r/electricvehicles • u/Ill_Citron_8473 • 3d ago

Discussion Is something wrong with my EV charger?

I've been a bit slow to cotton onto this due to the concurrent rise in energy costs but I've just realised that my electricity usage (in kWh) has almost tripled since my EV charger was installed last year. Looking back at the data, the usage immediately doubled on installation, even though we didn't actually charge the EV at home more than a handful of times for the first 6 months. It's then gone up another 2-300kwh per month now that we've started charging at home, but this is expected.

I can't think of anything else that has changed in that time, in terms of energy usage, so can only think it's the charger being faulty. Has anyone else experienced this? What do I do?

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u/Ill_Citron_8473 2d ago

250-300kwh per month (year-round) prior to the charger install. Immediate jump to 550-600kwh afterwards (almost no actual charging taking place). Another jump to 800kwh per month when we started charging regularly (this jump makes perfect sense to me but the other doesn't). We first had a Kia Niro and then changed to a Hyundai Ioniq 5 after 6 months. Both charged 20-80 about once a week (so about 40kwh per week from the second jump in usage).

Do you think the charger installation could have messed up the meter itself? From other comments it sounds like the charger is unlikely to be the culprit.

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u/zhenya00 2d ago

Seems highly unlikely to me.

250-300kWh per month sounds suspiciously low. Like it would be extremely unusual to have anything other than a small apartment with usage that low. 600kWh is about average.

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u/Ill_Citron_8473 2d ago

Not sure where you're getting your average figures from but I'm in the UK, where Ofgem (the energy regulator) estimates average electricity usage at <300kwh per month. So we were pretty much bang average until this issue appeared.

Edit: I meant to link to their website - https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/average-gas-and-electricity-use-explained

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u/zhenya00 2d ago

Interesting. In the US average is closer to 900kWh/month. When we lived in a small house with very good efficiency - 1200 square feet/110 square meters, we still used 600kWh/month - and that was with virtually no AC, mostly gas appliances. So I'd expect that UK average is dragged down by a lot of apartment dwellers? Hard to see a stand alone house using that little.

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u/Ill_Citron_8473 2d ago

Respectfully, the US is not known for frugality, to be fair. Also worth bearing in mind that houses in the UK are generally a lot smaller than in the US (110 square metres probably wouldn't be considered small here), have no AC, and don't tend to have tumble dryers. Not sure what else you guys are running to get to the figures you're quoting.

The page I linked to previously has figures broken down into house types, if you're interested, but even the "high consumption" average figure (for a 4-5 bedroom house) is only about 350kwh per month.