I have been charging my electric pickup truck off of an existing standard NEMA 5-15 (120 volt 15 amp) outlet next to our garage for over a year. [And occasionally running a cable out the door from our 240 volt dryer outlet to get a fast charge.]
Finally this summer I had an electrician run a 50 amp 240 volt circuit out to the side of the garage to put in a “real” charging station. Even though the existing Zivan NG3 240 volt charger will only use 12 amps at 240 volts, the NEMA 14-50 outlet gives me lots of room for improvement (240 volts at 40 amps max continuous draw, or 9.6 kilowatts). It also allows anybody with a super big RV to plug right in!
In addition to the NEMA 14-50 outlet, I also ran a GFCI 5-20 (120 volts at 20 amps) off of the same circuit, in case we want to max out 120 volt charging. The entire circuit runs through a sub-meter that easily allows me to read off how many kWh of electricity the truck uses. So far it’s averaging out to about 7-10% of our total monthly electricity usage. (The small plug at the bottom left of the above picture is the original NEMA 5-15 outlet.)
2 comments ↓
Looks a little fishy, is that meter there for your incoming house power? or the outlet load? how is that receptacle panel fed? Other than that, awesome!!! really wish I had a 50 amp receptacle on the outside of my house. Then again I wish I had 3 phase 480 VAC coming in but we can always get that. sorry for the grilling. (Electrician in training)
The houses’ incoming power meter is elsewhere, near the main circuit breaker panel, and is one of the new radio/electronic ones provided by the utility.
The 50 amp (6 gauge) wire from the main breaker panel comes through the brick wall behind the check-meter (sub-meter). This meter is simply to measure/display the draw through these outdoor outlets so that I can tell how much power my electric truck is using on a day/week/month basis. I chose the “easy read” digit display instead of mechanical dials to make it easy to read or just take a photo with my phone. Whenever I park the truck I take a photo of the odometer, and whenever I unplug it I take a photo of the meter. Every week or so I enter all the data into a spreadsheet to track total “from the wall” electricity usage vs miles.
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