[ai4px]

You all may remember me... I haven't posted in a while since changing jobs and trading my bolt on a Model 3. I've been working on this for some time and now that the patent application is in the works I can reveal this to the world.

Here's a EVSE that plugs into your meterbase directly. If you rent and the landlord won't allow you to modify the house wiring or if it would be prohibitively expensive to run a wire to your garage or driveway, this device may be just for you.

The cord is 24' long, but the box with the electronics can be remoted any distance you wish if your meter base is on the back of your house.

I took it by my local electric company a few weeks ago and a couple of their engineers had a look at it. They said it looked great and will approve it for use on their system.

The video below is using a test meterbase on a tripod. In real use it’ll be mounted to the regular meter base on the side of your house. Please pay no attention to the tripod.

https://youtu.be/n8_EgIyKwAo

 

[Vertiformed]

Some more details would be good. I wouldn't have thought you could remove the meter to install this without help from the power company. (If you could easily remove the meter, you could rather too easily steal electricity, right?)

 

[ai4px]

Yes the power company has to come install... it takes about a minute and they put seals back on the meter. I already got approval from my local power company for this. It's not a big deal.

 

[GJETSON]

Yes the power company has to come install... it takes about a minute and they put seals back on the meter. I already got approval from my local power company for this. It's not a big deal.

Nice! Literally thinking outside the box. I worry a bit about the tripod. I am thinking of kids using it as a lever to "uninstall" the EVSE...not necessarily on purpose...possibly just roughhousing. Maybe pound a temporary tubular post into the ground instead? In the video, the meter is over a concrete slab, so that wouldn't be an option.

 

[Pike Bishop]

Clever assembly. It looks like you are using approved existing components so there should not be a problem with the utility. Yours tap looks like a Brooks Utility EK (http://www.brooksutility.com/products/133)

Your EVSE circuitry is clearly the OPEN EVSE board with program button (https://github.com/OpenEVSE/OpenEVSE_PLUS/blob/master/OpenEVSE_PLUS_v5/Standard_v5.pdf). I do like the idea of using a DIN Rail contactor for cleanliness. Yours looks like a Baomain HC1-63 (A good deal at about $15!)

All of it is held up by a tripod, I am assuming because the Brooks adapter is not rated to support load. (You do not want to pull on the charge cord and rip out the meter...)



The question is, if your landlord is adamantly against electrical modifications, how did you have them agree to the change?



I am a landlord. Meter disconnect requires my utility to notify me because of 'Revert to Landlord' agreements or 'Authorized Persons' clauses in my service contract. These clauses are typical and are intended to maintain the property if the tenant misses payments--no one wants a sump pump to stop or plumbing heaters to be turned off...



Why wouldn't your landlord negotiate with you to add a stub NEMA 14-50R near the meter? That way you could have used any outdoor EVSE or a Tesla Mobile Connector. Again, if your landlord is OK with a tap, why not an official receptacle?

 

[ai4px]

Guys!! The tripod is a demo. In the real meterbase it’ll be on the side of your house. This is on a test stand in front of my workshop.

Clever assembly. It looks like you are using approved existing components so there should not be a problem with the utility. Yours tap looks like a Brooks Utility EK (http://www.brooksutility.com/products/133)

Your EVSE circuitry is clearly the OPEN EVSE board with program button (https://github.com/OpenEVSE/OpenEVSE_PLUS/blob/master/OpenEVSE_PLUS_v5/Standard_v5.pdf). I do like the idea of using a DIN Rail contactor for cleanliness. Yours looks like a Baomain HC1-63 (A good deal at about $15!)

All of it is held up by a tripod, I am assuming because the Brooks adapter is not rated to support load. (You do not want to pull on the charge cord and rip out the meter...)



The question is, if your landlord is adamantly against electrical modifications, how did you have them agree to the change?



I am a landlord. Meter disconnect requires my utility to notify me because of 'Revert to Landlord' agreements or 'Authorized Persons' clauses in my service contract. These clauses are typical and are intended to maintain the property if the tenant misses payments--no one wants a sump pump to stop or plumbing heaters to be turned off...



Why wouldn't your landlord negotiate with you to add a stub NEMA 14-50R near the meter? That way you could have used any outdoor EVSE or a Tesla Mobile Connector. Again, if your landlord is OK with a tap, why not an official receptacle?

 

[ai4px]

Your land lord might be willing.... what about apartment complexes? I'm sure there'll be lots of cool landlords, but maybe just as many unwilling to allow a tennant to tear into their walls. Land lord may require you to use a licensed eletrician and depending on the location of the breaker panel, it could require drywall work and a long run of wire thru the attic. Just depends. Could also be that a renter doesn't want to pay for improvements to the house he doesn't own and he'll just take the meterbase adapter with him when he moves.

I am concerned about someone yanking the cable and will recommend that it be attached to the house with a strain relief. Also, the box can be remoted from the meterbase with seal tite and the j1772 box can be hard mounted to the wall of the structure.

Thanks for your observations!

Clever assembly. It looks like you are using approved existing components so there should not be a problem with the utility. Yours tap looks like a Brooks Utility EK (http://www.brooksutility.com/products/133)

Your EVSE circuitry is clearly the OPEN EVSE board with program button (https://github.com/OpenEVSE/OpenEVSE_PLUS/blob/master/OpenEVSE_PLUS_v5/Standard_v5.pdf). I do like the idea of using a DIN Rail contactor for cleanliness. Yours looks like a Baomain HC1-63 (A good deal at about $15!)

All of it is held up by a tripod, I am assuming because the Brooks adapter is not rated to support load. (You do not want to pull on the charge cord and rip out the meter...)



The question is, if your landlord is adamantly against electrical modifications, how did you have them agree to the change?



I am a landlord. Meter disconnect requires my utility to notify me because of 'Revert to Landlord' agreements or 'Authorized Persons' clauses in my service contract. These clauses are typical and are intended to maintain the property if the tenant misses payments--no one wants a sump pump to stop or plumbing heaters to be turned off...



Why wouldn't your landlord negotiate with you to add a stub NEMA 14-50R near the meter? That way you could have used any outdoor EVSE or a Tesla Mobile Connector. Again, if your landlord is OK with a tap, why not an official receptacle?

 

[Pike Bishop]

Your land lord might be willing.... what about apartment complexes? I'm sure there'll be lots of cool landlords, but maybe just as many unwilling to allow a tennant to tear into their walls. Land lord may require you to use a licensed eletrician and depending on the location of the breaker panel, it could require drywall work and a long run of wire thru the attic. Just depends. Could also be that a renter doesn't want to pay for improvements to the house he doesn't own and he'll just take the meterbase adapter with him when he moves.

I am concerned about someone yanking the cable and will recommend that it be attached to the house with a strain relief. Also, the box can be remoted from the meterbase with seal tite and the j1772 box can be hard mounted to the wall of the structure.

Thanks for your observations!

I think you may be going down the wrong road. You have a clever solution that is minimally invasive to a property and works very well when a meter panel is convenient to the parking area. That should be interesting to landlords, who really don't know a lot about EVSE, and professional electricians.



When you begin to talk about 'tear into walls', run lines in the attic, and 'hard-mount' things to a building, that's not your product is it?


Also, when you imply this can be installed without 'a licensed electrician', almost by the renter surreptitiously, you may find some city inspectors and local codes have a different opinion. Even cool landlords will be perturbed if they visit their rental and find this attached without their permission.



It's good that you are pursuing a patent, it can be used to pay legal judgments due to perhaps irresponsible marketing.



However, if you view landlord reluctance as a lack of education or understanding, you may have a good product.



I do not own multiplexes, yet all of my properties have some extra feature I had to put in to gain a good tenant or differentiate the property in the market. All of the additions made me wince until I found the cost and discussed with the tenant. (Do you know how much it costs to put in a natural gas barbecue? How about replacing a washer-dryer? That's sunk cost. I would much rather put in 14-50R sockets...) I have had generator taps and EVSE sockets installed for tenants in exchange for an extended lease or a few extra dollars a month.


What I want to do is avoid losing out in the market or losing a good, long-term tenant. Simple solutions like yours make it possible to talk about options.



But if you start by pitching this as a 'do it yourself, don't tell the landlord', it won't make many friends.

 

[ai4px]

Dude, at no point did I ever say do this w/o landlord consent. Sheesh. I said your landlord may not like you tearing into walls; may require you to use a licensed electrician. You will not need an electrician to install it since it is no different than a meter... it (gasp) installs in a meter base socket which electric company linemen do every day.

Irresponsible marketing? Whaaaaa? Are you kidding me? I suppose I should put a disclaimer in very fine print at the bottom that says “Does not work on road runners” as well. .

 

[Vertiformed]

@ai4px, I think part of the issue is that you've spent so long immersed in your project and its details, and it's so obviously cool to you, that you think you can give the briefest of gists to others and we'll just “get it”.

In reality, you need to step back and explain it to people who haven't been similarly immersed and don't have the same background/perspective/context that you do.

For me, since my electrical panel is right next to my meter, it took me a while to understand the need. At my house, you'd just add something at the main electrical panel (or a sub panel), no big deal. No changes to existing wiring, no “tearing into walls”. I'm guessing that many houses have a meter on the outside of the house and the electrical panel inside, making your invention useful.

 

[ai4px]

In my part of the country, nearly all homes built in the past 50 years have a breaker box inside away from the meter. Naturally, if you have an external main breaker panel this product is not for you... it makes perfect sense to simply add a 240v breaker to your existing panel. But even house trailers in my part of the country have breaker panels inside away from the meter base.

I've attached two pictures, one of a house trailer, another of a local house. In other parts of the country external breaker panels may be more common. Even our local tennis courts have a lonely meter in the back corner of the parking lot which could use an EV charge station.

@ai4px, I think part of the issue is that you've spent so long immersed in your project and its details, and it's so obviously cool to you, that you think you can give the briefest of gists to others and we'll just “get it”.

In reality, you need to step back and explain it to people who haven't been similarly immersed and don't have the same background/perspective/context that you do.

For me, since my electrical panel is right next to my meter, it took me a while to understand the need. At my house, you'd just add something at the main electrical panel (or a sub panel), no big deal. No changes to existing wiring, no “tearing into walls”. I'm guessing that many houses have a meter on the outside of the house and the electrical panel inside, making your invention useful.

 

[GJETSON]

In my part of the country, nearly all homes built in the past 50 years have a breaker box inside away from the meter.

Fifteen years ago, I spent 10 months installing radio telemetry electric meters all over central Virginia. These meters allowed a meter reader to drive by in a truck and take meter readings from the road. Of the thousands I installed, only a handful were inside the building. I recall several apartment buildings with large meter rooms. Really old houses were a trip. One 1800's mansion had the meter in the master bedroom closet. One was on an enclosed porch behind a pile of old furniture. Several required a ladder. One that took a while to find was on a post in the middle of a hundred year old boxwood, fifty feet from the house! It was always a surprise when the meter base pulled off the wall with the meter. Most entertaining was one on a brand new house where the socket assembly that the meter blades clamp into was not nutted on the backside of the box. I pulled out the meter, and the clips, and live cables came along for the ride. Happily, I never had anything blow up, but several of my coworkers did, and they were very glad they had worn their safety equipment.

 

[steveskolnik]

The power takeoff device attaching to the utility meter base looks like a GREAT IDEA to me, and I can see its obvious appeal in many, although not all residential situations. Frankly, this could be something the power company could market and sell all by itself, direct to the ratepayer -- no electrician or permit needed as it is 'in front of', i.e., on the utility side of the home's main electrical disconnect and therefore comes under the aegis of the utility company.

One issue, obviously, will be the capacity of the electrical service -- the power company knows this, of course, so can easily determine whether the meter base and service entrance conductors can handle the added load of the EVSE.

Do you have plans to market the device? Seriously, I see it as a winner.

 

[p7wang]

Resurrecting a random thread on EVSE. If you can get the landlord to pay for the install, there would be a 30% federal tax credit. Charging does not have to be free, so the landlord can recover the energy cost and maybe even implement an idle fee so the EV parking spots gets shared.

Federal charging and EV incentives | ChargePoint

www.chargepoint.com

 

[Dyefrog]

I imagine that the new destination charger program could eliminate the pushback renters get from landlords especially when they have multiple tenants.
The best way to get them to see things our way is show them the money. This would financially incentivise them to provide a level 2 and it's a win-win for both.

https://i.redd.it/7txj97vyitf51.png

Since 4 out of 5 EV's are already Tesla's they would have a built-in user base that could provide a quick payback and chaining a J-daptor to the side will cover everybody else if they can figure out how to identify non-Tesla's for billing purposes.
I think there's a thread here somewhere that talks about a universal tagging mechanism that all non-Tesla's will subscribe to, meant to facilitate a plug and play experience at public chargers meant to mimic what the Superchargers do.

"So they just announced that the new wifi wall chargers (that charger at 30-40mph) will have the ability to charge users like the supercharger network.

Businesses that want to attract Tesla drivers would pay $500 for the wifi wall charger and installation. ANY Tesla can plug into them and charge at the slower rate and the business will receive a check from Tesla to cover the costs of the electricity (that was charged to the driver by Tesla initially).

When public wifi came online - the adoption was fast (not that important as we now have unlimited plans). If it takes off as wifi did - nearly every business will offer a Tesla charger since there is no ongoing costs to operate them.

Imagine airports, condos, apartments, office buildings, movie theaters, bowling allies, Costco, ABNB, VBRO, you name it - tesla charger waiting there for you.

Range anxiety will be over. Advertising and brand awareness will explode. Long lines at superchargers will fall dramatically."

Just finishing up a 6 unit install at my office however, the wi-fi connection fee can cost as much as the electricity depending on how much it gets used. What's nice though is it doesn't require a separate meter which with HOA's is the barrier I've run up against. This would be fair to the non-EV residents and also equitable for the BEV's that opt in where they all split the bill evenly when there's that one guy that's always plugged in and lives there full time.