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I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

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Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#71

Post by silisili »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #63
silisili wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooking is super bursty, and at variable times, and for short durations. And even then, varies by day. It's not at all the same as everyone on planet earth in the same hemisphere trying to charge their cars during peak summer AC time, between 4 and 6ish pm.

> everyone on planet earth in the same hemisphere trying to charge their cars during peak summer AC time Why do you keep parroting this nonsense? Virtually nobody charges their car at this time

I don't see how it's nonsense. Everyone keeps saying 'at night', but more realistically for most people, when they get home from work.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#72

Post by bhhaskin »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #65
bhhaskin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is hydrogen dead? There are a few hydrogen hybrids coming to market like the BMW i3. It has a 300 mile range and can refill in 5 minutes. Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods. Then there are people th…

> Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods. Care to cite any sources?

We are literally commenting on a post about how upgrading to EV charging was cost prohibited.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#73

Post by xani__ »

sschueller wrote: post #8
socialismisok wrote: post #4

"I'd have to bring my electrical systems up to code and that's expensive for my 80 year old house" Well, yeah. I suppose it would be. I'm a bit surprised this is a surprise to the landlord. Also, many of the costs here are looming anyways. It's a matter of when, not if, the electrical needs updating to meet code.

Grandfathering in electrical codes seems quite dangerous. At some point wouldn't the city just require it or deem the property unsafe?

No post body was provided.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#74

Post by sschueller »

alias_neo wrote: post #52
yieldcrv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the property will just burn down in a fiery electrical explosion killing anyone unlucky enough to have been there after the contractor missed the ancient arts necessary to avoid that. municipalities lack consensus for any other outcome to occur, they are all land fiefdoms.

I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house. My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional. This is in England

Isn't the code in the UK quite lax? From what I understand this is the reason every plug in the UK is required to have a fuse because the homes are not properly fused.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#75

Post by fomine3 »

bhhaskin wrote: post #64
zizee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another top level comment stated, in a lot of circumstances you can make do with charging an EV from a normal outlet. The post was mostly about the challenges with regulations/codes. For the most part it was a plea for governments to smooth over the jankiness they introduce to the whole process. Hardly an insurmountable challenge. Hydrogen is dead. Upgrading the existing electrical network gradually over time (EV…

Why is hydrogen dead? There are a few hydrogen hybrids coming to market like the BMW i3. It has a 300 mile range and can refill in 5 minutes. Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods. Then there are people th…

Gas is too convenient and cheap for now and foreseeable future, compared to hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't matter unless existing gas is banned. At that time (2045?), BEV will cover most personal use cases.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#76

Post by breput »

bhhaskin wrote: post #67
breput wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like most of the upgrades are about convenience to the power company. Not anything safety related, which is why older properties are exempt. That is definitely not true. An 80 year old house might not even have grounded outlets, let alone GFCI or AFCI protected outlets. > You also have to remember that it takes a lot of power to be able to change an EV in timely manner Nobody worries about how many electr…

GFCI and AFCI are great! But a home isn't going to burst into flames or explode without them. Which is why there are exemptions. 240v at 30A is most definitely not a trivial load. Most homes have 100 amp service. That would be 30% of your homes total power capacity just for changing EV. You wouldn't be able to run AC and the dryer and charge an EV at the same time at that rate. But more importantly there is only so m…

They might not burst into flames, today, but these technologies weren't invented because there was no risk.

> That would be 30% of your homes total power capacity just for changing EV

That's the thing - most people have a 8 to 12 hour window to fully charge their car(s) overnight and when you and your neighbors are using practically no energy. Worst case is there is no active management and there is just a new peak at midnight. Best case is that the electric company incentivizes you to not only charge at non-peak times, but also pays you to allow them to manage the charging times.

This technology is not science fiction - it already exists. I got a $250 rebate from my electric company to install a connected level 2 charger. It is not currently managed, but if there is some dystopian future where all of my neighbors aren't burning hydrocarbons, all have EVs, and somehow the infrastructure hasn't kept up, as long as my car is fully charged in the morning, I don't care if it happened from midnight to 2 AM or 4 AM to 6 AM.

But also...

> Most homes have 100 amp service

Most homes built decades ago, maybe. And to be clear, we're talking about US 120V system. I would be very surprised if any house built since...lets be generous...the 1980s doesn't have a 200A supply or couldn't easily be updated.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#77

Post by zizee »

bhhaskin wrote: post #64
zizee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another top level comment stated, in a lot of circumstances you can make do with charging an EV from a normal outlet. The post was mostly about the challenges with regulations/codes. For the most part it was a plea for governments to smooth over the jankiness they introduce to the whole process. Hardly an insurmountable challenge. Hydrogen is dead. Upgrading the existing electrical network gradually over time (EV…

Why is hydrogen dead? There are a few hydrogen hybrids coming to market like the BMW i3. It has a 300 mile range and can refill in 5 minutes. Converting to hydrogen makes wayyy more sense than EV infrastructure. All of the gas station can be easily converted to hydrogen stations with different pumps and tanks. A lot cheaper than running MW of power for a EV station or upgrading neighborhoods. Then there are people th…

> Why is hydrogen dead?

Car manufacturers are all releasing EVs. How many are really mass producing hydrogen vehicles?

It's a scale and chicken/egg (or two sides market) problem.

Gas stations won't convert until there is a decent number of hydrogen cars on the road (in the area the station is in), and people won't buy hydrogen vehicles if there are no stations to refill at. Manufacturers won't be able to scale production to make the investment worthwhile. EVs do not suffer from this problem as there are many people already in a position to easily charge at home (yes, I know it is not everyone, but it's a large enough market to be self sufficient).

For scale, I'll posit that there isn't room for three different types of power systems. Car companies won't want to invest in hydrogen because it's clear that there will be a significant percentage of people wanting EVs. The market for hydrogen cars will always be shrinking, because EV adoption will always be growing.

Gas station business models are finely tuned, with most of their revenue from convenience goods, petrol sales are just the mechanism to get people into the store to impulse buy. EVs will play havoc with this model. Less people will go to the stations as they will charge at home, causing a feedback loop of stations closing, and ICE vehicles becoming less convenient. It will also result in less money to invest in things like hydrogen tanks and pumps.

The number of EVs is only going to continue to grow, the window for hydrogen gets smaller and smaller (and I think already closed).

> Then there is the vandalism issue and mantaince problems involved.

Not really sure what this means. Presumably you are not talking about the EVs themselves as they require a lot less maintenance than ICE vehicles.

> Only if you are rich dose EVs make sense. But on a mass scale they make close to zero sense.

EVs continue to get cheaper and cheaper. Eventually it just won't make buy new ICE vehicles, even if you have to spend thousands to put in charging infrastructure.

Perhaps it will be only the "rich" who can adopt EVs at the start, but when the majority of new cars are EV, eventually the pool of 2nd hand ICE vehicles will become mostly EVs as well. It's inevitable.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#78

Post by alias_neo »

sschueller wrote: post #74
alias_neo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house. My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional. This is in England

Isn't the code in the UK quite lax? From what I understand this is the reason every plug in the UK is required to have a fuse because the homes are not properly fused.

I don't know honestly, the plug fuse thing is due to us having ring mains which I heard was due to copper savings around war time I believe; I'm too young to know as a 30-something millennial, and haven't looked into it properly as that reason seems plausible.

Our circuits are "properly fused" though with RCDs/circuit breakers, but they're high current because we can have so many large current drawing devices on a single circuit (such as in the kitchen) which is always given its own circuit.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#79

Post by bhhaskin »

Robotbeat wrote: post #50
bhhaskin wrote: post #3

This is one of the many reasons why I firmly believe that hydrogen hybrid are the future to replace gas vehicles. Charging at mass scale is just not feasible nor practical for most people. We can't even roll broadband out properly let alone the massive amounts of infrastructure required to deliver enough power to every home. That leaves centralized charging hubs which will quickly become overwhelmed and a massive tim…

Charging at scale is just way easier & cheaper than deploying hydrogen infrastructure, and I don’t think people realize just how big of a difference there is. It takes approximately 4 times the electricity (when you include liquefaction, inefficiency of electrolysis, etc) to drive the same distance with hydrogen cars as with electric cars. And Hydrogen cars get about the same range on a tank as electric cars, but eve…

The US. department of energy is pushing to have $1 per kilogram by 2030. ($2 per kilogram by 2025). The Toyota Mirai can go 402 miles on 16.8kg of hydrogen. And it takes 5 minutes to fill up.

Re: I tried to add EV chargers to my rental property

#80

Post by alias_neo »

yieldcrv wrote: post #69
alias_neo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with what you're saying, but also electrics done to "code" can burn down your house. My mother in law told me yesterday that my sister in law's mother in law's house burned down while they slept (they're safe) this week due to brand new electrics in a brand new house extension, carried out by a licensed (is that the correct word for an electrician?) professional. This is in England

whose house? I need a chart, or was this sarcasm about hearsay

Sadly not, it was a bit of a confusing one to write, there may be an easier way to describe the relationship but it seemed quite funny to read so I left it.

I meant to say my wife's sister's partner's mother.

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