I received an e-mail yesterday from Clean Fuel stating site inspections were starting and to send them some dates I was available. Decided to call them up and they were able to come out this morning for the site inspection. Here's what I found out. We have a 100amp panel. Our house was built in 1992 and I was told most newer homes have a 200amp panel which makes things a lot easier. Steve from Clean Fuel was really nice and explained all sorts of electrical stuff to me about our panel. He's going to do a load calculation and see if our current panel can handle the additional charge. If not, they'll need to upgrade my panel and that sounds expensive. He said Clean Fuel should be getting back to me pretty quick with more info.
We also discussed the placement of the charging unit. I asked if it could go on a stand but was told no. It must be wall mounted. We found a couple of good places it can go. No problem there.
He was here for maybe a 1/2 hour but probably would have been gone in about 10 minutes if I hadn't kept asking him questions.
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I'm in Irvine and our house was built in 1985. I was surprised to learn that we have a 200-amp panel. Today the electrician is running a 50-amp 220V line to the garage. When the crew from Clean Fuel Connection come to inspect, hopefully next week, we’ll be ready to go.
ReplyDeleteThis is going to be fun.
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteThanks Great News! It would be great once we all get our cars to have some sort of get together now and then. I see you're in Irvine and I'm just down the road in Long Beach. Good Luck on the inspection!
My biggest fear is that I don't have sufficient amps for the charger. I looked at my panel and it says 200-amps maximum. My neighbor said I should have 100-amp service but I have central air conditioning that was installed by the builder so the power may have been upgraded by the original owners. I hope so because I have underground utilities and it cannot be upgraded.
ReplyDeleteI've added a link to your blog on my blog and hope to hear further good news from you. Good luck!
-Stu Greenberg
http://www.stuartistry.com/my-mini-e
When it was all said and done the install of the 220V line to my garage worked okay for me, but I was exploring other options just in case. For example, we could have run the line to the garage from the AC and only charged the car when the AC was off. We only use the AC a few days each year anyway. Since it cools down most nights here and I think our rate for electric power is lower after 9 PM, we could charge our MINI-E then and not have any issues. There may be building codes that prevent “sharing” a breaker on the panel. If you can’t get enough power from your panel, how about living without AC for a summer?
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