As the electric vehicle takeover slowly lumbers along, marginally increasing efficiencies for certain applications while entrenching car-centric urban design even further, there are some knock-on effects that are benefiting people and infrastructure beyond simple transportation. Vehicle-to-grid technology has applications for providing energy from the car back to the grid for things like power outages or grid leveling. But [Technology Connections] is taking this logic one step further. Since a large number of EV owners have charging stations built into their garages, he wondered if these charging stations could be used for other tasks and built an electric heater which can use one for power.
This project uses a level 2 charger, capable of delivering many kilowatts of power to an EV over fairly standard 240V home wiring with a smart controller in between that and the car. Compared to a level 1 charger which can only trickle charge a car on a standard 120V outlet (in the US) or a DC fast charger which can provide a truly tremendous amount of energy in a very short time, these are a happy middle ground. So, while it’s true a homeowner could simply wire up another 240V outlet for this type of space heater or other similar application, this project uses the existing infrastructure of the home to avoid redundancies like that. dual type c charger
Of course this isn’t exactly plug-and-play. Car chargers communicate with vehicles to negotiate power capabilities with each other, so any appliance wanting to use one as a bulk electric supply needs to be able to perform this negotiation. To get the full power available in this case all that’s needed is a resistor connected to one of the signal wires, but this won’t work for all cases and could overload smaller charging stations. For that a more complex signalling method is needed, but since this was more of a proof-of-concept we’ll still call it a success. For those wanting to DIY the charger itself, building one from the ground up is fairly straightforward as well.
Thanks to [Billy] for the tip!
This is cool, and I know the answer to the following is “Because they wanted to” but, why? I must be missing something, it doesn’t appear to use the car’s battery to run the heater.
…this has inspired me however to wire up a sketchy splitter cable so I don’t need to unplug the welder to use the plasma cutter however.
It’s “I don’t want to put another high-current mains connection in the garage for occasional use when there’s a perfectly functional one RIGHT HERE”. The car has nothing to do with it.
Car? What car? This is about the EVSE, not the vehicle.
In the UK some energy providers off car charging for 5p/KW during the night Vs 31p normal rate, so running a garage heater from your car charger would definitely appeal to many (and probably break some contract rules!)
Also this might be the only 240v AC connector designed for repeat insertion instead of semi-permanent installation.
Sort of a similar story, one of the carpenters who was building my house was talking about the great idea he had in his house. He wanted an on-demand hot water dispenser to make coffee and a insinkerator (a food grinder… no idea if those are only an American thing) but he only wanted to run one circuit. So he used a three-way switch where “off” fed power to the water heater and “on” switched power to the disposal instead. Not that he couldn’t run two dedicated circuits, but he wanted to just utilize the one circuit fully.
I wonder where you can find a motor-rated SPDT (“three-way”) wall switch. If he used a conventional light switch I’d like to hear how that worked out for him.
Just put a subpannel in with separate breakers for the heater and the car charger. Dont even need to switch a switch over between them. Just don’t run them at the same time and trip the sub main.
what do you use to turn on your disposal? That’s right a conventional light switch! I’m sure it worked out fine for him, although that’s not up to code. Light switches do have HP ratings as well… A $2.37 builders grade 3 way from the depot is rated at 15A and 1/2 HP. They’re literally used on tons of little single phase motors all over the place.
Didn’t watch the whole thing?
My disposal? There is no waste disposer here. They weren’t invented when my house was built, and no subsequent owner felt installing one was a sane thing to do. A plain old switch for a bathroom extractor fan is fine and legitimate. For a 3/4 or 1 HP motor? Yeah, it will work. For a while. But if your jurisdiction still thinks food disposers are a pretty neat idea, they might think using a light switch for a motor circuit is acceptable too.
They’re out there. Not cheap. DPDT would be better without worrying about accidently running two things at once.
https://moniteurDevices.com/knowledgebase/knowledGebase/what-s-difference-difference- spst-spdt-dpdt/
Every house I’ve ever lived in has had a standard wall switch for the disposal’s power. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.
An Insinkerator is a brand name for a garbage disposal. Your friend’s “hack” would and should fail inspection.
InSinkerator make an air switch for just this situation. The undersink unswitched socket is being used by the dishwasher and this switch is used to share between the instant hot water dispenser and garbage disposal. Installed the push button by drilling a hole in the cabinet semi-hidden under the edge of the counter. Worked perfectly for the last 20+ years.
https://www.amazon.com/InSinkErator-STS-00-Outlet-SinkTop-Switch/dp/B000BQO9XM?th=1
CT, opto, and a relay/contactor can disable one circuit when the other has a sufficient load.
I kinda feel like the solution here is to wire a 240 plug to the car charger and unplug it from the wall when you want 240v for other things.
Or if you want things hardwired, put a little subpannel in next to the car charger with separate breakers for the car and a 240v outlet.
Using a car charger to just run a resistive heater is… kinda unnecessary? That same resistor will work just as well on bare 240v. And then you’re heater isn’t dependant kn your car charger interface that may or may not change in 10 years.
Hard to beat a good ol’ 240v plug for future proofing.
As a ‘have fun connecting a dummy load to a car charger and working with the interface’ project, it could be fair though.
That’s covered in the video, but the insertion ratings on high power plugs are really low compared to plugs for EVs. I’m sure you could find a suitable plug, here in the UK it’d be a commando socket, but why would you when the existing type 1 connection is right there.
Marine plugs as used by boats to connect to shore power are definitely rated for repeated connect disconnect cycles. Those get unplugged constantly and are usually 240v
Tell me you haven’t read the article or watched the video without saying you haven’t read the article or watched the video.
You clearly didn’t watch the video …
This is definitely a solution in search of a problem. If he’s already run a line for the charger, just hook into that for an extra 240 outlet, or if that violates code, do a single 240v outlet plug that the charger plugs into as other suggested. I guess to each their own…
Literally in the video. His charger does plug into a wall socket but those big sockets aren’t nice to deal with and don’t have high insertion ratings. Making this is partly to also present the idea that car chargers could be used for other temporary high power connections besides vehicles.
Lots of people dont watch the videos. I prefer a blog or github page I can read at my own pace, and that works even if I`m on my phone with spotty wifi coverage.
The problem is the design for the 240 NEMA plugs that aren’t suited for a lod of insertions and exraction. For instance a CEE17/BS4343 240V 32A switched socket is designed for repeatend insertions and extractions.
He spent a goodly portion of the video forestalling the comments already made by people here who clearly didn’t watch it.
But whatever, why break with tradition. Carry on.
People also completely ignore the “because I can and it seemed cool” reason which is the motivation behind three quarters of the things discussed here.
Gotta find that one perfect criticism of someone’s hobby project that’ll make everyone applaud them and give their life meaning.
This is also the same man who spent literally years trying to perfect a way to make LED Christmas light strands look vintage. “Because I want to” is a valid and strong motivating factor over at technology connections.
I’d suggest using it to power a decent arc welder. This will be great when the tow hitch tears out of your Wankenpanzer and you need to weld it back on at the supercharger.
Ok, when this is a dedicated source for car charging (with according metering), using it for different purposes is just “stealing” aside the mentioned fact that the power grid on the lowest level is mostly not capable at all for the things “used to be done when nuclear power was better put in heating than in cooling towers”. And I thought, we were further than in the 1970s. Smart grids someone? If that is solved, then, yes then, we can talk about utilities.
I don’t believe he has separate metering for his car nor that that is common at one’s home. So that’s a non-issue. Now the rest of your comment seems just to be a complaint that he’s using a resistive heater for temporary and occasional use in his garage instead of, what?, doing tons of work to hook up a heat pump that won’t run 99% of the time and won’t warm the garage fast enough for when it’s needed on short notice?
Ok, criticism taken. Here in Europe we have 400V/32A AC, standard CEE plug for charging at home, partly with supply subsidized for car charging explicitly, so the “stealing” on using it for other purposes (that was the “heating stuff” along our nuclear era as well). The other way around, you may of course heat your car with this heater on an expensive public super charger in the absence of a CEE plug. Individualism counts.
This is far too dumb to activate a DC fast charger.
Why do people keep calling them chargers, the charger is in the vehicle, its just a glorified contactor in a box, the output rate can be easily changed with the application of the correct value resistor across the pilot pin
Because it’s the thing you connect your car to so it can charge. From a black box standpoint, it’s the same as a phone charger. Actually this is true with most electronics; even if you’re supplying a constant DC voltage, the actual circuit that controls the charge cycle of a lithium battery is in the device itself.
That’s actually pretty ingenious. Here in Sweden you can get 50% off on the electricity used to charge the car if you cede control of the charger to the power company so they can turn charging off to control load on the grid.
They won’t know it’s not a car on the other end of the plug
Oooo that’s a pretty great system. Once enough people abuse it the government could easily counter with “X consumption doesn’t match Y mileage from yearly inspections by Z car’s worst efficiency + buffer”.
Why should the utility care if it’s a car or a heater on the end of the cable? They are paying (offering a discount) for the privilege of disconnecting the load as needed. They are not subsidizing electric vehicles per se.
The same thing is offered by utilities for electric water heaters and thermal storage heating systems.
Because they use the knowledge to estimate the load control potential of their system. If they don’t know what kinds of loads are connected, they don’t know what sort of effect to expect and how many loads to disconnect. Of course the system could incorporate active load monitoring, but that may not be the case right now.
Also, there might be some subsidy scheme at play where the company gets money from the gov. to cover the discount because it’s for electric cars. If it’s for other uses, the terms of the contract no longer apply.
Third reason: masquerading illegal activities or “industrial” use as EV charging to gain access to subsidized power. E.g. a moonshine still.
Or, crypto mining. The power company might afford the discount knowing that the use is intermittent and limited so the money they lose is offset by the value of the load control potential – but not when the use is more or less continuous.
There might also be cheats who defeat the point of the system, such as running your house on the EV charger and then switching over to regular power when they cut off the charger. The company gives you a 50% discount but don’t get any load shedding in return.
Okay, interesting project. Perhaps this is the first in a series where all sorts of unintended devices are plugged into a socket it was never designed for “just because it can”. Like all those sorts of crappy USB devices (USB cup heaters, USB fans, USB blinky lights, USB phonechargers, USB vacuum cleaner, USB dancing “Groot” plant, USB mini fridge, USB handwarmers, USB paper shredder, etc.). The cat is out of the bag now… the same nonsense… but this time with enough power to burn the house down.
This isn’t nearly as silly as some of those you listed and a few of those listed aren’t even that weird (fans, lights) when you think of how convenient USB is for low voltage power.
The point of this project is that car chargers are frequently just fancy high power mains connections with high insertion ratings. So it kind of makes sense to use them for other temporary high loads.
You also act as if the entirety of the USB charging standard wasn’t built on the back of people using it for power instead of data.
“This isn’t nearly as silly as” you are correct… but this is only the beginning. The list I mentioned was 25+ years after the introduction of the USB standard. I put in the USB phone chargers as that has become a real serious thing by now. But keep in mind that USB was intended as a replacement for the big but slow serial/parallel connectors. It was merely a data connector then a silly power outlet. And intended for a max. output of 5W in order to supply small peripherals (like a webcam) with power. That you can draw power from it and that it works (doesn’t immediately explode) doesn’t automatically mean that it was intended that way.
Now back to the car charger / power outlet, this is slightly different but I’m pretty sure that the people who created this socket might not have envisioned it to be the power outlet for a large heater. That was the point I was trying to make. And from that viewpoint I’m curious about what the future will bring us 25+ years from now. Then we might think back and say… I know where this all started, I read about it on hackaday, some guy connected the biggest electric heater he could find…
I kinda get where you are coming from and what you mean now. I felt you portrayed this project as foolish when it has some well reasoned merits.
I kinda doubt we’ll see anything too crazy. Most things I could see this being used on are already high power devices that either use a high power socket or direct wiring.
Now where things might get crazier is on the other end with cars that can back-feed power. We might see ridiculous (for cars) things that rely on the connector and backfeeding to function.
Amazing how the USA with its dumb 110V AC is trying to workaround the obvious solution to move to 230V AC like the rest of the world. In the real world, you plug a heater on a 230V plug like you’re plugging the coffee grinder. Each plug is rated for, at least 16A (usually 20A for any building built after 1980), so you can draw between 3500W to 4500W without any issue. Using a 240V plug with its requirement of 32A requires more expensive cabling (since you must use at least 6mm² wire), more expensive outlet, more expensive switches and so on. Everything is more expensive.
At least in my area of the USA— We have 125/250V. And has been for 40 years. If I see 110V on a outlet, something is wrong. A few years back we had a bad cold snap, voltage dropped to ~91V !! Some of my LED lights would not even “light” up. Lasted about 12 hours.
The US average household runs off a transformer that steps down the power to two lines of 110-120 volts at 60 hertz. This provides 220-240 volts when power from both lines is combined. It’s very unusual to have readings of 125/250, in which case you would be well advised to call in a licensed electrician to determine what the issue is. Perhaps you are simply mistaken or misinformed.
The national standard in the US (and Canada) is 120 V+/-5%, i.e. 114-126 V. If you’re seeing 110 V (or 220 V), something is wrong: there’s a voltage dip on the local grid, or your line is undersized for the current you’re drawing.
125 Vac is a perfectly normal voltage to see on an unloaded line. It is set that way so when you load it, the voltage might dip to the nominal 120 V.
A cynical soul might also say the utility sets the voltage at the top of the allowed range to sell more power, but they’d be wrong.
Sometimes “220 V” is specified as an allowed input voltage, implying that either 208 or 240 (or 230) are acceptable, since 208 V is the voltage in 3-phase 120 V systems common in industrial facilities — like the 3-phase 400 V / 230 V used in most of the other 95% of the planet.
First off most houses have a 220 plug somewhere for things that need it like a dryer or electric cooktop. And the vast majority of people aren’t like us with welders and heavy machinery kicking around, it’s simply not needed by the vast majority of people to have 220 with 20A in the house at every outlet when, as you say, it’s for a coffee grinder. And even if you need to run a machine mill in your bedroom (I’m not prying into your personal life, stay outta mine) it’s plenty do-able to wire up that 220.
Eh, people are always saying life is a grind.
We have ~230V (avoiding the semantics of exact RMS value). We just only use it for devices that really need high power. Otherwise standard 120V works fine, and all else being equal, is less often fatal in the event of accidental electrocution. Given we were the first nation with a functioning electrical grid and have maintained some level of backwards compatibility since almost the start, it doesn’t make sense to reinvent our whole system of plugs, breakers, and wiring just to boil water a bit faster.
What kind of coffee grinder do you use that draws >1500W? Do you have a particle accelerator that gets each bean up to relativistic velocity before colliding them? If so, I know some espresso enthusiasts who would love to back your Kickstarter.
normal plugs are usually rated for 10 or 13 amps and you are not allowed more than 6 amps if it is for more than 2 hours, then you need the big CEE plugs
I have not watched the video, but I like the solution! I have a Tesla smart charger installed in my garage and wanted to install a heater as well. There are some challenges:
The Tesla charger needs to have continuous power because it is connected to my home network. Having a single outlet to plug either the charger or the heater into would defeat this. Installing a y- circuit is problematic because you can’t have both devices turned on at the same time. It will surely blow the breaker, may cause a fire, and will definitely not pass inspection. Using a sub-panel is acceptable, but the main breakers within the main panel need to be sized to accommodate both devices. Otherwise you will have the same problems as number 2. Also, the feed wire from the main to the sub-panel needs to be sized correctly to handle the load of both devices.
This solution uses a contactor which provides mains AC, and the heater is modified to basically emulate a car (and therefore allow power delivered to it). The charger stays operational the whole time and basically acts like a power cord. The point of all this is that you can just plug in to the heater instead of the car with the charging cable.
That’s exactly why I like this solution!
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