When you charge your car, a lot of energy is lost in the process. Not all of it ends up in the battery, and there’s no getting around it. But how can I reduce these losses?
Different chargers supply electricity either through one or three phases. As you can tell from the name, three-phase charging provides three times more power than single-phase charging. Today, most cars are charged with single-phase, but more and more can be charged with three-phase, which means you can charge your car faster.
Whether you are charging single-phase or three-phase, there are so-called charging losses. When the car’s on-board charger converts alternating current in the grid into direct current for the battery, there is always a heat loss. More energy is used than the battery receives. So you’re paying for energy that doesn’t end up in the battery. This is especially true if you charge at low power, not least if you charge your car with single phase with fewer amps to charge. In particular, there are losses for cars that prefer to receive more power than they are allocated.
As much as a quarter of all power can be lost on the road. It’s a bit like filling up 10 liters of petrol and only getting a little more than 7.5 liters. But it is possible to reduce the losses. With ChargeNode’s 32A three-phase departure-based charging, one car at a time is charged from the outside as each car leaves. This means fast charging with higher power, which in turn means less charging losses. The total power output is roughly the same no matter which charging system you use, but it can be used in different smart ways.
So by using the departure time as a parameter, energy is only lost in the transfer itself. The opposite is arrival-based charging where all cars are charged simultaneously. When all cars share the available electricity, it can take time before you get a full charge. Then more power is lost in the transfer.
Read more about how ChargeNode’s departure-based charging works here.
There are several criteria that have an effect on charging. Obviously, the storage capacity of the car’s battery and whether the on-board charger can accept single-phase or three-phase charging current. It also depends on whether the charging box provides AC or DC power and how much charging current it can feed into the car. Finally, it depends on the total load on the entire electrical system in, for example, a building and the temperature. Charging losses are inevitable, but not by much if you compare them to the losses that occur when gasoline is burned in an internal combustion engine.
On a very cold winter day, the efficiency of charging can drop further. Especially if you are charging single-phase, as more energy is used to heat the cold battery cells to a temperature where they can be charged. If the temperature drops below zero degrees, the battery is not doing well at all. Some cars don’t charge at all, others charge a little when it’s really cold. The trick is to charge quickly to warm up the battery and then charge slowly. Or to charge the car directly when you’ve been driving for a while and the battery is warmed up. Unfortunately, it might be when you get home in the afternoon when it is most expensive to charge.
Charging at higher power reduces charging losses compared to charging at low power. This means that a larger share of the electricity you pay for actually ends up in the car battery.
Assume an average mileage of 125 miles per month (equivalent to 1500 miles per year).
If the electricity price is SEK 3.50 per kWh, the cost difference is
Choosing three-phase charging can therefore save both energy and money.
Charge Node Europé AB
Neongatan 4B
431 53 Mölndal
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