Extra charging cable

I'd take the 30 seconds of unplug to the $900 expense. I like that my cord is in my locked car. It's safe there.

 

I personally got tired of constantly pulling the portable EVSE in and out of the car at home. It's bad enough I have to do it at work. I finally spent the money and had an L2 EVSE installed at home. However, had I gone the route of buying a second portable one, it would stay locked in the garage when not in use.

 

Yup

 

I ended up spending the $1000 or so to have an L2 EVSE installed on the outside of my house so I could avoid pulling the cable out of the car constantly. $500 for the EVSE, and about $500 in parts/labor/permit to have my electrician put it in. For me, money well spent and well worth it.

 

Where did you buy a 240v EVSE for $500?

 

900 for the chord vs 1000 for home installation...


uhhhk THANKS TOYOTA NOW I HAVE TO BUY A HOUSE TO CHARGE MY PRIUS

 

I lucked into a deal. A fellow board member won one in a contest, but didn't need it.

 

It is possible to build your own L2 capable portable EVSE for about $500 in parts. The Open EVSE project shows you how to do it. At least one board member has done it. Can plug into a standard 120V outlet with an adapter, or into your typical dryer plug with another adapter.

 

I was the guy that sold a Nissan-branded AV L2 EVSE to devprius (thanks to a Nissan giveaway). I have no EV nor PHEV, yet.

I could keep it, but it's of no use w/o it installed (it requires hardwiring). If I had it installed, I'd have to take the tax hit on the unit + installation, for something that might never get used.

I still plan to get a Leaf, but I was planning to spend exactly $0 on EVSEs. The tax hit is a LOT more than $0.

 

Good deal. I wish I caught that.

Im thinking of sending my cable to evseupgrade.com Its only $250 and they will convert my evse to work with 120 or 240.

 

I got (sad) news for you. If punks want to seal / vandalize your junk, they WILL vandalize your junk. Consider this EVSE, located on my route home - city of Orange, in so Cal:


You think if being just a couple buildings away from the police department and this still happens, then somewhere more remote? . . . . it's easy pickens. Any punk with a base ball bat finds EVSE's fair game.



Pretty funny, hugh. It's a good thing I wasn't able to watch this happen . . . . . as someone would be in jail, if you know what I mean. EVSE stations are going to have to include CCTV setups.

120v - 240v or 208v

SGH-I717R ? 2
.

 

I've heard really good things about the upgrade.

 

Evseupgrade does a good job, however, you still only end up with 1 EVSE, if you build your own OpenEVSE you have a 2nd one for backup, or to use permanently at home, leaving the unmodified Toyota cord with the PiP for charging at work or a friends house, without dragging the cord in and out of the car constantly. You can build an OpenEVSE for about $550-600, it mostly depends on the cost of the J-1772 cable assembly, the high quality ITT 30A capable w/20' of cable is still $270.00

 

Want to buy my shed?

 

Somewhere I read that the 120v plug on the factory EVSE is really not designed to be repeatedly plugged and unplugged from the wall outlet; after a while, it does not fit as tightly, and you can get a poorer connection and attendant energy losses and heating.

In other countries such as in Europe, our power connector design and choice of 120V is really looked down upon as being lame. But it is what we are stuck with it, along with our arcane system of measurement based on medieval criteria (like a "foot" being the size of some king's foot).

 

I built the OpenEVSE for about $450. I could do it again for about $350 by saving on the J1772. I got the super hefty J1772 cable/connector so I paid $330 for the 75A version (I'm thinking very long term here....) instead of the $240 or so for the 30A version. The PiP only pulls 12A so I configured the OpenEVSE for 16A. Doing it again I would configure the OpenEVSE for 30A instead so it would have more flexibility going forward.

It took me an afternoon to do the whole thing once I had all the parts.

I've been using it now for about 2 months and it's great to be able to fully charge in 1.5 hours instead of 3 hours. But, truly, it will be forever for it to pay for itself - I did it as a convenience thing. I can no get home from work and charge for 45 minutes (not a full charge) and have enough charge to go pick my daughter up.

The charge cycle seems to do about 80-90% of the charge in the 1st hour and then it charges much more slowly for the last half hour. I suspect it's not great for the battery for me to disconnect before the charge cycle is finished, but I figure as long as I don't do it too often it should be ok.

 

Did you ever create a post chronicling the steps you took? Do you have a parts list? I'm on the fence whether I should build 1 or have my modified by evseupgrade.com.

 

Just want to point out that when your car is regenerating, its essentially charging the battery and at a much higher rate. So I dont think we have to worry about anything we could do to harm the battery while charging from the wall.

 

The charge cycle seems to do about 80-90% of the charge in the 1st hour and then it charges much more slowly for the last half hour. I suspect it's not great for the battery for me to disconnect before the charge cycle is finished, but I figure as long as I don't do it too often it should be ok.[/quote]


Actually according to my Kill A Watt charging at 110.0 volts draws about 1235 watts, then at about 10 minutes before charging is finished, wattage drops down to about 642 watts

 

You should be able to find a parts list at open-evse - Open Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) - Google Project Hosting . There's plenty of discussion at My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Open EVSE.