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Buyers Guide Series for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations: Staying Safe

Today we’re going to talk about staying safe. Safety may not be something you thought of but safety is the most important thing to consider when buying a charging station for your electric vehicle.

The good news is charging an electric vehicle is actually really safe but you can only be sure if you use a safety certified charging station to charge your car. The challenge is that not all charging stations on the market are safety certified or their safety certification is bogus and it can be hard to tell the difference.

When we develop a product we send samples to a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory that’s full of these really smart guys. We also send them a bunch of money so they will torture test our products against a zillion codes and standards. It takes many, many months!

After we pass all the testing and get certified the testing laboratory sends out technicians to perform surprise inspections on our factory several times a year. We also pay for that. They verify we’re still doing everything exactly right. Sounds tough doesn’t it? Isn’t that what you want from a safety certified charging station? It’s an electrical safety appliance after all, you don’t want it to be easy. All this adds up to make sure you stay safe.

So how do you know if you choose a charging station that’s been safety certified? Well in North America you need to look for these symbols [UL Listed and ETL Listed]. These marks can’t be put on a product unless a trusted third party laboratory has put the product through rigorous testing. And they have to appear on the product not on a website, not some vague statement in the product spec, a product is only certified if these marks are visible on the product.

And here are some things to watch out for. If you can only see a “CE” mark on the product it hasn’t been safety certified by the smart guys we were talking about earlier. “CE” is a self-certifying mark: it shouldn’t be trusted. Just because you buy from what seems to be a reputable seller doesn’t mean it’s been safety certified.

Please don’t buy a station with a plug that looks like these. [No 10-30 or 10-50 plugs.] They don’t even have an earth-ground connection, there’s no way they could ever be safety certified, you have to have an earth-ground connection.

So to wrap things up look for these safety certified marks [UL Listed and ETL Listed] when shopping for your charging station. Would you drive around in a car that wasn’t crash test certified by the safety authorities? Of course you wouldn’t! So don’t charge your car with a charging station that hasn’t been safety certified.

Charging your electric vehicle is safe and easy but don’t take a chance, buy a safety certified charging station. ClipperCreek only sells NRTL safety certified charging stations and you will find one of these marks on all of our products. ClipperCreek takes your safety very seriously.