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Planning to Charge MY at a RV Park with 50AMP using Nema 14-50 ; Should I set to 40A or 32A on my tesla app ?
- Thread starter hippagun
- Start date
exxxviii
Member
If I remember correctly, the maximum charge current of the Tesla mobile wall connector is 32A, so no need to do anything with the car's app.
Check ahead as RV campgrounds may have a limited number parking spaces for larger RV motor homes with 50A power. The travel trailer 30A (TT-30) is another option although you would need an adapter to use a TT-30 receptacle. EVSE Adapters sells the needed TT-30 power plug for the Tesla Mobile Connector. Be sure to bring the 5-15 power plug adapter as a backup in case you can't use a 14-50 receptacle to charge. You might want to bring a good quality 12 gauge minimum extension cord with ground connection for use with the 5-15 receptacle.
RV Parky | RV Parks & Campgrounds Directory, Reviews, Photos
RV Parky | RV Parks & Campgrounds Directory, Reviews, Photos
Unless he has the Gen 1 charger
TT-30 is also only like 120 volts also so you'll be limping although better than nothing
It looks like he's new here, so I'm assuming he's a new vehicle owner, doubtful he's got a Gen1. but you're right of course.
Twice as fast when charging as the 5-15 receptacle. 8 miles per hour versus 4 miles per hour while charging.
Please, what is your charge rate with your 240 wall charger at 32A at home, is it better than 28 miles per hour? That is what I get with my previously purchased EV Juice Net at 240V, 32A, using the Tesla charge adapter that came with my car new. Thank you.
Sigh.
@tampaboyt: Definitions always help. There's two common ways to do Level 1 or Level 2 charging: Either with a Tesla Mobile Connector or a Tesla Wall Connector.
- Tesla Mobile Connectors come in a cloth bag with a zipper.
- It used to be that one got one of these as a freebie with the car (both my SO's 2021 MY and my 2018 M3 came with one). Nowadays, my understanding is that if one is getting a new Tesla, one has to pay for the thing. They're about $250 or so.
- One end of this thing goes into the Telsa charging port. The other end has a cutesy bit of electronics with lights and a socket. Into the socket goes, potentially, a Large Number of possible adapters.
- The adapters come in either 120 VAC flavors (NEMA5-15, NEMA5-20), which are classified as Level 1
- or as 240 VAC flavors (NEMA6-15, NEMA6-20, NEMA10-30, NEMA15-50, etc.) that are classified as Level 2.
- The second digits (15, 20, 50, etc.) refer to the maximum current such the socket can carry. The TMC, though, maxes out at 32A.
- Tesla Wall Connectors, and a plethora of similar products from the likes of Juicebox et al, are typically (although not always) hardwired into a breaker in a breaker panel. The Gen 2 TWC (of which I have one) happens to support such a connection up to a 100A breaker; Gen 3's max out on a 60A breaker.
- Got a TMC? The TMC's electronics looks at the adapter plugged into it and figures the max possible current to report to the car from that. Got a NEMA5-15? Then, max load is 120V (it's a Level 1) at 12A. 12A = 80% of 15A. Got a NEMA10-30 adapter plugged in? Then you get 240 VAC (it's a Level 2) and 24A, 24A being 80% of 30A.
- Got a TWC or equivalent? Then it's the electrician or whoever did the install. On a Gen 2 TWC, one sets a rotary switch. On Gen 3, it's done through a Web UI to the box. In both cases, it's supposed to depend upon the breaker hooked to the TWC. Got a 60A breaker? Then one sets the config/switches for a 48A (80% of 60A) load. Got a 40A breaker? Then set the switches/config, and what you get is a 32A max load. All of these are 240 VAC; far as I know, I don't think it's possible to set up a TWC for Level 1 (120 VAC) charging. As I mentioned, the Gen 2 TWC can support a 100A circuit (80A load),
And that brings up the next point: There's a reason that the TMC and TWC's have the word, "Connector", in their acronyms. It's because they connect, they don't actually charge. The actual charger, the whatsit that's keeping track of the battery voltage and how many electrons are being stuffed into the battery, and how fast, is the car itself. The car takes in 120 VAC or 240 VAC, rectifies it into a DC voltage, then runs it through DC-DC converters to a much higher, variable DC voltage, that is used to charge the batteries themselves.
Superchargers, "Level 3" or DCFC (DC Fast Chargers) are a special case. Those things put out a variable DC voltage that bypasses the car's rectifier and goes, pretty much, straight into the batteries. The car tells the Supercharger what the voltage should be through a communications protocol. So, Superchargers probably do deserve the word, "Charger" in the name.
Two more snivveys and I promise that I'm done.
First off, there's a weird thing about the NEMA14-50, the 240 VAC, nominally 50A socket, that one finds in RV parks all over. In the NEMA universe, there are 15A sockets, 20A sockets, 30A sockets, and 50A sockets, but there are no 40A sockets. As it happens, there's a fair number of electric stoves and clothes driers that need a 40A circuit with a 40A breaker and wire rated for 40A. So, the NEC, in its wisdom, stated that it's perfectly all right to have a 40A breaker, 40A wire, and a NEMA14-50 socket. So long as its labeled. Which means that a $IDIOT might plug a 50A-style load into such a socket which, given Large Numbers of Houses, sooner or later some house or other is going to go up in flames if there's a lot of idiots around. And there's never a shortage of idiots. Or labels that, after 30 years, have fallen off. So, if for no other reason than this, Tesla's engineers can't tell if one has plugged a NEMA14-50 adapter into a 40A socket, in which case 80% of 40A = 32A is safe, or into a 50A socket, in which case 40A is safe. So, Tesla played it safe: There may be other reasons, but 32A on a TMC is all one gets.
Second: As I mentioned before, it's the car that sets the charging current, always and everywhere. That limit is set for two reasons:
- What kind of car it is. If one has a SR (Standard Range) car, such a car has a smaller battery than a P or LR car. In order to save on costs, SR cars also have fewer charging modules for AC voltage. The modules are good for 16A each; an SR gets two of them (32A max); an LR or P gets three of them (48A max). So, even if one plugs one's spiffy new Tesla into a TWC that's good for 48A, and one's spiffy new Tesla is an SR, 32A is all one is going to get. As I mentioned, older Model S's did support 80A charging, which is why the Gen 2 TWC supported that.
- State of charge. The closer one gets to 100% charge, the slower the batteries in a Tesla can charge without overheating. So, even if one has a M3 LR on a 48A TWC, when one is charging at 95% SOC, one is not going to get 48A; one'll get 10A or so. Perfectly normal. Note that this also shows up with a vengeance when Supercharging; at a 250 kW Supercharger one might actually get 250 kW until the car hits around 30% SOC, at which point the charging rate drops off fairly linearly with the SOC. At 80% SOC, the charging rate is around 50 kW or something. Still faster than L2, but a lot less than that 250 kW at, say, 10% SOC!
- The "Wall Charger" doesn't compute. I guess it's a Wall Connector?
- If it is a Wall Connector, 32A implies one of two things:
- You've got a 40A circuit breaker on the Wall Connector, so 32A is what you're going to get.
- You've got an SR kind of car, you know, the one with 287-something mile range, and that car limits the charging rate to 32A, no matter what kind of breaker you have.
Last thing, to the OP, @hippagun: If it's a NEMA14-50 at the campground, that extremely very likely dead lock is a NEMA14-50 socket backed up with a 50A breaker. But the TMC that you're going to hook into said socket is going to do its 32A max thing. Don't bother changing anything with the Tesla, one way or the other, you're just going to get 32A. Which, for the purposes of camping/charging overnight, you'll be doing fine with. Just verify that, when you do start charging, that it really is doing 32A and not some lower value.
TMCs/the cars have been known to drop the charging current when, as the current riseth up, the voltage falleth down. That's usually an indication of a loose wire somewhere, and such things generate heat. Like, a lot of heat As in, charring things heat. Further, there's a temperature sensor in the plug that goes into the socket; if things Heat Up (also a sign of a loose wire somewhere or bad socket) the car will Save The Day by reducing the charge current to keep things from catching on fire. If any of that happens, try a different camp site and let the owners know. (Which.. they might know, which is why you may have got that campsite
.)I mean.. There is a theoretical way to get 40A (80% of 50A) out of a NEMA14-50 socket: You'd have to buy (probably used, Tesla doesn't sell them any more) a Wall Connector that has a NEMA14-50 plug on the end of its cable. Or buy a Wall Connector (Juicebox, etc.) from somebody else that has that plug and can do 40A. But that's several hundred bucks, won't fit that nicely into the trunk, doesn't really improve your charging time much, and stuff like that requires a GFCI somewhere, so it gets complicated. Don't bother.
