Three phase charging

[Wizfinger]

My 2015 model is currently charging on 1 phase as my wall charger is only connected to a single phase.

I am considering connecting all three phases, which is supported by my home electrical network, it’s just that the other 2 phases aren’t connected yet.

Now I’m trying to find out two things:

1 - Will my car charge faster than 3.5 kWh?
2 - Will the charging power be equally spread across all three phases?

I understand it has something to do with the OBC. But even if the car cannot charge faster, will the charge power be spread across the phases as to less interfere with other appliances in my house?

 

[notfred]

The OBC only takes a single phase at up to 240V. Note that this can be centre tapped, in North America it is 120-0-120 to give 240V. It will charge at up to 7kW if fed with 32A from the EVSE.

 

[IanL]

In addition: What you want to do can only work if your wall charger is capable of taking 3 phases and outputting on one, balancing the draw across the three input phases. This would probably require that it incorporate a special transformer. I think this is unlikely, but you would have to check its specification.

Edit: You could continue to use your wall box as single phase, but put something like this in the supply https://www.torytrans.com/en/transf.../three-to-single-phase-converter-transformer/. It might be possible to put the converter between the wall box and the car, but extra cables and connectors.

 

[Wizfinger]

Thanks both for your replies.

Since I am on a 220V installation with 16A fusing per phase, I am limited to 3.5kW charging per phase. I understand the 2015 Kia Soul EV only supports single phase charging up to 32A (7kW) so it won't change anything for my charging speed if I connect all three phases of the charger.

Increasing the maximum amps to 32A per phase is possible but this quadruples annual costs from the power company so I won't do that.

I guess I am stuck with single phase charging then. The only reason to connect the three phases now may be if I get another car or if I have visitors that have a different car and would like to charge.

 

[IanL]

Limiting to 16A per phase is surprising - you can only draw 48A from the three?

In my case. I only have a single phase supply, but 100A limit, so it was easy to fit a 40A breaker in the consumer unit to wire up my wall box.

 

[Wizfinger]

Single phase home installations here in the Netherlands are max 40A but typically 25A. Three phase installations (with the same annual cost) are 25A per phase. By law you have to use circuit breakers that are a percentage of the max (max current divided by 1.6), so for 25A phases, 16A is used.

You can however put up multiple circuits on the same installation as in most cases the max current is not used on all circuits at the same time. Just make sure the max amps are not exceeded at any point in time.

I can upgrade to higher amps (up to three phase 80A) but that is very expensive unfortunately.

I did find information though that for car chargers, a circuit breaker of 20A is allowed instead of 16A, so I can have a tiny little bit extra