Can we talk about how my EV charger taught me I was charging wrong for 2 years?

I got a Level 2 charger installed in my garage in Austin about 18 months ago, and I thought I had it all figured out. Plug in at night, wake up full, go about my day. Then last week, I checked the power company app and saw I was paying peak rates from 6 PM to 9 PM because the charger defaulted to start immediately. The kicker was my neighbor, who drives the same model, said she schedules hers for 2 AM and pays half as much per mile. I felt like an absolute fool for never reading the manual past the plug-in part. Now I’m wondering, how many of us are unknowingly fighting the grid instead of working with it? Anyone else have a blind spot like that with their setup, and what tipped you off?

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matthewross17d agoMost Upvoted

Most chargers have that schedule function buried in the app, and it's stupid easy to miss. Setting mine to start after 11 PM cut my monthly charging bill damn near in half once I actually took five minutes to look. Check your utility's time-of-use rates and match the timer to the cheapest window, that's the whole trick.