Very informative. You had to do much more than we did to get a Level 2 EVSE installed (we live in the U.S.). Fortunately, my next door neighbor is an electrician and an EV enthusiast. He helped me install 6 gauge wiring from the breaker box (50 Amp) to the garage, then connect it to a NEMA 14-50 outlet. I bought a 40 Amp EVSE. More than the i3 needs but wanted to future-proof for other EVs. We don’t ever plan to buy ICE again. :)
Hi, thanks for watching! Yes, my 40 year old breaker box was never going to handle any upgrade very well, especially not an electric car, and then I made an additional problem by parking the car a long way from the house - but the most annoying part I suppose was the expensive upgrade by the power supplier. Having an electrician as your next door neighbor helps a lot! :-) Just so I understand correctly, you have ended up with 9.6kW of power at your charger - which more than the what a US spec BMW Wallbox Essential could do. Sounds like you have a good setup.
@@StevenBTuner I had no idea if I have 9.6 kW of power (remember it's my friend who's the electrician, not me lol) but I found the calculation to figure it out and yes, you are correct. Thanks for teaching me something else. :)
Liked the video, but FYI, in the Nordics most people painlessly charge their cars overnight having just 20A or even 16A 3-phase connection for the whole house - and we have not only electric ovens, but also electric heat-pump house heating. What you really need is load monitoring and balancing to fully utilize available power without exceeding 16A on any of the 3 phases. Then with subsidy from the state installation like yours usually costs around 700-1000 Euro (because no need to upgrade house supply lines). It will not charge the car at more than 11kWh but works well in practice despite just 16A main fuse :)
Hi, slow overnight charging is a lot easier but I was determined that full speed AC charging the car was never going to be a problem at any time of day or night. I'll have to look into the load monitoring and balancing to see how everything can best work together when there are multiple car chargers.
@@StevenBTuner the points are: 1- it can cost under 1000 Euro to install a perfectly sufficient home charger that is 100% guaranteed to not blow your fuses. 2- even if your house can not get more than 16A or 20A without colossal investments, it is still enough to charge electrical car at home for most people. :) But sure, if you want to charge large batteries at full speed (22Wh) then your install is a dream. I would still not do it because my electricity network-service bill would be more than 2x as expensive due to all the extra Amps that i would rarely use :)
Who else had trouble charging their electric car at home or has had a very different experience? I'd love to hear about it! Here is a breakdown of the chapters in this video: 0:00 BMW i3 Charging At Home - Overview 0:40 BMW i3 Charging At Home - First Charging Attempt 1:31 BMW i3 Charging At Home - What Went Wrong? 2:09 BMW i3 Charging At Home - How Much Power Does A BMW i3 Want? 3:13 BMW i3 Charging At Home - Home Charging Times 4:14 BMW i3 Charging At Home - Home Wiring Upgrades 6:42 BMW i3 Charging At Home - The Final Solution 7:13 BMW i3 Charging At Home - The BMW Wallbox Essential 6:42 BMW i3 Charging At Home - The Cost of the Upgrades in $US
Looking forward to more i3 related videos. I’m looking into owning an i3 in Denmark. Would be grate with a video about pros and cons of having it in Denmark.
Hi, the only 'con' is that people are switching to electric cars much quicker than fast chargers are being installed - it is a problem worldwide, not just in Denmark. Of course this is not an issue if you only drive in the range of your battery.
Installed a Wallbox 40 amp charger. The BMW CE 04 will not charge and goes into fault. The new EV charges perfectly. The wiring is new 6 GA and has no faults. I also tried the Charger that came with the car on the BMW. It will not charge at level II. Only works on commercial public charges.
Hi, those kinds of problems are not much fun to figure out! I don't know how fussy the wallbox is when it comes to voltage drop, but it may have an issue with a 2 or 3% voltage drop if you have a long cable run. This is something that your electrician should be able to test with a dummy 40A load. There is always the chance that the box or the car has a fault as well, and the car should record a DTC trouble code to help. All the best in getting to the bottom of the issue!
Actually BMW told me that to properly use it's advanced features it has to be a BMW. It will charge any car, but BMW does not promise any scheduling or tariff-based charging if not connected to BMW and/or compatible electricity provider. I chose another brand to not be limited in all of these things.
