Level 2 Charger!

Meet Sammie, or should I say Sam-e, my 2019 Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan. He can go 30 miles on a charge, give or take, so for roaming around our side of town he's mostly using electrons. I adopted him in December 2018.

Photo tweaked via DeepDreamGenerator

Sammie came with a 120-volt charger that I could plug into the existing outlet on our garage wall. However, that outlet is on the same circuit as the basement outlets and the bathroom outlets, all on a 15-amp circuit breaker. I've been told this was a common practice back in the '80s, when the house was built.

The first trouble was that two of the bathroom outlets would grow hot if Sammie was charging. In fact, in the master bath you could hear a buzzing noise. After joining the Facebook group for Pacifica hybrid owners, I learned that the misbehaving outlets were best replaced with fresh, commercial-grade outlets -- still only a few bucks. After more web research I bought three such, and swapped out the garage outlet and two of the bathroom outlets. The buzzing and heating stopped.

But it was still just a 15-amp circuit. If Sammie was charging -- and it took twelve to thirteen hours if empty, on 120 volts and 12 amps -- then the circuit breaker was likely to trip. Plug in a hair dryer? Pop. Dehumidifier in the basement (we run one during the summer) kicks in? Pop.

I finally decided to spring for the installation of a 50 amp, 240 volt circuit for Sammie, and collected a couple of estimates. One company wanted to completely replace the old panel, which didn't have spare slots after solar panels were installed in 2015. That was pricey. Another proposed adding a subpanel instead, and came in $1200 cheaper. That's more like it!

In this photo, solar stuff (disconnect, revenue meter, Enphase Envoy) is on the left, the original panel in center, and the new subpanel on the right. Circuits were moved from the original to the subpanel to make room for the 240-volt circuit in the original. The equipment is mounted on a basement wall.

Of course, I wanted to choose my 240-volt EVSE (Electric Vehicle Service Equipment), or what most folks call the "car charger," before the install. I'd been browsing for a while, knowing that I'd need one sooner or later, and chose Grizzl-e over more well-known manufacturers. The model with a premium 18-foot cable was US$419. Rugged construction and outdoor-rated.

I didn't need fancy features such as wifi connectivity. What I did want was variable charging amperage. Most EVSE units charge at a fixed rate, commonly 16, 24, or 32 amps. The very few that supported changing the amperage were more expensive, garlanded with bells and whistles.

Why variable amperage? Most of the time we'll want to draw only 16 amps to allow the solar panels to provide as much of the electricity as possible, by stretching the charge time, which would still be 2.5x faster than the 120-volt unit. But I would be able to jump to 32 amps (the Grizzl-e will actually go to 40 amps, but Sammie won't go that high) if I needed a quicker turn-around. Also, we're future-proofed against the possibility of a battery-only vehicle.

A feature or drawback of the Grizzl-e, depending on how you look at it, is that the amperage is not changed through an app on your phone, which if you're fumble-fingered like me might result in choosing too high or low an amperage. And it doesn't depend on wifi. Grizzl-e is a bit more work: unplug it, remove the front cover (Allen wrench), flip three tiny switches into the configuration you want, as described in the manual, and reassemble. If you don't need to change amperage often, that's plenty good enough.

I'm pleased to say that the electrical work and the first use of the Grizzl-e went smoothly. Now we don't need to worry about the hair dryer.