Home install help

[Hunter]

I need some help with installing the home charger (and forgive me if I have the terms incorrect). Our electrician came and this is my understanding:
We only have 200 amps (not 400 amps) on our home and it's all accounted for (between the main circuit breaker and our upstairs heating and air unit). Our main circuit breaker only pulls 90 amps. But the Ford Charger recommends connecting at 100 amps to get the full 80 amps the charger needs. Our electrician says he can probably get 60 amps reliably, but is trying to find someone with experience to see if he can turn the dial down on the charger and it still work ok on the 60 amps.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any help would be appreciated.

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[skyak]

Yes you can use the charger at a lower max amperage by adjusting the physical dial in the charger.

 

[GDN]

Adjusting the Pro charger is easily done and many do it.

You need to evaluate your charging needs too. On a 60 amp breaker you can still get 48 amp charging. This should truly suffice for 99.9% of the drivers.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

We only have 200 amps (not 400 amps) on our home and it's all accounted for (between the main circuit breaker and our upstairs heating and air unit). Our main circuit breaker only pulls 90 amps.

Ask more questions around this.
You have a 200A panel with a 90A main breaker? Or is it jus tthe circuit dedicated tit he charger is a 90A breaker?

If it’s the latter, just get a bigger breaker and run the appropriate wiring to accommodate the full 80A of charging..

Our electrician says he can probably get 60 amps reliably

This statement worries me a little. Does he think pulling 60A will trip the main house breaker? Why doesn’t he think it will work “reliably” if he goes over 60A?

 

[Tony Burgh]

“Our main circuit breaker only pulls 90 amps.”
But what is its rating?
I have 150 amp service and thats the rating on the main breaker. I have the FCSP wired for 100 amps through a 100 amp breaker.
I have had to problems charging at 80 amps with HVAC and major appliances running.

 

[jimfigler]

Ask more questions around this.
You have a 200A panel with a 90A main breaker? Or is it jus tthe circuit dedicated tit he charger is a 90A breaker?

If it’s the latter, just get a bigger breaker and run the appropriate wiring to accommodate the full 80A of charging..



This statement worries me a little. Does he think pulling 60A will trip the main house breaker? Why doesn’t he think it will work “reliably” if he goes over 60A?

To me it sounds like he is pulling at max about 90 amps of the 200 amp service. But that is just the way I’m reading it.

 

[Hunter]

Ask more questions around this.
You have a 200A panel with a 90A main breaker? Or is it jus tthe circuit dedicated tit he charger is a 90A breaker?

If it’s the latter, just get a bigger breaker and run the appropriate wiring to accommodate the full 80A of charging..



This statement worries me a little. Does he think pulling 60A will trip the main house breaker? Why doesn’t he think it will work “reliably” if he goes over 60A?

The main breaker is 90A. And yes, he thinks pulling more than 60A will trip the main house breaker. He said I may have to be careful about running our dryer when charging my truck if we push it too high.

 

[dirtdiver]

FYI. Like others have said it is easy to dial back the pro charger with an "inside the case" dial. I dialed my charger back to 48amps and I get about 20 miles per hour on the charger. Plus or minus.

steve

 

[jimfigler]

The main breaker is 90A. And yes, he thinks pulling more than 60A will trip the main house breaker. He said I may have to be careful about running our dryer when charging my truck if we push it too high.

Why do you have 90a main breaker on a 200a service?

 

[Yellow Buddy]

The main breaker is 90A. And yes, he thinks pulling more than 60A will trip the main house breaker. He said I may have to be careful about running our dryer when charging my truck if we push it too high.

1) Does the house actually get 200A service, or is it just an oversized 200A panel?

2) If the house doesn’t get 200A service, what does it get?

Supplementary:
3) What are your heavy electrical requirements? (Electric or gas dryer? Stove? Oven? Heat? Etc)

I may even turn it down even more depending on what the loads actually are - assuming you’re actually limited to 90A

There’s a couple ways this can go depending on your answers…

 

[Hunter]

1) Does the house actually get 200A service, or is it just an oversized 200A panel?

2) If the house doesn’t get 200A service, what does it get?

Supplementary:
3) What are your heavy electrical requirements? (Electric or gas dryer? Stove? Oven? Heat? Etc)

I may even turn it down even more depending on what the loads actually are - assuming you’re actually limited to 90A

There’s a couple ways this can go depending on your answers…

Yes we do get 200A. Our house breaker is technically a sub-breaker (that may not be the right term). But a significant part off of the main breaker goes to our upstairs heating and air units. There is not any available amperage to pull from the main 200A or he would run wiring from it. He has to pull it off our house breaker.
As far as our house breaker, the dryer is the biggest pull. Others include all our kitchen appliance and washing machine. Our hotwater heater is a forever hot water heater, so it's part gas and doesn't pull much electricity.

 

[RickLightning]

Talk to your electrician about two options:

1) Setting the Ford charger to the most amperage he says you can handle with the dryer running, and size the circuit appropriately.

2) Ignore the dryer - give you a bigger circuit with a load balancer on it. This would allow you to set the Ford charger higher. If the overall demand exceeds a threshold (I believe it's 85% of the total), then it would shut down the Ford charger until the dryer stopped. Or, you could go to the Ford charger and lower the amperage, and it would again start up once the load balance timeout ended (15 minutes?).

I would go with #2.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Yes we do get 200A. Our house breaker is technically a sub-breaker (that may not be the right term). But a significant part off of the main breaker goes to our upstairs heating and air units. There is not any available amperage to pull from the main 200A or he would run wiring from it. He has to pull it off our house breaker.
As far as our house breaker, the dryer is the biggest pull. Others include all our kitchen appliance and washing machine. Our hotwater heater is a forever hot water heater, so it's part gas and doesn't pull much electricity.

Ok I had to read it several times. Let me know if my understanding is correct.

1) You have a main distribution panel with 200A service and a 200A main breaker.

2) From the main distribution panel you have breakers that go to (2) subpanels - 100A ea? One to “upstairs” HVAC, one “house panel”

3) Your electrician is trying to wire the FCSP to the “house panel” which is a 100A subpanel using a 90A breaker.

4) Your “house panel” contains multiple heavy electrical loads. Including a 240V/30A dryer.

Is all of that correct so far?

Also not stated but I assume you also have a downstairs heating/cooling units? Is this powered from the “house panel” as well? Or is your entire HVAC on the upstairs panel?

Things to note, electrical doesn’t work the way you’re describing. Just because 100A is portioned off for a subpanel, doesn’t mean that subpanel consumes 100A of your service. It only pulls as much as it needs.

What may be limiting you is that your “house panel” is only wired for 100A and the electrician can’t upgrade it to 200A without significant work and doesn’t want to run another 100A for your charger alone.

For reference, I’m on 200A and have a fully eIectrical house hold. run (2) Tesla Gen2 80A chargers (load shared) and sits on a dedicated garage subpanel with a 14-50. Electric stove, oven, dryer, and heat pump water heater, HVAC. So it’s capable of supporting it that shouldn’t be a question. The bigger question is what is your electrical setup/design as that seems to be the limitation

 

[Hunter]

Ok I had to read it several times. Let me know if my understanding is correct.

1) You have a main distribution panel with 200A service and a 200A main breaker.

2) From the main distribution panel you have breakers that go to (2) subpanels - 100A ea? One to “upstairs” HVAC, one “house panel”

3) Your electrician is trying to wire the FCSP to the “house panel” which is a 100A subpanel using a 90A breaker.

4) Your “house panel” contains multiple heavy electrical loads. Including a 240V/30A dryer.

Is all of that correct so far?

Also not stated but I assume you also have a downstairs heating/cooling units? Is this powered from the “house panel” as well? Or is your entire HVAC on the upstairs panel?

Things to note, electrical doesn’t work the way you’re describing. Just because 100A is portioned off for a subpanel, doesn’t mean that subpanel consumes 100A of your service. It only pulls as much as it needs.

What may be limiting you is that your “house panel” is only wired for 100A and the electrician can’t upgrade it to 200A without significant work and doesn’t want to run another 100A for your charger alone.

For reference, I’m on 200A and have a fully eIectrical house hold. run (2) Tesla Gen2 80A chargers (load shared) and sits on a dedicated garage subpanel with a 14-50. Electric stove, oven, dryer, and heat pump water heater, HVAC. So it’s capable of supporting it that shouldn’t be a question. The bigger question is what is your electrical setup/design as that seems to be the limitation

Yes, (from my understanding, and sorry I'm probably using incorrect terms) that is our house setup.

As for downstairs, our HVAC is gas for heat and electric for AC in the summer. I think it goes off the main breaker as well (not from our "house breaker"). I am going to ask our electrician for details (sorry, I'm essentially the opposite of electrical savvy).

I "think" that is correct that our "house panel" is only wired for 100A.

Let me get with my electrician and get back to you to clarify (though it will probably be a couple of days before I hear from him due to the holiday).

(And thank you so much for you and everyone else's help!!!!!!!)

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Yes, (from my understanding, and sorry I'm probably using incorrect terms) that is our house setup.

As for downstairs, our HVAC is gas for heat and electric for AC in the summer. I think it goes off the main breaker as well (not from our "house breaker"). I am going to ask our electrician for details (sorry, I'm essentially the opposite of electrical savvy).

I "think" that is correct that our "house panel" is only wired for 100A.

Let me get with my electrician and get back to you to clarify (though it will probably be a couple of days before I hear from him due to the holiday).

(And thank you so much for you and everyone else's help!!!!!!!)

The right way to do this is to run a new line. While you’re at it ask him for an estimate to run the FCSP direct to the main 200A panel, and/or the cost to install a dedicated 100A garage panel. Generally it’s a minimal difference if you need to do a new long run anyway.

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