[good4watt]

Portland General Electric has quoted me roughly $6k to make the necessary upgrades to add the 400 amps (and 480v) necessary to run a DCFC, and I'm interested in following through (I have other plans that require electrical upgrades, so while this feels indulgent, it doesn't seem insane). Does anyone here have experience with installing a DCFC at home? I'm having trouble even finding a vendor who sells DCFCs that don't look like gas station pumps. Would love some recommendations, and any other input you care to share!

 

[ericy]

Portland General Electric has quoted me roughly $6k to make the necessary upgrades to add the 400 amps (and 480v) necessary to run a DCFC, and I'm interested in following through (I have other plans that require electrical upgrades, so while this feels indulgent, it doesn't seem insane). Does anyone here have experience with installing a DCFC at home? I'm having trouble even finding a vendor who sells DCFCs that don't look like gas station pumps. Would love some recommendations, and any other input you care to share!

I can't think of anyone who has DCFC at home. What power levels were you hoping to deliver?

 

[Spin]

Welcome to the group. I can't help you but good luck with that.

 

[good4watt]

I should have googled DCFC hardware costs before posting — looks like $20k on the low end, which is beyond my willingness... L2 will be fine!

 

[Manybees]

Not sure about availability, but this looks interesting:

Charge in Minutes, Drive for Hours - dcbel

dcbel’s electric vehicle charger bringsPremium DC charging to residential customers.

www.dcbel.energy

 

[good4watt]

Not sure about availability, but this looks interesting:

Charge in Minutes, Drive for Hours - dcbel

dcbel’s electric vehicle charger bringsPremium DC charging to residential customers.

www.dcbel.energy

Not available in my area (idk why region would be an issue — I've emailed and asked), but this looks promising and gives me hope there will be something better than L2 soon if not now!

 

[tochi312]

Highjacking the topic a little. We don't have L2 supporting wiring in our home. So we plugged in L1 but charging is slow with only 1kwh. Is the plugged in charger helping to keep the battery conditioned even when not charging? I read here that it does but could someone confirm?

My second question is about the setting to unlock the plug once charging completed. Does that also disconnect the car completely? I assume it does, so that battery conditioning is off as well.

 

[mcden]

Not available in my area (idk why region would be an issue — I've emailed and asked), but this looks promising and gives me hope there will be something better than L2 soon if not now!

Searching for an electric vehicle charger? Find it at Wallbox chargers

Wallbox is a smart electric vehicle charging and energy management provider which designs, manufactures and distributes electric vehicle charging technologies.

wallbox.com

 

[good4watt]

Highjacking the topic a little. We don't have L2 supporting wiring in our home. So we plugged in L1 but charging is slow with only 1kwh. Is the plugged in charger helping to keep the battery conditioned even when not charging? I read here that it does but could someone confirm?

My second question is about the setting to unlock the plug once charging completed. Does that also disconnect the car completely? I assume it does, so that battery conditioning is off as well.

Not sure, but I am sure you'll have better luck getting questions answered if you start your own thread! Not that I mind the post here.

 

[good4watt]

Searching for an electric vehicle charger? Find it at Wallbox chargers

Wallbox is a smart electric vehicle charging and energy management provider which designs, manufactures and distributes electric vehicle charging technologies.

wallbox.com

This looks great, thank you!

 

[sledgehammerface]

If you DCFC the car constantly, like daily, I'm pretty sure that will degrade the battery faster than normal.

 

[Nai3t]

If you DCFC the car constantly, like daily, I'm pretty sure that will degrade the battery faster than normal.

Say you were to pick up a 15 kW "home" DCFC, it'd be about the equivalent of charging a car on a 60 amp Level 2 charger.

It's important to put everything in relative perspective, ultimately any charge applied to the battery is DC current, whether it is AC converted by the car's onboard inverter or DC applied from an external unit. So really, it's all about current and heat.

You can make the same argument about charging at 48 amps vs. 24 amps L2, or 150 kW vs. 50 kW DCFC. In any comparison, slower / lower is generally going to be better for the battery, but there's no escaping the reality that using the battery will cause it to degrade -- as you point out we're just talking about managing the rate of degradation.

 

[wildpitcher]

Portland General Electric has quoted me roughly $6k to make the necessary upgrades to add the 400 amps (and 480v) necessary to run a DCFC, and I'm interested in following through (I have other plans that require electrical upgrades, so while this feels indulgent, it doesn't seem insane). Does anyone here have experience with installing a DCFC at home? I'm having trouble even finding a vendor who sells DCFCs that don't look like gas station pumps. Would love some recommendations, and any other input you care to share!

My question would be "why"? Is there a reason why you cannot charge at home over a period of hours?

I'm part owner of Portland General Electric, though, so my best wishes to you getting that done and paid

Dave

 

[Atlant]

If you DCFC the car constantly, like daily, I'm pretty sure that will degrade the battery faster than normal.

But DCFC at (say) 30 kW isn't the same thing as DCFC at (say) 150 kW.

There's nothing inherently stressful about the charge being delivered by Direct Current; the stress is in the high power levels.

 

[Huey52]

btw: Even given older wiring and a presumably "maxed out" service panel you should still be able to install a lower amperage throughput L2 240V EVSE. The 240V service entry wiring to your home should still be adequate to have a sub panel installed if necessary. The ID.4 has a specific lower amperage charge setting for older infrastructure, as well do many 'smart' EVSE's. This would be much more efficient than your L1.

Highjacking the topic a little. We don't have L2 supporting wiring in our home. So we plugged in L1 but charging is slow with only 1kwh. Is the plugged in charger helping to keep the battery conditioned even when not charging? I read here that it does but could someone confirm?

My second question is about the setting to unlock the plug once charging completed. Does that also disconnect the car completely? I assume it does, so that battery conditioning is off as well.

 

[sledgehammerface]

But DCFC at (say) 30 kW isn't the same thing as DCFC at (say) 150 kW.

There's nothing inherently stressful about the charge being delivered by Direct Current; the stress is in the high power levels.

thanks for the info, I have always thought there was something inherently stressful about direct current, I don't know why I thought that.

 

[Don]

Highjacking the topic a little. We don't have L2 supporting wiring in our home. So we plugged in L1 but charging is slow with only 1kwh.

If you have access to an outlet fed with 12 gauge wire with a 20 amp breaker, you should be able to charge at about 2Kw - 120 volts at 16 amps is 1920 watts. You can't do that with the EVSE that came with the car, but you can buy a 16 amp EVSE without spending too much

 

[Einar98281]

The original question was about recommendations for DCFC at home. I'll constrain my list to DC charging at home, at all levels of availability from potential to actual, that I've run across:

• Wallbox
• Nuvve.com
• dcbel.energy
• How the Emporia V2X Bi-Directional Charger Works
• Rectifier Technologies (https://www.rectifiertechnologies.com/type/chargers-power-systems/)
• Delta (Products - EV Charging - Delta)
• Qmerit (Fermata Energy | V2X Solutions)

 

[truthseeker]

Are you starting a taxi company? Buy several RWD Pro ID4.s and install several DCFC stalls.

If you are just purchasing a family vehicle, you need an L2 EVSE.

But, I hear robotaxis are around the corner, so it may make sense to get ready for a fleet of robotaxis.

 

[styxl]

Portland General Electric has quoted me roughly $6k to make the necessary upgrades to add the 400 amps (and 480v) necessary to run a DCFC, and I'm interested in following through (I have other plans that require electrical upgrades, so while this feels indulgent, it doesn't seem insane). Does anyone here have experience with installing a DCFC at home? I'm having trouble even finding a vendor who sells DCFCs that don't look like gas station pumps. Would love some recommendations, and any other input you care to share!

The utility costs are quote reasonable. My Utility quoted $13K, i wanted a 400 amps supply but the cost was simply too high since they needed to run another feed (phase), i gave up and settled for 50 amps (level 2). in retrospect (purely my opinion) anything over 100 amps for a house charger is overkill.