wanderingjustin said:
The best place to run a new line for ESVE is on the side of my house, which is close to the electrical panel. But it's also exposed to what little rain we get here. Any problems with that if I want to do a plug-in station instead of hard wired?
I park my RAV4EV outside in front of the right-most garage bay, and have my
OpenEVSE with 24' J1772 cord plugged in to an exterior-mounted outdoor receptacle. That model comes with a short 14-50P pigtail, so it can be hardwired or configured to plug in to a receptacle. Because my garages are unfinished inside (ie no interior wallboard), and my breaker panels are all on that same wall on the right, it was a snap for me to add a 50A 240v breaker and run ~25' of 4C 6ga wire to the new 14-50R receptacle.
[A couple of years ago we had a master bath remodel, and I specified that a subpanel be installed to accommodate future expansion, and to move my milling machine off the main panel; the 1996-era panel was maxed-out in terms of space for more breakers, due in part to an after-built A/C installation. Not everybody's panel will have room for an add'l 50A dual breaker. I recommend against the half-size form factor "peanut" breakers.]
This EVSE and receptacle are under a pretty large eave, but we do get a lot of rain here in the Seattle area, and this setup is never wet in the morning when I disconnect, except during windstorms with rain. I did have to prune that tree a bit, to be able to get around the corner easily without dumping a bunch of water off the leaves onto me every morning
I bought a
Talon LGP1S outdoor receptacle, about $40. It's well-made, apparently in Georgia. There are good user-supplied pictures in the reviews at the Ama-zon link. It's designed for RV campgrounds, gensets, etc. so it's OK for exposed-to-weather, though my situation keeps it fairly well protected.
Four-conductor 6 gauge wire isn't cheap. I had purchased 100' of it to install a second range in the mudroom/garage 1st bay a few years back (in lieu of remodeling the kitchen for a double-oven, installing a second range in the garage for holidays was the compromise), so I had enough wire left over from that project, but unless you can buy wire by the foot, budget close to $200 for 100' coil of it.
I added a $30 Costco-sourced (
Sunforce) solar LED motion-detecting light under the eave a few months ago, because it's very dark in winter when I leave for work at 0530, and the black J1772 connector and black holster make mating them for storage a PITA. The light really helps, and turns itself off after I leave. Unfortunately, this class of solar/motion detector lighting has a really bad reputation for longevity, reliability. I bought three of these, and none of them have a functional timer: they work only in "test mode", which is around seven seconds ON time. Works OK for my situation, but I returned the other two after I tested them. Lots of complaints from folks online about that problem and this model. All this consumer-class lighting from China is a crap-shoot, IMO.
If you see pictures above this, they are clickable for larger versions.
[I see that I've configured my OpenEVSE to 42A, though technically it should be set to 40A (40A x 1.25 safety margin = 50A breaker). I suppose I should reconfigure it.]
If I were to do it again, I would probably look hard at a
JuiceBox EVSE, as it seems to have more features, but honestly I don't need 'em. After a quick configure, the OpenEVSE has "just worked" for nine months, and I like that in a product. I haven't even set up its WiFi, because I don't really need it.
