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

Tue May 26 17:21:12 PDT 2026

I have an L2 charger at home which is indeed very convenient for an overnight full-charge after a long day trip. Until you get one for when the need arises, I assume nearby you can find an L3 fast charging station, and have downloaded the PlugShare app so useful for long trips. 

Last bit of advice is expect that the 12V battery in the car is only going to last 2 years. When it dies, so does everything in the car including the Start button. It seems the manufacturers install cheap 12V batteries in new cars. I always carry a small portable jump start battery with me. 

Best, 
Larry 

From: "Justin" <justinclose at comcast.net> 
To: "Charles Bonville" <charlesbonville at comcast.net>, "Shawn Tucker" <shawntucker541 at gmail.com> 
Cc: "caevlist" <Caevlist at caevclub.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2026 4:05:32 PM 
Subject: Re: [Caevlist] Bought an EV! Need a home charger... 

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) 

BQ_BEGIN

On 05/26/2026 7:35 AM PDT Shawn Tucker [ mailto:shawntucker541 at gmail.com | <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 < [ mailto:justinclose at comcast.net | justinclose at comcast.net ] > wrote: 

BQ_BEGIN

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 

BQ_END

BQ_END

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