Power Cord Question

You can get a small adapter with a switch at the hardware store, just make sure it is rated at 15 amperes, which it should be.

 

I mounted a 20 amp switch in the duplex box with the outlet and wired the switch to the outlet.
After reading my Kill A Watt kWh charge value, I turn off the switch.
When I turn it on, it resets the Kill A Watt to zero.

 

Why not? Is it drawing much power?

 

I am confused by this post, I don't understand what the issue is.

I plug mine in when I get home from work at 5:30, it finishes charging at about 8pm, it stays plugged in until I leave for work the next morning at 7:30.

 

There is a small parasitic drain to run the electronics in the EVSE itself, it's a few watts, and doesn't amount to very much, that's what this thread is about.

 

he's talking about plugging the evse into the wall, not the car.

 

I leave mine plugged into the wall. It draws 1.1 watts when not acutally charging.

 

That's also what I measured with my Kill-a-watt. The person who does the 240V upgrades was claiming that the factory unit pulls something like 5.4w, but that is sure not what I see. Even at my high rate of 30 cents/kwh, 1.1w costs about 25 cents/month, which I can accept.

 

1.1 watts X 24 hours/day X 365 days/year = 9636 watts/year or 9.636KWh, even at .30 per KWH, that is only $2.89 per YEAR, of course it's even less than that, as some of those 24 hours in the day we assume it's actually being used (and drawing a lot more power than that).

It comes out to 24 cents per month, at the high rate of 30 cents per KWH. It's not worth spending any money on a switch...
In most of the country with rates about half that (we pay about .15 per KWH here, total...), it's only half these numbers.

 

when i think of all the devices plugged in to my house that are not doing anything much of the time, this is a drop in the bucket. the power company sent me a letter saying that i should unplug my cable box when not in use as it draws a lot of electricity even when off. of course, being the power company, they had no idea how much electricity, but they were kind enough to mention that if i did unplug it, it could take up to 3 hours to update when plugged in again.

 

If your charger is plugged into a GFCI outlet, you can just press the test button on the outlet to kill power.

If you don't have GFCI on the outlet, it may be cheaper to replace your outlet with GFCI ($10-$20) than to buy a high amperage surge strip. I don't know the duty cycle of the test button on those outlets, though.

 

Bielinsk,

It's been advised to charge the battery when it has cooled off and being at max charge just before driving again.
So when you get home, if you don't plan to go out, you should set the Charging Timer to 4:30 am. That way it doesn't start charging until 4:30 am when the battery is cool and just finishes when you're ready to leave for work.

This will help extend battery life.

 

I think they were talking about the DVR recorder that many cable companies provide. There is a hard disk drive that is always running, so it draws a lot more power even when not used than most devices. I won't use those for that reason. When everything is "off" in my house, the meter shows about 200 Watts being drawn, it is hard to get less than that if you have modern appliances with clocks running and converters plugged in for stuff like an answering machine, computer modem, router, printer, etc.

 

I don't know about cable company DVRs, but the current model TiVo Premier pulls 24w (per my Kill-a-watt). It is set to record stuff at all hours, including "suggestions" it picks based on my viewing habits, so it just stays on.

I've gotten my "idle" home usage down to 310w, per my electric company's Smart Meter online web site. The single biggest device is the refrigerator, even though it is a fairly new "Energy Star" appliance.

 

^^^
(I have a Kill-A-Watt) I've got my idle usage down to 180 to 200 watts or so when I'm sleeping per PG&E's smart meter monitoring site. I haven't had time to hunt down all the vampires and can't easily for some things.

I have a TiVo HD, external hard drive, cable modem and router running while I'm asleep. There are a few UPSes at home and my PC, and the aforementioned hardware are also on UPSes.

The lowest I got it down to was 70-90 watts for a few hours for the morning of April 13, 2012 when we were having thunder and lightning during the evening. I unplugged virtually all electronic stuff: TiVo, UPSes, computers, etc. for fear of lighting damage.

 

thanks chris, i don't have a dvr, so that's one thing i don't have to worry about! but there is a lot going on here even tho it's only a 2500' house with 3 people. we have hot water by oil so the burner has to run. a well pump that's on and off all day depending on demand. washer/gas dryer and we hang out the clothes when weather allows. appliances are all new but we have electric stove and my wife cooks almost every night. we don't turn on lites unless we're using them. we have a standby generator with a battery charger and heater for winter. but we're averaging 20 kilowatts a day when the heat, a/c and lawn sprinklers are not being used. power company says were #29 out of a hundred homes within 3 miles of us with similar size homes. it's funny, because most people i know don't ever shut any lites off and don't turn their heat down or a/c up.

 

You could also use the finish time function if you leave home at a consistent time everyday.

 

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I don't think that is is only 1.1 watts. My Kill-A-Watt meter measures 70 mA which is 8.4 watts which comes out to be about 6 KWH a month. I have a two meter system, one for the house, the other for the car, and the car metter has a peak and off peak rate schedule. Peak cost about 0.28/KWH and off peak 0.12/KWH. However the leakage is 24 hours a day. I charge during off peak only so I put an electronic timer in series with my wall plug which turns on about 30 minutes before my car timer starts the car charging and turns off about 1 hour after it is done charging. That way I minimise the leakage. The savings will pay for the timer in about 1.5 years. For many this may not be worth the bother. But if you are in Home Depot anyway, how much longer does it take to go over and buy a timer? It takes a few minutes to setup the timer. You can buy a Kill-A-Watt metter at HD as well. Or get it on Amazon.com. ​

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