A recent project near Clark, Colorado brings to eleven the number of places where I have installed Level 2 EV chargers. At three of these projects, I had a particularly strong motivation to succeed in the installation because if I had not, my own EV would have been stranded for a very long time at the location.
In every case I chose to hardwire the installation (blog article). Yes a person can use an EV charger that is plugged into a receptacle, but in each of these cases I was able to hardware it, and I did so.
It will be recalled (blog article) that strictly speaking when we say “Level 2 EV charger”, the technical term is actually “Level 2 EVSE”. But in everyday talk, lots of people call them “EV chargers” so in this blog article I will call them EV chargers.
As I mentioned above, a few of these locations were sufficiently remote that there were few EV charging resources anywhere geographically nearby. So for those locations, had I not managed to complete the installation, I would have been unable to charge up my own EV (which by the time I drove to the remote location, had a depleted battery) and would have been stranded there!
How did the make and model of EV charger get selected?
For one home, the constraint was that there was a single supply line and two EVs would need to be charged. So we selected two Wallboxes, which can coordinate between them to share a single supply line.
For two homes, the homeowner drove a Tesla vehicle, and so the Tesla wall connector was a natural choice.
For the remaining homes, it was a matter of which make and model of EV charger was available inexpensively and could be delivered promptly. I recall one time that I was getting ready to install an EV charger (the Wisconsin location on the map) and the only EV charger that worked at 48 amps and that I could get delivered promptly was the Grizzl-E. So that determined the make and model for that location.
Most recently the Emporia EV charger (shown at right) has become my go-to choice for a very nice and relatively inexpensive EV charger.