How much electricity am I using?

Should know this by now as I feel like a veteran (had mine for 1 month!)

I recharge mine daily in my garage on my L2 charger.

Do I need to add some hardware (like a private electric meter) to tell electricity consumption?

Or is there some kind of log file I am not aware of yet that tells me how many KWks I have used?

(But separating such a list between private and public charging?)

You're not missing anything. There is no log file on the LEAF that can tell you the amount of power that you are drawing to charge.

Charging a new LEAF to 100% from empty ("turtle mode") at 240 Volts takes very roughly 25 kWh from your wall outlet or power panel. Charging from the same low state of charge to 80% takes something like 21 kWh.

Some of us have installed a TED 5000 metering device (Google search TED, The Energy Detective) attached to our power panels to see total household usage and car charging usage separately. You can also use a TED to monitor power generation from a solar PV array or for monitoring other power usage like a pool or A/C unit. TED also has a single channel system (TED 1000) that can monitor a single circuit like your charging circuit.

Ok, researched that site and see the
TED 5000-G.

I assume you take those two clips and put them around the 30amp breaker for the L2 charger.

And go from there.

If later, I wanted to measure the whole house, I move it to the two main incoming leads.

(My breaker panel in the garage is a separate sub panel from the main breaker panel.)

Will order one tomorrow!

Knowledge is everything!

Thanks.

Sorry I can not find the thread, but a fellow on this forum purchased a used regular house kWh meter at quite reasonable cost and rigged up a connection between his 240 volt source and the EVSE. Not as fancy as the TED, but cheap and does the job.

Perhaps someone will come up with the thread.

Although not exactly accurate, and you have to add 15% or so for charger inefficiency, CARWINGS does supply some data on daily, monthly, and annual kWh consumption:

sp4rk said:

Ok, researched that site and see the
TED 5000-G.

I assume you take those two clips and put them around the 30amp breaker for the L2 charger.

And go from there.

If later, I wanted to measure the whole house, I move it to the two main incoming leads.

(My breaker panel in the garage is a separate sub panel from the main breaker panel.)

Will order one tomorrow!

Knowledge is everything!

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yep. But from an owner's perspective, getting a TED up and working can be tricky. Here are some caveats:
1. The communications for the TED travel over your home's power wiring. If you have another system in your house that is using power line communications, PLC, like a home security or home automation system, you might have interference.
2. Some home electronics such as power supplies and some fluorescent lights, including CFLs, provide enough interference to mess with the TED signal. The "gateway" signal receiver wall unit plugs into an outlet inside your house. You might have to hunt around for a circuit inside the house that doesn't have interference or even buy an interference filter (inexpensive) that blocks the interference.
3. The gateway device needs to connect to your home's router via a data cable. TED comes with a 6ft cable. I had to buy a longer one to reach from a certain wall outlet to my router. No big deal, a trip to Fry's.
4. You'll need to find a 240 V breaker in your power panel to connect the wires from the small MTU box. The current transformer, CT, wires connect by small plugs to the MTU. Your circuit breakers have screws that you can attach the MTU wires to, but if you're skittish about working inside a power panel, get professional help.
5. A cool extra is to get the free app called TED-O-Meter for your iPhone or iPod Touch. It gives you quick summary readouts via wifi from your router anywhere in your house that you can get the wifi signal.

It looks like you've picked the right system, the 5000-G for a single circuit. You can add CTs and MTUs later to expand the system, though your multi-panel home wiring might be a challenge.

This is the first time in months that I've looked at TED's website. I hate the way they've oversimplified it. It used to be easier for a first time, somewhat savvy buyer to see what they were getting. Now it's so simplified, it's hard to even find a page to see all of the products. Looks like they've discontinued the 1000 series.

Good luck and enjoy!

keydiver said:

Although not exactly accurate, and you have to add 15% or so for charger inefficiency, CARWINGS does supply some data on daily, monthly, and annual kWh consumption:

Click to expand...

Do you find that even marginally accurate? I don't. I just checked my June month to date and Carwings shows my energy consumption as 80.5 kWh. My home TED system shows that I pulled 134 kWh for charging. Add almost 5 kWh for public charging in the month, and Carwings reports only 58% of my real energy usage.

That's why we've long ago quit paying any attention to Carwings' energy efficiency estimates. It shows that I'm averaging 5.3 mi/kWh and I've never ended even one day with more than 4.4 mi/kWh.

Another measurement device is made by current cost which can provide you with the same information as TED.

If you use the timer and a set start time with charging to 80% you can get an estimate of the energy used with a charge stopped message notification. The notification will tell you when it stopped charging and with 80% charge the EVSE operates at full power on level 2 until 80% is reached. The typical power demand for a 3.3KW LEAF battery charger is 240*16 is 3.84 KW so using the set start time, the notification end time for 80% you can implement a zero cost KWHr into the EVSE.

sp4rk said:

Ok, researched that site and see the
TED 5000-G.

Will order one tomorrow!

Knowledge is everything!

Click to expand...

The TED 5002-G has two pairs of CTs if you want to monitor your EVSE and whole panel simultaneously, but it cost $320, instead of $200. I have experience with a TED5000 and while it does a reasonable job, I have found the power line carrier communication to be unreliable at times and I have had the wireless display unit fail. For kWh, the TED doesn't agree within better than about 8-10% compared to my new utility smart meter (sometimes much worse). Part of this is a result of trying to measure small loads with a 200A CT (the LEAF only draws 16A). Also, there may be some issues with TED accurately measuring loads with goofy wave forms or lower power factor. I would consider looking around at other metering options, too.

Here are some I'm familiar with, but I don't have extensive direct experience with all of these (the dollar signs get much bigger, and the capabilities overkill, as you go down the list):
EKM metering ($90 plus remote pulse counter?)
Acuvim ($200)
IMS mini-meter ($237 plus remote pulse counter)
Brultech ($200-300?) also http://www.brultech.com/home/store/product.php?id_product=35" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Veris E50 ($500)
EIG Shark100 ($500-700?)
Ohio Semitronic ($790)
Pqube ($800-1000?)

Howdy

hgoudey said:

sp4rk said:

Ok, researched that site and see the
TED 5000-G.

Will order one tomorrow!

Knowledge is everything!

Click to expand...

The TED 5002-G has two pairs of CTs if you want to monitor your EVSE and whole panel simultaneously, but it cost $320, instead of $200. I have experience with a TED5000 and while it does a reasonable job, I have found the power line carrier communication to be unreliable at times and I have had the wireless display unit fail. For kWh, the TED doesn't agree within better than about 8-10% compared to my new utility smart meter (sometimes much worse). Part of this is a result of trying to measure small loads with a 200A CT (the LEAF only draws 16A). Also, there may be some issues with TED accurately measuring loads with goofy wave forms or lower power factor. I would consider looking around at other metering options, too.

Here are some I'm familiar with, but I don't have extensive direct experience with all of these (the dollar signs get much bigger, and the capabilities overkill, as you go down the list):
EKM metering ($90 plus remote pulse counter?)
Acuvim ($200)
IMS mini-meter ($237 plus remote pulse counter)
Brultech ($200-300?) also http://www.brultech.com/home/store/product.php?id_product=35" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Veris E50 ($500)
EIG Shark100 ($500-700?)
Ohio Semitronic ($790)
Pqube ($800-1000?)

Howdy

Click to expand...

Not trying to be argumentative, but my system has pretty good accuracy compared with direct readings from my power meter. Maybe your smart meter is less than perfect? Oh, and you can put a correction factor into the TED software if you are aware of how much of a correction to apply.

I don't have any experience with the other options, and I do agree that the TED can be wonky at times. I wound up replacing my outdoor CFL lamps with more expensive LEDs to eliminate interference from the CFLs on that circuit only. I also had TED act up when another outdoor CFL was about to fail. Once I saw that the CFL was flickering, I replaced the bulb and the TED issue went away.

My TED wireless display also failed, but then came back to life in a triumphant second coming after months of torpor. Go figure. The TED wireless display is considered a pretty poor unit with low battery life. Luckily it is optional and not really needed, especially if you have an iPhone app.

Boomer23 said:

Not trying to be argumentative, but my system has pretty good accuracy compared with direct readings from my power meter. Maybe your smart meter is less than perfect? Oh, and you can put a correction factor into the TED software if you are aware of how much of a correction to apply.

Click to expand...

It's possible that my utility meter is a dud, but revenue grade meters have an intended specification (+/-2%?) that is much better than the deviation shown in my data below. I should do another comparison now that I'm at different house with another smart meter, but I'm inclined to attribute most of this erratic error in the data below to TED. Both meters in the data below are measauring whole house, not just EVSE. Note that there is no single correction factor that would result in consistently good agreement. Although, an average correction could bring the average agreement into better shape. I'd be curious to see similar data from your setup. What's the "pretty good" accuracy you've seen quantitatively?

Howdy

ebill3 said:

Sorry I can not find the thread, but a fellow on this forum purchased a used regular house kWh meter at quite reasonable cost and rigged up a connection between his 240 volt source and the EVSE. Not as fancy as the TED, but cheap and does the job.

Perhaps someone will come up with the thread.

Click to expand...

This one ? http://www.hialeahmeter.com/index.php/products/remanufactured-meters/single-phase-watt-hour-meters/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Howdy, I don't record daily data from one system to the other and my utility meter only displays whole kWh, so I don't have data to more precision than that. I do, however, check my total usage, solar PV generation and EV charging usage daily by both systems, and they rarely vary by more than 1 kWh. Since my total usage and PV generation are on the order of 30 kWh per day, the total error of 1 kWh per day is no more than 3 to 5 percent.

LEAFer said:

ebill3 said:

Sorry I can not find the thread, but a fellow on this forum purchased a used regular house kWh meter at quite reasonable cost and rigged up a connection between his 240 volt source and the EVSE. Not as fancy as the TED, but cheap and does the job.

Perhaps someone will come up with the thread.

Click to expand...

This one ? http://www.hialeahmeter.com/index.php/products/remanufactured-meters/single-phase-watt-hour-meters/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

I think that you are referring to the method DaveinOlyWA came up with:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/blog.php?u=291&b=92" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I use this method to track usage for my L2 EVSEupgrade installation:

It was a simple DIY project since my panel is in the garage.