[MattyG]

I am curious to hear about your power company and how it stacks up to me and others.
Where do you live?
Who is your power company?
How much do you pay per kWh?
What power plan do you use?
Do you mostly charge at home or away?
Do you have a L2 charger installed or just use L1?

For me.
Torrance CA
Southern California Edison
On the tier plan. Tier 1 is .08 cents a kWh and Tier 2 is .14 cents a kWh.
I charge mostly away from home using free chargers. The Del Amo mall has a lot of free chargers. I sometimes go work at the Lomita Library (work from home normally) and charge there for a couple hours. Harbor UCLA hospital also has a bunch of chargers but those are for employees/visitors only so I only use those on the weekends.
Just have L1 at home and will charge up overnight if I have a meeting the next morning. A good chunk of my customers have free chargers.

 

[rucallingmefiat]

Irvine, CA
SoCal Edison
Plan: TOU-D-A (Time of use)
Peak: $0.28/kWh Super off-peak: $0.14/kWh (10pm-8am).
I charge at home starting at 10pm until full. After I get to work in the morning in Manhattan Beach I charge again to full using the Chargepoint station at work ($0.14/kWh). Each charge at work is between 11 and 13 kWh so I'm guessing it takes the same amount to charge at home nightly. That puts me at around 25 kWh daily, or around $3.5/day. My monthly cost of charging is around $30 for the chargepoint and around $35-50 at home. I also have solar, but won't factor that in since my wife also drives an EV. I might switch to the EV plan with SCE, but I have to crunch the numbers to see if it'll save me anything. Off peak is only $0.13/kWh, but it's something like $0.38/kWh between 4pm-9pm daily.

 

[abenusa]

Hutchinson, MN
Hutchinson Utilities
$0.10/kWh 24/7
Straight rate. No plans available. I spoke to an employee at the utility a couple weeks ago and they are considering possibly offering off-peak charging rates in the future.
Charge at home, always.
I was using the Fiat OEM charger at 240V. However Hutchinson Utilities as of Jan 1, 2020 is offering a $500 rebate on Chargepoint home chargers (L2). So I just bought one and installed it last week.

 

[map]

Springfield OR had a 2 tier rate until last year, when it was decided it was unfair to charge heavy users more.

Now it's 5.75 cents per kWh. There was free charging at a few locations, but most charge 10 times the home rate.

 

[RostHaus]

Where do you live? Dallas, TX
Who is your power company? TXU
How much do you pay per kWh? $0.15 per kwh during the day or $0.01 per kwh at night(8pm-5am)
What power plan do you use? Wind and Solar with "free" nights
Do you mostly charge at home or away? 95% at home
Do you have a L2 charger installed or just use L1? Two 40a L2 OPENEVSE chargers

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

San Pedro, CA
LADWP (Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power)
$0.00*/kWh + all taxes & fees = $0.32/kWh (same as local ChargePoint plugs)
*Apparently my 56kWh/month is less than their minimum.
"Green LA" renewable plan
Charge about half-&-half home-&-away
Just L1 at home, & that's really all I need (adds 40 miles in 8 hours of sleep)

There are now 17 free public L2 chargers on my normal 17-mile route, where I often stop & go online on my phone while I wait. At least 10 of them have free 120V wall outlets, where I sometimes plug in to gain a bit while I wait for someone to unplug.

 

[Enyapeoj]

San Diego SDGE EV TOU-5 plan about as convoluted as something can be. Paying $16/month fee gives us 9 cent per kWh “super off-peak” between 12-6am, 12a-2pm Sat & Sun, (an extra small window March/April) Great for charging the car, laptops, phones or practically any battery storage device.

Other TOU plans range between 25-31 cents/kWh. Some peak pricing windows during the summer can reach 55 cents/kWh. Ouch. A peak shave home battery bank could be an attractive asset.

Honestly, all the pricing plans make my eyes glaze over. Electricity cost including taxes divided by kWh consumed seems to cut to the chase. For example our Dec electricity totaled about $140 for 635kWh or 22 cents/kWh including taxes, delivery, etc.

Speaking of TOU plans here's something I found that's been incredibly useful to provide timer functions, remote control and power usage information:

TOPGREENER Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, 15A, 1800W

Sort of a Kill-A-Watt meter with WiFi connectivity.

 

[UrbanYeti]

Where do you live? Gresham, Oregon
Who is your power company? Portland General Electric
How much do you pay per kWh? After all power transport fees: between $0.12 and $0.15 per kWh
What power plan do you use? Standard billing (not time-of-use) plus the Renewable Power package. (Also have solar & a Powerwall 2, but have not yet worked out how the cost adjusts the overall cost of charging the car, but I will be tracking this year, so I may be able to report back later.)
Do you mostly charge at home or away? Splitting charging around 60/40 between home and a city-sponsored charger near where I work.
Do you have a L2 charger installed or just use L1? Just using the Fiat EVSE with a 15A plug at home (L1).

From what I have tracked so far (bought the 2016 500e at the end of June, been tracking charging in a Google Sheet since September), I am spending around $20 to $26 per month on home charging, getting around 20-40 kWh from the city per week to adjust what charging I need to do at home.

I'm definitely looking forward to the spring through fall months, when I can charge completely every weekend on solar only, so I'm not incurring any additional cost over the monthly for the PV + battery system to drive the car.

 

[SWAHog]

2013 with 57,000+
Where do you live? Dallas, TX
Who is your power company? Chariot Energy
How much do you pay per kWh? 8.8/kWh
What power plan do you use? Cheapest
Do you mostly charge at home or away? Home exclusively
Do you have a L2 charger installed or just use L1? OEM L1 on 240V

 

[br1chter]

South SF Bay Area, SVCE is $.06 off peak, when I actually pay for it. 7.5kW solar on the roof + battery, so it's not very often that I do.

 

[rkw]

What is that power meter display on the wall? Did you install it yourself, and what is it connected to?

 

[Enyapeoj]

What is that power meter display on the wall? Did you install it yourself, and what is it connected to?

I don't have one but have used similar in past:

Amazon.com: AC 100A Meter Voltage Amperage Power Energy Multimeter with Split Core Current Transformer CT AC 100A Meter: Home Improvement

Amazon.com: AC 100A Meter Voltage Amperage Power Energy Multimeter with Split Core Current Transformer CT AC 100A Meter: Home Improvement

www.amazon.com

 

[SWAHog]

What is that power meter display on the wall? Did you install it yourself, and what is it connected to?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRZAFAF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I installed it when I ran the wires tor the outlet. I was extremely easy since the CB panel is less than a foot away from the outlet I installed. I lucked out, the builder had the house wired for a 240v cooktop. It was an unused 40amp double breaker because ours cooktop uses natural gas. I reset the usage every month. I average around 500 miles per month for the tune of about $14.

 

[MattyG]

Really cool to see where everyone is from and the different rates and plans. Seems like most people charge at home. Makes sense since the 500e charges so quickly with the small battery.

@SWAHog I really dig your setup. I've been looking for a cheap way to monitor usage from the charger. So far I am still just using the L1 charger and I have that plugged into a Kill-A-Watt. I wish PlugShare or some other app made a simple way to track charge usage for home. I know the nice L2 chargers from ChargePoint and others can do this but I don't need an L2 yet and don't want to spend the money. Also I am one of the unlucky ones to have my garage detached from the house. There is just 110 going to the garage and running 240 would require an expensive trench and I am just not looking to spend that kind of money yet.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

I'd say that when it's available, home charging just makes sense, period. Like a cell phone, plug it in when you get home & it's ready to go in the morning. That said, I like the fact that it's so cheap that you can get it free in public without much effort.

A few years ago I read that Chevy tracked all the Volt users & something like 95% of them did 95% of their charging at home, HOWEVER those were "early-adopters", & for mass-market acceptance where many people have only street parking, they're going to have to have rapid chargers in every car and every gas station.

Battery size doesn't alter charge time much: Drive 40 miles (US daily average), charge 8 hours on 110 outlet. Roughly the same for a 500e as for a Bolt, Tesla 3, eKona, etc. They all add about 5 miles per hour of L1 charging.

 

[map]

I'd use care with the Kill-a-watt. It's OK for monitoring stereos or even a low load refrigerator, but the L1 charge levels can exceed its safety margin. Some Leaf owners have had them melt.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

I just looked up Kill-A-Watt specs:

15A (Fiat chargecord is 12A)
1875W (Fiat is 1440W).

I believe that's a generally acceptable safety margin, so the issue might not really be the Kill-A-Watt. For example, some Fiat owners have had their stock chargecord wall-plug melt. My friend plugged into a worn-out extension-cord outlet & melted his, but easily installed a Home Depot upgrade plug (just not waterproof). Mine gets a bit warm even in my cool garage. A desert forum member said it helps to wait for the car to cool a bit after driving.

 

[rucallingmefiat]

I think they're only rated for up to 800W. 1.1kW is definitely pushing it

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

That would be pushing it, but it shows 15A & at least 1875W ("VA" = Volts times Amps = Watts) for every metered unit at the maker's website.

Of course it would be foolish to plug a Leaf AND a Fiat (or microwave, vacuum, etc.) into their multi-outlet unit.

 

[Electric Tire Shredder]

...and their "TV", & "Edge" models are definitely too weak, but every unit with "Kill-A-Watt" in the name should be fine, IF you wait a bit to let the car cool, before inserting the somewhat inferior stock chargecord plug (which is good advice no matter what you're plugging it into)