I figured I would try to post this story here, because it's really frustrating. I was hopeful maybe it could somehow be seen enough to get some help.

I have a chargepoint home flex model mounted to the outside of my house. I bought it secondhand, but it was fully functional. I discovered today it's out of warranty (4 years old) but that's only part of the issue here. I connected it to my account, and wifi, without any real issues. The wifi didn't seem super strong or reliable, but our house is cinderblock, so I wasn't really surprised.

Anyway, I decided I would try to upgrade our network from one AP to a mesh system to make it work better in general. Our AP was old anyway, so it was needed, but part of the reasoning behind it was to get it to connect more reliably. I set up all my devices on the new network, which has a different name and password. I went outside to reconfigure wifi via the chargepoint app and.. it said it couldn't find the charger. I tried multiple times. I flipped breaker off, waited, tried again. Tried again. No luck.

I didn't expect it to be super helpful, but I contacted chargepoint support, who advised me to do... Exactly what I already was. But I did it with them on the phone anyway. Flip breaker, wait two minutes, flip it again, try to connect to no avail.

After a few tries the tech suggested that the only way forward was to remove the charger from my chargepoint account and then to try to reconfigure it that way. Not sure how that would be different, but ok. This was the critical failure point. I said "ok, sure." And the charger was removed. It still wouldn't connect to my phone. They then emailed me a generous 10% off coupon to buy.. another charger.

Frustrating, but what could you do? It's secondhand, I get it. Oh well. Right?

Well about a half hour later I had an idea which really irritated me. I spoofed the old wireless network on my phone as a hotspot and.. the charger connected to the network successfully. ONLY NOW IT IS NOT ASSOCIATED TO MY ACCOUNT. Uh oh! Trying to reconnect to the old network would have been a really good, albeit uncommon troubleshooting step.

I called chargepoint back. "I got it reconnected to the old network! You removed it from my account and you have all the details, surely you could re-associate it with my account!" No. Can I talk to a supervisor? Surely someone has that power. I know this is all database related on the backend from other horror stories about account associations with chargers.

They said yes I could talk to a supervisor, and then never contacted me again via email or phone. Now I have a dumb charger.

The cable is nice, but I wouldn't recommend buying from chargepoint. I found out today that this is a really common, often dreaded failure and that chargepoint has no plans in place to remedy it. I definitely wouldn't buy secondhand at least.

Like most of you I had a Grizzl-e charger and was working on the $0.03 rebate until the next tier

When switch announced their $0.11 after $1,500 KW I was disappointed that Grizzl-e wouldn't match it or do anything to help out current owners.

So I ordered a swtch charger but the installation wouldn't be one for one because swtch has a pigtail coming out of it and the Grizzl-e you wire your incoming feed directly inside the box

So I bought a 60 amp disconnect and managed to fit it in where the Grizzl-e was and it turned out pretty good

Getting those pigtail wires into the breaker of the disconnect was definitely tricky because it's such a short distance from the base of a disconnect to the breaker.

But after wrestling it with it for a little while I managed to get it in.

I've attached some photos

I recently installed a 48A NACS charger, only to find it defective out of the box (Error Code 121 whenever plugging in to a vehicle). Initially (like, 2 weeks ago) email support was responsive, and I was told that a refund would be issued, as they have no stock to replace it (which was an odd, sort of deflective response, as it gave no indication how they were going to do this, and the charger was purchased through their Amazon storefront). As of now, there is virtually no stock of the NACS 48A anywhere online, and other models also appear to be sold out on the larger sales channels. Have been trying to work through the refund process through Amazon, through the Wallbox US's storefront... zero response to messages in spite of Amazon's supposedly mandatory 48 hr turnaround time. Additionally, as of this past week, their phone support seems to no longer exist.

I am considering replacing with a J1772 that is in stock at Best Buy, but am worried this company may totally cease to exist in a few weeks. I see that they did some financial restructuring and seem to be in a precarious cash position... all seem to be bad signals. Pretty unfortunate as it seems to be the only charger that had all of the features needed for my landlord to approve an install at our multifamily.

It's probably pretty rare that someone would want to use a hybrid dynamic/load-cut load management system, but they are interesting and unusual, and one of them is new to me, so I thought they would be worth discussing.

The concept is to use some communication, probably ocpp, between a 3rd party control unit and the EVSE or the car to adjust the charging rate dynamically to avoid overloading the service or feeder capacity, but to also have relays in the control unit to allow cutting the power if the dynamic control isn't available or if it fails. That way, it can be safety certified even if software control of charging rate can't be guaranteed to be fail safe, which is hard when you have multiple manufacturers involved. The two units like that I know of on the market are:

• Stepwise, https://www.getstepwise.com/, $780. Dynamic control is supported via the Tesla API for Tesla vehicles, or OCPP for Walbox Pulsar Plus. Supports one or two sets of CTs, or monitoring the feeders to one panel, or to a main panel and a sub panel.

• EV Powershare, https://www.ev-powershare.com/, $680 + ~$100 for a UL listed enclosure = $780. This one also offers support for the Tesla API, but the main idea is that it has an open interface protocol to allow a tech-savvy user to program it to work with any hardware. It supports OCPP 1.6 J and also had available interfacing for Home Assistant. It also supports solar capture.

Every once in a while we get people coming here wanting to program their own dynamic load management using Home Assistant or something like that. We typically warn that it's unlikely that you will achieve an appropriate level of fail-safe capability, and that it won't be code compliant. EV Powershare allows people who really want to do their own software to do that while having an excellent fail-safe capability and being fully code compliant. It will be great for those people if what they really wanted was the opportunity to write their own software. If what they really wanted was to save money, it won't do that.

To compare to that $780 cost, upgrading from an Emporia Classic to a Pro with load management included costs $150. With Wallbox, it's $332 extra with an enclosure; for Tesla $210. And with Schneider there's no extra cost--it's built into the $695 EVSE. But that's about $150 more than a Chargepoint, for example, so let's call it $150 extra. All much less than $780.

$780 is similar to the cost of load-cut boxes from DCC (the best known), but a little more than boxes from Black Box ($646) or PSP, which is available for $503.

So it remains the case that dynamic load management built built into an EVSE offers the best performance and the lowest cost. For people who want to roll their own software for fun and to avoid being locked in to one ecosystem, EV PowerShare is a good option. For people who just want a load-cut system for whatever reason, you might argue that one of these hybrid units isn't that much more expensive and that you might as well get the extra capability in case it's useful in the future, but for $280 less, I think I would go with the PSP unit In that case.

One case in which stepwise might be worth considering is where there is a main panel and a sub panel, and just managing the load on one of those without also managing it on the other could lead to an overload of the unmanaged one without overloading the managed one. The stepwise system has terminals for connecting an extra set of CTs, for just $100 extra.

How’s your experience? Which charger are you using, and would you recommend it for everyday home charging? Thanks! 😊