Charging 101

At some point your EV will run out of electrons and you will need to charge your car. Survey after survey shows that convenient charging is a big deal for EV owners. Thus Id be amiss if I did not share some of my experience as an EV owner. As always, I do happen to own a Nissan Leaf, but the principles are universal regardless of the brand. Generally charging falls into two categories: At home charging, and the road trip, the former is all about convenience, while the latter is all about speed.

Charging at home is a big plus of owning an EV. Convenient charging is key here. Even a standard 110V, 15A circuit can get you about 1kW of charging power, overnight that’s about 50 km of driving per day, plenty to cover the median commute which according to Statistic’s Canada is 8.7 km (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/190225/dq190225a-eng.htm). A level 2 (L2) 6.6 kW charging station moves this to 300 km of driving per day, plenty.

Survey’s show consistently the value of at-home charging (see for example https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1132102_study-1-in-5-ev-owners-go-back-to-gasoline-and-home-charging-is-a-big-issue), thus its well worth the cost. In my case, installing a L2 charging station in my garage cost me about $2500 CAD. Most of that was spent installing the high power outlet (220V, 50 A), more specifically the cable from the electrical panel to my garage. If your service panel happens to be in the garage, or even better, if you have a high power appliance (say electric clothes dryer) in your garage, you might already have ample electrical capacity for a L2 charging station.

There is ample choice these days for the charging station itself. I purchased a portable L2 charger, mostly as I wanted a flexible on the road option. Whichever charger you choose, if you want to bring it with you, make sure that it has a few different current modes to suit the circuit you find yourself plugged into. Electrical circuits are rated by their maximum current (the “steady-state” current limit is usually about 80% of that). Some of the common limits in North America are: 12 A for a household 110V outlet, 16 A for a “high-power” 20 A outlet, 24 A for an RV style “30A service”, and 32A for a 40 A “dryer circuit”. This is the charger I have, and use in combination with various adapters (mostly from AC works and also available on Amazon), which allow me to charge from a standard 100V outlet, a TT-30 RV outlet, a dryer outlet, and the NEMA 14-50p plug that is on the charger. The most used one is easily the 12 A, 110V standard outlet, so if you are only getting one, thats the one Id get.

Even with a L2 charger at home, most road-trips will exceed your EV’s range. But don’t worry, chances are you will need recharging long before your EV will. A recent article suggested at least 15 minutes of rest every 2 hours (see https://lazytrips.com/blog/how-often-should-you-stop-on-a-road-trip), and some say (see https://www.theroadtripexpert.com/how-far-can-you-drive-safely-in-a-day/) a 45 minutes of rest for every 4.5 hours. So if you and your car are recharging at the same time, your EV’s range is not a terribly important statistic. Further there is lots of charging stations out there, so why not pick a charging station by say a Tim Hortons or your favorite on-the-go restaurant.

Lastly lets discuss how to find these charging stations, and most importantly make sure they are working when you get there. Plugshare (www.plugshare) is great for this, as it shows “checkins” from other EV drivers that have recently used a given charger, further it has filtering options to suit your EV. There are other apps available such as chargehub, and the charging networks (Flo, Ivy, PetroCanada, Electrify America/Canada, Chargepoint etc.) have their own apps as well. Shown below is a screen capture from plugshare, showing charging stations compatible with my 2018 Nissan Leaf (plugtypes: Wall, J1772 and ChaDemo)

As you can see there is ample charging available through the GTA, of particular interest on a road trip are the orange stations (level 3 fast charging stations) as those can charge my EV much faster, which as we saw above is very important to how far I can travel in a given day.

Its a good idea to plan on an alternate charging station as well. For example, if going from say Toronto to London, ON, via the 403, its good to know that there is a L3 Ivy station in Brantford, and if that is not working, there is also L3 Flo station by Canadian Tire also in Brantford. Both stations show recent checkins from other plugshare users which is a good indicator that both stations are working.