3 Simple Steps to Check If Your Home’s EV Ready
This guest blog post was contributed by Pearl.
Thinking about installing an electric vehicle charger in your home? Before you do, check out these must-know EV charger tips from the experts at Pearl.
Installing home-electrification upgrades, like home electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, can help homeowners save significantly on their energy costs, and thanks to the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, undertaking these home improvements comes with more incentives than ever.
But before you summon a licensed electrician to your home, there are a few simple steps you can take on your own to assess your home’s readiness for EV-charging upgrades. These can help you roughly anticipate costs without shelling out cash for an official estimate.
Just start with the three simple steps outlined below:
1. Understand the differences between Level 1 and Level 2 chargers.
Every EV on the market today comes with a basic 120V charging cable, known as a Level 1 charger. This allows you to connect to any standard electrical outlet in your home and start charging your vehicle immediately, with no modification required.
While that sounds great on paper, unfortunately, it isn’t an ideal solution for most EV owners. Just consider the following two drawbacks, for starters:
- Speed and time: The charge from a Level 1 charger can be exceedingly slow—you might only increase your vehicle’s range by a few dozen miles during the course of a full overnight charge, for example, and it’s going to take more than 24 hours to bring your battery back to 100 percent if it’s anywhere near empty. For many daily commuters, that alone could be a deal breaker.
- Load and capacity: Many home electrical systems aren’t equipped to handle the combined load of EV charging along with home appliances and accessories like hair dryers and microwave ovens, which you probably use every day. In other words, you might have to completely change your ordinary patterns of home energy consumption to make a Level 1 charger work for you.
In light of challenges like these, it’s probably unsurprising that most EV owners install Level 2 chargers at home. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, these dedicated chargers can charge an EV to 80 percent from empty in four to 10 hours on average.
While these chargers require a slightly different kind of plug and support from a qualified electrician (more on both of those below), the overall process of upgrading isn’t too taxing from a cost or planning standpoint. A simple first step, for instance, is to consider your home’s layout.
2. Think about your home’s physical layout.
Most EV owners opt to upgrade to Level 2 charging capabilities at home — and you probably will, too, for the above reasons — but not all homes have the ideal physical layout.
With that in mind, take a moment to review the following two rules of thumb, which may help you better understand your home’s readiness for an upgrade to Level 2 charging capabilities and anticipate the associated costs.
- Proximity is key: The closer you can park your car to an existing power source, the better. Do you have a driveway, garage, unused barn or anyplace you can store your car near your home? If so, great — upgrading should be relatively straightforward. But the flip side is that if you’re 100 percent reliant on street parking, you may be looking at significantly higher costs to upgrade.
- Measure length from charger to vehicle: Most chargers on the market today come with about 25 feet of cable, so ask yourself: Can I park somewhere within that radius to a power source? If so, that’s ideal. If not, the costs associated with upgrading may be somewhat higher.
Bear in mind that these are “rules of thumb” for a reason — that is, they may help give you a sense of what to expect in terms of upgrade costs and complexity, but nothing more. It’s always a good idea to speak with a qualified electrician with experience with Level 2 charger installations before deciding whether or not such an upgrade is right for your home.
3. Assess your home’s electrical setup.
Physical layout aside, your home’s existing electrical system can be a determining factor in EV upgrade readiness. After all, as mentioned in connection with Level 1 chargers, charging an EV can easily max out load capabilities if other energy-intensive appliances are switched on simultaneously, so this is a key area to focus on.
Again, you’ll need to consult with a licensed electrician to understand your home’s electrical capacity fully, but there are also a few steps you can take on your own in the interim. Here’s one, for example:
- Scrutinize your breaker box: Take the cover off your breaker box and see if there are any available spaces where breakers could be plugged in. If so, the upgrade should be even simpler. But if there aren’t any, don’t worry — it doesn’t necessarily mean that your upgrade will be complicated, as some breaker boxes come with double-breaker capabilities through which a single slot can be turned into two separate breakers.
Whatever the case may be, the key thing to understand is that Level 2 chargers run on higher-pressure 240V outlets — similar to the outlets powering your A/C unit, dryer or electric stove, and different from the standard 120V outlets found throughout your home, which are capable of generating more power over shorter periods.
Beyond that, you should verify that your home’s garage, barn or intended EV-charging-and-storage structure is connected to a power source. If not, you’ll need to make changes to connect it to your home’s electrical panel, which could involve trenching and running cables underground, resurfacing your driveway and/or drilling holes to connect it to your electrical panel (especially if the electrical panel is located in the basement of your home, as the case may be). Of course, all of these concerns you can address with a licensed electrician.
Next steps
As we have seen, there are simple steps you can take right now to assess your home’s EV readiness and, in so doing, determine the potential cost and complexity of upgrading to a Level 2 charger for your home.
The next step after you’ve completed the three basic ones above? Reach out to a qualified electrician in your area. Also, check with your power company – they may have a vetted list of licensed electricians to assist you on your electrification journey (and maybe some additional incentives).
While you wait for your appointment, download Pearl’s free app. This app allows you to find rebates and tax credits on home charging stations and certify your EV charging station and other energy-efficient systems to capture the value they add to your home.
Pearl is the national leader in home performance ratings. Pearl measures all aspects of a home's performance — safety, comfort, operational efficiency, resilience, and energy management — and provides homeowners with actionable insights on what's most important to them, whether they're buying, selling or renovating.
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