cost in my city to charge a 90% dead leaf

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crab

New member
Joined
Aug 27, 2017
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1
I found that a overnight charge is the same as running my dryer at 208 volts for eight hours. not good
 
Sure. If you have an EVSE that has a delivery rate that allows your car to draw at its max acceptance rate (https://www.clippercreek.com/three-things-determine-ev-charge-time/), then the car will be drawing anywhere from about 3.8 to 6.6 kW continually for many hours until it ramps down before stopping.

Since we have no idea what model year you have or what trim level, I can only specify that large range.

Hope you realize that 1 gallon of gasoline has about 33.7 kWh of energy content. No currently shipping Leaf has a battery pack that large in capacity.
 
I've got a feeling the OP is trolling. The title is asking how much it would cost to charge, then the next statement is how it's "not good" for a car to be charging for 8 hours. There's no reason why an EVSE that's properly installed by a qualified electrician would have an issue for supplying that much electricity for that long a period.

Tesla owners draw even more electricity (due to their batteries being bigger than that of any Leaf) and have no issues.
 
RonDawg said:
I've got a feeling the OP is trolling. The title is asking how much it would cost to charge, then the next statement is how it's "not good" for a car to be charging for 8 hours.
Yep. And no mention of "cost" anywhere in the post.

And, like most people who do not own an EV, the post focused on the time required to charge a 30 kWh LEAF from empty to full. In reality, our 2011 LEAF charges for 3.5 hours each night at 3.3 kW to fully recharge for my wife's 50-mile RT commute. That means that her commute each day uses about 11.5 kWh of electricity, which costs US$1.38 at our utility's rate of US$0.12/kWh. It likely uses a bit more in wintertime: perhaps about US$1.50 worth of fuel. Commuting cost on the coldest days may approach US$2.00, including preheating.

Our 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid can make that same trip on almost exactly one gallon of fuel (long-term average mileage is 49.2 MPG), which currently costs US$2.50 for the ethanol-free grade that we use.

Finally, MOST of our LEAF's fuel is provided by the PV array on our roof which is basically pre-paid fuel for the next 20 years or so. Exactly what percent of her annual commuting costs are already covered by the PV array depends on the weather over the course of the year. Normally, the array will provide for all of the house's consumption and about 2/3 of the LEAF's consumption.
 
crab said:
I found that a overnight charge is the same as running my dryer at 208 volts for eight hours. not good
If your dryer is in a US home then probably 240v. However, you don't know the current so you cannot calculate power.

One possible example:
Say the current draw was 16A, then the power is 16*240 = 3840 watts. If 15% of power is charging losses then power to the battery is
3840*0.85 = 3264 watts = 3.264 kW.
Over 8 hours then, 3.264*8 = 26.11 kWh into battery.
That would be expected for a new 30 kWh model LEAF charging up 90%

So what is "not good?"
 
I have been chasing vampire loads for a couple of years, and had gotten our home electrical use down near 4MW-hrs per year (400 kw-hrs/month). This was the result of efforts to get our annual home electrical consumption below our solar production.

So when I added the Leaf, it did kind-of make my heart sink to see the power use. The Leaf will almost double our electrical consumption, which seems to mock those efforts to shave 10 watts here, 20 watts there. Of course, driving the Leaf is a huge improvement over an ICE. But when you dump gasoline in a car, the energy consumption is sort-of hidden. Or rather, you know about it only in the "car" part of your brain which is somehow disconnected from the part of your brain that just put-in an LED bulb. It's easy to overlook how much energy it really takes to propel two tons down the freeway at cheetah speed.

So, I have to agree that seeing the power bill still makes me think: "not good!" But it's given me some extra insight, and now if I have time, I commute on city streets (25 minutes, versus 20 minutes on freeway... but about 40% less energy), and I even bicycle sometimes (55 minutes at 1 burrito per hour).
 
specialgreen said:
I have been chasing vampire loads for a couple of years, and had gotten our home electrical use down near 4MW-hrs per year (400 kw-hrs/month). This was the result of efforts to get our annual home electrical consumption below our solar production.

So when I added the Leaf, it did kind-of make my heart sink to see the power use. The Leaf will almost double our electrical consumption, which seems to mock those efforts to shave 10 watts here, 20 watts there. Of course, driving the Leaf is a huge improvement over an ICE. But when you dump gasoline in a car, the energy consumption is sort-of hidden. Or rather, you know about it only in the "car" part of your brain which is somehow disconnected from the part of your brain that just put-in an LED bulb. It's easy to overlook how much energy it really takes to propel two tons down the freeway at cheetah speed.

So, I have to agree that seeing the power bill still makes me think: "not good!" But it's given me some extra insight, and now if I have time, I commute on city streets (25 minutes, versus 20 minutes on freeway... but about 40% less energy), and I even bicycle sometimes (55 minutes at 1 burrito per hour).
Same story to a tee.

The day I tracked down the doorbell transformer, I ripped it out and displayed it proudly on the kitchen table. My wife had no idea what I meant when I told her it was the heart of a targ, and was our dinner. I got our home consumption down to 100 - 150 kWh a month. Nowadays we consume 400 - 500 kWh a month, albeit with a LEAF and a plug-in Prime, and our PV covers that amount and more.
 
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