Hi everyone. I want to share my tale of woe. I got my first EV in 2019. It's a Hyundai Kona. My wife recently got the ID.4. Both are great cars. That's not what this is about. I own a single-family home in the burbs, so I had the ability to install a level 2 charger in my garage. I feel bad for my condo-dwelling friends who have to rely on other options. Charging at home is fantastic. I digress.
I got the Bosch EV200 charger because I was putting it on the outside of my house. (https://www.boschevsolutions.com/en-ca/charging-stations/ev200-series). It's a 30 amp charger. If you click that link, it says right bloody on it that you need a 40 amp breaker. I didn't check this. I trusted the electrician who spec'd the charger and the wiring.
The electrician put in a 30 amp breaker and ran #10 wiring to the charger. This is a big problem and why the breaker was buzzing. The buzzing is the breaker getting close to its maximum load before tripping. When he pulled it out, he showed me - the breaker was really warm.
The code says you're supposed to put in a breaker that can handle the load with 20% head to spare. So you'd take the amp load of the charger and divide it by 80%. 30 amp draw = 37.5 amp breaker minimum. Hence why the Bosch specs say to put in a 40 amp. The electrician says I cannot just throw in a 40 amp breaker now because the #10 wiring that the old bonehead installed is only rated to 30 amps in the code book. He would need to pull new wiring - #8 at least - for it to accommodate a 40 amp breaker.
For now, I am going to tolerate the buzzing but because my wife's ID.4 can handle more amps than my Kona, next summer, I am going to get the new (intelligent) electrician to pull #6 wire to the charger (if he uses the right type, it should be able to handle up to 65 amps according to this table: https://www.cerrowire.com/products/resources/tables-calculators/ampacity-charts/). Then I will upgrade my charger to a 50 amp charger to allow for better charge times at home.
Between the new charger and the labour he needs to do to pull the new wire - I'm looking at another $2k CAD. Super irritating. It's $1500 just for the new wire + 60 amp breaker.
Moral of the story - don't assume that a licensed electrician knows what they're doing when it comes to Level 2 chargers.
Ps. I asked about future V2L capabilities and what I would need to change for that and because I am on a 200 amp service, he basically said that's impossible so.... will need to do some more homework on that front too because if I'm going to get them to do all that work, I'm going to try to get it ready for V2L as well.
Pps. Not sure why people are downvoting this. I'm not an idiot. I'm just not an electrician and I'm willing to bet most people are not.