Wire sizes and plug-in types to use on your electrified vehicle

[nemo]

Another consideration is the covering material and whether it meets your needs.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Since you edited the post to add plugs too be careful with chargers for your ev. You can plug a 20 amp charger into a 15 amp outlet, but you will pop the breaker. Dont just replace the breaker with a larger one, you need a whole new circuit or a 15 amp charger and a circuit in your home with few to no other loads on it. A 20 amp circuit uses different wires vs a 15.

If you home has some age on it you may seriously consider getting a circuit added for your ev or call your power company about getting a line, service or panel and meter just for your vehicle. My local power company came out, talked to me and said they can give me up to a 440 line service.

In the world of electricity 1 does not always equal 1.
The breaker is there to protect the wiring in side your walls, so if the breaker flips its doing its job.
Also you should not run more than 80% of a circuits capacity for more than an hour (I think it might really be up to 3 hours for safety lets just say its 1 hour). So if your charger draws say 18 amps for several hours thats actually too much for a standard 20 amp home circuit. This greater than 80% problem over heats the breaker, given enough time.
This is why electric vehicles come with such anemic 120 volt chargers, they have to figure some one might be plugging it into a 15 amp circuit, ran using aluminum wiring inside an old mobile home.
If in doubt refer to post #4.

Older homes have 12ga 20 amp circuits. But then during the 1970s and 1980s it seems like a lot of homes were built with 15 amp circuits, sometimes using aluminum wire.
But the modern standard seems to favor 20 amp 120 volt circuits.

[ksa8907]

While we're on home wiring, be careful when you select normal 120 outlets, they come in 15 and 20 amp. A 15 amp outlet controlled by a 20 amp breaker is a fire waiting to happen.

[Cobb]

We have a 25 year old home and since it was a foreclosure we had an electrician we knew check it out. I asked about adding a circuit for a welder or plugging in an electric car. He suggested doing neither and calling the power company for a second service.

Same applies if you back feed the circuits for a grid tie solar array. You want to use a low use circuit as it can load it up towards the breaker vs away and you can over load a circuit by back feeding too much power. If its a heavy use circuit you can burn out the wiring before it even gets to the box.

[oil pan 4]

Actually NEC allows you to run 15 amp receptacles on a 20amp circuit so long as you use 12ga wire.
That's about the only time you will see a smaller receptacle on a bigger wire and bigger breaker for every day normal use.
The 5-15 and 5-20 receptacles aren't really the problem they can handle a lot of power, I have a dedicated welding outlet, which is a 5-20 outlet on 10ga wire and a 30 amp breaker, its even labeled "welder only" because that's all I had room for. Its one breaker, one receptacle on about 9 inches of 10ga wire. I can do this with a welder because the most it will ever run is a 50% duty cycle.
Most welding machines call for a 60amp or way smaller breaker. No need for separate connection for most machines.
EVs, block heaters, deicing heaters are all 100% duty cycle.
If you have to put in separate service for an electric vehicle that's an extra service charge per month you will be paying for.

To hook up grid tie to your house put a sub panel out side for it or run it back to the main and put it on its own breaker.

[oil pan 4]

I updated the OP with common high power receptacle types and where you might find them.