How Much Will Charging Cost You?

Not nearly as much as a tank of petrol or diesel, that’s for sure! But it’s worthwhile understanding what the costs might be to decide if and how much to charge.

What’s Your Electricity Tariff

To work out how much it might cost you if a guest charges their car at your place, you need to understand how much you pay for electricity. Grab your most recent power bill. Typically, on the second page it will have a section that shows the cost per kWh. 

Depending on what energy plan you are on, you might see terms like “General usage” or “Single rate,” which means you pay the same rate regardless of the time of day, or you might see different rates for “Peak”, “Shoulder” and “Off Peak”, which means your rate varies depending on what time of the day you are using power.

Currently in Australia, it’s not uncommon to have peak rates or general/single rates of between $0.30 and $0.40 per kWh.

How Much Power Will They Use Per Hour?

If you’re allowing guests to charge off a normal three pin socket, the maximum “draw” (i.e. how much power they are using) is about 2 kW per hour. If you are paying $0.30 (30 cents) per kWh, it will cost you 2 x 0.30 = 60 cents per hour. That means, if they are connected for 10 hours (e.g. overnight) they will use about 20 kWh, which is about a third of a typical EV’s battery capacity, at a cost to you of about $6.

If you’ve installed a single-phase Level 2 charger, the charging speed is about 7 kW per hour or $2.10 using the same rate. To charge about the same amount as the overnight example above will take around 3 hours, so it will cost you about $6.30.

If you have a 3 phase Level 2 charger, then the charging speed jumps to about 22 kW per hour for around a third of the battery’s capacity. In this case their energy use could cost you $6.60 per hour.