I was commenting in another diary about electricians being a bottleneck when the incentives for solar and electric cars and other things starts to kick in increasing demand for electrical work. We really need to start right now recruiting more electricians. It takes 5 years to go from Apprentice to Journeyman where they can work on their own, so it’s not like creating jobs and putting out an ad on the Help Wanted pages.
However, it is not that difficult to install simple residential circuits, so full fledged electricians are not necessary to install a car charger or even put in solar panels. But you do need to know what you are doing and you do need to know the electrical code. So perhaps a different kind of electrical license can be created for people that specialize in this kind of electrical installation. Ac Power Plug
I am not an electrician, but I’ve been involved in several construction projects that had me working closely with electricians. I’ve become familiar with NEC codes and electrical safety. I’ve rewired my mom’s house (built 1955), my house (built 1954) over the last few years and I’m in the process of rewiring my son’s house (built 1963) to get the kitchen, bath and garages on grounded circuits and to get at least one grounded outlet in all the other rooms.
So, when my son told me last spring that he ordered a Tesla and he would get it in July, I had to add a car charger to the electrical work scheduled at his house and get started on it ASAP.
He bought the house in November 2020. It had the original 1963 electrical panel and meter mains. This panel was 200amp, but split into two 100amp busses. It was flagged in the pre-purchase home inspection report as a fire hazard.
The first thing done after he purchased the house was to get a licensed electrician to upgrade the main panel in the garage to a new 200amp panel. Due to the pandemic, we had to wait months for the materials we needed. And due to increased demand, what had been a 2-3 week lead time for electricians was 2-3 months (it’s even worse now). So it took until March 2021 to get that work done.
There is no way we could have installed a car charger using this old panel. Even if we could find new breakers, the house would have probably burned down running that much juice thru this panel!
In addition to replacing the old electrical panel, there are other electrical upgrades needed on this house.
The subpanel is overloaded as well since a previous owner moved the laundry from the garage to the furnace room where the subpanel is located and connected the washer/dryer to the 60amp subpanel, so I will be installing two 60 amp panels when I replace the old panel.
I hadn’t been able to get to the rest of the wiring last year. When the car charger need came this spring, it got me started. Since I need to run a few other new circuits into the garage electrical panel, I had to plan for this future work when installing the car charger.
The first phase of this electrical work was to just get a 50 amp 240V outlet in the garage for the Tesla mobile connector and add the first two new 120V GFCI outlets in the garage and garage closet. Next year, my daughter-in-law will be getting a new car, which will be electric. At that time, we will look at getting two hardwired, wall mounted car chargers that can share the same 60 amp circuit. For now, the Tesla will charge using the 50 amp outlet and the mobile connector.
The garage panel is recessed into the back wall of the garage, in a closet (the old laundry room, over the old washer and dryer location, a big no-no these days). So this meant that the wiring had to get from the back wall of the garage to the front wall of the closet.
After looking in the attic and considering the other circuits that will need to get into the garage panel, I figured conduit along the wall was the best way to go. The first thing to do was to make a drawing.
I used a 1 1/2” rigid “bushed elbow” to come out of the recessed panel to the surface of the wall.
This connects to a 1 1/2” rigid conduit body. From there it reduces to 1 1/4” conduit to the 8x8x4 junction box in the garage. If I were just installing a car charger, I would have used a 1” bushed elbow and 3/4” conduit to the charger. However, I have 6 more 6AWG and possibly 3 10AWG and some 12 AWG that will need to feed thru that conduit in the future. It will get tighter.
In addition to the conduit drawing, I needed a wiring drawing.
A car charger does not use a neutral wire, so there is no need for a white wire if you are connecting a car charger. However, to meet code, an outlet in a garage needs to be GFCI. They do not make 50amp GFCI outlets, so you must use a GFCI breaker. GFCI needs the neutral wire to work.
If you intend on just installing an outlet and not a hardwired wall charger, you will need to install a 50amp GFCI breaker and run a 6AWG Neutral wire to the outlet (use 6/3 NM wire if not in conduit or 6AWG red, black and white and 10AWG green THHN wire if in conduit). You must also use the NEMA 14-50 outlet and adapter. Beware: From what I could find, charging a car on a GFCI breaker is not recommended. The built in car chargers test for ground before starting the charging process, which can cause the GFCI breaker to trip.
Since this outlet is temporary until the wall chargers are installed next year, I did not run the white neutral wire and used a NEMA 6-50 outlet on a regular 50amp breaker. It won’t get inspected until the hardwired wall chargers are installed.
The only real advantage of a hardwired wall charger is the ability to to charge at 48amp on a 60 amp circuit. Code states that load on a circuit cannot exceed 80% of the amp rating. 48amp is the max on a 60 amp circuit. The max for an outlet connected charger is a 50 amp breaker which is a 40amp max charge rate. (Note: The Tesla model 3 extended range is limited to 240V/32Amp using the mobile connector and either of the two 240V/50 amp adapters, but will charge at 48amp using a wall charger). Many lower end electric models that are coming out are limited to 240V/32amp max charge regardless of wall charger or plug used).
Both 240V/50amp and 60 amp circuits use 6AWG wire. If you are installing a wall charger, you can use lower gauge wire, like 10AWG on a 30 amp breaker, then set the charger to max 24 amp charge, but why bother. If you are going thru all the work to get it installed, 6AWG vs 10AWG will add about $100-150 to the cost. Most of the cost is the labor to get it installed, regardless of the wire size.
However, if you are just installing an outlet next to a surface mounted panel in a garage, and you have an older 100amp panel, you may be able to install a 20amp or 30amp 240V outlet for pretty cheap, which would be plenty for most people.
Wall mounted car chargers are getting more advanced every day. That was the main reason for not getting one now. There are a few models (including Tesla’s) that can integrate with other wall chargers on the same electrical circuit. This means that they can communicate with the other chargers on the circuit and adjust their charging to balance the load between all the chargers on the circuit, so that they never exceed 48 Amps (11,500 Watts). I was afraid that if we bought a charger this year, that when it is time for the 2nd charger, the newer model would not be compatible.
The next phase of the project will be running the wiring from the 8x8 junction box in the garage into the attic to rewire the garage circuit. I’ll use a 1 1/2” PVC conduit from the junction box thru the ceiling into the attic. I can drop non-metallic (romex) wire from wire runs in the attic down into the junction box where it switches over to THHN wire to the panel.
When the time comes for the 2nd car charger, I will run 6/2 NM wire from the junction box, into the attic, then into 3/4” PVC conduit back into the garage along a side wall, near the garage door. This charger can be used to charge a car parked on that side of the garage or in the driveway. This required a cable spice for the 6AWG wire to split it out to two different branches.
The 6AWG wire is too thick to use wire nuts, so these 3-port insulated connectors were used ($20 each!). They have a port opening where the wire is inserted and another opening for a screw that locks the cable into the connector.
When the cable is run for the 2nd charger, I just need to connect the two hot wires into these connectors and connect the ground wire to the ground bar and it will be ready to go.
This is the junction box just before I finished up this phase and closed the box. It’s pretty tough using wire nuts on stranded wire, so I’ve been using these Wago connectors. They work on wire up to 10AWG. Great for connecting stranded wires and also in cases where you have alot of wires connecting together. They make them in 2, 3 or 5 port sizes. They also help to keep junction box wiring neat.
The GFCI outlet will trip for all outlets in the garage. The lights will not be affected by the GFCI. I also ran the 12AWG wire for the garage door opener circuit from the panel to the junction box and terminated the ends with 2 port Wago connectors.
Now that the weather has cooled off around here, I will be starting the next phase in the next couple of weeks. I’ll add the PVC conduit stack into the attic, then drop 2 12/2 NM wires from the attic into the junction box. One will go to the garage door opener to put that on it’s own circuit, and the other to another 8x8x4 junction box in the attic that will distribute power to the outlets on the garage side walls and to all the lights on the old garage circuit. I will be able to just connect these new wires into the existing Wago connectors in the junction box.
The conduit stack into the attic will be where all the new circuits will be routed into the 8x8x4 garage junction box, then to to garage electrical panel. It’s gonna get pretty crowded in there once it is all done.
Since it is all metallic conduit from the panel, I did not need to run a ground wire and could have used the conduit for the ground. It is code, but over time, something could loosen a conduit connection and the ground become broken, so to be safe, I ran a ground wire in all conduit and bonded each junction box to the ground. Ground wires are required for PVC conduit. Only one ground wire is needed in conduit. It must be of the size required for the largest conductors in the conduit. 6AWG conductors require a 10 AWG ground wire. I added the ground bar to the junction box to make connecting all the ground wires that will be coming into this box easier. From here, all circuits share the same 10AWG ground wire back to the panel (and the conduit also acts as a ground path).
If I were just installing a car charger, instead of going up to the junction box when the conduit comes out of the wall, it would have run horizontal to the car outlet location. And I would have used 3/4” conduit from the panel direct to the outlet box.
I hope this helps those that are looking to install a car charger in their garage. Don’t try to do this unless you have some experience installing electrical circuits. There are so many little things that must be done to meet code. But you can use this info to help you understand the work that will be involved when you talk to the electricians who come out to give you an estimate.
When planning your car charger, keep in mind the location of the charging port on your car and the length of the cord on the charger you select. Tesla put the power outlet on the back of the car, were the gas cap is on a gasoline car. Then they made their wall charger’s cord only 18ft. So, if you put the charger on the back wall of the garage, the charging cord may not reach the car’s charging port unless you park very close to the wall or back into the garage.
Put the charger/outlet as low to the floor as you can. This outlet is 24” off the floor. I figure I’ll put the charger about 3ft off the floor. This allows the max distance of cable and still allow it to rest on the floor while connected to the car. You don’t want it stretched in the air from the charger to the car.
This garage is only 20ft from the wall to the garage door. The closet behind this wall was added after the house was built by a previous owner. Most garages are much deeper than 20 ft. If you install the charger on the back wall, you may have to give up some storage space in that part of the garage to be able to pull the car up to the wall if the charging port is on the back of the car (or you’ll need to back the car into the garage).
If you place it on a side wall, make sure you can get the cord to the charging port without having to drape the cable over the car.
So, location of the charger and the cord length of the charger you choose are very important to consider before talking to an electrician.
The location of your electrical panel will be a big factor in the cost.
If the panel is in the basement, the cost for wire will be much more and labor will be much more. Getting that wire from the basement to the garage may require tearing into walls.
If the panel is in the garage, the costs will be lower. However, a recessed panel will be more expensive since you will have to get into the walls. The location you need to place the car charger to the panel will also determine costs. If you can place the charger next to the electrical panel, the costs will be the cheapest. If you have to run it another wall in the garage, costs will rise.
If you have 100amp electrical service, you will have to upgrade to 200 amp electrical to charge at 48amp on a 60 amp circuit. That can run you $4000-6000 depending where you live.
If your 100 amp electric panel has two available slots, and enough capacity, you may be able to install a new 240V circuit for a car outlet or charger. However, you may be limited to a 20 or 30 amp circuit. That would still be enough for most people to charge their cars overnight after a daily commute. If you go this route, have your electrician use 6AWG wire from the panel to the outlet/charger, then install a smaller breaker. This will allow you to upgrade to a 50 amp outlet or 60 amp hardwired charger someday when the electric service is upgraded to 200amp. All that would need to be done is to install the correct size breaker in the new 200amp panel and install the new 50 amp outlet or wall charger in the garage. The wiring would not need to change.
Cr123a Lithium Batteries Also, be sure to plan way ahead. It is no longer a 2-3 week lead time to get an electrician, it’s more like 3-4 months and as more and more people start wanting car chargers in their garages and solar panels, etc, etc, electricians are going to get even busier!