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DIY Home EV Charger

jamesfotherby.com

101–110 of 195 posts

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evse (misnamed charger here) needs to reduce the amperage based on what the car side wants. So it does more than just pass mains voltage.

This completely goes against my understanding of electricity. The correct amount of amps are pulled by the plugged in device, and it doesn't matter how much are available at the supply side (as long as it meets the minimum.)

Yes, this goes against my understanding as well. I don't think the laws of physics changed that much in the last few years, but I could be wrong.

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#102
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm disappointed at the anti-DIY sentiments here, it's this safety obsessed mentality that got us to where kids can't walk outside by themselves any longer. Just no? That analogy is EXTREMELY strained. From his own link: A word about safety. I’m not an electrician. I’m not allowed to make alterations to my consumer unit. I let my kids play outside all the time solo and with friends without supervision. On the flip s…

> would nullify my homeowners insurance What is up with this common refrain? One of the main functions of insurance is to indemnify you against your own negligence. Let's say you turn a small stovetop fire into a house fire by trying to put it out with water - the insurance company doesn't just get to stiff you because you were responsible for causing the problem. Are there actually prevalent and enforceable weasel c…

That refrain is common enough that I even ended up reading my homeowners policy, and I didn't find anything in there that excluded unpermitted work, even if I did the work myself, even if I failed to follow code.

And if you think about it, such an exclusion would be crazy. The average homeowner is in no position to judge whether the work someone they hired does exceeds the scope of their license, or whether all the details of the work that need a permit get one, or whether work any work that doesn't get inspected is in fact done to code. Furthermore, the average homeowner isn't the original owner of their house, and is in no position to know what tomfoolery the prior owner might have done.

For those of you out there that are certain that DIY electrical work voids your homeowners insurance, can you prove any evidence to support your claim? A local news story about a guy whose homeowners insurance denied him because he DIY'ed something in good faith? A FAQ page from an insurer that says that DIY'ing something voids the insurance? Anything other than a vague reference to there being a lot of words in your policy and it gets interpreted through the lens of an enormous body of caselaw and the insurance company can afford more lawyers than you?

Insurance regularly pays out when people do stupid stuff and cause a loss to their own insured property, as long as they weren't trying to do damage. Doing stupid stuff that happens to involve electricity doesn't seem any different to me. And frankly, building your own L2 charger after much research and thinking about the safety aspects seems like a far cry from a "here hold my beer" moment.

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#103
Disagree with the fire risk comments, even if it burns it's outside in a suitable enclosure.

The real problem here is DIY RCD with microcontroller in the loop. The soldering on the high voltage wires is absolutely horrendous and if those come loose and the enclosure or chassis becomes live you are trusting your life on the atmel interrupt delay and software. Good luck!

Edit: it's not even an interrupt, its just part of the Arduino loop(): https://github.com/fotherja/EV_Charger/blob/main/EV_Charger....

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#104

I'm disappointed at the anti-DIY sentiments here, it's this safety obsessed mentality that got us to where kids can't walk outside by themselves any longer. The box in that guy's build is outside and could probably burn to a crisp without hurting anything else. I suspect it would not hurt anything even inside a garage, other than making a lot of smoke and setting off smoke detectors.

>I'm disappointed at the anti-DIY sentiment How would you feel about a "DIY House Circuit Breakers" project? This is essentially the equivalent. Total insanity.

I disagree - the actual current switching electronics are off-the-shelf relays. It's more like "didn't use a GFCI or AFCI breaker where one is required, but did try to address the same safety hazard those breakers address, in a way that wasn't as good as such a breaker, but isn't totally incompetent"

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#105

I'm disappointed at the anti-DIY sentiments here, it's this safety obsessed mentality that got us to where kids can't walk outside by themselves any longer. The box in that guy's build is outside and could probably burn to a crisp without hurting anything else. I suspect it would not hurt anything even inside a garage, other than making a lot of smoke and setting off smoke detectors.

Don't DIY what you can buy.

[deleted]

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#106
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 100% right, but it not being "high voltage" is totally negated by the fact that the two legs together will kill me if it seeks ground via the right (wrong?) path for sure.

Don't work with a live panel.

I know a few electricians, and none of them would agree with you. There's some things that can't be done safely on a live panel, but there are some things that can.

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evse (misnamed charger here) needs to reduce the amperage based on what the car side wants. So it does more than just pass mains voltage.

This completely goes against my understanding of electricity. The correct amount of amps are pulled by the plugged in device, and it doesn't matter how much are available at the supply side (as long as it meets the minimum.)

[deleted]

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#108
post #28

Given what's in this, why are EVSEs so expensive? Given the quantities we see, the $150 range should be more than enough for a decent profit.

Well there is also software... I really liked go-eCharger HOME+ 11kW, because it has 3-phase "European connector" and I can go almost anywhere in europe take it with me and charge there... I usually take it with me when I go to my parents so I don't have to stop on way at fast charger... Anyway.. I paid 650EUR, well above price of parts cost... But mobile app and firmware keep getting updated and it keeps getting features like "charge from solar" better scheduler, also supports multiple chargers to limit total amps...

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would nullify my homeowners insurance What is up with this common refrain? One of the main functions of insurance is to indemnify you against your own negligence. Let's say you turn a small stovetop fire into a house fire by trying to put it out with water - the insurance company doesn't just get to stiff you because you were responsible for causing the problem. Are there actually prevalent and enforceable weasel c…

Homeowner's insurance assumes you're doing your due diligence to not do things that unnecessarily destroy your home. Negligence is specifically not covered when it's something that you should have reasonably been able to prevent. There's a difference between a panic-induced response that makes an accidental fire worse and you making the explicit decision to install something unsafe.

[deleted]

Re: DIY Home EV Charger

#110
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the whole setup, but the inspector is likely right. When you have a feeder to an outbuilding (or external structure or piece of equipment or subpanel or basically anything else), you supply it with the intentionally current-carrying wires and the ground. (Ground may be called “equipment grounding conductor” or “protective earth” or perhaps something else in your jurisdiction. It’s a wire or the metallic…

> you supply it with the intentionally current-carrying wires and the ground Whether you connect both grounds to both themselves and Earth, or just connect both grounds to Earth, or connect them to Earth once and connect them both depends on so many details, it's not funny. What is certain is that you don't want something that doubles as a lightning rod protected on the same internal circuit as your house. So your ra…

Indeed. We had proper ground fault protection breaks for that purpose, and it was really hard to get them.

That + the use of metal tubing to carry electrical power as well as the incredibly flimsy construction of various sockets and such (as well as the high amperage) translates into lots of preventable fires each year in the USA and Canada. Point a FLIR at your average distribution panel and try not to be amazed at the number of hot spots.

My biggest gripe: I don't mind inspectors, I just expect them to be really knowledgeable, not just theoretical. Grounding a structure is inherently different from grounding a circuit. He basically kept on insisting that the windmill is part of the circuit and should be bonded rather than that it had its own ground and that is just patent nonsense, more so because the windmill produced variable frequency AC that first had to be rectified, passed through a battery charger, a bunch of batteries and an inverter. The latter of course was bonded to the house ground.

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