App says I used 150 KWH in the last 31 days for a rate of about 35$ according to the app. However my utility bill is saying I’m using about 300 KWH more on average a month from before I bought the car.
Does the trickle charge run expensive in long term owners here on the forum? I mean the car has about 1500 miles if that. We barely drive it. Would it be better to just not plug it in unless it’s near dead?
The car doesn't ever "trickle" charge. It draws power until it reaches the set battery charge level, then it stops drawing. Unless by "trickle" you mean charging on 120V, which is VERY inefficient. The car has a ~300-400W hotel load from the computer, which runs whenever the car is charging. You can probably guess that the lower the charge rate, the more inefficient this is. A 120V/15A socket can only provide 12A of continuous load or 1440W; about 25% of this goes to run the computer, and if the batteries need to be heated in order to be charged, some of that energy will be diverted for that purpose too. Contrast this with charging at 240V/48A or 11520W: much lower overhead and a higher percentage of the energy can be put into the battery, and then the computers can be shut down much quicker.
I’m having my Tesla wall connector installed tomorrow. Just want to clarify. Does the Tesla wall charger trickle charge once it reaches the set percentage of charge? Or does it shut off and kick back on once it gets low enough?
First off, that is not controlled by the wall connector or mobile charge cable. It's controlled by the car. The car will not constantly trickle. It's just a general safety thing that they do not want the cord energized all the time. It will fill until it reaches the limit and then shut off. If you have a start time set, then it will wait until that next start time comes around. If you don't have a scheduled start, then it will let it go down some amount (used to be about 3%) below the limit before it wakes up and recharges back up.
Yep, and with the WC, it's very easy to see when the vehicle is pulling energy and when it's not:
1. Solid green light: not connected
2. Solid blue light: connected, not charging
3. Scrolling green lights: vehicle is charging
When you connect your car, you'll see it pull energy from the WC whenever the HVAC system is running. It will also pull energy according to the charging schedule, then it will stop and go back to solid blue. The batteries do slowly self discharge, and so if you don't drive the car, it will pull energy again according to the charging schedule, or if no schedule is set, according to a hysteresis cycle that keeps the battery near the set point.