Our Plans for Home Charging, Part III

Now that we've decided on our plan for installing a home charger for our new Nissan LEAF electric car, things are in motion to make the plan a reality.  I've scheduled our electrician, Jason Wakefield, to upgrade our electrical panel from 100 Amps to a new 200 Amp panel next Tuesday, December 7.  I've also ordered a TED 5003 energy monitor for my Christmas present.  http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5003-c  The TED 5003 will be installed in our new power panel and it will let me monitor our solar electrical production, our main household power usage and the power used to charge our new LEAF.  It still remains to schedule Aerovironment, Nissan's partner to install their EVSE (home charging dock).  I'm waiting for a few days to hear from Aerovironment on an updated quote.

The TED 5003 will not only monitor our power production and usage, but through a partnership with Google, the information will be sent to a web site that I'll always be able to view via the Internet.  Here's a link to Google's PowerMeter home site:  http://www.google.com/powermeter/about/

Southern California Edison's EV Charging Rate Plans

I was able to speak with analysts from SCE at the recent LA Auto Show about their EV charging rate plan, called TOU-D-TEV.  This rate plan has two pricing tiers and three time-of-day periods, with the Super-Off-Peak time period priced lowest to encourage customers to charge their EVs after midnight, when electrical demand is lowest.

I learned a lot about how the rate plan works, but a big question remains.  After much discussion on the My Nissan Leaf forum, I realized that in calculating our baseline allowance, our negative usage, that is the amount of power we send back to SCE's grid, is ADDED instead of being subtracted from the amount of power that we draw from the grid.  That means that as we make more solar power, we are pushed into the higher pricing tier for EV charging!  That should not happen.  I'm in contact with an analyst at SCE who will help to resolve this confusing issue.

What's Happening in the LEAF World?

1.  The first US LEAF delivery will apparently happen on December 11, when a Northern California man will receive his black LEAF, accompanied by lots of press coverage.

2.  It is rumored that about 50 LEAFs will be delivered in five states in early December.  The same rumor has it that another shipment will arrive in late December.  Forum members on www.mynissanleaf.com who were able to order their LEAFs on August 31, the first day that orders were enabled, have been notified that their cars will be delivered in January.

3.  As for us, our Nissan online "dashboard" still shows a delivery date of "Pending".  I'm guessing that our car will be delivered in February or March.  Since my BMW's lease is up on January 13, I may be without a car for a few weeks.  I'll be talking with BMW dealers about my options.  I'd love to rent a Mini for a few weeks.


More on our waiting game and the progress on our new power panel in my next blog post.