Tesla Charging at Home: The Ultimate Guide for Tesla Owners

Would you like to charge your Tesla not only at public charging stations, but also at home? Great! This will definitely make your everyday life much more relaxed, as you'll always have a fully charged car in the garage and you'll also be doing something good for your car battery. But did you know that you can charge much more cheaply than at public DC and AC charging stations?

This blog post explains how you can charge your Tesla at home and get even more out of your charging process.

Charging your Tesla at home offers numerous advantages. Here are some reasons why this option is so interesting for electric car drivers:

• Convenience and time savings: If you charge your Tesla at home, you can start the day with a full battery every morning. You don't have to make any detours to public charging stations and save valuable time.
• Cost savings: Compared to public charging stations, charging at home is usually much cheaper. By using a smart wallbox and charging with flexible electricity tariffs, you can protect your wallet and save a lot of money.
• Environmentally friendly: If you have a PV system installed at your home, you can even charge your Tesla for free and with green electricity, which greatly reduces your ecological footprint.
• Protecting the battery: Regular charging at fast charging stations potentially damages the car battery. If you manage to strike a good balance between charging at public DC charging stations and charging at home, the service life of your Tesla's battery can be extended.

You can charge your Tesla at home using a normal socket or a wallbox.

• Charge your Tesla at a normal socket: Although this is the easiest way to charge your Tesla, it is also by far the slowest. Charging from a domestic socket can sometimes take up to 35 hours (0 to 100%). That's quite a long time. This option is therefore only suitable as an emergency solution for Tesla owners.
• Charging a Tesla with a wallbox: If you charge your Tesla at a wallbox with up to 11 kW or 22 kW charging power, it will be recharged in just a few hours (2-6 hours). Perfect if you want to charge your electric car overnight while you sleep or, for example, at the weekend when you are not travelling to work.

If you want to charge your Tesla quickly, we recommend a wallbox with up to 11 or 22 kW charging power.

Please note that only very old Tesla Model S can charge with 22 kW. All newer Teslas charge with a maximum of 11 kW AC. This makes it all the more interesting that the Tesla wallbox is only available with a maximum charging power of 22 kW, which unfortunately can also lead to problems with the approval of the wallbox by the network operator in some cases.

Our go-e Chargers are available with up to 11 kW and up to 22 kW charging power.

When buying a wallbox for your Tesla, think carefully about which functions are important to you and where you want to use the charging station. Do you only want to charge at home or do you perhaps want to take the wallbox with you when travelling or visiting friends and family to charge your electric car?

This is important to know because the Tesla charging box, for example, is only available as a stationary unit. It is therefore permanently wired to the house connection and must be installed by an electrician, which incurs installation costs.

However, if you want to take your wallbox with you from time to time, then a mobile wallbox such as the go-e Charger Gemini flex 2.0 is the right device for you. You can simply plug the charger into a red CEE socket, unplug it, put it in the boot and take it with you. AND you don't need an electrician to install and remove it. Of course, the go-e Charger is also available as a stationary wallbox if you are sure that you only want to charge at home.

Installing a wallbox for your Tesla is relatively straightforward in Austria, but requires a few considerations:

• Checking the house installation: Before you install a wallbox at home, you should have the house connection checked. An electrician can determine whether the existing infrastructure is sufficient or whether additional measures are required.

• Authorisations and regulations: You need to find out about local regulations to see whether you need registration or even a permit to install a wallbox. In Austria, for instance, you do not need to register your mobile wallbox, such as our go-e Charger Gemini flex or Gemini flex 2.0, regardless of its charging capacity. This applies to all smart charging cables, including our Gemini flex variants. However, if you opt for a stationary wallbox with a charging capacity of more than 3.7 kW, you must notify the grid operator of the installation and, in some cases, obtain authorisation. 

Charging your Tesla at home costs 22 cents per kWh or less. However, this depends on various factors, such as the time you charge, the charging tariff you use to charge your Tesla and whether or not you charge with excess PV.

If you want to charge your Tesla cheaply and efficiently at home, we have a few tips for you here that can help you:

1. Use a wallbox with smart functions: 

A smart wallbox with intelligent functions and Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi and mobile radio, such as the go-e Charger, can help you save money.

The wallbox from go-e can be controlled remotely via an app. It has simple and smart charging planning with flexible electricity tariffs. You can also use the wallbox for fully automated charging with PV surplus and much more.

If you have programming skills or use third-party integrations, the go-e Charger is an exciting device thanks to the open API and other interfaces such as Modbus TCP, MQTT or OCPP, as the wallbox adapts to existing systems and not the other way round.

Let's take a closer look at the individual functions to make it even more tangible what this means for your everyday life with your Tesla.

For example, if you want to plan the next charging process, simply set the charging timer in the go-e app so that your electric car charges within a certain period of time. If you want to get even more out of the charging planning, then set a maximum kWh quantity until the next departure or the maximum acceptable electricity price for you. With this setup, you ensure that the go-e Charger pauses the charging process if the energy price is above the price you have set. If it falls again and is within the desired price range, the wallbox automatically starts charging again. At the same time, you receive the desired amount of electricity. Ingenious, isn't it? Here you benefit from the integrated flexible electricity tariffs, as they pass on the ongoing fluctuations on the electricity exchange directly to you and you only charge your Tesla when the electricity prices are at their lowest.

2. Keep the charge level in the optimum range

Wir empfehlen dir, deine Tesla-Batterie zwischen 20 % und 80 % zu halten, um die Lebensdauer zu maximieren. Für den täglichen Gebrauch ist es selten notwendig, die Batterie vollständig aufzuladen, es sei denn, du planst eine längere Strecke zu fahren.