My County is very strict. Permits would be required along with inspections. And, unlike some surrounding jurisdictions, load calculations are required before the permit can be issued. Finally, the contractor must have a state contractors license and a county business license.
There's no reason you shouldn't be able to with a properly installed inlet & interlock, provided you manage the loads to avoid overloading.
Illinois doesn't license electricians here, but they do require you have a license to call a BINGO game or cut someone's hair, go figure. Municipalities and counties are afforded the ability to set licensing and inspection requirements. In the county to the west of me, the inspection system is usually a corrupt collection of former contractors who will do everything in their power to steer work toward their friends. In my county, it's typically a "make sure it won't burn things down" view.
Yes but it has to do with the neutral I believe and can be resolved if your interconnect is wired correctly.
this is crazy and just plain wrong. Heat is the enemy of batteries. My Tesla charges far cooler at 20 amps than at 48 or 60 or 80 amps on Level 2 charging. I only use the higher amp settings when I need to go back out quickly after plugging in at home. For overnight charging I always set it for slower, lower amp charging to protect battery life. This is unquestionably better for the battery.
L2 charging is so slow that it's inconsequential to battery life. Besides, the coolant pump will run above something like 76% SOC and 85F to take care of your battery. Charge and don't worry.
Cold batteries have more internal resistance, but they are happier to be stored at low temperatures than high, though extremes of either side are to be avoided.
Believe what you want, but anything you can do at home is all in the same boat - there is very little more heat between the 24 to 60 amp charging. No where near enough to make a change or do damage to the battery. You need some heat for proper efficient charging. The slower you charge you waste more in inefficient energy usage. You likely waste more energy than you could ever do damage to your battery.
Nope. Cold does not damage the battery, just delays its charging while the battery heats up to the required level to take a charge. But excessive heat during charging, or repeated fast charging, which generates more heat than slower charging, does reduce battery life. Batteries actually prefer cold storage for long periods. I once sat in my earliest Tesla Model S (vin 1,609) at a ski resort in Maine attached to a level 2 charger, watching my state of charge go backwards in minus 10 degrees F temps, on the phone with Tesla, who were also watching in real time, while the battery spent two hours getting up to warm enough temps to begin taking a charge. That was a long day and hard lesson learned.
Nope, I have 80-amp level 2 at one of my homes (current Tesla HPWCs are limited to 48 amps, but the first gen Tesla high power wall chargers went as high as 80). The cable gets soft to the point of near melting and the car's battery cooling system runs full blast, leaving huge pools of condensate on my garage floor. It sounds like a 737 taking off at max charging rate in my garage, which is rare, only when we're doing a quick turn-around. Level 2 charging can definitely impact battery life at higher amps.
Neither of us is a battery expert. I am basing my comments on two things, ownership of four Teslas, from an early 2012, through a current MX, and seeing the degradation (mostly lack thereof) in my cars vs others with more cavalier charging habits, and second, Elon Musk's statements about level 2 charging and speed, as well as recommended storage levels - he specifically said that charging slower is better due to lower heat, and maintaining at 60% (instead of the default 90%) increases battery life. Another data point is the most recent Apple charging algorithms for the latest Macbook Pros, which allow SOC to drop without recharging, based on its analysis of user habits, and then charges slowly, not using the full amps available from the newest big brick chargers that come with the computers, to a level below 100%. Their explanation for why they do this is that gentler charging, at lower amps and heat, with less use of lithium battery extremes (zero SOC or 100% SOC) has proven to increase battery life, so they've figured out how to maximize this in the latest algorithms. Now, if you want the latest Apple laptop to show 100% SOC or to charge at the max available rate, you need to over-ride the default battery settings. If that's true for small lithium ion batteries, there's no reason it isn't true for an EV. And Elon said it, so I beleive it anyway.
When it is 68 degrees where the car is charging it may not make a big difference whether it takes 10 hours to put in 14kwh (120v x 12 amp) or 2 ish hours to put in 14kwh (240x30amp). When it is 5F the 120 x12 amp may not even increase the state of charge due to battery heating. It is the other factors that play a role in charging efficiency not just the 120 vs 240v. Another way to look at it is 120x12 amp is probably equally efficient as 240x6amp. The increased charging efficiency happens because if the shorter charging times. 240x30 amp is probably not much better than 240x40amp.
