3 Phase 240V Charging

[Bonobojones]

My winery runs on all European equipment, and we use 3 Phase 240V power with this style of plug. I have tons of outlets all over that would be real easy access for 30A/240v charging, but I can not find a charger that plugs into 4 pin 3 phase. Just recently this type of adapter is becoming available, but only for Tesla mobile chargers, but it is exactly what I need. I guess I could buy a tesla mobile charger and then use a cheap NACS to J1772 adapter, but the unelegance of it all is a bit of a bummer and could lend itself to bugginess. Anyway, my google searches and talks with electricians has not yielded a solution yet. Wondering if any more electrically savvy types out there have solved this one

Thanks

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[teartags]

I've got a shop with 3-phase as well. I tried to find hardwired options and the market in NA for those is pretty slim. All the chargers I could find were in the thousands.

 

[Zoidz]

My winery runs on all European equipment, and we use 3 Phase 240V power with this style of plug. I have tons of outlets all over that would be real easy access for 30A/240v charging, but I can not find a charger that plugs into 4 pin 3 phase. Just recently this type of adapter is becoming available, but only for Tesla mobile chargers, but it is exactly what I need. I guess I could buy a tesla mobile charger and then use a cheap NACS to J1772 adapter, but the unelegance of it all is a bit of a bummer and could lend itself to bugginess. Anyway, my google searches and talks with electricians has not yielded a solution yet. Wondering if any more electrically savvy types out there have solved this one

Thanks

OpenEVSE should work for you. They use one phase and neutral of the 3 phase power.

Disclaimer: I use an OpenEVSE on standard US 240AC "split phase" (it works great!), not 3 phase so I can't provide any experience information regarding 3 phase. OpenEVSE is a "Maker" type of device. It's not UL Listed. Use at your own risk. You can contact them or get on their user forum for more details.

3 Phase connection

 

[Dark-Fx]

Rivian will only take power from a single phase. If you insist on being able to use all three phases, you will have to invest in a "cheap" DCFC charger. Choices are pretty limited still.

 

[Herb]

My winery runs on all European equipment, and we use 3 Phase 240V power with this style of plug. I have tons of outlets all over that would be real easy access for 30A/240v charging, but I can not find a charger that plugs into 4 pin 3 phase. Just recently this type of adapter is becoming available, but only for Tesla mobile chargers, but it is exactly what I need. I guess I could buy a tesla mobile charger and then use a cheap NACS to J1772 adapter, but the unelegance of it all is a bit of a bummer and could lend itself to bugginess. Anyway, my google searches and talks with electricians has not yielded a solution yet. Wondering if any more electrically savvy types out there have solved this one

Thanks

Are you sure it's 240V? European 3P standard is 380V/400V between phases. 220/240V is between each phase and neutral. So this is single phase and basically matches US single phase. In other words, you should be able to use a standard US wall or portable charger and an electrician should be able to hardwire a standard charger to a pigtail to a Euro plug, which you can simply plug into the Euro receptacle. First, confirm this with a voltmeter (380 to 400V between phases and 220V to 240V between each phase and neutral/ground). If this is not the case, this won't work!

In Europe, true 3phase charging is used (European Teslas have 3 rectifiers, while US have 2). All US EVs charge on single phase, so there's no benefit using this "3-phase" plug over a regular US 220/240V charging setup.

 

[Bonobojones]

Are you sure it's 240V? European 3P standard is 380V/400V between phases. 220/240V is between each phase and neutral. So this is single phase and basically matches US single phase. In other words, you should be able to use a standard US wall or portable charger and an electrician should be able to hardwire a standard charger to a pigtail to a Euro plug, which you can simply plug into the Euro receptacle. First, confirm this with a voltmeter (380 to 400V between phases and 220V to 240V between each phase and neutral/ground). If this is not the case, this won't work!

In Europe, true 3phase charging is used (European Teslas have 3 rectifiers, while US have 2). All US EVs charge on single phase, so there's no benefit using this "3-phase" plug over a regular US 220/240V charging setup.

Thanks for the reply. It's actually 208V 3-Phase, standard for commercial operation. The fact that the equipment is manufactured in Europe doesn't really matter, as everything we use the 3-Phase for has a frequency drive. I just use 240v by habit as I also have a 480V system for steam generation and a couple of more serious HP pumps. When talking with electricians about which system needs work I just refer to them as 240 and 480, even though that's not true voltage. I really wish I could use the 480 system, but charging equipment is still really expensive at that voltage. Anyway, was wondering if its true you can wire just 2 of the 3 hot legs and get 208V single phase.

 

[SolartoEV]

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[Herb]

Thanks for the reply. It's actually 208V 3-Phase, standard for commercial operation. The fact that the equipment is manufactured in Europe doesn't really matter, as everything we use the 3-Phase for has a frequency drive. I just use 240v by habit as I also have a 480V system for steam generation and a couple of more serious HP pumps. When talking with electricians about which system needs work I just refer to them as 240 and 480, even though that's not true voltage. I really wish I could use the 480 system, but charging equipment is still really expensive at that voltage. Anyway, was wondering if its true you can wire just 2 of the 3 hot legs and get 208V single phase.

Sorry, not familiar with the 208V/3P standard. A voltmeter will tell if 208 is between two hot legs or between one hot and neutral. Either way, the pigtail would be wired to this wire combination (plus ground). Make sure you pick a charger that operates at this voltage.

You can't make 480 work without a transformer. it's obviously 480V between two hot legs, and 277V between phase and neutral, which is unfortunately just outside of the operating range of all the chargers I have looked at. If you go this route, something like this should work 1-Phase 240x480v Pri 120/240v Sec Encapsulated Transformer (maddoxtransformer.com)

 

[Cosmacelf]

My winery runs on all European equipment, and we use 3 Phase 240V power with this style of plug. I have tons of outlets all over that would be real easy access for 30A/240v charging, but I can not find a charger that plugs into 4 pin 3 phase. Just recently this type of adapter is becoming available, but only for Tesla mobile chargers, but it is exactly what I need. I guess I could buy a tesla mobile charger and then use a cheap NACS to J1772 adapter, but the unelegance of it all is a bit of a bummer and could lend itself to bugginess. Anyway, my google searches and talks with electricians has not yielded a solution yet. Wondering if any more electrically savvy types out there have solved this one

Thanks

Your proposed solution is probably the best you’ll find I’m afraid. There just isn’t much of a call for adapting European plugs to North American ones!

While it may seem kludgy, it’ll work well since the Tesla Mobile Connector will advertise to the car that it can draw a maximum of 25 amps or so (80% of 32). And the NACS to J1772 adapter will work fine.

The J1772 adapter world just isn’t anywhere nearly as built out as the Tesla adapter world.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Of course if you own the winery, getting an electrician to wire in something like the Tesla Universal Wall Connector is also straight forward.

 

[Monkey]

You should still have a transformer in there somewhere as I'm assuming you have standard 120V wall outlets and such. So as long as it's appropriately sized, you shouldn't have any issues using a normal EVSE on 240V. That's what most everyone does... We have 3-phase power in all our commercial properties, no big deal since we still need to accommodate 120/240V power to a certain degree, unless you're not compliant with current/recent electrical code.

Forget about adapting anything directly to the European style outlets. You can get 3-phase level 2 chargers that can be adapted to your outlets rather easily or direct-wired. However, they won't be compatible with charging our domestic vehicles.

Your only real option for installing on 3-phase is to go with a DC charging solution. There are some really good ones available, but you may not have the overhead on your electrical service, depending on what you're already running and they are quite expensive. ChargePoint has some really good options for DC chargers ranging from 25kW output all the way up to 350kW, just know that you're going to pay a lot, even for the entry-level one. Ford also has made theirs available, but there's a long wait list to get them and you can't even get on the Ford waitlist right now unless you're already a fleet customer. They have 50kW, 150kW and 250kW options available for fleet partners. I've looked into Ford and ChargePoint options as I'd like to put a couple chargers at one of our properties. Unfortunately we're just going to leave it as two ChargePoint Level 2 chargers that we've had for a while. Just can't make the cost work out to go bigger right now. I did swap the charge cord on one of them to NACS so we have one of each connector available.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Stop it guys! At no point did the OP ask about charging USING 3 phase power. He just said he had a bunch of 3 phase power receptacles. So the solution is to extract a single phase from such a power distribution system and use that. Indeed that's the solution that the OP himself suggested.

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