My Nissan Leaf Forum

Tonight while "Trickle" charging my LEAF at L1, I inserted a "Kill-a-watt" device to measure the current.

It moves around a bit at first as the handshaking occurs, but once the dust settles, it read about 11.5 amps steady-state.

Since my EVSE inspection went well on Friday, I'm hoping that my 2nd meter will be installed in a few days and I can fire up the L2 charging....

RedRandy

Can you guesstimate how many miles you're gaining per hour of L1 charging?

I guess I haven't measured it that precisely, but I thought it was around 5 miles of additional range per hour of L1 charging...

Another data point is that when I press the power button on the Kill-a-watt it reads about 1300 watts, give or take.

With 100% efficiency, and assuming that 4.3 miles per kwh is an average that I see a lot on my car, then one hour of L1 charging would be 1.3 kwh.

1 hour of charging would equate to 5.5 miles at 100% efficiency (4.3 x 1.3). So maybe 5 miles is not so far out of line....

1300 watts at 11.5 amps is only 113 volts, unless some RMS nonsense is going on. Is your voltage really that low?

The Kill-o-watt reads 118 volts unloaded and 114 volts when it is drawing the L1 juice....

4 volts loss through house wiring (and possibly "poor" connections) when drawing 11.5 amps?

Yes, I hope you don't have undersized wiring somewhere. You may want to watch out for a 45w "heater" in your walls.

I'll do some checking, but it is a 20amp GFCI circuit in the garage with a short run to the main panel.

I have an external voltmeter that I'll test with to verify.

Might be interesting to measure the voltage on a separate circuit (but the same leg of your 240V feed) to see if the voltage sag is detectable there, too. I wouldn't expect a 12GA / 20A circuit to sag under 12A of load... Have a rough estimate of the length of your run?

For example, a 20ft run of 12GA with 12A of load on it should only see a voltage drop of about 1V.

Not every house has a 120V even at the panel. I see some with 130! and some at 113 or so.