As you know, a year ago I equipped myself with a small electric car for my daily commute, the Dacia Spring. With its small battery, it's easy to recharge during off-peak hours at night. But there are two drawbacks: on the one hand, a domestic socket tends to heat up; on the other, recharging is rather slow. If you're like me, and you're looking for the ideal solution between a simple domestic socket (too slow) and a wallbox (sometimes superfluous), I suggest you discover the Legrand Green'up reinforced socket, which could well be the answer to your needs.
Unpacking the Legrand Green'up plug
The Legrand Green'up socket can be purchased on its own, or in a pack with the associated circuit breaker. I opted for the latter, as the project was to draw a dedicated line for recharging the car.
In this pack, the Legrand Green'Up socket is supplied with a 20A 30mA differential circuit breaker, a suspension bracket (to hang the EV charger), and of course assembly instructions.
At first glance, this plug looks like a conventional household socket, but don't be fooled!
The Legrand Green'up socket has a robust design with a protective flap that gives it impressive shock resistance (IK08) and total waterproofing (IP66).
But the real “genius” of the Green'up lies in its innards. Legrand engineers came up with the idea of integrating a magnet that acts as a power activator. This innovation enables the plug to deliver up to 3.7 kW of power, i.e. a charge almost twice as fast as a conventional plug.
In fact, although domestic plugs and sockets are generally rated at 16A, in reality they are only designed to handle 8A continuously, the 16A being a power peak that can be supported from time to time.
This is why electric vehicle chargers, such as the Dacia Spring, are limited to 8A. A domestic socket already gets a little hot at 8A after 12 hours' charging, imagine if the charger required 16A for all that time!
This plug incorporates a patented detection system that enables the vehicle to recognize a secure infrastructure. The plug automatically manages the power sent to your car, avoiding any risk of overheating.
In short, the Green'Up reinforced socket allows you to take full advantage of 16A, eliminating the risk of overheating (and fire), and potentially charging your electric vehicle up to twice as fast.
With the Green'up, you can recover between 20 and 30 kilometers of range per hour of charging. So after a good night's sleep, you'll have a full battery!
With this reinforced plug comes the circuit breaker selected by Legrand to perfectly accompany the plug:
Installing the Legrand Green'up plug
Here I chose to run a new power line dedicated to charging my electric car, directly from my electrical panel. This required a bit of work, including making a trench in somewhat rocky terrain, between the positioning of the socket and the electrical outlets in the crawl space…
I'll skip the details. In a nutshell: trench 60cm deep, sand, red TPC sheathing for the cables, sand, red wire netting (to indicate that a power line is buried here, in case someone goes digging there), and close it all up with the recovered earth.
The only thing is to select the right cable. 6mm2 is recommended for this plug, but in the event of installing a recharging point later on for a larger vehicle, I preferred to go for 10mm2. Who can do more can do less ;-) That way, I won't have to remove any cables, just replace the Green'Up plug with a terminal.
The Legrand Green'Up socket is then installed like any other electrical socket: neutral, earth and phase. Be careful to respect the direction, as some electric vehicles can be recalcitrant if phase and neutral are reversed.
The trickiest thing is to position the cables correctly: they're thicker, so harder to fit than 2.5mm2 :p
Close the top part:
And our plug is functional:
A gutter to make it cleaner, and it's done :)
At the other end, in the electrical panel, all you have to do is connect these cables to the earth leakage circuit breaker (phase and neutral, with earth at the distribution block), and the circuit breaker itself to the main supply.
Be sure to switch off the meter before working on the switchboard, of course!
I also took the opportunity to place a Shelly Pro 3 EM metric clamp around this phase to monitor my car's consumption and recharging costs. More on this in a future article, with its integration into Home Assistant ;-)
The verdict after testing
After several months of use now, the Legrand Green'up plug is living up to all its promises. The build quality is top-notch, the plug doesn't heat up, and I'm no longer afraid of tripping the meter if the car is charging while the Spa is heating up at the same time (and yes, the same external power line was originally used…). In terms of safety, we're much more serene.
Having a dedicated line also makes it much easier to keep track of your electricity consumption, and therefore the cost of recharging.
Finally, its 3.7 kW power output offers an excellent compromise between charging speed and simple installation. Please note, however, that using the car's original charger – in this case, the Dacia Spring – will make no difference to charging speed, as the charger is limited to 8A. You'll have to opt for a more powerful charger. There are many models available today, some of which allow you to select the wattage on the case.
Conclusion
The Legrand Green'up socket represents an excellent alternative between a simple domestic socket and a complete wallbox. It offers excellent value for money for anyone wishing to recharge their electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle at home. As we've seen, it's relatively easy to install, and guarantees safe use, with charging performance that will meet the needs of most users.
Of course, if you're not a do-it-yourselfer, opt for installation by a qualified professional, to guarantee your safety and the proper functioning of the unit. Once installed, all you have to do is enjoy this safe and efficient charging solution!
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