How To Save Money Charging Your Electric Car At Home Or In Town 

Once again, great job Max. Another video is the solar panel Level 2 at home charging. Each Electrical Company is different but in my case, it is best to charge when I am producing the most from 11am-3pm. When I charge at night, I end up paying more. Note, I do not have a battery to store the extra energy produced which would be a different dimension to charging.

Excellent info! Check federal/state tax credits for home charging installation/hardware costs. Check your local utility for EV discounts - we get $0.015/kWh discount for midnight to 6:00AM electricity use. Also, a couple years ago, the utility had a $500 credit for charging hardware. Charging etiquette videos would be great for OOS crews to do.

We have been home charging our Niro EV on the provided 12A level 1 EVSE for 4 years. Never needed more at home. I only recently installed a 50A outlet to charge my Rivian with its provided 32A EVSE. I keep the battery at 50% for daily use and only increase charge level when i need it. I used level 1 when i first took delivery, which was fine as long as i didn't NEED it to charge. Local public chargers picked up the slack during that time.

TFTC I can't install a charger where I live so I'm stuck granny charging (lv1) but even that will get me 20% overnight. There's exactly 1 lv2 charger in my town that's nowhere near anything so I don't use it. Fortunately even though I can't really slow charge properly at home, between the one Chargepoint 15mi away and the ubiquity of the Tesla network on the freeway I pretty much got over range anxiety in a couple weeks knowing I can pull in at home practically empty and still be able to hit the road in the morning no problem.

I charge daily at L2 at work at 3.2 kW (shared power station) for 4 hours. It is perfect for my 50 mile round trip commute.

As to maxing out the breaker, it's probably fine if you just need to add 40 miles quickly. But, it's good practice to leave the charger set to 80% of the breaker's rated load, as you say. i suspect the level-1 is less efficient because the on board charger has to pump (boost) the voltage more to get from 120 VAC to an adequately high DC level higher than the car's pack voltage. Starting with 240 VAC means less boosting is required. Less boosting equals better efficiency. After boosting the AC voltage it is rectified and filtered to make DC.

For those of you who don't speak nerd. Hahahahaha love it

I also own a Polestar2. I live in Florida and signed up for their EVolution program. They will install a Level 2 40 amp JuiceBox charger for free! And a flat rate of $38.00 per month. If you already own the charger it’s a flat rate of $31.00 per month. You can select if you want on or off peak hours via their ap. Pretty good deal.

That link I just posted to the comments has a color code for the light on the mobile charger. I had to look it up a few minutes ago. I let my battery go lower than I ever have since taking delivery 6 weeks ago (22 miles and 12 percent SOC). So when I plugged in earlier I had a little amber light to the left and pulsing blue. Which said it was “CHARGING AT A REDUCED RATE DUE TO OVERHEATING”

For a very small percentage of EV owners over 90% of their charging is free. My solar panels which already saved me more money than what I paid for them, generate enough electricity to charge the two Model Ys that my wife and I own. You can still argue that 10% of the time during the year we have to pay for Supercharging when traveling so it isn't technically free unless I only charge at home. But I can say that home charging is free.

They installed the 60 amp for 48amp chargers but they have to be hard wired in, no plug.

I think it's a mistake to use your onboard charger speed or battery size to decide what amperage L2 to go with. The real determining factor is how much you drive and whether you can replenish your daily driving usage overnight. Even just a 20a 240v circuit can supply 38kWh in a 10 hour window, enough for 100-150 miles or around 200km. That translates to over 36,000 miles / 60,000 km per year which is more than most people drive.

I actually pay less for peak charging than off-peak in my specific case. I have solar and if I use a time of use plan (not common where I live) then the net metering banks kWh separately for peak and off-peak. My utility doesn't bank dollars for net metering, they only bank kWh and they keep separate banks for peak and off-peak. At year end at true-up time, I'm going to have a credit on peak use/production. The credit is based on wholesale rates and was about 7.1 cents per kWh this past year. Off-peak usage is currently about 9 cents per kWh. Thus, charging during peak reduces my credit and, therefore, my cost for peak charging is about 7.1 cents per kWh as compared to paying 9 cents per kWh for off-peak charging. But this is only because I have solar and my utility keeps separate banks for off-peak and peak.

Building codes need to require EV circuits in all new housing - do not leave it up to developers because they will leave it out if they choose to leave it out.

L1 charging at 120 V is fine for people who can manage picking up about 30 miles of range for overnight charging. Not ideal for many people but also fine for many. Be sure charging is only load on a 15 amp 120 V circuit.

if they put a 60A breaker on your NEMA 14-50 plug, you still have a fire hazard. The breaker cannot be greater than 50A.