Emporia Offers EV Owners With Old Electrical Service Panels New Load Managing Option

If you own a home with a maxed-out electrical panel and want to add a Level 2 EV charger, the options were bleak - until now. Emporia, a trusted name in home EV charging products, has just introduced a new Load Management product that will save many EV owners thousands of dollars in electric panel upgrades. 

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The Problem - Your Electrical Panel Does Not Have the Capacity For an Added EV Charger
Many homes have maxed-out electrical panels. By this, we mean that the panel is rated at, say, 100 amps, but you want to add an electric vehicle charger that can pull more than 30 amps of current continuously for many hours at a time every day. Imagine that your home has a couple of mini split heat pumps (AC units), and you are also running your dryer and home range (stove). Throw in a well pump and maybe a septic pump. Your electrical service panel may not have the capacity to add that 30 amps of current to this already considerable load. 

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Past Solutions
I’m an EV tester and live in New England. Due to a lack of panel capacity, I’ve upgraded the service in three homes. The costs in 2023 dollars were about $5,000, $6,500, and $3,000. Each job was a bit different, but all three required a new service panel. If you have to upgrade from 100 amps to 200 amps, you may need many peripheral upgrades to meet the current code. Things like a new mast, added grounding capability, a whole house surge protector, and more. While you are doing the upgrade, your electrician may also suggest more GFCI and AFCI breakers at additional cost for safety. Then you pay for your NEMA 14-50 EV circuit and installation of the EV charger or a receptacle. It is daunting. 

Emporia’s Solution
Unlike many EV charging companies, Emporia is already in the business of comprehensive home energy management. The engineering team at Emporia worked for a year to design, develop, test, and have approved by UL a solution that costs just $200. It’s called Load Management, and it allows you to (legally and to code) add an EV charger to a panel that is already operating at its rated capacity. 

How Does It Work?
How Emporia’s Load Management works is simple to understand. The device monitors your home’s energy usage. It then only allows your charger to operate when it is safe to do so. Your charger’s priority is last. If you need heat or AC, you get it. If you need to cook or run your dryer, you can. Emporia knows that you have time at night when your home’s energy draw is low. You are not cooking or doing laundry at 2 a.m. The Load Manager waits until your home panel can handle the load from the EV charger and then turns it on so you can charge your car. We won’t dive into the Coulombs, Butterworth filters, and Flux Capacitors Emporia uses to make this all work, but since UL has certified it and it complies with NFPA 70 standards, we are confident it will work just as well as all the company's other great products. The device itself is compact and simple for your electrician to install. 

What Does Emporia’s EV Charger With Load Management Cost?
The cost of Emporia’s Level 2 EV charger with Load Management is just $599. That is only $200 more than the cost of the company's charger. In essence, Emporia has found a $200 solution to a $3,000 problem. The Load Manager will allow more EV owners to more quickly put their new EV to use. 

Who Is Emporia?
Emporia is a Colorado-based manufacturer of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSEs, a.k.a. “chargers”). Torque News has been testing an Emporia EV charger now for four months, and it has worked flawlessly and impressed us with its combination of ease of use and great features. As great as Emporia’s chargers are, the company does much more than provide you with reliable charging. Emporia offers an entire home power ecosystem to manage your power and even has solar power interface equipment. New to the portfolio is the Load Management system. Emporia is also among the EV changer companies moving the most quickly toward the new NACS (Tesla-style) charger standard in America.

Why Not “Just Use Your Dryer Outlet?”
In the lucky states with never-ending warm weather, 240-volt electric dryers are sometimes located in the garage. EV chargers are available that can connect to the dryer outlet and allow for EV charging. However, was that dryer outlet installed to code? Is it rated to handle continuous duty, as EV outlets are? Has it been inspected by an electrician? Was a permit pulled, and was that dryer outlet inspected by the town electrical inspector? And how will you dry clothes if you use that outlet for EV charging? Will you be unplugging the dryer to then plug in your EV charger or using a manual switch of some sort? Why not do the job right? And let's remember that homes above the Mason-Dixon line where washer line freezing is a concern don't have dryers in the garage in the first place. And finally, many dryers are not 240-volt powered but instead use natural gas to make heat. 

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Will I Still Need a New Circuit?
Yes, you still need a local electrician to install your new EV charger’s circuit. It is best to have the charger hard-wired rather than add a receptacle. A new 50 amp circuit is not very expensive. 

Where To Buy Emporia’s Products?
Emporia sells directly and also offers its products via Amazon. The Level 2 EV Charger with Load Manager is available now.

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.

Image of Load Manager courtesy of Emporia. Image of electrical inspector by John Goreham. Image of electrical inspector by John Goreham.