evse recommendations?

I live in a place that not only has no incentives/tax benefits to EVs, but some places are actively trying to tax them because they don't pay fuel duty. And they wonder why Australia has the lowest EV uptake of at least the industrialised nations, and probably the world....

 

With my poor timing of doing this stuff too late for 2020 tax year, I, too, was grateful to see the extension of the benefit through 2021. Secretary of T. Pete B. has our back!

 

We actually did it thinking we'd get at least one credit offered to us since I missed out on the car credit. Plus installing in Oct weather wise is better than January lol

One sibling has started but never finished installing. Maybe this will be their year and still get the credit

Sometimes I think if people didn’t see Tesla as just a status symbol, we'd be worse than we are. Some regions are far more EV friendly than others. Mine really kind of stinks. We punish EV users with excessive cost on car registration. I'll be paying roughly 5x more to help keep roads up than I did while driving ICE. Really stupid.

 

ABRP supposedly takes into account elevation changes when traveling, which is really nice if true. I also would like to know what specific values to enter for the detailed settings for the SE, since they haven't baked that car model in yet. One thing I find amusingly incorrect for the SE is the starting SoC defaults to 80% instead of 100%. Maybe we could, as a group, resolve the technical details and come up with a reference configuration for our beloved EV.

 

I noticed that 80%, as well, when I checked the app yesterday.

 

I assume the 80% is there due to time for fast charging. That last 20% takes longer than most would be willing to stop for time wise

 

When I saw the 80% default, I decided ABRP must assume MINI SE owners need to protect the longevity their batteries the way Tesla owners do by charging to only 80%. @Lainey, your explanation makes more sense.

 

There's a separate setting for recharge max percentage. I was referring to the start charge from home, where that last 20% wouldn't be an issue. I'm sure it's an assumption made based on Tesla, where owners rarely charge above 80%. I'm with @insightman.

 

When starting a new trip plan in ABRP, it would be nice if it wou

I noticed the same thing when checking out the app. The start charge value should be 100% for the Mini and not 80%.

 

Gotcha! I looked some at this and it was buggy on my tablet so I couldn't see that it didn't start at 100%.

That makes sense - and is kind of silly since many do charge more than Teslas do. But given Tesla was 1st on the drop down, I assume that's who they cater to?

 

ugh.
Ugh.
UGH!

Now I have conflicting electrician stories.

I had an electrician visit today for estimating. He suggested 60amps, even with my house having a max of 100amps service.

This leads me to a fundamental lack of understanding of how this works. Let's say, for instance, that I get a 60amp circuit, and overnight, the washing machine and dryer are running when the car kicks in to recharge, and, for good measure, the boiler pumps kick in as the house pre-heats for the day. Let's also say the fridge kicks in for a moment, the desktop computer is running (always does) and the usual trickle charge of every device, as well as phones recharging etc.

What happens if this draw exceeds 100amps? Does the main circuit flip and protect the house? Or does something explode?

More importantly, how can I measure the maximum draw of the house today?

 

The 100 amp circuit breaker *should* just trip and disable if you exceed it. The best way to measure the maximum draw is to figure out what time of day most of the biggest power draws are turned on. Where I live, it's during a hot summer day when the air conditioning kicks in. Then you can write down the meter number, wait an hour, then check and see the difference. That will give you a good *average* of your peak. It's possible you may have immediate load spikes; those can happen for brief periods, like when your appliances turn on/off. The only way I know to measure those is to get a device like a Kill-A-Watt and plug your device into it. That will give you can instantaneous reading, but it only works for appliances that run on 120V and that you can plug directly into the device.

Over time I've recorded what the maximum draw is for nearly all of the devices in my house; the ones I pay most attention to are the ones with very large motors or compressors, and heating elements. So that means I worry about the air conditioning, electric ovens, clothes washers/dryers, toaster ovens and hair dryers and portable space heaters. The next step down are things like computers, treadmill, TVs. There are high-draw devices that are *very* short in duration like blenders, vacuum cleaners.

I have a 200A breaker and I don't think I've ever come close to exceeding even 100A, so your electrician *might* have a point. But the other thing to consider is what he's good at - he may be steering you towards a bigger circuit because that's what he's good at installing, whereas someone who is good at doing panel replacements and pulling permits would advocate for a 200A panel.

I'd get yet another opinion, but it appears you've already done that and it's just adding to the confusion.

 

If you're going to just have the MINI SE, a 40 A circuit is fine since it won't draw more than 7.4 kW (31 A) (draw has to be under 80% of circuit max). That should be okay on your existing 100 A service. When I did my install I had the wiring put in for a 60 A circuit (heavier gauge) but with a 40 A circuit breaker, since replacing the circuit breaker is relatively easy compared to replacing the wiring if I need more power for future vehicles.

If you add a second EV down the road that would be the time to consider what it would cost to add another 100 A service to your home.

As for measuring load, at one point I thought of a DIY project like the Not So Tiny Power Meter, but I don't have the courage to take the cover off my circuit panel to add the clamps.



And today I came across the Span Smart Panel, something like that will definitely be considered if and when I get my solar installation.

 

This is my third quote, and the first one was the one to alert me to the capacity issue, but none of them did any kind of measurement or estimation. The guy today was talking about 40amp or 60amp because they've done so many Tesla installs. I'd be curious to specify 40amp and now I have the desire to run some experiments to use the meter reading to estimate something.

I don't have electric heat or AC, so I think the biggest draws for me, particularly at the time of night I would recharge, would be:

• Washer/Dryer (sometimes we run them before we go to bed)
• Dishwasher (can be programmed to run overnight)
• Radiant Heat pumps (in the winter, it starts up between 1am and 4am, which means the pumps run to circulate the heated water)

I just looked at my meter, and discovered that it has a rotating display. It shows the regular kWh number, with no decimal points, but then it cycles to show kW, which when I looked at it, changed between 0.5 and 0.6 something before cycling on to show me the current voltage (some number slightly above 240). I am not sure, but wouldn't I be able to run some tests and just look at the meter to see what the momentary amperage load is? I mean, couldn't I force my heat to go on when my Washer and Dryer are running and see what the kW number is, getting a sense of what capacity I have left when those things are running?

I could even do that in the evening when we have our probable maximum consumption, just to be sure...

 

Washer typically is about 7-8A. Dryer, if electric, could burst up to 25A or so; you can check the plate on the back of the dryer. Even a gas dryer will use 7-8A sporadically to turn on the electric starting element. I have no idea about radiant heat pumps.

Your electric meter seems to be a good indicator about how much power you are using. If you have the ability to turn off everything in your house briefly, and then turn on something that has known power load like a higher powered incandescent lamp, that could give you a good indicator on what units the power meter is telling you.

 

It is plainly labelled "Kw" at that cycle. I have seen some formulas that if you know the Kw and the Voltage, you can calculate Amperage, I think, but I would want someone with more electrical knowledge to make sure I'm interpreting correctly.

 

How does the Mini charge at 31A? I thought the onboard charger was capped at 16A.

For the rest of the discussion, those numbers look really excessive unless the cost is negligible or you are planning on adding additional EVs. I have 2 EVs and the other is about half as efficient as the Mini. I could get by just fine on 30A total in almost any situation, but have a 50A line delivering 40A (80% rule).

 

The SE can charge at 7.4 kW on a 240-Volt EVSE, so 7400 Watts/240 Volts = 30.83 Amps.

 

The default is at 3.8kWh (just under 16A) but you can go into settings and change it to 7.4. That was one of the first things I did.

 

Yeah, the manual is very confusing and inconsistent on all this. However, I have confirmed on my JuiceBox that the Mini does indeed charge at 31A / 240V.