Roger, I think you misunderstood the original question. Scott wants to keep his off-board Lester charger in case he ever gets trouble with an on-board charger, so he can fall back to charging at home the same way as today. I agree with you that the simplest way could be to carry the Lester and allow it to be on-board as it works - if it can convince the J1772 outlets (called EV chargers) to power the Lester at 240V. There may be reasons that does not work, either when power factor of the Lester is not good enough or if there is no space for that bulky charger in the vehicle, then it could be better to get a modern, small and high efficient switching charger that accepts 240V (or both 120/240) and can charge his 120V pack.
Scott can comment if he wants to carry the Lester or go for a different charger while keeping the Lester off-board. Personally I am happy with my 120V charger since I can plug into a 120V outlet at all places that matter to me, even though there is a 240V inlet on my Bycan charger that was already installed when I bought this truck. I might not have chosen that particular charger due to its bulk. My favorite would probably have been 3 series 48V switching power supplies with current limit (and trimmed to deliver up to 150V) Cor van de Water Chief Scientist Proxim Wireless Corporation http://www.proxim.com Email: cwa...@proxim.com Private: http://www.cvandewater.info Skype: cor_van_de_water Tel: +1 408 383 7626 -----Original Message----- From: ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org [mailto:ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org] On Behalf Of Roger Stockton Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 10:57 AM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: Re: [EVDL] Best J1772 deal, adding a public level-2 charging ability Scott Ford wrote: > I am the proud new owner of a 1985 VW Cabriolet 120v EV.(1st EV) Congratulations! > The vehicle is currently designed to charge from an old > Lester Electronics off-board charger. Seeing that I live right on the Los > Angeles and Orange county borders, it seems silly for me to not have the > ability to take advantage of opportunity charging with the available > Southern California EVSE stations. I am hoping to get some advice for a > cost effective setup that I can add to my car which would allow me to > charge virtually anywhere. I am wanting to keep the current Lester > Charger capability if possible for back up should I ever have problems > with an on-board charger. The Lester charger plug in is located in the > front grill of vehicle where the VW emblem would be. Sounds a lot like the configuration of my first EV, other than mine having been 96V while ours is 120V. My Lester had a little sliding door on the front which was used to expose or cover one of two AC inlets; one accepted a 120V cord, the other a 220V cord. If yours is similar, then you can use your Lester with the J1772 public stations simply by plugging a cord from the (220V only) J1172 inlet (that you will add) to the 220V AC plug/inlet on the charger. This does require that you are able to fit/carry the Lester in the car with you, and you would either relocate the Anderson DC charge inlet from the front bumper to a more convenient location, or simply extend the charger DC output cable such that it can reach the original inlet even while inside the car. Note that you refer above to keeping the Lester in case of trouble with an "off-board" charger; just in case there is some misunderstanding: the J1772 EVSE's are NOT off-board chargers; they are simply fancy/smart AC outlets that provide power to the on-board charger that *you* provide. Cheers, Roger. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
