Changes for a Better EV Life: Charging at work costs less than a Mini Fridge!

Having driven CO2 Fre for over a month now, I feel I can now safely make some recommendations for change that would make my life infinitely easier.  Some of these things I've been writing about long before I purchased my Nissan LEAF; I knew going in some sacrifice would be required for the greater good.  That's not to say there aren't great things like the burgeoning Charging Infrastructure and wonderful LEAF features to help get me through the day!  But there's always room for improvement and if you don't speak up, nothing will get done.

Power Consumption

During business hours a typical mini fridge is drawing about 320 Watts (W) of electrical power.  A car plugged in to trickle charge on the other hand is using about 120 Volts of Alternating Current (VAC) × 12 Amperes (A), and thus an average of 1,440 W peak.  Note, since A/C is a sine wave, the maximum power used at the peak ends of each cycle is 2,036 W (The maximum for a sine wave with a given Root Mean Square — multiply by √2) but 0 W is used at the middle of the cycle so overall the 120 VAC average is produced.  This is therefore about the equivalent of the power used by just 4 typical mini fridges.

Daily Electrical Consumption

The mini fridge runs 24 hours a day, continuously, and thus uses about 7.68 Kilowatt⋅Hours (kWh). The EV on the other hand is only drawing power for 8 hours a day and thus uses about 11.52 kWh, and thus is about equivalent to that of the 1½ mini fridge.

Annual Electrical Consumption

In a typical year, running 365.2425 days that same mini fridge is using 2,805 kWh of electricity.  But the employee who works 40 hours a week, 46 weeks a year (including 2 weeks fixed vacation and 4 weeks flexible vacation) uses only 2,764 kWh of electricity, and that's less than what a single mini fridge uses!

Conculsion

So, wouldn't it be cheaper to ban mini fridges and allow electric vehicle charging at work?

Changes for a Better EV Life: Where for art thou, CHADeMO?

Having driven CO2 Fre for over a month now, I feel I can now safely make some recommendations for change that would make my life infinitely easier.<  Some of these things I've been writing about long before I purchased my Nissan LEAF; I knew going in some sacrifice would be required for the greater good.  That's not to say there aren't great things like the burgeoning Charging Infrastructure and wonderful LEAF features to help get me through the day!  But there's always room for improvement and if you don't speak up, nothing will get done.

What about CHAdeMO?

Granted, the LEAF SL has a TEPCO plug and CHAdeMO support, so it can theoretically be charged from 0% to 80% in twenty-five minutes.  But CHAdeMO stations are few and far between currently and even with with the 350Green announcement of 47 new Charging Stations in the Baltimore and D.C. regions, if I recall only 5 of those will be CHAdeMo.

Fortunately, 350Green chose CHAdeMO as the Level 3 standard they and aren't going with the the odd-ball SAE proposal currently floating with the J1772 plus two prongs below it for the direct current connection of Level 3.  On the one hand, CHAdeMO is the de facto standard because it has the most stations and the most cars that can accept it.  But right now, those numbers aren't big and if the SAE comes up with something cheaper and car manufacturers or EVSE makers decide to take a risk on following the official recommendations, it's possible over time CHAdeMO could be the BetaMax over the SAE's VHS.

Changes for a Better EV Life: Slowest EV Charge Time: LEAF

Having driven CO2 Fre for over a month now, I feel I can now safely make some recommendations for change that would make my life infinitely easier.  Some of these things I've been writing about long before I purchased my Nissan LEAF; I knew going in some sacrifice would be required for the greater good.  That's not to say there aren't great things like the burgeoning Charging Infrastructure and wonderful LEAF features to help get me through the day!  But there's always room for improvement and if you don't speak up, nothing will get done.

Putting the LEAF Charger in Perspective

The chart above demonstrates how of the most popular EVs today, the LEAF takes the longest to charge from depleted to full:

As can be seen, the LEAF is slower by an hour even over the Tesla Model S and is clearly the slowest to charge of all; it's even twice as slow as the Focus Electric and Chevy Volt.  Of course, in terms of the amount of mileage you get from charging any of these cars can differ greatly so to be fair, compare them to the total pack size:

Obviously, the Model S has a lot more battery than the Nissan LEAF but still only takes about 6½ hours to charge.  And since most cars in the sample range in capacity from about 16 kWh to the LEAF's 24 kWh, yet most of these have much shorter charge times, it's clear that Nissan underestimated the competition.

Changes for a Better EV Life: The 6.6kW Charger (Part 1)

Having driven CO2 Fre for over a month now, I feel I can now safely make some recommendations for change that would make my life infinitely easier.  Some of these things I've been writing about long before I purchased my Nissan LEAF; I knew going in some sacrifice would be required for the greater good.  That's not to say there aren't great things like the burgeoning Charging Infrastructure and wonderful LEAF features to help get me through the day!  But there's always room for improvement and if you don't speak up, nothing will get done.

The LEAF Needs a 6.6kW Charger

I've written about this numerous times and even created a Facebook Group for it.  Put simply, there are two basic reasons I would pay a pretty penny for the 6.6kW charger.  The first has to do with situations like the one where I had to spend three hours at Rosenthal's Nissan/Mazda waiting for enough electricity to get home.  With a 6.6kW charger, that would have been a mere ninety minutes.  Put another way, with the 3.3kW charger, you only get about 10–15 miles (15–25 km) of driving per hour of charge.  Since my driving average comes out to 4.0 ^mi⁄_kWh (6.4 ^km⁄_kWh), this comes out to 11.52 mi (18.54 km) for me.  With a 6.6kW you double that!  And that means 45 minutes out at a nice restaurant like the Cracker Barrel in Manassas next to the IBEW Local 26/JATC ChargePoint stations would net about 20 mi (32 km), more than enough to get home on a near-depleted pack; with only 10 mi (16 km), I feel I'd be pushing my luck!

The other reason has to do with the new Dominion Virginia Power Time Of Use rate.  Specifically, by going to a 6.6kW Charger under Schedule EV, I estimate I could be saving $80 per year in electricity costs by limiting my charge time to the hours 1–5 am.  Now, if the 6.6kW charger costs $1,000 to retrofit into a 2011/2012 LEAF, as I once suggested I would still pay it gladly.  Sure, it would be a 12½ year return on investment, assuming current electric rates, but the time I don't have to spend at places like my local Nissan Dealer or Panera waiting for a sufficient charge to my car is quite valuable too.  By some estimates this could be as much as $40 per hour for a skilled software engineer such as myself, and at that rate it doesn't take long to equate an hour wasted waiting here, an hour wasted waiting there and before you know it, you've wasted a grand.