“Electroholic” Ben from New Jersey tells his JuiceBox story

Published August 17, 2018
Ben, a customer from NJ

Hi, I am Ben P from New Jersey and I am an electroholic. I caught the bug from my lovely wife, Mary, when she decided that she was getting an electric car in late 2011. I resisted vehemently but ended up catching the electron fever. That is when our journey to electrification started and led us to getting the JuiceBox Pro 40 level 2 plug-in EV charger this year.

 

I have to describe our EVs, their usage and our power source to convey the full picture. I drive the BMW i3 BEV. I commute 35 miles to my job as an energy manager, mostly on county roads at about 50-60mph and about 8 miles of urban and suburban streets going 30-45 mph. With a range of up to 90+ miles in the summer, the i3 displays around 63% battery left when I reach work. I have workplace 240-volt, Level 2 charging with 10 charging spaces available. So on many days I can just fully charge at work, go home and make it back to work the next day without charging at home at night.

 

Mary has the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, which may be unfamiliar to many as it is brand new to the USA market. It has about 25 miles of electric range and about 300 miles on gasoline. Until recently, her commute was about 11 miles each way so she was totally emission free for that use. Because the Outlander can tow, we were able to sell off our old, gas-guzzling clunker of an SUV, a Toyota Land Cruiser. I have used the Outlander PHEV once for my work commute and I would deplete the battery and get 90 MPGe with combined propulsion for a one-way trip. Having both the i3 and the PHEV gives us driving options. We always choose to drive electric if we can.

Outdoor Juicebox installation

Our outdoor Juicebox installation.

 

In addition, we have a 100% electric home with geothermal furnace and solar panels that we bought from SunRun through their partnership with Costco. We recently learned that you can purchase a JuiceBox through Costco.com too! Did we say we love Costco? That would be an understatement.

Now the good part: The connected features of the JuiceBox! A typical “solar spill” can enable us to produce up to 60 kWh of electricity on a clear summer day. Since we get charged fees from our utility company to bring us electricity, we now try to plug in when our panels are producing power. This is where the JuiceBox really shines. I can set an alert in the dashboard for the JuiceBox to remind me if no car is plugged in by 9:45am. I also set a time of use window to coincide with our solar production from 10am to 6pm to minimize the use of grid power. I went a step further and reduced the available amperage of the JuiceBox’s output to match the approximate output of our solar array! All of these settings can also be adjusted on the fly using the Enel X Way app on my phone and I can also ask Amazon Alexa to tell me the status of my JuiceBox at any time. Also located within the dashboard website there are quite a few reports that you can use to track your energy usage and costs and the data can be downloaded to a spreadsheet for further analysis.
Dashboard session data
Prior to getting the JuiceBox we were only using a basic 30-amp, non-connected level 2 EVSE. It has performed well but with a much shorter charge cable it often leaves us jockeying cars to make the cable reach the charge port. The JuiceBox has a very generous 24’ cable that can reach just about any parking space inside or outside of our garage. Eventually we plan to replace it with a second JuiceBox so we can capture more charging data and have the ability to charge your future Tesla at the full 40A/10kw if so desired. Also, the extra amperage of the JuiceBox helps to recharge quickly on the weekends when we typically charge multiple times in a day after running errands, making trips to Costco and visiting local attractions around the New Jersey Shore and the Pine Barrens. We know there’s a lot of choices when it comes to home EV charging, but none are better than the JuiceBox!
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