Charging cost

Simple, have an electrician hard-wire a pass-thru meter on the line. With that installed, all parties will know precisely how much electricity has been drawn. The hardware itself costs about $40.

kWh is displayed just like a household meter. One with an illuminated display makes it especially obvious. You can pay the landlord monthly based on whatever rate was agreed upon per kWh. No guess work. No conflict.

I know someone who did that for a parking spot in her condo. Seeing that meter, everyone knew she you would be billed for the electricity used. It's worked great.

 

You can buy an inline consumption meter.

Search "electricity usage meter" on Amazon.

 

The cost depends on the tariff (billing plan) that the landlord has subscribed to. There are about 40 plans for California electricity users. Your best bet is to use an industrial strength meter that works like a 'killawatt" usage meter. With that, you can read the number of total killowatt hours used since it's installation and subtract the previous reading to provide an accurate 'energy used' number.

 

Is the outlet used to charge the Prime accessible solely by you?

Knowing what rate plan your landlord selected is also needed to calculate the amount you should pay her for electricity. Some rate plans don’t incentivize usage during off-peak hours. Once you know the rate plan, you can go to PG&E’s website and look at the pdf file for that specific rate plan to better understand the fee structure.

 

You're not metered individually?
That seems somewhat un-Californian to me.
How is the property zoned?

Since you're obviously doing the L1 charging thing, I'd kick over $20 for this month (it's early May) and spend another $20 on a Kill-A-Watt meter or equivalent.
If I'm accurately informed the PP draws 12amps while charging L1.....so the portable meter has enough overhead, and you're charging indoors - riiiight?

Kill A Watt - Wikipedia.

Even if you happen to be charging using L2 they make a portable Kill-A-Watt device for 230Vac equivalents which also allow up to 15A - also adequate for the Prime (IIRC.)
GET an affirmation on those quotes and see if another PP user uses something similarly portable.

The reason you do not want to (or cannot, physically) have something more permanent connected is that....it's not your property - right?

I can't speak for PG&E's rates since they've killed more people in the last few years than my banned rifle has, and SOMEBODY has to pay off all of the lawsuits - so you're probably paying more than my $0.05 per KWH ($0.32 peak - we have a 2-tier rate schedule) so you and/or the property owner are going to have to come to some understanding based on whatever you two agree on is a fair per-KWH rate.
Or?
You can get somebody to do the heavy lifting FOR you by looking at what some tesla fanboy says they pay to charge their BEV and multiply their final figure by how many Pinocchio's you think that their story is worth and to account for the deltas in L1/L2 charging efficiencies.
Or?
You can look on this site.
How to calculate charging cost ? | PriusChat
The costs seem to be hovering in the $1.40 to $1.50 per nightly charge according to my quick glance at some of the posts but then again some PP owner will probably chime in to tell me that I'm full of balloon juice....which often is the case.

If you worse-case it at $2 a day - that's still only $60 a month, but real-world numbers are probably (for now!) closer to $1.20 - $1.40 per nightly charge - or about $45 a month.


Double check your renter's insurance!!!

I might be wrong, and it might be entirely normal for communal renters in Caly not to be individually metered but I'd still make sure that your renter's insurance doesn't have an exclusion for some sketch, unlicensed sub-letter.

Good Luck!

 

Somewhere on this site I did the math for my Prime. I add about 7 kWh to my battery when it's charged from "empty". Using the PG&E TOU rate for plug in vehicles gives me 18 cents per kWh if I charge after midnight and before 3PM. I calculate that .18 dollars * 7 kWh gives ME $1.26 per charge IF IT'S EMPTY. It's almost never empty at the end of the day. I drive less than the "typical" 25 miles a day.

However... The PG&E rates change with the season. They change with the area you live in. They are based on the rate that the landlord chose to use.

 

If you know the cost of electricity per kWh, then a single charge the rate ($/kWh) x 6.4 for a full charge. I have seen CA has a rate anywhere from $.10/kWh all the way up to $.40/kWh depending on the plan and TOU. If you are using only a 120v OEM charging cable then a simple "Kill-a-watt" meter connected at the wall will give you actual usage of kWh. You still need to know the electricity rate in order to calculate the actual cost.

 

The big problem is your dwelling may not be legal since there is only one meter and it is being shared by multiple units.

Even if your landlord made a deal and price per kw, there is no way they can show you what you used and so they can just say hey you owe me this much and rip you off.

At the end of the day if your place is not legit then make deal and note the price stays locked per month and will not go up.

Otherwise you will feel threatend by them and in reality or the place is not legit you have the upper hand.

Do you share a mailbox too?

http://www.RedBullet.net

http://www.ProjectLithium.com

http://www.Pulstar.com

http://www.PlugOutPower.com

 

You can always guess, but if the landlord has solar with an net zero plan, you can basically offer to pay the same rate that PG&E pays for the excess energy that he supplies. If he generates an extra 6.4 kWh during the year, PG&E will pay him something along the lines of "the cheapest rate for buying commercial power".

I suggest that you just offer to pay him 5 cents for each mile that you drive, up to a max of 25 miles per day. That requires no extra equipment. It uses the assumption that he's getting around 18 cents a kWh from PG&E and that you are using EV mode whenever it's available. If you get him to admit that PG&E is giving him significantly less than 18 cents for his surplus electricity, then you can negotiate from there.

Dan

 

I can't provide you with cost estimates, but there's a relatively easy way to monitor your power consumption if you are charging from a cicuit (either an outlet or hard-wired EVSE) which is you use exclusively.

You can obtain inexpensive meters like the one shown here:



Now this is in my garage on a single family house, so I am using this to track energy consumption on my Level-2 EVSE charger and not for purposes of billing anyone.

If you and your landlord can agree on a simple price per kWh -- and trust one another to reset the meter to zero at the beginning of the month and not tamper with it during the measurement period -- then it's not hard to calculate a cost.

While technically possible to do this, you may run afoul of California regulations. I do not know what the current law is, but when I lived in California years ago, sub-metering was not allowed because the "selling" of electricity would constitute your landlord becoming an unlicensed and unregulated utility. There may also be local laws which prevent landlords from billing residential tenants separately for electricity not metered individually.

What you work out on your own is up to you, but be aware that there may be issues such as these.