80A Charge Station Pro

[Smokewagun]

Thinking about my Lightning purchase, I’m already reaching out to ComEd for service upgrade options. I think in Illinois, the state will pay for 50% of the costs for an electrical upgrade for a charging station for a BEV. But, I already have a 60A breaker feeding a 100A panel in my poke barn. I only have the 60A breaker because a 100A wasn’t available at the store when the electrician was switching out my house 100A to a 200A service.

Anyway, this has me thinking. I can easily upgrade the breaker to the barn to an 80A or 100A breaker, but is an 80A breaker REALLY required for Fords 80A charger? This does not make sense. Many, many, many homes today have 100A services. That has me thinking, drawing 80A from these homes would be detrimental IF 80A is truly needed. This could shoot the EV market in to foot before it even gets to start.

I thought sharing at night, late, could minimize impact to my panel draw as not a lot of current is needed at Kate night, BUT I have a 200A main panel serving a 100A sub panel in my barn. If Joe Everyday has a 100A panel only, that leaves 2OA for EVERYTHING else. If that’s the case, should I worry? Will the Ford 80A charging station require a sustained 80A?

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[Starkiller]

Hi,

Fellow Illinoian (Illinoisan?) here. According to some interviews I've seen from Ford (Sources below) there will need to be a 100 amp breaker available. Knowing this, and having recently bought a Tesla Model Y (we are going full electric) I knew that in order to accommodate the lightning and the model Y, we would have to upgrade our existing 100 amp service to a 200 amp service panel.

I also talked to an electrician who told me that to accommodate the power requirements of the Lightning (based on the 100 amp breaker required), it is most likely going to require a 100 amp/240 volt line. Personally, I am not an electrician and haven't heard anything very 'official' from Ford yet so take this with a grain of salt. Personally I would wait before you do anything until Ford comes out with some real numbers and requirements.

Source: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36480020/2022-ford-f-150-lightning-charge-station-pro-explained/

 

[Smokewagun]

Thanks for the reply.
That tells me I should be good with a 100A breaker to my barn, which is fed off my 200A main house panel.
I need to figure this all out before the order bank opens. I think I’m very close to the front of the line. Work is even installing a charger for me in 2022. I can’t get a Lightning and then find out I need to upgrade the service. ComEd came out and said they’d give me a ballpark number for a service upgrade and an option for a new independent service to my barn. $4700 was thrown around just for the wiring in ground. If that’s the case, I’ll stick with an ICE.

 

[jefro]

Maybe. 100 A at panel may or may not be 100 A at some barn. Ampacity of cables and length may need to be calculated.
Also the 80 A charger is supposed to be a dedicated 100 A circuit.

Pretty sure one could adjust maximum charge either at truck or charger but it's really not suppose to be the way to protect a circuit.

The truck may for some time take the full or near full 80 A but it would depend on a few variables. The charge level of the battery, temperature.

Some of the utilities may offer money but require a smart meter to turn or the charger. That charger will most likely have the ability sooner or later that allows power companies to regulate it I'd think. No way to let unlimited charging on US wide scales.

 

[Roy2001]

80A charging requires a 100A breaker. Your panel should be 200A or higher. 80A charger would be hard wired to panel directly. Unless overnight charge is not OK, I would look for regular 40A charging as you would never need to charge from 5% to 100%. More practically, it would be 20-80%.

 

[jefro]

Most EV's have a setting for the amount of L1 and L2 charge amounts.
This truck should also have them. At the max setting and assuming things, it could indeed draw 80A for hours. My cars have drawn the max I set the evse and meter seems to be quite constant over the best charge conditions. It will taper off or taper up as conditions warrant.

 

[beatle]

If it's anything like the Tesla HPWC, the box will have options inside to select the appropriate amperage for the wires coming into it. You won't need 100A service if you only plan to charge at say 40A.

I have a 14-50R in my garage for my Model S. I plan to convert it to a hard wired Ford box and then just set the box to reflect a 50A breaker so it charges at a maximum of 40A. Some boxes have hard switches inside to set the max current, others use an app.

 

[Garbone]

A breaker can run at 80% of their peak rating continously so a 100amp breaker does 80amp continuous and 100amp peak load.

 

[Derek Beeston]

Does anyone know when the charging station will be available for purchase? Doing a Reno and would like to build it in. Also is there a spec sheet on it for my electrition to pre-wire? In interested in hooking it up to solar panels and looking for info on if it would pay for the solar installation in the first 100 years....lol.

Thanks

 

[Nick Gerteis]

Does anyone know when the charging station will be available for purchase? Doing a Reno and would like to build it in. Also is there a spec sheet on it for my electrition to pre-wire? In interested in hooking it up to solar panels and looking for info on if it would pay for the solar installation in the first 100 years....lol.

Thanks

Somebody at Ford knows. They aren’t sharing right now, wish they would. I guess you could call them, be sure to share what you find out!

 

[jefro]

Standard 100A service to the unit if hardwired.
Unknown how to connect the ABT to it.
No way Ford is actually building it so maybe if someone knew the company the mach-e charger they might follow. Then see if any specs leaked online.

 

[gwrace14651]

A breaker can run at 80% of their peak rating continously so a 100amp breaker does 80amp continuous and 100amp peak load.

That is actually the NEC rules. Breaker and circuit should always be 20% higher than the max amp draw. All of your 240 volt 40 Amp power stations require a 50 amp breaker and 6 gauge wiring.

 

[Jer1983]

Continuous duty rule, 125%

 

[happyzippo11]

That is actually the NEC rules. Breaker and circuit should always be 20% higher than the max amp draw. All of your 240 volt 40 Amp power stations require a 50 amp breaker and 6 gauge wiring.

Thanks for the clear explanation. i understand we need 100 amp double pole breaker for 80amp charging pro.
I have a couple of questions.
In the basement, I have 200amp main pannel, which is full and contains most of the "important" stuff like AC, water heater, furnace, refrigerator and 100amp subpannel, which has 10 space left.
1. Is it smarter to put that 100amp breaker into the 200 amp main panel or 100amp subpanel for the emergency vehicle to grid situations?
2. Garage to thr panels in the basement is about 50 ft. What size of copper do i have to use? Will 4/3 be enough? 2/3 or 1/3?

Thanks

 

[uniblab]

Thanks for the clear explanation. i understand we need 100 amp double pole breaker for 80amp charging pro.
I have a couple of questions.
In the basement, I have 200amp main pannel, which is full and contains most of the "important" stuff like AC, water heater, furnace, refrigerator and 100amp subpannel, which has 10 space left.
1. Is it smarter to put that 100amp breaker into the 200 amp main panel or 100amp subpanel for the emergency vehicle to grid situations?
2. Garage to thr panels in the basement is about 50 ft. What size of copper do i have to use? Will 4/3 be enough? 2/3 or 1/3?

Thanks

I have a 200-amp main panel and 100-amp subpanel in the garage. My subpanel is about 75 feet away and is fed by 2-gauge cable, which according to NEC is good to 115 amps. This setup has worked well for me for the past 15 years.

There is an issue that I haven't seen talked about much yet. I'm not an electrician but I believe NEC specifies that you can't feed additional power back into a panel at more than 20% of the rating for the panel. This is because the combined current of all input breakers can't be more than the busbar rating of the box which I believe is typically 120% of the main breaker. That means for a 200-amp panel you can't feed more than 40 amps back into it, and you can't feed more than 20 amps back into a 100-amp panel. 9.6Kw is exactly 40 amps so you could (just barely) meet the requirement by feeding that much power into your main 200-amp panel, but your subpanel would be limited to half of that, or 4.8Kw. I'm guessing you will need to feed the power back into your house through a separate breaker that is limited to the above values in order to satisfy NEC requirements. There are a couple of ways around this limitation, you could reduce the size of the main breaker in the panel or you could backfeed the power through a line-side tap.

Anyway, to answer your questions, 1. I think it is smarter to put the 100-amp breaker for the charging station pro into your main panel and move a couple of smaller breakers to your subpanel to facilitate it. It will cost more and be more work but it won't overload your subpanel. 2. NEC specifies at least 2/3 wire for a 100-amp circuit.

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