp per second (= 1 joule). So, a 30 kW battery / 21 hours = 1.429 kWh charging rate (=1429 Wh). 1429 / 110 volts = 13. They're using 110 volts at 13 amps to get the 21 hour estimate. (21 hours * 110v * 13A = 30000 = 30 Kwh battery capacity). Similarly, the "6-7 hour" estimate at 240v: 30000 Wh / 240v / 20A = 6.25 hours. So for that estimate, you're on a 20 amp circuit.

The missing info in these time estimates is that they're not telling you what the amp value used is.

Now here's another question for the electrical gurus - the onboard charger is 6.6 kW, which appears to be a maximum rate. Dividing that by 240v, I get 27.5 amps. So even if I had a 40 amp circuit, it seems like it would be maxed out at 27.5 amps anyway. I'm curious because my wife's coworker was talking about installing a 50 amp breaker. If the car won't take more than a rate of 27.5 amps, why?

So far on the 110v outlet we're getting about 5 miles of range per hour, which lines up with 110v at 13 amps. It seems adequate but it might be nice to not have to plug it in every night.

I'll get an electrician. Now I'm thinking we could move the one bathroom baseboard to another circuit that has two shorter baseboards, leaving that circuit solely for the 220v outlet for charging. We have 18 linear feet on two of the circuits and 11 feet on the other two.

The level 1 EVSE is slow, but in my case meets my needs.

You have a 6 year old 2017 with 30KWH battery.

How many miles do you need per day and how long does it take to get that with your current level 1? Will an over night charge get what you need?

I use a level 1 16 amp EVSE because I have an available 20 amp circuit with only one plug. I am getting 7-8 GOM miles added per hour of charging. The 12 amp EVSE was getting 5-6 GOM miles added per hour.

GOM Guess-O-Meter range estimate.
2023 Leaf S

Now here's another question for the electrical gurus - the onboard charger is 6.6 kW, which appears to be a maximum rate. Dividing that by 240v, I get 27.5 amps. So even if I had a 40 amp circuit, it seems like it would be maxed out at 27.5 amps anyway. I'm curious because my wife's coworker was talking about installing a 50 amp breaker. If the car won't take more than a rate of 27.5 amps, why?

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It's called "Future Proofing". People install charging equipment that can handle the charging speed of a Tesla/Lightning/Porsche, in case they one day drive one. Future proofing is sort of like an in-ground swimming pool: nice if you can have it, but don't create a financial hardship for the sake of something you may drive in ten years.

Also if they will have an outlet there isn't a 40a outlet, you'd need a 50a outlet which the code allows to be hooked to a 40a breaker as there isn't a 40a outlet. So now you'll have a 50a outlet with a 40a breaker that someone could plug in something like an RV and draw over 40a, tripping the 40a breaker.
Now that's what I have but I have a label on the outlet saying 40a breaker but I did use 50a wiring so all I'd need to make it a 50a is to replace the breaker. I used a 40a breaker as that's what I had and I knew the Leaf would never draw more than 27.5a but wiring is more expensive to replace so I just paid a little more to future-proof my setup.

It's called "Future Proofing".

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That probably explains it. After his Leaf the guy has owned two Teslas and I think might be waiting on a third one. I don't know which Leaf he owned. I should have taken a picture of the wall mounted charging station he wanted to give us. I guess it was an EVSE-RS. The thing weighed about 30 pounds. I don't know what the large white cylinder thing does, but it seemed like overkill. It's 35A and charging rate of 7 Kw. If the car only takes 6.6 Kw max, I'm not sure what the point would be. I'll continue to poke around and learn about this stuff.

LeftieBiker said:

Now here's another question for the electrical gurus - the onboard charger is 6.6 kW, which appears to be a maximum rate. Dividing that by 240v, I get 27.5 amps. So even if I had a 40 amp circuit, it seems like it would be maxed out at 27.5 amps anyway. I'm curious because my wife's coworker was talking about installing a 50 amp breaker. If the car won't take more than a rate of 27.5 amps, why?

Click to expand...

It's called "Future Proofing". People install charging equipment that can handle the charging speed of a Tesla/Lightning/Porsche, in case they one day drive one. Future proofing is sort of like an in-ground swimming pool: nice if you can have it, but don't create a financial hardship for the sake of something you may drive in ten years.

Click to expand...

A 40 Amp circuit is maxed out at 80% continuous, or 32 amps, as electrical code limits continuous draws to 80% of circuit capacity.

A 50 Amp is maxed out at 40 Amps. This is the largest allowable plug in. 240V*40A and 3 miles per kWh gives something like 300 miles overnight. Seems unlikely you would need more on any frequent basis... unless you are doing Taxi service or similar.

J1772 specification goes to 80 Amps, if you want. I largely don't see the point, unless you plan on a vehicle to home setup with both a huge battery in the car and a power hungry house.