It's a smart relay with a cable and industry-standard connector attached.
That's it.
It's a smart relay with a cable and industry-standard connector attached.
That's it.
It may have integrated ground fault protection
And the "smart" word covers over a lot of potential features, like stopping/starting charging based on electricity prices, doing load balancing between multiple chargers, reporting usage to the cloud, etc.
It's also an outlet where you really want to be sure that everything is professionally done, and up to spec, because drawing maximum currents for hours and hours is very demanding on all the parts. There can be significant heat generated in the wiring and contacts.
And it can be as low as 720 watts but I've heard of attempts to get it lower for certain situations where only 400 to 500 watts can be allocated.
But that's not what the linked article is about.
I don't see a single thermal cutout on this design. I'd be scared.
The PCB is equally scary. How was the trace width figured for the high voltage side? There's also little or no isolation to the low-voltage side.
I also didn't catch if this is a level 1 or level 2 charger. Is that line 120V or 240V single phase? He's pulling 10A which may as well be level 1 household outlet charging here in the US.
The crimped ferrules on the wires is also much more common in Europe vs USA
https://www.gm-volt.com/threads/2016-volt-120v-evse-is-l1-l2...
I've confirmed this first-hand with several different models.