My first real post. I wanted to share my experience installing a home EV charging circuit.
Background:
-I live in Arizona in a house with 2 floors, so 2x 5 ton AC units, a large-ish pool with 2x 240v pumps, and a 3 car garage that of course is on the exact opposite side of the house from my electrical panel.
-House was built in 1998 with a 200A service main panel. You’d think that this would be great, but wait…
- I had solar panels installed about 7 years ago via a solar lease. I love them, but…
-I just picked up a 1yr old 2024 AT in July that came with the Lucid 40A mobile charger, but not a home charger. First EV in the family. So, I needed/wanted to install a permanent home charger that charges the Air a little faster than a standard wall outlet.
Because the garage is so far away from the main panel, I had an electrician do the work, mainly because my wife didn’t “want me to kill myself”. I promised her my life insurance was paid up, but she wouldn’t buy that. I knew it would be a complicated job, and in the end, I’m glad I listened to her. I probably wouldn’t have killed myself, but I likely would have spent 3x the time and made many mistakes along the way that a professional electrician didn’t make,
Whenever I say “we” below, it means my electrician and me. We did a lot of text/phone/email discussions, and lucky for me, I was able to be home for the duration of the install.
We could have run the circuit either through the ceiling of the first floor or dug a trench through the front yard and under the front walkway to get to the garage. We picked the inside/ceiling route mainly to avoid having to have a conduit exposed on the outside of my garage wall, which would have been visible from the front entrance walkway. Also, this might have influenced things, as I don’t think my electrician would have been happy with me asking him to dig a 50ft+ trench in 100+deg weather. We ended up using about 70ft of wire all-in.
I also wanted to future-proof as much as possible to avoid cutting drywall again, so I asked my electrician to install as big a wire as possible/allowable under code, even if we were going to use a smaller breaker now and not need the bigger wire.
A major complication to the charger circuit install was my solar install. Because of the solar system, my main breakers had to be derated to 150A per NEC. This, combined with my other big loads (2x 5ton ACs, 2x pool pumps, elec clothes dryer, elec stovetop, etc), meant I was almost at my 150A limit even before installing the charging circuit. I didn’t want to pay $20k plus to upgrade the service to 400A, so I had to make some compromises.
According to my electrician, we needed to install a load limiter to manage the load on the charger circuit to not trip the mains and be able to pass inspection. The electrician quoted me $800 for that, but I discovered that Wallbox makes a load manager that works with their PulsarPlus for $300. So, I picked the Wallbox instead of others like a Chargepoint Flex or the Lucid Home Charger. That also allows me to install a 2nd Wallbox charger if my wife and I ever get a 2nd EV and need to charge both vehicles at the same time. The Wallbox passed inspection for the permit, so we’re all good there, and I saved about $500 doing that vs what my electrician quoted me. I just paid for install of the load manager.
We ended up using a 60A breaker for the 48A hardwired Wallbox PulsarPlus, with the amperage dynamically limited by the Wallbox load manager. I expect during summers, I’d see capped charging circuit amps every once in a while.
My electrician swore that with my desire to future-proof and be able to support a 100A circuit in the future, we could use 4AWG wire, and that the City of Phoenix would not even allow a bigger wire. Since the Wallbox only goes up to 48A, I won’t have to worry about that now, but I fear I or a future owner might need to pull 2AWG to support a 100A circuit, esp if I/they decide to do a V2H solution.
I found this electrician via Lucid/Qmerit and picked them over a couple of others, including the one I usually use, mainly because of their professionalism. They were the only ones who said the work required a permit. Three others basically implied that they could do the work without a permit as long as I didn’t ask too many questions. That spooked me a bit.
So, in summary, here’s what I learned:
-Need a permit for work like this
-Wallbox is a good choice if you need a load manager. Their docs are a bit hard to find and the website is a bit janky, but once installed, it seemed to work great.
-Getting solar for a house is great, but watch out for derating of the main breakers. Dropping the main service from 200A to 150A, esp in a house with a lot of other electrical usage like mine, is a big issue to contend with.
-When I buy my next house, I will damn sure check locations of all utilities. If anyone could design a track home with a worse utilities layout than mine, I’d be shocked
Hope this helps anyone considering a new charging circuit install.
Background:
-I live in Arizona in a house with 2 floors, so 2x 5 ton AC units, a large-ish pool with 2x 240v pumps, and a 3 car garage that of course is on the exact opposite side of the house from my electrical panel.
-House was built in 1998 with a 200A service main panel. You’d think that this would be great, but wait…
- I had solar panels installed about 7 years ago via a solar lease. I love them, but…
-I just picked up a 1yr old 2024 AT in July that came with the Lucid 40A mobile charger, but not a home charger. First EV in the family. So, I needed/wanted to install a permanent home charger that charges the Air a little faster than a standard wall outlet.
Because the garage is so far away from the main panel, I had an electrician do the work, mainly because my wife didn’t “want me to kill myself”. I promised her my life insurance was paid up, but she wouldn’t buy that. I knew it would be a complicated job, and in the end, I’m glad I listened to her. I probably wouldn’t have killed myself, but I likely would have spent 3x the time and made many mistakes along the way that a professional electrician didn’t make,
Whenever I say “we” below, it means my electrician and me. We did a lot of text/phone/email discussions, and lucky for me, I was able to be home for the duration of the install.
We could have run the circuit either through the ceiling of the first floor or dug a trench through the front yard and under the front walkway to get to the garage. We picked the inside/ceiling route mainly to avoid having to have a conduit exposed on the outside of my garage wall, which would have been visible from the front entrance walkway. Also, this might have influenced things, as I don’t think my electrician would have been happy with me asking him to dig a 50ft+ trench in 100+deg weather. We ended up using about 70ft of wire all-in.
I also wanted to future-proof as much as possible to avoid cutting drywall again, so I asked my electrician to install as big a wire as possible/allowable under code, even if we were going to use a smaller breaker now and not need the bigger wire.
A major complication to the charger circuit install was my solar install. Because of the solar system, my main breakers had to be derated to 150A per NEC. This, combined with my other big loads (2x 5ton ACs, 2x pool pumps, elec clothes dryer, elec stovetop, etc), meant I was almost at my 150A limit even before installing the charging circuit. I didn’t want to pay $20k plus to upgrade the service to 400A, so I had to make some compromises.
According to my electrician, we needed to install a load limiter to manage the load on the charger circuit to not trip the mains and be able to pass inspection. The electrician quoted me $800 for that, but I discovered that Wallbox makes a load manager that works with their PulsarPlus for $300. So, I picked the Wallbox instead of others like a Chargepoint Flex or the Lucid Home Charger. That also allows me to install a 2nd Wallbox charger if my wife and I ever get a 2nd EV and need to charge both vehicles at the same time. The Wallbox passed inspection for the permit, so we’re all good there, and I saved about $500 doing that vs what my electrician quoted me. I just paid for install of the load manager.
We ended up using a 60A breaker for the 48A hardwired Wallbox PulsarPlus, with the amperage dynamically limited by the Wallbox load manager. I expect during summers, I’d see capped charging circuit amps every once in a while.
My electrician swore that with my desire to future-proof and be able to support a 100A circuit in the future, we could use 4AWG wire, and that the City of Phoenix would not even allow a bigger wire. Since the Wallbox only goes up to 48A, I won’t have to worry about that now, but I fear I or a future owner might need to pull 2AWG to support a 100A circuit, esp if I/they decide to do a V2H solution.
I found this electrician via Lucid/Qmerit and picked them over a couple of others, including the one I usually use, mainly because of their professionalism. They were the only ones who said the work required a permit. Three others basically implied that they could do the work without a permit as long as I didn’t ask too many questions. That spooked me a bit.
So, in summary, here’s what I learned:
-Need a permit for work like this
-Wallbox is a good choice if you need a load manager. Their docs are a bit hard to find and the website is a bit janky, but once installed, it seemed to work great.
-Getting solar for a house is great, but watch out for derating of the main breakers. Dropping the main service from 200A to 150A, esp in a house with a lot of other electrical usage like mine, is a big issue to contend with.
-When I buy my next house, I will damn sure check locations of all utilities. If anyone could design a track home with a worse utilities layout than mine, I’d be shocked
Hope this helps anyone considering a new charging circuit install.