Charging and Grid
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Can I charge an EV from a regular house outlet?
Every car comes with a Level 1 charging cord that can be used to charge the car from any standard 120V household outlet. Level 1 charging works well if you drive, on average, less than 30 miles/day. Make sure to have an electrician install a new, high-quality outlet for you.
How do people charge their cars?
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Eighty-five percent of charging happens at home so EVs are charged while we sleep. Home charging is the most convenient and affordable way to power your driving so that is why a majority of charging happens at home. If people live in an apartment building or a condominium, charging infrastructure installations can be slightly more complicated, but many multi-unit dwellings are working on this since they have realized that it is an important service and provides value by also "future-proofing" their properties.
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The second most common place for charging is work if people have access to charging at their workplace.
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Public charging is used much less often, but it is still important. Since the DC Fast Charging network enables road trips, visitor charging, for example at a grocery store or a hotel, is a good way to attract customers and many regions use public charging to even increase tourism.
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"How to provide EV charging for Condominium and Apartment buildings?" (MUDCharging.com)
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"Workplace EV charging provides value to all stakeholders (WorkplaceCharging.com)
How long does it take to charge?
Since most people charge their EVs during the night time, this question doesn’t matter that much. You just plug it in when you come home and unplug it when you leave in the morning. It will charge automatically during the night time and you will always have a full battery in the morning. During the longer trips, a charging stop at a DC Fast Charging station usually takes 20-60 minutes. Right now they are installing new, higher power corridor charging stations by the highways, so road trip charging times are going to be shorter in the future.
"Charging" (mnevbuyer.com)
Can the grid handle more EVs?
Since most of the EV charging happens at night time when the grid has very little other load, there is quite a bit of extra capacity available. Calculations show that most of the U.S. cars could be shifted to electric power right now without a need to increase the production capacity and without considerable grid upgrades. As we know, this shift will not happen overnight but over years and decades, so electric utilities can adjust accordingly. One important thing to do from early on is to provide education and monetary incentives for people to charge their cars mostly overnight so we are not piling more load on to the evening peak hours.
"Is America's Power Grid Ready for Electric Cars?" (Citylab)
How can EVs help the grid?
EV charging is a flexible load meaning that usually people are fine with whatever time that car is charged as long as it is ready when they need to leave. This allows people to let utilities control the charging as part of the smart grid management so that charging would, for example, soak up the excess wind production during the night. This is the same way EVs could be used as dynamic loads during the day when there is a lot of solar production in a certain area. In the future, vehicles can also provide power back to the grid to further support it.
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"How Electric Vehicles Are Becoming a Tool for Grid Stability" (GreenTech Media)
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"Future VW Electric Vehicles Will Send Power Back to the Grid" (Car and Driver)
Are there enough public charging stations?
As mentioned before, most of the charging happens during the night at home, so less than 10% of EV charging is expected to happen at public charging stations. This means we don’t need the public charging stations in the same way as the internal combustion cars need gas stations, but they still play a role especially for long road trips. Charging infrastructure development has been very fast in recent years and charging networks are forming around the country. Tesla’s Supercharging network already provides very good coverage around the US and general DC Fast Charging stations that are used by other makes and models are being built out as we speak. Check out the coverage in your area with these tools:
You can also map out the charging station availability on your favorite routes by using ABetterRoutePlanner.com or Tesla Trips.
How much does a home charging station cost?
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If you drive less than 30 miles per day, you can get by with a Level 1 cordset that comes with the car and can be plugged into any regular outlet.
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If you drive more, a Level 2 charging station costs $400-600 and the installation costs depend mainly on how close your breaker panel is to where the charging station will be installed. Talk also with your electrical utility since some utilities provide incentives and rebates.
