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After my foray into Supercharging my next bit of learning was using a standard electric vehicle (EV) public charger. While I’m learning that there are many types of plugs, cables and adapters the one that is most common outside of the Tesla world is the EV Plug (J1772). These plugs can charge at up to 80A at 240V (19.2kW), but the power can vary and you often see them at only 30A and 200V (6kW) or about ~3/4 of the NEMA 14-50.
Connecting the Tesla
Tesla includes an adapter for the J1772 to fit it into the Tesla’s charge port. You don’t need your universal mobile connector (UMC). Once the adapter is fitted onto the J1772 connector you just plug in and charge as usual. One thing to be careful of is that you now have a plug going into the adapter that then goes into the car. Fitting them together is straight forward and can only be done one way. Unplugging you need to follow a simple process:
- Stop charging (from 17″ screen)
- Unlock charge port
- Grab charge cable by the adapter (not by the J1772/cable) and pull out
- Separate your adapter from the J1772 cable
- Replace J1772 cable in the hanging spot
On the J1772 I found which is a pretty typical one in this area of the US I saw a charge rate of 16 miles/hour. Definitely not a fast charge but about 5 times better than plugging into a normal 110v outlet.
Finding Chargers
There are a bunch of great ways to find available chargers. Chargepoint has an entire network of over 17,000 chargers. There you can find chargers, check their operational status, check the power rating, etc. The one I used was listed as:
Level 2, J1772, 6.6 kW
This particular one I tested on was on the Chargepoint network and for the Tesla right now this is about what they offer. In my area they’re all rated around that 6.6kW amount. Not all Chargepoint chargers are for a fee, but you need to use your Chargepoint account to access/enable all of them. You can sign up for free online and you would only pay when/if you use them. Signing up was one of the pre-delivery things I did and this charge was to test the charging as well as the card/access. If you didn’t sign up for a Chargepoint card you can use a regular credit card at many of them instead. This particular one seemed to be free but the whole pricing/communication of price is weak both on their site and on the charger. Either I’m missing something or it’s still really early days for this infrastructure.
One really nice thing about the Chargepoints is that it’s a small way for businesses to generate revenue while looking green and attracting people driving EVs — the result is that they’re often located in convenient locations where you may be stopping for a while. Those locations can vary from shopping centers to grocery stores, to restaurants.
The 99’er is a local chain with reasonable prices and you can charge up while you’re eating. It won’t add a lot of miles to your car but may top you up enough to get home if you’re low. This location had 2 charging spots and there seems to be some kind of partnership between Chargepoint and National Grid to get these spots installed and powered in Massachusetts.
In the end, it was a simple process and worked as expected. You definitely appreciate your NEMA 14-50 or your HPWC at home once you’ve exposed yourself to charging in public. And a Supercharger spoils you for life!
This post first appeared on Teslarati.
I think 6.6kW is tops for a Leaf, which was the previous sole pure BEV around. Now that the MS wants 20X as much …
Right, which is going to make many public charges useless.
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“These plugs can charge at up to 80A at 240V (19.2kW) which is similar to a NEMA 14-50 in terms of power, but the power can vary and you often see them at only 30A and 200V (6kW) or about 1/3 of the NEMA 14-50.”
14-50 = 50amp max, which really use a max of 45amp which give you 10kW.
80AMP J1772 is possible but pretty rare in the wild ! For example, Sun Country Highway in Canada do have the 80AMP charger.
So an 20kW charge is not similar to a 10kW, it double. As for 6kW vs 10kW is not a 1/3 difference, maybe closer to 2/3.
Hard to find and feels very slow after supercharging!
50 Amps max x 2 legs = 100 Amps, so 80 Amps for a continuous draw
NEMA 14-50 is 50A MAX, using two 120V legs to get 240V.
There is no 100A or 80A draw, the absolute MAX is 50A.
Continuous loads, such as electric cars, have to be de-rated under the NEC to 80% of capacity. De-rating is required for all loads lasting over 3 hours.
So for EV purposes, a NEMA 14-50 is only rated for 40A.
For all NEMA connectors, the last number is the MAX load. So a 14-50 is 50A Max, 14-30 is 30A Max
Is there a web site that shows J1772’s and its Amps? Plugshare and chargepoint don’t. Hard to plan a trip if you may get 16 mph or you may get 45 mph. And if another vehicle is also charging, you’ll get only 1/2 !
OpenChargeMap is a great source and provides power information at the chargers: http://openchargemap.org/app/?view=map-page
ChargePoint shows the capacity of each ChargePoint charging station in kWh on my Android and Apple apps. It also show if it is in use.
Unfortunately, any that are off network that are using Bosch, Schneider, GE or others don’t really show the capacity. The only way is to go there and see what you got.
Would be nice if the sites, especially Plugshare would allow uses to update the capacity on the stations, could crowd source this and get a complete picture of what’s out there.
Obviously ChargePoint doesn’t really have much interest in highlighting free competition out there.
The article desperately needs to be corrected.
“These plugs can charge at up to 80A at 240V (19.2kW) which is similar to a NEMA 14-50 in terms of power, but the power can vary and you often see them at only 30A and 200V (6kW) or about 1/3 of the NEMA 14-50.”
As noted, NEMA 14-50 is never rated for 19.2KW, it MAX output is 50A. Using typical 240V connection with a Hot1 and Hot2 120V lines, you get up to 12kWh at 50A capacity.
However, due to NEC requirements, all continuous loads (over 3 hours) have to be derated by 20%. So a NEMA 14-50 can only run at 40A for EV charging purposes as they can last up to 8 hours or more.
So, a NEMA 14-50 for a typical Tesla is rated at 9.6kWh, and that is the maximum allowed output according to code, and the design limitations of the connector.
Thanks for the comments. I made some adjustments, let me know if you see anything else off.