the Tesla UMC universal mobile connector this is what the majority of Tesla
owners are going to use to charge their car on a daily basis of course some of
you might have a high powered wall wall charger but in general this is really
all you need it can charge your car at up to 40 amps depending on if you have
the old style or the new style which is 32 amps and even on a 100 kilowatt hour
battery pack that's generally enough to get you a full charge overnight however
I am running into a lot of people talking about having to unplug it every
day but they're not taking it with them I could see I'm plugging it every day if
you were bringing it with you but I'm plugging it just for the sake of
unplugging it or saving on the vampire drain that most electronics nowadays
have it's just it it's just not really present and worthwhile for the few cents
a year that the UMC is going to use staying plugged in to your wall outlet
whether it's on a 120 or 240 or in Europe I'm not too familiar with
European standards for the charging but also I believe three-phase so we're just
gonna use a 120 plug it into our kilowatt meter and take a look at
exactly how much power a UMC uses when its idle not plugged into a car at all
we are going to use this extremely cheap and under sized extension cord but we're
not going to plug it into the car no need for that just for this now we got
line voltage 210 not that it matters plug in the UMC lights green good to
charge if we wanted to one point one watt or two volt amperes now in a
residential setting at least in the US and for the most part Canada - not sure
on European billing standards but for residential we are billed by the watt
hour not kilovolt ampere so we're looking at this number 1.1 watts so
let's calculate out exactly how much it will cost
oh shoot I'm leaking anyways let's calculate out exactly what the cost is
per year so one point one watt so one point one watt hour times how many hours
in the day folks 24 hours in a day and we're at twenty six point four whadda
watt hours per day now we multiply that by and we're just gonna take an average
of 30 days per month so 792 watts watt hours per month so point seven nine two
kilowatt hours multiply that by twelve months out of the year and we're talking
nine point five zero four kilowatt hours I guess it does really add up so let's
just round it down we're gonna round it down to nine point five kilowatt hours
multiplied by the national average of 12 cents per kilowatt hour and it costs you
a whopping $1.00 and fourteen cents per year to leave your Tesla UMC plugged in
to the outlet I know faint breaker isn't it now you might say
well it's still it's waste electricity yes but plugs have a design life a shelf
light or a useful service life and so do the outlets plugging it in and
unplugging it every day so if you're charging your car daily so it's not just
in plugging it in 365 times a year its unplugging so you're talking that's 365
plus 365
my math on the spot sucks so 730 730 times a year
insert pulling out now we got chief 120 volt plugs yeah sure but when you're
talking a 1450 are much more expensive outlet that's all cycle lives and more
corrosion you're better off just leaving it plugged in especially if you have to
replace one of these and then after these are forty five bucks so eventually
you will wear it out regardless you're gonna wear this out eventually
maybe not this one whatever you're using for your daily basis it's just not worth
it if you're doing it just to save some electricity dollar or $2 worth of
electricity a year big deal compared to the cost for doing that plus then more
flexing of the cords so on and so on and so on so if you're just charging at home
and you don't take your UMC with you every day plug it in leave it plugged in
now a few exceptions are thunderstorms lightning strikes around so if you have
some inclement weather and well the UMC is designed with some lightning or surge
protection built in it's still an electronic device plugged into the grid
and it's still susceptible to power surges in that case go ahead give her a
good old unplug but for the most part don't waste your time