How to Charge Your Tesla at Home

Tesla Recommended Home Charging Outlet

The Story…

I’d plug in my Tesla Model 3 about once a week using the mobile connector that comes with the car. If you are familiar with the mobile charger specs, the car will continually pull 32 amps from that receptacle until the tesla is charged at your chosen percentage. Depending on the state of charge for your tesla, this can be, well sometimes for my case up to 7 hours to charge while I sleep. This will generate a lot of heat on that outlet and also the mobile charger UMC box. I didn’t think anything of it and thought it was normal.

What Happened…

After about 6 months have passed; charging my model 3 about once a week. I received this notification on my car's screen. “Charge rate reduced- Wall plug temperature high” and it further reads to check wiring installation. My charge rate at night dropped from 32 amps down to 20 amps and sometimes when I’d wake up to find out the car had not even completed charging after 8 hours. I further read into this and found that not all nema 14-50 outlets are created equal. In fact; straight from tesla’s website, it recommends using a high quality industrial grade outlet. One that can handle the continuous output of 32 amps for many hours without getting too hot. First off, thank you to the tesla mobile connector for recognizing this issue by lowering the amperage. The last thing you want is an electrical fire to burn down your house because of a cheap outlet you bought at home depot.

What I Did…

After I read this issue on my tesla screen, I immediately ordered a replacement receptacle from amazon since I could not find an industrial grade one at any big box retail store. This Hubbell brand nema 14-50 receptacle cost me about 90 dollars and what I first noticed was the weight difference in comparison to the Eaton brand outlet that cost 10 bucks. The Hubbel outlet felt heavier and more durable. Even the tork hexagon screw with the solid copper fitting was far superior over the flat head tork screw from the Eaton brand. While there was no evidence of melting or over use on the Eaton receptacle, I didn't want to take the risk and find out later.

Here are some pictures of other tesla owners I found who also used cheap receptacles. Again don’t be that person to risk your home and your tesla to a fire.🔥 I understand that tesla has safeguards in place to prevent this from happening, like what we saw; the UMC cord will just lower the amperage when it senses something is not right, but I’d rather not test those limits. Spend the extra money on something with Quality and what Tesla Recommends to Use.