A Guest Blog by Plug’n Drive Volunteer Glennengineer
I charge the LEAF in my garage using the standard 120 volt cord set (Level 1) that comes with every electric car. The actual charger which converts Alternating Current (AC) from the grid into Direct Current (DC) for the car’s battery is built-in to the car.
Through my observations, the LEAF charges at about 1.3 KW using 120 volts. As observed in the data below there is a significant difference between the amount of energy used (measured by the LEAF) and the amount of energy supplied TO the charger (measured by my KWH meter) In fact the efficiency ranges between 70% – 80%.
The data below shows a loss of 3KW over 10 hours or 300 watts/hour.
The significance of this is that charging times will be always be longer than expected if based on the KWH driven. Next time we will examine the Km/KWH or driving efficiency.
| VEHICLE/TRIP | Drove (Km) | Km/KWH | KWH Used | CHARGE KWH |
| LEAF around town (Aurora) | 65 | 6.4 | 10.2 | 13.2 |
| LEAF to Keswick | 86 | 7.1 | 12.1 | 15.3 |
| LEAF to Newmarket | 25 | 6.5 | 3.8 | 5.5 |
Plug'n Drive's Blog 
Thanks for the figures. Looks consistent with other test. 1.3kW charging rate efficiency is 78%. Added lithium battery charge-discharge efficiency of 90% (at least), that translates to 70% overall efficiency. http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/SteadyStateLoadCharacterization2015Leaf.pdf
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[…] According to the references I can find, the charging efficiency for a new Tesla is 82% and a Nissan Leaf has a charging efficiency of 70% – 80%. So if we assumed the average charging efficiency was 75% then that 9,000 GWh immediately jumps to […]
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