EV Plug (240v J1772)

[protomech]

The J1772 coupler supports both 120V (AC level 1) and 240V (AC level 2) charging.
http://www.sae.org/smartgrid/chargingspeeds.pdf

I don't know if the J1772 spec mandates that all chargers support lower levels. The Zero S w/ J1772 almost certainly can charge at level 2 / 240V .. with no real improvement in charge times versus a standard 120V wall socket.

[protomech]

BrammoBrian posts on the Asphalt & Rubber Empulse IET discussion thread..

The 2012 Empulse will incorporate a J1772 charging outlet which will allow for both Level 1 (120Vac household) and Level 2 (220Vac single phase)charging. The charge time on Level 2 will be approximately 3.5 hours. Zero’s charge time is less because they have less battery capacity.

Empulse will have J1772! Woo!

3.5 hour charge means an onboard 3kw charger, if Brian is talking about the 10 kwh bike. Very cool, and good news for our Euro friends as well - the charger should be capable of charging at 220V 15A from a standard wall plug, or about 3-4 hours for the Empulse 10.0.

If you can find a J1772 plug, you should recover around 30 suburban miles of range per hour charging. Very useful.

[Gavin]

Very cool....Brammo is trying hard to get me to change from a Plus to an Empulse

Still prefer the Enertia style, but getting 30 miles of range in an hour is nice....Stop for a nice lunch and charge and jump back on...

I know one place to park it...




and will be putting a J1772 in my garage in the next year (sooner if the Plus has J1772, but I doubt it will...but maybe...)

Gavin

[Brammofan]

I'm glad Brian is out there leaking bits of information. And I'm glad we're catching it all here (thanks, protomech). 

[Shinysideup]

This is great news, since I'm on the Empulse wait list.

Here's a couple of resources:

http://www.pluginrecharge.com/2011/08/residential-evse-roundup.html

http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/Low-Cost-EVSE-td3835375.html

 And a video of how to install the charger at home:

[FreepZ]

A J1772 on the Empulse is great news! 10 hour charge time just seemed like way too long to have to wait around anywhere. 3 hours is much more reasonable. Furthermore, I would be able to use all the charging stations that are (or will be) sprouting up like mushrooms!

Perhaps this has already been discussed, but can anybody tell me if it would be preferable to use slower charging if I knew that I had lots of time to charge.
This article says:

"When you charge at five times the rate, you get 25 times the heating," explained Gow. And heat is the enemy of lithium ion batteries.

Perhaps the negative effect of using the level 2 charger are negligible since, by the above calculation, two times the charging rate would only be four times the heat.

[protomech]

That article is specifically talking about fast-charging, eg Nissan Leaf's 480V 80% charge in 30 minutes. That's 1.6C, or 160% of the pack recharged in an hour.

A 3kw charge will recharge the 6 kwh empulse in 2 hours (0.5C) and the 10 kwh empulse in 3.5 hours (0.3C). That's generally pretty gentle. After all, you're pulling power out of the pack at 4-7C (40kw motor) .. putting it back in at 0.3-0.5C is probably okay!

Caveat: Brammo is the only one that can give a definitive answer, as it will be specific to their battery cells.

[860]

10 hour charge time just seemed like way too long to have to wait around anywhere.

You are absolutely right, but to put this into perspective, you would only need to wait around 10 hours if you had completely discharged the battery. 

In reality, most folks won't completely discharge their battery for daily use.  If you get 100 miles out of a 10 hour charge, then on days you only drive 50 miles, you are looking at just a 5 hour charge, and 2.5 hours for days you drive 25 miles, etc. 

For me personally, that means most of the time just plugging into a 110 standard plug at night will be way more than I need.  On the other hand, I like the idea of being able to return from a long ride, plug it into a fast charger like this, and in an hour have 30 miles or so worth of range back again in case I need to head out for dinner or something.

Any restaurant/bar with a J1772 nearby after a longer ride will get my business.  We're always stopping somewhere at the end of a ride on our gasser bikes.

[FreepZ]

Any restaurant/bar with a J1772 nearby after a longer ride will get my business.  We're always stopping somewhere at the end of a ride on our gasser bikes.

I second that motion!

My predicament is that I would like to be able to make a 80 mile trip (one way) every weekend. Some math (and advice from protomech) showed me that taking the shortest/quickest route (via highway) isn't going to work, as I would be about 5 miles short of juice.
Plan B would be to take the longer, slower route, keeping under 55 mph all the way.
Plan C would be to find somewhere to get an extra 5 miles worth of juice on the way.

The problem with Plan C is that at 110 V, I would have to wait an 30 minutes to get my extra 5 miles. However, with a level 2 charger, I would be able to get that in 10 minutes.

Of course, next I will have to find a level 2 charger on the way...
(Oh wait! I just traced my route on www.plugshare.com, and there is a L2 charger on the way. w00t!)

[860]

Cool website.  I think I found exactly what I was looking for.  A Micro-brewery with a bar and a tour with samples!  (and a 240v J1772 plug-in)  

http://www.plugshare.com?charger=5885


Edit:  Is it some kind of sign that I may have a problem when I post a comment about beer, and I get promoted to "Enertia Master" rank?

[FreepZ]

It looks like you've found the University of Central Florida charging station. I believe that the L2 charging station in question is a bit to the NE of the marker.



They had installed a solar powered station over there some time last year, which you can read about over here:

http://today.ucf.edu/new-solar-charging-station-on-campus/

I've been meaning to visit that station, just to get a feel of how it would work. Do I just roll up and plug in, or is there some procedure to follow? It sounds like they are planning on setting up a way to pay for the juice, but I don't know.

So far, I've only actually seen three L2 charging stations:

• At my office (free)
• Downtown Orlando (pay with a credit card)
• At a Nissan dealership (probably only accessible to leaf owners)

I'm going to try to investigate more of them.

[Gavin]

Mmmmm, I see it as New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins Colorado...

Gavin

[FreepZ]

Mmmmm, I see it as New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins Colorado...

Hmm... I see what you mean. For some reason, the link brought me to the plugin share website, but not the the specific chager that 1416 was pointing at. Instead, when I hit the link, it probably went to the last location that I was looking at.

Anyway, I went to visit a couple of locations on that website. One at a car dealership, the other at the University of Central Florida.

The salesman that I talked to at the dealership said that the charger was reserved for company use only. He even said that I wouldn't be allowed to use their charger even if I had bought a vehicle from them. That doesn't sound like good customer care to me, but oh well...

The university charger was interesting. It didn't have any J1772 plugs, but did have a set of 20A sockets. A website that I read said that only two of the eight sockets would be 240V, but I didn't see any way to determine which ones were the 240V and which ones were the 120V (as far as I know, the sockets look the same). I would have thought that voltage information would be quite important as equipment made for 110V doesn't do very well with 240V.

I'm going to have to contact the university to see what the rules are for using their charger. I hope it's not restricted to students and faculty only. The charger is in a parking lot that is open to the public, but has a ticket machine that sells $5 daily parking passes. Since I only intend on sticking around for 10 minutes or so, perhaps I could get away with just hanging around while the bike charged.

I'm going to have a lot of fun figuring out where all of the opportunities to charge are -- once I have something to charge!

[Phantom]

The salesman that I talked to at the dealership said that the charger was reserved for company use only. He even said that I wouldn't be allowed to use their charger even if I had bought a vehicle from them. That doesn't sound like good customer care to me, but oh well...

Did it show up as a public charging station on Plugshare?  I saw that you could write a review about it. I think that information would be helpful for other people to know.

I would like to get my company to install one and advertise it for the public to use. I could not find any charging stations close to me yet on Plugshare.

[protomech]

Look at the 20 amp sockets.

NEMA 5-20 has a vertical "eye" in the top right, NEMA 6-20 has a horizontal "eye".
NEMA L6-20 has a much smaller prong in the bottom left vs NEMA L5-20.

We'll find out soon, but the charger for the Empulse is probably auto-ranging - ideally you can just plug it into either a 120V or 240V socket and the charger will sort it out.