Idea for apartment dwellers: 'host' charging through window

I would just set up a practical test.

It's like doing the power factor calculation. What I get on paper is alway different from the actual capacitance I end up needing.
It's real close but is never perfect.

The calculations usually get you close. This is why we still have labs and test things in a lab.
Best example of this is underwriters laboratory. If everything worked on paper all the time then these guys wouldn't exist.

In this case we already know people have burned down their homes and have died in this exact situation. Which is an overloaded breaker that didn't trip. So we already know the result. Anyone who wants to be in the experimental group, be my guest.
I'm going to stay in the control group for this one.

Oilpan4 said:

Ignore NEC, test your smoke detectors for real and meet the fire department.
Any other questions?

Click to expand...

In order to ignore NEC, a homeowner has to read it first. The intended audience of NEC is electricians and fire marshals. If an electrician is installing an EVSE, then they will follow NEC. But there is no expectation that homeowners will buy a copy, let alone read it or understand it(*). Firemen are not going door-to-door giving helpful "Overview of NFPA70 changes for 2019" speeches. There is no expectation that homeowners need to read anything beyond the instructions that came with their UL-Listed device.

Realistically, homeowners will plug-in anything that physically goes together, and will only be stopped when a CPD pops or if an electrician is called-out for other work and notices the unsafe condition. This means that 99% of consumers who use extension cords will never hear about Article 629. The other 1% may hear about it, but stopping 1% of EVSE cord fires is not going to move the needle.

If increased EV adoption leads to a rash of extension-cord related fires, then I expect we'd just see all EVSEs go hard-wired, and UL Listings will be dropped for EVSEs with NEMA plugs. I think that's the traditional NEC approach: if something is unsafe, you build the permanent wiring to make that condition impossible. Since homeowners don't read NEC, adding Articles which attempt to dictate how the homeowner should behave will be ineffectual.

(*) you can now buy a copy for $96 on iTunes