Do you gain AP when using an ADA Refactor or Jarvis Virus

If you want to level up, don't recharge your portals at all—wait for them to decay (which should take about ten days) and then rebuild them and link them together to form a field. Repeat this process as necessary.

A better option, and one which would make Ingress an actual game for you in addition to helping you level, would be to find someone to play in the opposing faction who would compete with you for the portals in your town.

With limited portals, and limited portal turn-over (Little Rock, AR has a 3:1 resistance to enlightened active player ratio, turn-over here sucks), your best bet is to find a group of portals that are close to you, not used by other players often.

1. Make them the highest portals you can by yourself.
2. Get keys and connect them up in as many CFs (control Fields) as you can. The majority of your AP comes not from destruction, but construction.
3. Let them decay. It takes ten days for a portal to decay if it doesn't get a recharge.
4. Rinse and repeat.

This isn't the fastest way to level, but given the constraints of distance, gas, and lack of portals/competition, it is under those circumstances.

The fastest way, without these constraints, is to either connect up a lot of portals to create a lot of fields or to find an enemy portal with the most links and fields, and take it. The more links and fields, the more AP for you when you build/kill it.