Selecting a Level-2 Charger

[SeanNelson]

There is almost nothing you can do with a wi-fi connected EVSE that you cannot do with the my.chevrolet web site or the available smartphone app for iPhone or Android.

...as long as you continue to pay for your OnStar subscription after the free trial expires.

The basic OnStar service (which supports the MyChevyApp notifications and diagnostics) is supposed to last for at least 5 years without any additional payment.

I'm having trouble finding any concrete information about it, but I believe I've read that the trial period is a lot shorter for those of us who live in Canada.

 

[oilerlord]

FWIW, I use a Clipper Creek HCS-40p EVSE. I bought it before deciding on which EV I was going to buy. In hindsight, I would have liked to have the $859 50p model that supports 9.6kW - but I got a great deal on ebay for the 32amp model at less than half that, and it delivers 7.7kW to my car. The "p" version allows you to take it with you so you can plug into campgrounds / rv parks that typically use the standard 14-50 plug. CC's don't have fancy features but are well made and do what they do.

Regarding monitoring apps...my B250e came with a three month trial, then they wanted USD$500 per year. For that price, I'm fine with guesstimating my SOC, and spending that dough on a diesel parking heater to stay warm & extend winter range.

 

[gbobman]

FWIW, I use a Clipper Creek HCS-40p EVSE. I bought it before deciding on which EV I was going to buy. In hindsight, I would have liked to have the $859 50p model that supports 9.6kW - but I got a great deal on ebay for the 32amp model at less than half that, and it delivers 7.7kW to my car...

You car only supports up to 7.2kW. So anything past the HSC-40p's rate is of no use to you/us. It's a bummer of course but it does save a bit on the charger choices.

 

[Anonymous]

Unless of course you have plans to upgrade your car, or add another one later.

I purchased the LCS-25p for my Volt (3.3) and now am going to be charging more slowly on my Bolt EV due to "saving" a few dollars!

 

[oilerlord]

You car only supports up to 7.2kW. So anything past the HSC-40p's rate is of no use to you/us. It's a bummer of course but it does save a bit on the charger choices.

Actually, my car does support charging up to 10kW.

http://www.plugincars.com/mercedes-b-class-e-cell

There have been a couple of times that the HCS-50p higher 9.6 kW charging rate would have come in handy, but I the extra cost wasn't worth it to me.

 

[Anonymous]

Finally after 3 years of the Chevy Volt and now 6 months of the Chevy Bolt EV running on 120V, I had an electrician run 100' of a DYI extension cord to bring 240v 30 amps into the garage so that I could power my Clipper Creek LCS-25P that I purchased 3 years ago!

The Clipper Creek only runs at 20 amps (purchased for the Volt), but the increase in charging speed compared to 120v at 12 amps is so dramatic!

 

[LeftieBiker]

Clipper Creek names its charging stations according to the size breaker required, and makes that 20% more than the actual consumption. So shouldn't an LCS 25P draw 20 amps...?

 

[Anonymous]

Clipper Creek names its charging stations according to the size breaker required, and makes that 20% more than the actual consumption. So shouldn't an LCS 25P draw 20 amps...?

Noted and corrected; which means I am getting 4.8KWh instead of my assumed 3.3KWh; great!

 

[roperld]

Here are two options for using the portable EVSE that came with the CBEV for 240-volts:

http://www.roperld.com/science/ChevroletEVSEUpgrade240Volts.pdf

 

[roperld]

I have the OpenEVSE (https://store.openevse.com/collecti...nced-40a-charging-station-powered-by-openevse P50A charging station. Here is the power curve for a recent charging session when the battery gauge showed about half full at the start of charging:

http://www.roperld.com/science/graphics/OpenEVSEPower_CBEV.jpg

I am surprised that it stayed near 7 kW until very near the end. I thought the power decay would be much sooner and slower. Could this be because there are quite a few kWhs left in the battery when the battery is "full"? Could this curve be useful in calculating the remaining kWhs when the batter is "full"?

 

[SeanNelson]

I am surprised that it stayed near 7 kW until very near the end. I thought the power decay would be much sooner and slower.

The battery is designed to be capable of being charged by a DC fast charger at rates of as much as 50KW (or possibly even 60KW, although I don't think anyone has actually had access to a CCS charger of that capacity to test it). So the 7KW from a level 2 charger is already very highly ramped down compared to that.

 

[Anonymous]

Is it relevant that Regen charges at a much higher rate no matter how much the battery is charged?

 

[SeanNelson]

Is it relevant that Regen charges at a much higher rate no matter how much the battery is charged?

Well that's not strictly true because we know that regen is limited when the battery is fully or nearly fully charged.

I suspect that you can generally get away with higher regen power levels when the battery is in the top half of its charge range because regen isn't normally applied for a very long period of time. But if you were at, say, 70% charge level and you were coming down a really, really steep hill that tried to pump 40KW into the battery over a 15-minute stretch of time I suspect you may find that the car will start to limit the amount of regen it would accept.

 

[Anonymous]

I am really impressed with the speed at which the 20A Clipper Creek 240V LCP-25P is charging my Bolt EV!

I drove up to the San Manual Indian Casino (80 miles) for their Friday seafood buffet and back and plugged back in in the late evening.

I was fully recharged by 6:45 the next morning! 240 is nice!

Now to find that 4 years old invoice from Clipper Creek and submit it with the electrician's bill to LADWP for the $750 rebate!!

 

[sgt1372]

I pay about $0.105 per kWh, and use about 200kWh per month. For me, about $22 a month to drive about 800 miles with a L2 charger.

I drive about 1,000 miles a month and it works out to about $30/month @ .13/Kwh. Whether it's level 1 or 2 shouldn't have a significant impact although there are more losses with one over the other but I don't remember which IIRC.

Thanks, this is the kind of info I was looking for.

Obviously, my personal results will vary but I'm limited to driving my Bolt 800 miles/month on 10k mile annual limit under the lease. So, I'll be looking for an approximate increase in my electric bill of around $20-30/month.

My current electrical cost probably will be a little higher since I'm still using the L1 cord and have to charge the car for 16-20 hours per day over 2 days to get it back to a full charge from about a 50% SOC.

Should cost less when I get my L2 charger hooked up and can schedule charges to correspond to lower demand/lower rate time periods.

Update on electrical costs:

I finally took a look at my utility bills to see what the cost of charging the Bolt on my L2 charger has been. When I charge the Bolt, it is usually (but not always) at about a 40-50% SOC (with about 100 estimated miles remaining) and the charge time is around 5-6 hours.

I used the "charging complete" emails to note the day that I charged the car and there was a distinct daily usage spike each day I charged the Bolt. However, the daily usage rate is only shown in graph form on my bill (not the actual kwh used each day). So, I had to guess-timate the amount of electricity used on those days.

The last 2 months are the best representation of my current use and during those months I used about 145-150 kwh more electricity when I charged the Bolt, which cost $40-41 at the Tier 2 rate of 27.612 cents/kwh. The Tier 1 rate is 19.979 cents/kwh but I was never below Tier 2 usage and deducting the electricity used charging the Bolt would not drop me into Tier 1.

I have driven the Bolt only an average of 750 miles/month. So, the cost per mile for the past 2 months as been about $81 or about 5.4 cents/mile.

The comparative cost vs gasoline usage is hard to determinate because it depends largely on which car I drive and the type of fuel used. My MR2 gets 25 mpg on regular. My MB and BMW each get 20 mpg on premium. My truck gets barely 12 mpg on diesel. I use to get about 35 mpg on regular from the 2 Priuses that I previously owned, but that usage isn't currently relevant to me.

I drive the MB & BMW more than the MR2 & truck, so using them for comparison, driving 1500 miles at 20 mpg would use about 75 gallons of gas costing about $3.30/gal (at current local pricing for premium gas) which would equal about $247.50 (16.5 cents/mile) resulting in a "savings" of about $166.50 or $83.25/month or 11.1 cents/mile driving the Bolt instead of the MB or BMW.

That's actually much better than I expected and is a good reason to choose to drive the Bolt whenever range is not an issue.

 

[Anonymous]

I leased my 2013 Chevy Volt from September 2013 until I returned it on September 19, 2016 and for most days I recharged the battery up to its capacity, up to 40 miles (about 16 KWh) at 120v. Rarely would I charge it twice.

I have been charging my 2017 Chevy Bolt EV on 120v since January 3, 2017 until June 17th when I upgraded to 240V. I have driven about 9,150 miles, which is well ahead of my annual 15,000 lease miles, but my enthusiasm will wane and I will slow down as time goes on.

Here are 3 charts from my LADWP bill showing energy using on my 4-plex's "common" meter, which includes some outdoor lighting, the laundry room and the garage, which is shared with 3 other tenants (no other EV drivers).

Remember there was no EV charging between September 20 through January 2.

Looks to me like my cost of electricity has doubled, which is not surprising to me, since I am sure that my mileage driven on electricity has doubled!

If anybody can analyze this information for me, I would appreciate it:

 

[sparkyps]

You appear to have a rate that charges (a lot) for peak demand.

If you drive 1000 miles/mo you should use about 250kWh of power extra per month.

No idea if your rate is a time of day peak demand, if it is make sure you only charge during off peak times

 

[Anonymous]

How do they know what time I am charging?

 

[wwhitney]

the Tier 2 rate of 27.612 cents/kwh. The Tier 1 rate is 19.979 cents/kwh

In case you're not aware, PG&E has an EV rate which is untiered but TOU. PG&E's website supposedly has an usage analyzer that tells you what rate plan would be cheapest for your usage, but it has never worked for me, because I have solar. So I don't know if it is any good.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[sgt1372]

You appear to have a rate that charges (a lot) for peak demand. If you drive 1000 miles/mo you should use about 250kWh of power extra per month. No idea if your rate is a time of day peak demand, if it is make sure you only charge during off peak times

In case you're not aware, PG&E has an EV rate which is untiered but TOU. PG&E's website supposedly has an usage analyzer that tells you what rate plan would be cheapest for your usage, but it has never worked for me, because I have solar. So I don't know if it is any good.

Tier 2 is not a peak rate. It's a tiered rate; doesn't matter what time you use it. When you use a certain amount of electricity, you get bumped to the next higher rate. I think that there are 4 tiers and I think I got bumped to Tier 3 once before I got the Bolt.

The only thing offered to me as a "EV Rate" is an off-peak rate called EV-A (restricting use to mainly between 11pm and 7am) or a Time of Use rate plan called ETOU-B (reducing use bet 4-9) but I don't want to worry about charging or using other electricity only at night in order to get the lower rate because these time/use restrictions apply to all use not just EV charging.

Although others report paying much less, I live in the SF Bay area and am use to getting corn-holed for utilities as well as gas/diesel but my operational "savings' compared using electricity instead of buying gas/diesel is satisfactory enough for me.

I'm already at about max mileage for my Bolt at 9000 miles/year (w/a 10k limit) so I don't expect my charging needs to increase beyond what they are now. So, there should be no need to switch to another rate plan but, if my electricity bills increase further (for whatever reason), I may consider it later.