Wimpy vs. Good

Who is to say what good looks like in an EV Charger? Me.

LinkedIn does funny things with images in the header of newsletters, depending a lot on your platform. So allow me to embed that image here and you should be able to click it and see a full-size version you can study:

First, if you have visions of a Level 1 charger for your EV, forget it. 110VAC (designed for household appliances) would give you around 3 miles per hour of charge. Or 12 to 24 hours to recharge, depending on your EV make and model. Not good. Wimpy.

Level 2 uses 240VAC and up to 80Amps or more to charge much faster. However, you can find a lot [way too many!] at just 30-32Amps. Therefore, 240VAC times 32Amps = 7.6kW of EV Charging power. Wimpy.

However, 6 to 9kW is good for charging where you sleep. But not good enough for shopping centers, restaurants, coffee shops, or the like. Yet in Columbus, Ohio as you can see in the "wimpy" map above, that is where more than half of those chargers are located.

If you pull into a location not to sleep and they have less than 10kW, don't bother to hook up. I was on a business trip and the charger I planned on using during the trek across mid-Ohio was a 16kW unit. But when I got there, the business was closed and gone. So was the charger!

I had to backtrack to a 6.5kW unit that took me 2 hours to get the 44 miles of range I needed to reach a REAL charger, a Tesla Supercharger with 250kW of power. Yes, I paid less than six bucks, but lost two hours!

Level 3 chargers like the Supercharger I mentioned (located in my hometown of New Phila, Ohio) use phase three power of more than 480VAC and convert it to DC (direct current) then put it right into the batteries. Level 2 "chargers" are not chargers at all. They route AC to your car, where the actual charger converts it to DC. All car batteries store only DC energy. These Level 3 chargers are most often used for traversing long distances and the power costs more than charging at home.

Rule #1 Of EV Ownership:

You MUST charge at home or where you sleep.

Most Tesla owners charge over 90% of the time at home. with 10+kW level 2 chargers, and you can refill most EVs to the 80% recommended "top" in eight hours or less. If you didn't know, most EVs should be operated on a daily basis between 20 to 80% and it is recommended to only charge more the night be a trip.

So, for Columbus, Ohio in the map above, there are only 32 charging stations with sufficient power for shopping, eating, golfing, or traveling. With a population of 1.3 million in 2023 and another 180,000 "bed nights" occupied during the year, mostly from non-residents, one can see we have a shortage of suitable "Destination Chargers," those Level 2 units designed not for sleep or travel. But not just in Columbus.

Questions? Ask.

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The images are from the App, Plugshare. One of the more popular third-party tools for EV owners to find suitable chargers when leaving the backyard.