[adoreizi]

So I am about to purchase the Bolt but currently rent my house. My landlord pays all utilities, however, I was upfront with her and said I wanted to cover the cost of charging the car as we both agreed that was fair. This was a decision to increase relationship with her so I can live here longer than a one year period.

I have thought of two ways to handle this situation but wanted to see if anyone had any creative solutions. Please share if you do. Otherwise, please comment on my two ideas:

Option 1: Pay landlord a monthly "subscription fee" to charge the car. This flat monthly fee would be simply tacked on my rent and I wouldnt have to worry about calculation actual usage.

Option 2: Calculate my EV usage per month and multiply the kWh by the current rate the landlord pays. This seems the most fair, however, I am unsure how to correctly calculate my monthly electricity usage. Does the Bolt have a feature to track each individual charging session? If so, I could write down each charging session at home and submit that to my landlord (scouts honor).

*Also, I highly doubt my landlord will want to add an EV meter, nor do I want to pay for one when I wont be living here after a few years.

 

[TotaledJetta]

The Bolt tells you how much energy has been used since the last full charge. This is close to, slightly less than the energy that needs to be added back in to get it back to full charge. In my case, I installed a Charge Point EVSE and it comes with a phone app that displays kWh added and computes the cost based on local electric rates. The numbers the Bolt gives for energy used are very close to the Charge Points energy added. Of course it gets complicated when I go to the local AMC theater and can charge for free to full charge and at home I use hilltop mode which is 90 percent.
The Bolt console shows stored energy in the battery with a 20 bar display, each bar is equal to 3 kWh and it seems to compare well with the measurements described above. So offer to pay for the energy added as shown by the flow display. That would be quite close. Ten bars, 30 kWh at 12 cent/kWh = $3.60. I think that would work.

 

[David M O'Rourke]

Get an electrical monitor for the ev charging circuit and it will tell you exactly how much you charge.

Effergy makes one that will track usage.

 

[martinknutson]

So I am about to purchase the Bolt but currently rent my house. My landlord pays all utilities, however, I was upfront with her and said I wanted to cover the cost of charging the car as we both agreed that was fair. This was a decision to increase relationship with her so I can live here longer than a one year period.

I have thought of two ways to handle this situation but wanted to see if anyone had any creative solutions. Please share if you do. Otherwise, please comment on my two ideas:

Option 1: Pay landlord a monthly "subscription fee" to charge the car. This flat monthly fee would be simply tacked on my rent and I wouldnt have to worry about calculation actual usage.

Option 2: Calculate my EV usage per month and multiply the kWh by the current rate the landlord pays. This seems the most fair, however, I am unsure how to correctly calculate my monthly electricity usage. Does the Bolt have a feature to track each individual charging session? If so, I could write down each charging session at home and submit that to my landlord (scouts honor).

*Also, I highly doubt my landlord will want to add an EV meter, nor do I want to pay for one when I wont be living here after a few years.

Are you going to install an L2 charger, or use the 120v one that comes with the car? Some L2 chargers (Juicebox) have an app that records each session, and it would be pretty easy to know the total kWh for any time period. You can even download the records as a .csv for use in Excel (or similar). If they have their electrical records going back a year (they can probably get these from their utilities portal, if they haven't retained them), you could compare year over year demand by month and determine what your additional load was before and after EV purchase, and get a rough accounting. Pretty curde, but might be sufficient. Does their utility offer rate schedules that are attractive for EV charging? You might look into that, and discus it with the landlord. If you're in an area with tiered metering, the calculations become a little tricky if your EV charging pushes them partially (or completely) into a higher tier. If they have been traditionally in the lower tier for that month, the EV should probably be accounted for at the higher tier cost.

 

[Cardyin]

Are you planning on getting a 220V EVSE installed or are you planning on just plugging into 120 V outlet?

 

[adoreizi]

To address all questions.

Will i get a L2 evse? I'm on the fence, I drive very little during the week and weekend is minimal. Plenty of range on bolt to satisfy my weekly need. If I do go L2, I'd get chargepoint or juice box so I could monitor.

Electrical circuit monitor? I didn't think of this but this seems to be the most simple solution especially if I only go L1. I'd like online monitoring but if it only acts as a sub meter than I could just take a picture of the first and last read of the month like old school electrical meters.

Time of use rates? That's a possiblility but ultimately the landlords decision. I should have said that the house has solar so I'm not sure how much she creeps in the tier system. If she's close, it would be very smart to switch to time of use.

 

[jimmyspeed]

To address all questions.

Will i get a L2 evse? I'm on the fence, I drive very little during the week and weekend is minimal. Plenty of range on bolt to satisfy my weekly need. If I do go L2, I'd get chargepoint or juice box so I could monitor.

Electrical circuit monitor? I didn't think of this but this seems to be the most simple solution especially if I only go L1. I'd like online monitoring but if it only acts as a sub meter than I could just take a picture of the first and last read of the month like old school electrical meters.

Time of use rates? That's a possiblility but ultimately the landlords decision. I should have said that the house has solar so I'm not sure how much she creeps in the tier system. If she's close, it would be very smart to switch to time of use.

Just wondering why this is such a big issue based on your noted usage. If you were doing 100 miles a day it would add up - but "very little" and "minimal" sounds like you should just hand the landlord $20 a month and be done with it. It wouldn't be worth the cost of accurate metering if you only need to charge once a week.

 

[adoreizi]

Just wondering why this is such a big issue based on your noted usage. If you were doing 100 miles a day it would add up - but "very little" and "minimal" sounds like you should just hand the landlord $20 a month and be done with it. It wouldn't be worth the cost of accurate metering if you only need to charge once a week.

Good point. I'll speak with my landlord and negotiate a fair agreement. Just wanted to see if anyone ever ran into this situation. Thanks everyone!

 

[Sean Nelson]

Just wondering why this is such a big issue based on your noted usage. If you were doing 100 miles a day it would add up - but "very little" and "minimal" sounds like you should just hand the landlord $20 a month and be done with it. It wouldn't be worth the cost of accurate metering if you only need to charge once a week.

It would still be nice to have the metering to show the landlord that he's not being abused. There's a real value to cordial landlord-tennant relationships that is worth spending a little money on, IMHO. Especially if the landlord is amenable to this kind of request.

 

[jimmyspeed]

It would still be nice to have the metering to show the landlord that he's not being abused. There's a real value to cordial landlord-tennant relationships that is worth spending a little money on, IMHO. Especially if the landlord is amenable to this kind of request.

Fair enough - If the OP has a landlord that they really want to impress then go for it. In my experience, a good tenant is worth making a few fewer $$ on. In the OP's situation, if the car needs a partial charge every week (approximately 66% at 12cents/kW) you are looking at roughly $5/week.

I don't think it's possible to "abuse" the landlord by charging your car at home if electricity is included in the rental agreement. I agree it is good to be upfront with them, which it sounds like the OP is doing. Offering to cover the approximate cost of power with some sort of reasoning for the number (as provided above), should be music to the landlord's ears. It isn't very often that someone offers to pay for the same thing twice!

Alternative thought - if the OP uses so little range, it may make sense to seek (free or paid) public charging that meets their needs. I don't know the whole situation, but maybe the car could charge up at the mall in a few hours or at DCFC two times a week for half an hour. That would completely remove the need for landlord payment discussions.

Completely separate to the idea of this topic, it's important to remember that a relationship between a landlord and tenant should be strictly business for both of their protection - it can be a good relationship or a bad relationship but if too many decisions are made on emotion - someone is going to feel cheated if an issue comes up.

my $0.02

 

[ChiBolt]

It would still be nice to have the metering to show the landlord that he's not being abused. There's a real value to cordial landlord-tennant relationships that is worth spending a little money on, IMHO. Especially if the landlord is amenable to this kind of request.

I agree that many people think electric cars will run up hundreds of dollars of electricity bills. Since you only plan to use 120V for now, you could purchase a "KILL A WATT" meter for $20 to $30. It plugs into a standard 120 Volt outlet and will record KWH. Some models also allow you to insert a KWH price to calculate your cost and can continuously log your usage. This should help to show your landlord that the cost will not be overwhelming.

 

[Sean Nelson]

Since you only plan to use 120V for now, you could purchase a "KILL A WATT" meter for $20 to $30.

I have seen posts that suggest that a Kill A Watt meter is not safe for handling a continuous 12 amp load, so I'd be a little cautious about that. And it's so easy to unplug that kind of meter for a few charges that I'm not sure it would be all that convincing as "proof" of anything.

 

[adoreizi]

Since you only plan to use 120V for now, you could purchase a "KILL A WATT" meter for $20 to $30.

I have seen posts that suggest that a Kill A Watt meter is not safe for handling a continuous 12 amp load, so I'd be a little cautious about that. And it's so easy to unplug that kind of meter for a few charges that I'm not sure it would be all that convincing as "proof" of anything.

I have a good relationship with my landlord so I think my integrity would outweigh the risk of me cheating her. However, there are plenty of free L2 evse in my city and a L3 at my grocery store. The L1 would just be a trickle charge during the week. Seems like a subscription of $10-20 would suffice for the first 6 months to establish a baseline.

 

[GMOTSL]

The Bolt tells you how much energy has been used since the last full charge. This is close to, slightly less than the energy that needs to be added back in to get it back to full charge. In my case, I installed a Charge Point EVSE and it comes with a phone app that displays kWh added and computes the cost based on local electric rates.

The energy used by the Bolt should be less than the electricity consumed by recharging the Bolt. Your EVSE reports kWh added, but does it also have the ability to report amount of electricity it consumed from the wall (since charging isn't perfectly efficient)? I really have no idea how efficient or inefficient recharging is, especially once the battery is closer to full than it is to empty.

I do have a Kill-a-Watt. I might try charging (at 8A) to take some measurements, and hopefully not catch on fire.

[EDIT] I just realized that using a Kill-a-Watt probably won't prove anything. Wouldn't the draw always be 8A or 12A?

 

[Sean Nelson]

[EDIT] I just realized that using a Kill-a-Watt probably won't prove anything. Wouldn't the draw always be 8A or 12A?

Yes, it will 8 or 12A depending on the car's charging settings. The Kill-a-Watt won't really show you anything you don't already know about the power being drawn by the Bolt, but it does have a watt-hours function that will tell you the total amount of energy consumed while the car charged (i.e., power times the number of hours the car was actually charging).

 

[David M O'Rourke]

if you're using the 120 volt charger that came with the car the maximum the car can draw is about 1.5 kWh ever hour. So an 8 hour charge would be 8 * 1.5 or 12'ish kWh…

at 12 kWh "day" @ 0.15 kWh = that is $1.80/day

the only issue I have with this is some utilities have tiers - and if the charging pushes the landlords power up into higher tiers then all the electricity from that point forward for the month is more expensive - that will get hard to backout…

the cost really depends on duration and if it's a 120 volt or 240 volt charge

however we can pretty much predict the usage based on duration of charge if we know the circuit/amps we're using.

hours charged * volts/amps * kWh cost = pretty accurate payment.

 

[ChiBolt]

however we can pretty much predict the usage based on duration of charge if we know the circuit/amps we're using.

hours charged * volts/amps * kWh cost = pretty accurate payment.

I agree. The calculations are the simple way to determine usage but some people need to see it or need to get some verification.