High electricity usage for charging

[EVsoph]

Prior to my model 3 I had an Ioniq EV. Regular charging cost me about $60 per month. I’m using the same charger but now since switching to Tesla my electric bill went up about $250 above that. My charging habits are essentially the same, anyone have a similar experience, I purchased now the Tesla OEM charger, thinking maybe that can help.

 

[srs5694]

In cold temperatures, the car will warm up the battery before it starts charging. So your consumption while driving is not actually this high, it's from heating the battery. It gets worse the less you drive. You basically use a huge chunk of the electricity bill to warm your battery without actually getting any mileage out of it.

You're probably better off not charging every day and/or charging right after you arrive home so that the battery is still somewhat warm.

I'll second this suggestion. I live in Rhode Island and park outside (I have a driveway, but no garage), and in my first winter, I noticed that my Tesla would occasionally try to charge, even after it had fully charged, to replenish minor energy losses; but to do so, it would have to heat up the battery, and that would consume more energy than it added to the battery. I think that Tesla has tweaked its charging algorithms since then, so it's not quite as bad today as it was in the winter of 2019-2020, but it will still expend power on heating the battery if the battery is cold in order to charge. Today, I tend to wait until the SoC has dropped below 50% before charging in the winter, just to avoid this problem. Of course, deeper discharges are worse for the battery, so this isn't a solution that has no costs. I certainly wouldn't recommend draining the battery down to 10% in order to minimize battery-heating costs. Charging less often, and/or unplugging after it's done charging to prevent it from doing a minor top-up, is worth trying.

Can sentry mode (I have it turned off at home) etc cause such an increase?

It's unlikely to account for the whole difference you've seen; but it could account for some of it.

 

[SageBrush]

KWh used this month: 1127
kWh used this month last year: 720

Put a cheap CT sensor on your EV charging circuit. Then you will know exactly how much of your consumption is the EV, instead of engaging in wild and futile speculation

Hint: The weather is not the same from year to year during the same month, and neither are your consumption habits.

 

[KenC]

400kWh more! 13kWh more per day, that's more than can be attributed to a new car. You'll need to look carefully at your bill and do you have access to daily energy usage? by hour? I can see my energy use by hour, so I can see when I plug in my car, etc.

 

[vishnumrao]

Have you added any new electrical equipment? perhaps like a new space heater? or a bitcoin mining rig? or Induction cook top replacing a gas based one? Or a window air conditioner (heat pump based).

Have you tried looking at at power consumption by day or by hour? My electricity utility (SMUD), allows to see power consumption by hour for all past days.

You can try turning off other equipment in the house and do a measurement for a night?

 

[Braumin]

Maybe someone said this already and I missed it, but at least where I live, often times the power bill is based off an estimated reading, and then every few months someone comes by and reads the meter. If they are estimating low for 5 months in a row and then read it for month 6, you'll have a huge bill.

Check you past bills and see if the meter reading is estimated or actual.

 

[zannman]

KWh used this month: 1127
kWh used this month last year: 720

Everything stayed equal in terms of household usage.ie: no, no electronics or other electricity draw

Our heat is gas not electric.

I was charging EV last year as well

Can sentry mode (I have it turned off at home) etc cause such an increase?

I can recommend the Emporia Vue as a really good energy monitoring system that isn’t all that expensive relative to what it can do. Would be nice to know where your energy is going and that will help.

I can give relative numbers to my house in Ohio after a year’s use of energy monitoring. My house without EVSE use in winter averages 700kWh or so. This can go up or down 20% based on how much I go around turning off lights or otherwise closely monitoring energy use for a family of four.

I have 2 EVs that use similar amounts of energy. Our EVSE use is 300-600 kWh or so per month - for around 1200-2400 miles of driving at between 3 to 4 miles/kWh. We don’t have a consistent routine, and COVID lockdown made numbers artificially lower than they might have been.

Are you sure you’re driving around the same amount as last year? At national average rates, the 400 kWh increase you saw year-over-year should have only increased your bill by $52 or so. I’ve heard that the old Ionic was super efficient at 5 miles/kWh sometimes, but I can’t imagine winter would be very different between cars.

 

[srs5694]

There have been several more excellent suggestions above. Here's another: A malfunctioning appliance can cause energy use to spike. Years ago, I experienced this with a refrigerator. I was renting at the time, and IIRC the freon had escaped, causing the fridge to be barely able to maintain a cool temperature and my electricity bill for the month went up significantly. This was so long ago that I doubt if I even have the bill any more to check how much it went up; it could be that the usage went up by something similar to what @EVsoph is seeing, or an order of magnitude less. It's something worth considering, though, especially if there are any old electric appliances in the house that run frequently or constantly.

 

[ay221]

I use a chargepoint charger. With the app it states exactly how many kwh I use per month. If ever my utility bill jump way to high, I can compare with the chargepoint and see if the vehicle is the cause or eliminate it as the cause.