[Caevlist] Bought an EV! Need a home charger...

[Justin]

Hey all,

Thanks for the various feedback.  All interesting things to think about.

• After some further testing, turns out the freezer is on the kitchen 
circuit, not the garage.  So far, charging has all gone well, about 20 
hours of it.

• I'll check with PGE (my power company)

• Interesting point about hardwiring the unit - makes sense.

• Sticking with something quantity is a good point.  Seller of the Eaton 
unit was asking $400 for the 32a version...

• We could live with L1 charging, sure... but I think I like the 
flexibility of having an L2 charger.  If needed, we wouldn't feel 
constrained if we expect to drain-and-full-charge in a single day, 
because we would need to do it again the next day.  Is it common? No; 
but we do periodically go on longer trips, sometimes back to back.  So 
not having to wait 3 days for it to charge up fully would be a nice bit 
of peace-of-mind to have in the back pocket.



Thanks,

*-- Justin*




On 5/26/26 10:36, Charles wrote:
> Which utility are you with?
> There may be EV charger rebates offered by the utility, but only for 
> certain brands and certain installation conditions (like hardwired, 
> not plug-in).
> -Charles
> (Project Manager at a solar/battery/evse installer)
>> On 05/26/2026 7:35 AM PDT Shawn Tucker <shawntucker541 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There's a couple things going here.
>> 1) You can't charge your EV on the same circuit as your freezer. The 
>> garage outlets are going to be limited to 15 or 20 amps, and the EVSE 
>> for the car will pull around 12 amps, leaving essentially nothing 
>> left on the circuit for additional loads. I learned that my garage 
>> circuit is also shared with my hallway circuit when I was charging on 
>> 120v and tried to vacuum at the same time. Popped the circuit.
>> 2) your freezer should be on its own, separate, non-GFCI circuit. 
>> Freezers can often trip GFCI circuits, so it's best to have them on a 
>> separate single circuit that isn't GFCI. It's (normally, often) 
>> allowed as the plug is usually behind the unit, not used by anything 
>> else, and a single outlet for the freezer only so exception to the 
>> "everything in the garage needs to be GFCI".
>> 3) HARD WIRE your L2 EVSE. Period. The NEMA 14-50 plugs can all too 
>> often be the cause of melting or fires with EVSEs. Whatever you get, 
>> hardwire it.
>> 4) When you get the EVSE installed, use an electrician, and have the 
>> electrician install a second circuit for the freezer. Win-win.
>>
>> On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 11:01 AM Justin <justinclose at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>     My wife and I finally bit the bullet and bought an EV!  We are
>>     excited...  Hyundai 2023 Ioniq 5 SEL.  Really liking the car.
>>
>>     But now I need to work on all the ancillary stuff... most notably
>>     charging at home.  It came with a 120v Level 1 charger...  it
>>     looked like it was working in our first attempt at using it, but
>>     it later tripped the GFCI outlet, which cause the rest of the
>>     garage circuit to cut out, of course.  There is a freezer on that
>>     same circuit - don't want to have that go out!  :)  (Not sure if
>>     it is the charger, the car, or the freezer... if the freezer
>>     kicked on while charging, it seems like it would have tripped the
>>     breaker, not the GFCI.  Car and outlet are all inside the garage,
>>     no moisture or water in the neighborhood.)
>>
>>     I have a NEMA 6-20 outlet that I was planning on using in the
>>     short term... but no adapter for the current charge cable (which
>>     is standard 3-prong 120v, NEMA 5-15 or 5-20).  Are there places
>>     locally to source an adapter?
>>
>>     And then I plan on installing a Level 2 charger in the (near?)
>>     future.  I saw some Eaton ones on Facebook... person had stacks
>>     of them, new in box.  These appear to be more commercially
>>     oriented - but seem like they could work in a home setting.
>>
>>     Saw a Juicebox one, for fairly cheap - but that company went out
>>     of business (in the US).  There seems to be an after-market
>>     OpenSource kit you can buy (for certain Juiceboxes anyway - not
>>     sure it would fit on this particular model).
>>
>>     I hope to (again, at some point in the future) supply this via
>>     solar panels, also.  Do I need to take that into account when
>>     settling on a charger?  Or are all those issues handled by
>>     upstream equipment?
>>
>>
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>
>>     *-- Justin*
>>
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