Miami Tech News

PSA about EV charging. I spent the morning swapping out my son’s 50A receptacle at his rental house (installed by a certified electrician!) due to heat damage. He was alerted to possible problems by the Tesla Mobile Connector dropping charging amps from 32A to 16A. Sure enough when I got there, I saw signs of overheating on one of the blades. So I did what the “professional electrician” should have done and spent an extra $30 to buy an EV grade receptacle. $41 instead of $11 at Home Depot and the house doesn’t burn down. I consider that a deal. If you are charging via a 50A receptacle and it doesn’t have an EV symbol on it like this (or isn’t a Bryant or Hubbell), do yourself a favor and replace it with one that does. It’s usually a pain in the butt because the better receptacle usually has a bigger diameter and depth, so take careful measurements and pictures to understand the physical layout. Frankly, I’m still astounded that we have this incredibly over engineered electrical code, yet the testing labs (like UL) allow junk receptacles to still be sold.