These sorts of articles could use a geographical indicator since this is an international website - I know it's not part of the original headline, but rarely is [video]/[pdf]/(2013).
Homeowners should not be installing their own EV chargers and definitely shouldn’t be installing bi-directional EV charging equipment. I wouldn’t do my own natural gas pipefitting because I don’t know how to do it correctly, I would hire a pipefitter to do it. Electrical work is just as dangerous if you don’t do it correctly.
Homeowners are terrible electricians that don’t understand that every termination needs to be done with a torque wrench or torque screwdriver that has been inspected and verified to be accurate within the past year or it doesn’t meet code.
Homeowners do dumb shit like tapping multiple circuits off a single breaker, stripping off too much insulation and leaving live conductors exposed, using a coffee can as a junction box, or using the wrong size wire because they don’t know how to read an ampacity table.
50 to 60 amps at 240 volts is over 10kW, terminations matter a lot more at 10kW than they do at 1.8kW (15A @ 120V)
Please pay an electrician unless you have a copy of the NEC and understand it.
I sell and run commercial electrical work for a living.
Anyone that understands the NEC knows you can bypass the proposed code change entirely by using a cord and plug connected EV charger and pulling a permit for a 240V 50A ‘welding receptacle’ or ‘RV shore power receptacle’ since cord and plug connected equipment is not subject to the NEC.
You can even convert a hardwired charger into a cord and plug connected charger with a NEMA 14-50P cord end and some #6/3 SO cord, assuming you have access to the line voltage terminal block inside the charger and the instruction manual allows it.
But then you're limited to a lower amperage, since hardwired EVSEs can handle more current than the highest-amperage receptacles, and you need a redundant GFCI breaker even though your EVSE already has GFCI built in.
Your EVSE’s ground fault protection will trip at 20mA of leakage current to protect the equipment, not a person. That is not good enough to qualify as protection to personnel, you need a GFCI breaker that will trip at 5 mA of leakage current.
Similarly, electrical switchgear can come with ground fault protection relays that trip at around 30mA of leakage current, which is enough to protect the equipment but not a person.
Anyways, a 250V 50A 2P GFCI plug-in breaker is only about $120, that’s the cost of two 15A 1P GFCI/AFCI combo breakers.
These sorts of articles could use a geographical indicator since this is an international website - I know it's not part of the original headline, but rarely is [video]/[pdf]/(2013).