Charge multiple car at home

[user 4647]

Hi, can't use any decent word to try and search as all the term I try are reported as too frequent according to the search engine..

I'm new to EV and thinking future wise I would probably be tempted to add a 2nd EV to our home in the future so how would I go to charge 2 car at home, obviously I will not want to go out in the middle of the night to switch the plug to charge the 2nd car.

Is there any Charging Stations that can (optional or not) come with 2 plug or will I need two Charging Station? If I need 2 charging station I might as well get all the wire done at the same time as I do the first one to save on the cost of the workforce.
Does anyone of you have any experience advice on that?

 

[STS134]

Only EVSEs I have ever seen that have two plugs are the commercial ones. For example, the ChargePoint CT4000 https://www.chargepoint.com/products/commercial/ct4000/ It is not designed for home use, it is designed for commercial use and an account is required, and it bills the person charging the car according to the parameters set by the owner.

Why would you want to have a single EVSE with two plugs in a private garage anyway? If you put it in the middle, along the back wall, the cords are going to block access to the vehicles. It's best to mount each EVSE along the side (if it's a 2 car garage) or along the back (center stalls in a 3+ car garage) and you would need one outlet per EVSE.

 

[ThudnBlundr]

We charge 2 cars, but we're lucky that the PHEV can get charged during the day, leaving the Zoe to charge overnight. The current chargepoint is on the outside of a remote double garage between the 2 doors. But then we usually leave the cars outside. It works for us - YMMV. If we did get another charger, it would have to go on the house as the garage only has a 40A feed for a 30A charger (on a 240V supply). In the UK, we can still get a grant for upto 2 charges in a household, so we're considering investing in a second while the money's available, especially if we go for a supply contract with cheap overnight electricity.

I'm not sure what power home chargepoints are designed to deliver on your side of the Atlantic - over here home points normally deliver up to 7kW. If you did stay with a single connection, you would have to check whether a double-headed charger could deliver 7kW to each outlet (14kW in total), or whether it would have to "share" the 7kW between the two. The size of the existing wiring is key here.

 

[user 4647]

Well I don't have a garage so any power that I get will have to come out of the house. Hence why I said that if I need to have 2 charging station I might as well have all the wiring done at the same time and only have to spend on the "station" after.

 

[STS134]

We charge 2 cars, but we're lucky that the PHEV can get charged during the day, leaving the Zoe to charge overnight. The current chargepoint is on the outside of a remote double garage between the 2 doors. But then we usually leave the cars outside. It works for us - YMMV. If we did get another charger, it would have to go on the house as the garage only has a 40A feed for a 30A charger (on a 240V supply). In the UK, we can still get a grant for upto 2 charges in a household, so we're considering investing in a second while the money's available, especially if we go for a supply contract with cheap overnight electricity.

I'm not sure what power home chargepoints are designed to deliver on your side of the Atlantic - over here home points normally deliver up to 7kW. If you did stay with a single connection, you would have to check whether a double-headed charger could deliver 7kW to each outlet (14kW in total), or whether it would have to "share" the 7kW between the two. The size of the existing wiring is key here.

Huh? Modern ChargePoint Home Flex units are 50A, and need a 60A breaker and 60A wiring. If you install two of them, you need two 60A breakers and a >= 120A breaker behind them. And obviously, separate wiring to each unit that can take that much current. So if you got another charger, you need to run new wiring and possibly upgrade your panel. A double-headed charger can in theory "share" the current between two ports, making the full current available to one vehicle while the other is no longer charging, and the commercial ChargePoint EVSEs can be configured to do just that. But I am unaware of any home units that have dual ports on them.

 

[Tai626]

Here is one to charge 2 cars:

https://www.clippercreek.com/trade-up/

Tai

 

[STS134]

Here is one to charge 2 cars:

https://www.clippercreek.com/trade-up/

Tai

Very interesting. This would be the absolute first home EVSE with dual plugs I've ever seen. But note that it's hardwired, and would require professional installation anyway. That's because it draws over 60A and the most you can get from a power outlet is 50A. Anything over 40A must be hardwired (including the 48A Tesla wall chargers) because you need a certain amount of safety factor and you can't actually draw 48A from a 50A outlet and breaker

Edit: looks like it doesn't draw 60A, it only draws less than 50A and if both cars are charging at the same time, it will deliver < 7.7 kW to each. So it's not even a very good EVSE.

 

[twosout]

First, for the Outlander, you don't need a fast charger. It will charge merrily on 13A overnight (only 11kWh). At that rate you could charge as many cars as you have chargers from household supplies (sockets).
Second, there's some clever electronics in the charger that talks with the car to control charging, so I'd expect that to be duplicated if a "two port" was available. In that case I don't think there'd be much cost saving. Also the wiring becomes much more substantial, the faster you charge and you may wish to park vehicles further apart.
Unless you need to bury a cable underground, I'd wait until I knew exactly what was required. Charger prices should fall as the market picks up.
Good forward planning, though.

 

[STS134]

Well I wouldn't ever wire a charger with a 20A outlet and 20A wiring, I'd go full 50A if doing an outlet. Chances are, your next car will need more juice. And if you're going to go through the trouble of hard wiring a charger, get one that can do at least 60A. J1772 actually will do up to 80A but I don't know of any EVSE that can do that except for the Tesla wall charger. Still, you can run 100A wiring just in case, and use a smaller breaker so that it's easy to upgrade to a Tesla WC in the future. Always future proof your setup.

 

[user 4647]

Well looks like I started an interesting discussion. Nobody here have 2 EV car at their home? I would love to have input of how they do fill that challenge.

That's a very interesting solution, beeing new to this Level 2 charging thing isn't that charger a bit on the low side of the power as I remember reading here to install future proof 48Amp...

Edit: Also I just found out the price is more than double the price of a single 40amp charger... so not sure that's really worth it.

Here's the spec I found for the ClipperCreek dual head charger:

Features of the HCS-D40 include:

7.7kW of power to charge two electric vehicles quickly
32 Amp hardwired station that installs onto a single dedicated 40A circuit
Charges two vehicles simultaneously, automatically splitting power with up to 16 Amps of electricity each when both are charging and up to 32 Amps when one vehicle is charging
Fully sealed NEMA 4 station enclosure for indoor or outdoor installation
Operating temperatures: -22°F to 122°F (-30°C to 50°C)
Integrated cable wrap making storing the cables simple and convenient
Optional Cable Cradle offered for flexible cable management for just $19
Two 25 foot charging cables for installation flexibility and superior vehicle reach
Two SAE-J1772 universal connectors, suitable for charging any electric vehicle in the US
Connectors accommodate a specially sized padlock for security (padlocks included)
Two SAE-J1772 connector holsters included
3-year warranty and support from the outstanding ClipperCreek customer service team
No assembly required
Made in America

 

[ThudnBlundr]

We'd owned the Zoe for a while when we got the PHEV: we used the chargepoint for the Zoe and the granny charger for the PHEV. With our 240V system, the latter draws 2.4kW (10A). In theory the 40A (~10kW) main fuse in the garage should not be able to cope with a 32A Zoe and a 10A PHEV charging for too long, but in practice they never charged at the same time. But the plug for the granny cable started getting hot, so we invested in a proper cable so that both could charge from the chargepoint.

 

[wws]

There are a couple of ways to charge two cars using one circuit. Clipper Creek makes a EVSE that is designed to do this. If you have one EVSE plugged into a car, the car can use up to the entire capacity of the circuit (subject to the 80% rule). If a second EVSE is on the same circuit and plugged into a second car, the two EVSEs will talk to each other and divide the available capacity between them.

The latest version of the Tesla High Power Wall Charger (HPWC) can do the same. Here in North America, one can purchase an adapter cable (e.g., JDapter from Quick Charge Power) to adapt from the Tesla-specific plug on the HPWC to J1772 plug - used by non-Teslas.

I have two plug-in cars (Model 3 and Volt), but I use two different 240V receptacles for charging.

 

[user 4647]

There are a couple of ways to charge two cars using one circuit. Clipper Creek makes a EVSE that is designed to do this. If you have one EVSE plugged into a car, the car can use up to the entire capacity of the circuit (subject to the 80% rule). If a second EVSE is on the same circuit and plugged into a second car, the two EVSEs will talk to each other and divide the available capacity between them.

The latest version of the Tesla High Power Wall Charger (HPWC) can do the same. Here in North America, one can purchase an adapter cable (e.g., JDapter from Quick Charge Power) to adapt from the Tesla-specific plug on the HPWC to J1772 plug - used by non-Teslas.

I have two plug-in cars (Model 3 and Volt), but I use two different 240V receptacles for charging.

How did you wire it from the electric panel to each individual receptacle? Did you setup two 40A breaker from the panel and ran a cable to each receptacle? I'm trying to plan ahead and avoid the "if only I had knew that, I would have done things differently"

 

[Tai626]

In my opinion, one 50A circuit should be sufficient for 2 or even 3 family cars.

Here is my thought:

Wattage: 40A x 240V ~ 10kW;
Energy in 8 hrs: 80kWh;
Efficiency of EV cars: 250 to 400W/mile;
EV miles per day: 200 to 320 miles.

How many miles our family drive per day? Do we go to gas station every day?
Yes, the Share2/2 plug are expensive but if you don’t mind go out of code:
(14-50P) = (14-30R) + (6-20R) or;
(14-50P) = (6-20R) + 2*(6-15R).
Solve the equation and you may get your answer.

Tai

 

[wws]

How did you wire it from the electric panel to each individual receptacle? Did you setup two 40A breaker from the panel and ran a cable to each receptacle? I'm trying to plan ahead and avoid the "if only I had knew that, I would have done things differently"

In the case of the Clipper Creek Share2 series EVSEs, breaker->EVSE #1->EVSE #2. For example: https://store.clippercreek.com/Share2-HCS-40-Bundle The Tesla HPWC would be similar. If you scroll to the bottom of the Clipper Creek page, there are other options for different power levels.

Also Clipper Creek offers single stations with two charge cables, e.g.: https://store.clippercreek.com/dual-ev-charging-station In this case it would be just breaker->EVSE.

Kind of depends on where your cars are parked. In my case, the reason I use two circuits is because the two cars are parked in different locations. (I have two driveways.) So it isn't convenient to have just a single charging station. And they are on separate sub-panels. One sub-panel is in my garage. It is actually a re-purposed 30 amp circuit from when the previous owner of my house had a kiln out there. The other sub-panel was from when we installed our solar system a few years ago. I anticipated needing a receptacle for EV charging, so had the solar installer put in a 14-50 with the new sub-panel at the same time.

 

[user 4647]

How did you wire it from the electric panel to each individual receptacle? Did you setup two 40A breaker from the panel and ran a cable to each receptacle? I'm trying to plan ahead and avoid the "if only I had knew that, I would have done things differently"

In the case of the Clipper Creek units Share2 series, breaker->EVSE #1->EVSE #2. For example: https://store.clippercreek.com/Share2-HCS-40-Bundle The Tesla HPWC would be similar.

If you scroll to the bottom of the Clipper Creek page, there are other options for different power levels. Also single stations with two charge cables, e.g.: https://store.clippercreek.com/dual-ev-charging-station In this case it would be just breaker->EVSE.

Thanks all for your input. I'm learning a lot of new things

 

[wws]

Thanks all for your input. I'm learning a lot of new things

Happy to help.

BTW, Tesla can support up to four daisy-chained HPWCs on a single circuit: https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation/wall-connector There is a fellow on one forum I'm on that uses three HPWCs sharing a single 100 amp circuit - for two Teslas and a Bolt EV. The Bolt, like the Outlander, has a J-1772 port for L1/L2 charging. So one would need a JDapter to use it with a HPWC.