That’s why with an electric vehicle you can do something special with electricity, to make sure the right people pay for its use. Power theft has always been a problem, so what we’ve decided with the growing demand for outdoor power outlets is that there is a way to switch them and measure how much is being used. You can do it yourself with a kWh meter and switch, but that’s obviously not always practical for a car. This is why those outlets are often card-switchable, which actually tells who’s paying, and that outlet then talks to a backend so your energy bill gets paid.
All of this is actually what a charging station is. Not a “smart” converter, but just a sort of kWh meter/switch/backend-in-one. And since there is some kind of lightweight UART connection between the car and the pole that allows you to switch between phases, or even: how many amps can be used at any given time, a lot is possible.
Your colleague’s solar panels are usually on one phase with that kind of power. Not bad in an offsetting economy, but I think we all know that offsetting isn’t entirely “fair.” Instead, what your colleague can do is calculate how many kWh they really need per day. 2600kWh isn’t that absurdly so for panels mind you, and 3000kWh is certainly not a few, but with a “smart” charging station (socket) you can actually introduce a kind of eco-mode where you actually charge only from your own sun ( provided that there is no other demand from the network, such as a barbecue or stove lurking on 2kW).
I think your boss could save a lot of costs by providing such a backend post + card. Because let’s be honest: a kWh through a fast charger is always more expensive than normal mains power, even if you use 11kW (3x16A), and especially if you charge “eco”. That, and it’s a lot less administration.
By the way, 4000kWh, I get about 100km on 14.7kWh, which brings me about 27,210km on 4000kWh. That’s a reasonable annual mileage. Especially good that it drives electrically! But if it’s business, then his boss should really contribute something. If you translate that into fossil fuels, that’s a mega profit. In a liter of petrol there are about 9kWh of energy, if petrol had the efficiency of electricity they would consume about 444 litres. However, petrol is not that efficient, with a very optimal 1:20 consumption it would have previously cost you around 1500 liters of petrol, probably more. Each liter of petrol weighs about 750 grams, 82.5% is carbon, therefore in relation to CO2 about 2.5 kg of CO2 are emitted per liter of petrol, which would bring the 1:20 petrol car to 3750 kg of CO2. A coal-fired power plant, which is certainly the worst case, emits only about 800g per kWh, which brings the EV to 3200g. And this is the worst case. Our energy balance is increasingly CO2-free, and is already around 440g/kWh. And then I focus on CO2, but an electric vehicle does a lot more on other things.
However, with figures like this… a “smart pole-plug with self-billing via contactless means of identification” (a charging station) will come in handy! Also for the responsibility of the employer, because from next year the CO2 data of a company must also be reported. And there are even now companies that use that kind of data in favor of a contractor in a tender (in the form of a virtual discount, for example).
