How do I know how much charge I'm getting?

[DoubleDownOn9]

Hello all,

Just bought a Rav4 last night. I have a 2011 LEAF and a 2012 Volt so I'm pretty well seasonsed with EVs.

I have a GE Wattstation but I'm curious to know how many kw I'm actually drawing. I'm used to 3.3kw charging times but I know the Wattstation can do over 7kw. My question is if there is a way to see what the actual live draw is? It might be useful if I'm at a public charger that can only support 3.3kw.

The LEAF has telematics that you can download into excel and actually see the draw (not real time).

I also would like to know so that I know how if I'm taking grid power as the PV panels on my house can only deliver 3.5kw max.

Thanks in advance!

 

[smkettner]

RAV4 should grab close to 10 kW when available. If the GE does 7 kW then that is what RAV will pull.
You will need to use a lower power EVSE to slow the charging power.

 

[miimura]

Your utility electric meter will always show the net power in or out of your house in real time. Below is a graph of my electric use from PG&E. You can see the RAV charging around 4am and the solar net generation during the day when nobody is home. This data is generally available a day later.

While the RAV's timers always over-estimate the charging time, they do work. Since you have solar you probably have a time of use metering schedule with net use metering. It will be cheaper to use grid power at night to charge the car and let the solar go into the grid.

 

[DoubleDownOn9]

Thanks! I always have trouble logging in to PGE Smart meter. I'll give them a call as it looks like that's the way to solve for this.

Thanks for the info. I'm very happy with the Rav so far. Blown away with the range. I'm used to driving 60-65 on the freeway to conserve range in the LEAF or Volt. When I drove it home I played it safe because the guess-o-meter said 75 miles. It looks like those are different than LEAF miles!

 

[fooljoe]

You can use RavCharge to estimate your charging rate, either at home or from a public EVSE. Unlike the car's 16 bars or the "Guess-o-Meter" (GOM) miles display or Entune's useless picture of a battery, RavCharge shows you how much actual charge is in your pack, in kwh. To estimate what rate you're charging at just take note of how many kwh you had and at what time you started charging, then hit 'Update now' to ping your car for the latest data. Take the difference in kwh and divide it by the elapsed time (in hours) and you'll see how fast you're charging.

Note that this estimate tells you how many kw you're putting into the pack - to estimate what you're pulling from the wall just divide your result by .8 to account for charging efficiency.