Installing my 240V Electric Vehicle charger and extra 40A breaker

A couple of months ago I bought a Nissan LEAF. It comes with a trickle charger you can connect to your 110V outlet but it takes a bit of time to completely charge your car (over 12 hours). I leased the car with a fast charger pack which makes it possible to charge the car in a couple of hours if you have a 240V charger.

I decided I wanted to install this myself. I bought a Bosch EL-51253 Power Max 30 Amp charging station with 18’ cord. I also bought a NEMA 14-50R outlet I wanted to put in the wall. And I bought a Electric WX9X35 4-wire Range cord to connect to the charger so I could plug it in the wall.

Connecting the range cord to the charger is easy. Open it up on the back and connect 3 wires (you only need 3, the white wire isn’t used because only 3 wires go from the breaker to the NEMA outlet).

The 240v connection wasn’t that hard. Most of the time I used to figure out what the exact rules are here in the US. It’s a bit different compared to the Netherlands (Yes I read the NEN1010 in NL when I was in school). I did a lot of research online to figure out what is allowed or not. I requested a permit (this is different per area, even Redmond and Bothell are different, some areas you go to the power company, some you go to the city. For Bothell I needed to go to the city and pay around $60) and after everything was hooked up, somebody from the city came by and approved the installation. (You don’t want to fight with your insurance when your house burns down because you made a mistake )

First I needed an extra breaker in the outlet panel. This house is a new build so the panel is new. I could just add an extra 40A breaker. Here in the US they use 110V outlets although 240V comes into the house. The breaker for your dryer is also 240V.

After I switched of the main breaker I added the new breaker. (btw, although the main breaker is switched off there is still current on the main thick feeder line at the top of your breaker box!). Just make sure you use a breaker which fits on the panels connectors.

Adding the breaker in the panel is easy, just click it in.

That was the easy part

I was lucky I wanted the outlet really close to the breaker panel. I bought some materials at Home Depot and started working. I used this wire which allows 55A and in the wall usage. First I needed to cut out the hole in the wall.

Opened up one of the holes in the panel to feed the wire

Make sure you put in this plastic ring before you feed the wire (you need this if you want to get the permit approved afterwards)

Strip the wire and feed it to your breaker and attach the ground to the ground block

Feed the wire to the outlet (only 2 wires and 1 ground)

Connect the NEMA connector, I connected the ground and the 2 L wires.

Et voila, done

I am happy with the result

Update: Although my charger doesn’t use it, I would recommend adding the extra wire from the breaker to the NEMA plug and just connect it (neutral wire goes into the neutral bar). So for future use the NEMA connector is wired completely and would save some frustration of you use it in the future but forgot 1 wire was missing 🙂

Comments

Comment by David on 2014-12-23 12:14:28 -0800

So you installed a 4 prong outlet but you only hooked up 3 of the 4 wires. I am surprised the inspector didn’t fail you. Yes the ground and Neutral are connected to the same location in this panel but they provide different purposes for items plugged into them. Yes your EV station isn’t using the 4th wire but someone else may use the plug in the future that needs this.

Also the white wire in the panel and at the plug need to be color coded to something other then white, Red tape should work as White is normally neutral and not a hot “live” wire. Example would be to look at the other 240 Volt items in your panel.

6/3 wire would have been a better choice over the 6/2 that was used. Proper color codes and correct amount of wires. For the distance you have I would swap it out for the correct amount of wires, but at a minimum color coding the wire in the panel, and marking the outlet as 3 prong only.

Comment by Matthijs Hoekstra on 2014-12-26 18:52:59 -0800

Well, I looked all over the net to figure out what was needed, this was done by several other people and they got a permit too. If I would use the extra wire and connect it to the Nema plug, where would i connect it to in the breaker box?

Comment by Pete on 2015-04-29 10:20:12 -0800

Awesome blog. Stumbled onto it today and notice that we have run into very similar issues (and successes) with SmartThings. My energy meter is arriving today! Looking forward to installing it with the latest device type code.

PS I also feel your pain on how horrible presence sensing is with Windows Phones.

Comment by Pete on 2015-04-29 11:00:06 -0800

I meant to post my previous comment under your energy meter blog entry, not this one