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Even if you down own your home, it's no guarantee. I live in a condo with a detached garage, which is on the far side of another row of condos. So getting pow

Even if you down own your home, it's no guarantee. I live in a condo with a detached garage, which is on the far side of another row of condos. So getting power from my meter to the garage means trenching through a sidewalk, under a block of condos, then through about 20 feet of pavement. Alternatively, I could trench through 100 feet of pavement from the power vault where our complex's transformer is and have the power company install a new meter for me. The garage has a light bulb + garage door opener circuit, but the panel that feeds it wouldn't support a single charge station, let alone enough for the 8 garages that the panel serves. The HOA isn't interested in running enough power to let residents install an EV charge station in the garage, and I'm not interested in paying for it either. So unless I can get my neighbors to help share the cost, I'm not going to be able to install a charge station.

emiliobumachar 8y ago
Just a thought: a sufficiently smart EV and a sufficiently smart garage door could talk to each other to share a circuit. The car just stops charging when the door needs to move, which shouldn't add up to too much time. Not practical for an individual to develop to solve their individual problem, but maybe it could become a selling point for any particular EV.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  The problem isn't "sharing" the circuit, the problem is that the EV charger wants power, as much power as possible, and the circuit to that garage has been sized to allow for just enough to run a bulb and some trivial electrics like a door opener. Say 150W. If you divert that 150W to an EV charger, so little power will make no perceptible difference to the charge overnight. Maybe 3-4 miles per night. And in fact a smart charger might conclude the circuit is faulty and cease charging altogether at this very low input.

emiliobumachar 8y ago

Just a thought: a sufficiently smart EV and a sufficiently smart garage door could talk to each other to share a circuit. The car just stops charging when the door needs to move, which shouldn't add up to too much time. Not practical for an individual to develop to solve their individual problem, but maybe it could become a selling point for any particular EV.

tialaramex 8y ago
The problem isn't "sharing" the circuit, the problem is that the EV charger wants power, as much power as possible, and the circuit to that garage has been sized to allow for just enough to run a bulb and some trivial electrics like a door opener. Say 150W. If you divert that 150W to an EV charger, so little power will make no perceptible difference to the charge overnight. Maybe 3-4 miles per night. And in fact a smart charger might conclude the circuit is faulty and cease charging altogether at this very low input.