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Your EV and Charging (tips from Carlsbad Car Chargers)

When talking about electricity usage, there are two different parameters that are important. Energy and power.

Energy. This is energy put into the battery to later drive the car. It's usually expressed in kWh. A kWh is 1,000 watts, used for 1 hour. So, 10 light bulbs, each 100 watts, on for 1 hour, would use 1 kWh.

The important thing about the energy needed for an electric car is that it has almost nothing to do with the size of the battery. The energy needed to charge an electric car depends on the miles driven and heating or cooling needs. Most electric cars get between 3 and 4 miles per kWh. Drive 60 miles, and your electric car will probably require between 15–20 kWh to recharge.

Power. Power measures how fast the energy is delivered. If you need 20 kWh, that can be 20 kW for 1 hour, 10 kW for 2 hours, or 1 kW for 20 hours.

A standard 120V/15A outlet in the U.S. will provide about 1.4 kW, so it would take about 14 hours to recharge 20 kWh. A 240V/30A circuit is 5.7 kW, so it would only take 3.5 hours.

Most people only drive about 30 miles per day, so would only need about 10 kWh, making all the times about half what I calculated above. You can calculate for your situation.

Either way, whether using high power for a shorter time, or lower power for a longer time, the energy is the same and determined by the miles you drove.

Note: Some people might know that Watts = Volts * Amps and wonder why my power calculation for 120V and 15A was 1400 watts instead of 1800 watts. Sustained current draw on a circuit isn't supposed to be more than 80% of its rated load. Since electric cars are a sustained load, they make sure to follow that restriction. All the calculations have that taken into account.

(src: quora)

How much does a home car charging station cost in Carlsbad, CA? What is the cost?

The equipment runs from $150–800, depending on how much power you want to deliver. Many vendors to choose from. Many features to pick some of which perhaps you won’t need.
The labor depends on how far from a service panel or sub-panel you want to plant the station. Also consider if you need conduit, or can use Romex (plastic sheath around the insulated conductors).

Details:

A long run (60–100 feet from the source will mean large more expensive wire so that you can handle the full load current drawn without voltage sagging at the car end.

Make sure it is a dedicated circuit, not shared with anything else, or you’ll have problems. No sharing with a refrigerator, a compressor or another circuit.

If your panel has no more space for an added breaker, you can shell out several thousand to upgrade it, and then add in the charging station cost on top.

Then there might be permits involved.

NOTE: If you are a DIY type, and something goes wrong, and your place burns down, and they trace the cause of the fire to the self-installed EVSE, your insurance company may not cover your losses. In other words... Let the pros handle this! Get in touch with Carlsbad EV Chargers to get your Car Charging Station installed the RIGHT way. Call us: 760-682-6020

Should I charge my electric car every night?

Yes - that is the recommendation for Tesla cars - and I can’t imagine it’ll be any different for other cars based on either Lithium Ion or Lead-Acid batteries.

NIckel-Cadmium batteries like to be fully discharged once in a while - so maybe old cars with those batteries might not be happy.

The only thing to be wary of is that with Lithium Ion batteries - you shouldn’t routinely charge to 100% of the battery capacity.

However, most EV’s have a way to limit the charge to (say) 80% of the maximum.

The reason to leave them plugged in is that they use a small amount of electricity even when not being driven. The computer remains on - and in very hot or very cold weather, the car may cool or heat the battery pack to keep it in good condition.