Charge at Home / What it costs
Charging overnight on a schedule
Set the car or the charger to start after the price drops. A slow charger still finishes by morning.
Most EVs and most connected Level 2 chargers can delay charging to a start time or finish by a departure time. That matters when your utility prices electricity by the hour: the Department of Energy notes that some utilities offer residential time-of-use rates or other rate incentives for charging.
Check what your utility offers
Look on your utility's site for a time-of-use plan, an EV-specific rate, or a managed-charging program that pays you to let it shift your charging. Read the whole plan before you switch: a time-of-use plan lowers the overnight price by raising the afternoon one, which can cost more if you run air conditioning or cook on an electric range at the peak.
A slower charger still fits the window
A 24-amp charger adds about 16.9 miles an hour, so a six-hour off-peak window adds about 101 miles. A 32-amp charger adds about 135 in the same window. Run your own numbers in the calculator.
Range figures assume a car that uses 30 kWh per 100 miles and loses 12 percent of the energy between the wall and the battery. Your car's figure is on its fueleconomy.gov label; the calculator takes yours.
Set it in one place
If both the car and the charger have a schedule, use one and leave the other on "charge now". Two schedules that disagree are the usual reason a car is not charged in the morning.
Sources
- U.S. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center: Charging Plug-In Electric Vehicles at Home (accessed 2026-10-23)
- U.S. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center: Federal and State Laws and Incentives (accessed 2026-10-23)
This page was drafted with a language model from the sources listed above and published under the quality gate; the editor samples pages after publication. Every number on it is computed by the site's calculator code, not typed.
General information for planning, not electrical, tax or legal advice. A licensed electrician and your local code decide what is safe in your home.
Found an error? See Corrections.