Destination charging is sometimes free. What do we mean by destination charging? Well, it’s kind of self-explanatory. They are chargers that are at your destination. So we’re typically talking about places like hotel car parks, restaurants, maybe the gym, places like that. They will nearly always be AC chargers putting out about 7kW. So an overnight charge at your hotel will be enough to fully charge your Tesla.

Some workplaces also have free chargers. These are very useful and they are also very dependable as you can have spaces that are dedicated for particular staff. Because people will typically be parked up for around 8 hours, you don’t need to be charging quickly. This means that you can install slower AC chargers that are much cheaper. A model 3 parked up for 8 hours, even plugged into a regular domestic socket, would get about 60 to 70 miles range put back in. That will cover most people’s needs, with a little spare to get them through the weekend!

Solar at home

Things have been pretty basic so far, so let’s start making this a little interesting! Of course this won’t apply to everyone, but it is becoming a more common occurrence….me being one of them!

We’re talking about people that have solar panels on their roof at home! You can plug your car in to charge up, and some of the energy will come from the electricity panels on your roof. BUT, let’s take this one step further. Let’s say that you have a nice 6kW peak system on your roof. It’s a sunny day, and you’re working from home. Your house is probably using a bit of energy to tick over; the fridge, the freezer, charging your computer, and so on. That 6kW will have a significant surplus of energy that you don’t need. So instead of dumping it back into the grid for free, it’d be great to use it up, right?
Well, there is this charger called a Zappi, it knows how much energy your house is using, and it knows how much your solar panels are producing. It then diverts that excess energy into your car’s battery. So in that hour, you could be sending, let’s say, 4kWh into your car, which is enough to drive about 15 miles. Now that’s not a lot, but we’re talking about just one hour there and it really does add up over time! There are some people that just leave their car plugged in all of the time, and it only charges on excess energy. Take out the original cost of the panels…and they’re driving for free!

Getting paid to charge!

There is another way that is starting to be seen with the roll out of smart metering. I want to tell you about an example that happened here in the UK last year. It’s not happening lately because of the European energy crisis but might come back!

There is an energy company called Octopus Energy. They have a special tariff that tracks the wholesale price of electricity and then just charges you that price, with a profit on top of course! So energy is cheap at off peak, but really expensive at peak times. But we had situations last year when there was so much renewable energy going into the grid, and so little demand, that the wholesale price of electricity actually went negative! So even after Octopus had added their margin, the price of electricity for people at home was still negative. Yes, you heard me right…people were being paid to use electricity! People were programming their car to charge at those specific times. They’d head to bed, go to sleep, and without doing anything wake up with more range and more money in their pockets!