electric bill with ecars

cena · 23-09-2021 9:55am #1

Has anyone that has ecars and charge at home? Has your electric bill gone up since you brought one? I don't have an ecar, just curious

ELM327 · 23-09-2021 10:18am

It's gone up by 10% of my previous fuel bill which is now zero.

To put that in laymans terms, for every 100 of petrol I used to buy, I replaced that with a tenner on the electric bill

cena · 23-09-2021 10:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117927914#Comment_117927914

Very good. Cheap to run so

zg3409 · 23-09-2021 11:53am

I did the sums, and I saved a fortune on petrol versus my ESB bill. It works out about an 80% saving.

My 110km round trip commute needs 20kWh of energy per night, and it costs mr about 2 euro in electricity, about 10 or 11 euro a week. Petrol before was 80 euro a week...

If you drive a lot, a night rate meter makes sense for cheaper night rates. Some people have solar electric panels to power house and charge the car, but I opted not to do this, and charging at home is really cheap anyway.

RingSting · 23-09-2021 12:02pm

My 100km commute is costing 1e a day (more like 90c),charging on night rate @ 5c.

Was costing 12/13e a day in my petrol car, which I kept 🤣

the_amazing_raisin · 23-09-2021 12:35pm

By Ecars I assume you mean an electric vehicle and not ESB Ecars which provides public charging

If so, then yes your electricity bill will go up. Makes sense since that's where you'll be charging your car from

How much it goes up by depends on how much you drive and how efficient the car is, same as any ICE car

The advantage of electric is that the higher bills are more than offset by the fuel savings. And you can charge at the night rate which makes it very cheap

For example, when I got my Leaf, the electricity bill went up by about €200 per year. But I didn't have to spend over €1000 on petrol for my old car 😁

Red Silurian · 24-09-2021 8:35am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117928362#Comment_117928362

Is your 5c per unit on a smart meter?

the_amazing_raisin · 24-09-2021 9:07am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117931758#Comment_117931758

I don't think anyone is getting a rate that low on a smart meter. I'm keeping my day/night meter as long as I can

ted1 · 24-09-2021 9:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117931851#Comment_117931851

its kind of hidden as you get a welcome bonus for signing up to the tariffs. e,g Electric Ireland are giving you €210 + free Nest hub. so after the credit you are effectively paying les than 5c

AndyBoBandy · 24-09-2021 9:50am

Since getting our EV we've done 41,600km, and the average consumption in that time has been 146Wh/km, which gives a total consumption of 6,072 kWh.

Lets add 15% for charging losses and miscellaneous usage that the car doesn't count (AC on while not driving etc...) and we hit a figure of about 7,000kWh

If I did 100% of my charging at home, it would have cost me roughly €560 (my night rate is in or around €0.08/kWh). In reality though I've charged in public on eCars AC22's when they were free, Tesla destination chargers (which are free), Tesla Superchargers (for free as I still have referral km's), and eCars DC chargers the odd time.. so in reality, I've probably charged about 6,000kWh at home, costing me roughly €480. My total spend to date with eCars is €77.49 for 711kWh, giving a grand total of around €557 spent on charging (home & away).

Now I also have a diesel BMW, and its consumption figures are around 7L/100km, so had I done those 41,600km in the BMW, I'd have used about 2,912 litres of diesel, and going by todays diesel prices of around €1.47/L, that would have cost me €4,280.

So a saving of roughly €3,723* in 18 months of driving, and that's just fuel costs.

*in 41,000km, I'd have changed the oil & filter in the BMW at least 3 times, so there's about an additional ~€250 saved, so lets call it €4,000 saved in the EV compared to the old ICE.

Tax on EV: €120

Tax on ICE: €710

LeeroyJ. · 24-09-2021 10:24am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117932021#Comment_117932021

How much was the installation of the at home charging point? I've just started looking into buying an EV (mostly Tesla model 3)

Black_Knight · 24-09-2021 10:24am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117931877#Comment_117931877

Depends how much you drive, and whether you want a nest hub. Energia were selling nest hubs for €50 the other week. Any time i've done the maths of late, a cheap night rate is worth more savings to me than any credit.

AndyBoBandy · 24-09-2021 11:02am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117932164#Comment_117932164

I bought a Tesla Wall connector for €530, and paid about €430 to get it installed, so net cost after grant (€600) was €360

the_amazing_raisin · 24-09-2021 4:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117932164#Comment_117932164

You can get a very basic charger from QUBEV for something like €250 off Amazon. I think @Gumbo got one installed last year as a destination charger

Electrician can run the wire from the meter box, so in that case installation would probably be just a few hundred

So it's possible to get a charger for a little over the grant amount

AndyBoBandy · 24-09-2021 4:39pm

Whatever a charger and installation ends up costing you, will be made back in fuel savings in no time.

I would however recommend getting a tethered charger, which makes the whole plugging in process quite easy really..

Now you could get an un-tethered charger, and buy an extra cable and leave it permanently attached, but it's then open to possible theft etc...

The Tesla charger is a tethered charger, with 2 cable lengths available (2m & 5m), but the added benefit in the Tesla charger is it has a little button on it which opens your charge port as you approach the car, so plugging in really is an afterthought...

Have you test driven an EV yet? Model 3? When I ordered mine, I'd never even driven an EV before, and had only sat in the showroom model in Sandyford. We eventually test drove one about 2 weeks before collecting ours, and were blown away by it... 18 months and 41,000km later, and it still blows me away how good it is to drive, and despite being incredibly fast and incredibly fun, the Model 3 SR+ is still one of the most efficient EV's on the road today. No other EV is giving 450km's of WLTP range from a 50kWh battery.

Red Silurian · 25-09-2021 8:55am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117931851#Comment_117931851

Apparently they can't force you to change to a smart meter, so says an unreliable poster on Facebook anyway... Unreliable being the key word there but when they pop by to install, try saying "no" and see what happens

I'm fact there are rumors (again - not very reliable sources) stating that they don't have the technology yet to change you from a day/night meter to a smart one

ted1 · 25-09-2021 10:46am

The technology is a screw driver and snips. They simply remove the old meter and replace it. Not very hi tech.

what the smart meter may not have is a output to trigger a relay to turn on storage heaters. But that’s not an issue as unlike day nights meters the internal clock on smart meters is accurate and doesn’t drift. So you can use timers knowing that they will operate on the correct Time of use tariff

the_amazing_raisin · 25-09-2021 11:57am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117936420#Comment_117936420

Partly true, there was an issue a while back where they couldn't do night rates on smart meters but that's been corrected now

Comer1 · 25-09-2021 12:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117936732#Comment_117936732

Interesting, so are the day\night times determined locally by my meter or externally. The time on my meter is one hour behind

eagerv · 25-09-2021 12:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117937056#Comment_117937056

By the meter, it should be set on GMT which is 1 hour different to now.

Furze99 · 25-09-2021 12:52pm

When the public actually have to pay for the full economic costs of electricity for charging EVs, it'll make for a lot of hand wringing. There's no such thing as a free lunch or cheap power/ energy. It's makes sense at the moment due to subsidies on electricity and carbon & other heavy taxes on oil based fuels. That won't always be the case....

Calahonda52 · 25-09-2021 1:19pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117937113#Comment_117937113

When YOU have to pay the full economic cost of using the www and cease being the product... as above..

What subsidies are on electricity?

The PSO levy, which its the main subsidy for RE only, is coming down in Oct due to market prices going up so a bit more clarity in the arm chair driven discussion is needed

innrain · 25-09-2021 1:51pm

As diesel is not subsidized at all

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/ffes/fossilfuelsubsidies2019/infographic/

What if the electricity will be more and more generated using renewables means?

When the public actually have to pay for the full economic costs of electricity for charging EVs ..

How would you differentiate from electricity used to cook your dinner to electricity for charging EVs.

KCross · 25-09-2021 2:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117937113#Comment_117937113

I don’t think you’ve really thought that statement out at all.

what are the electricity subsidies you speak of?

Furze99 · 25-09-2021 8:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117937675#Comment_117937675

Well we could start with.. https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/36d8d2-renewable-electricity-support-scheme/

and then consider the excise duties, VAT and carbon taxes on petrol & diesel. When these dry up in the great change over to EVs, how exactly do you think Revenue will compensate??

graememk · 25-09-2021 9:23pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117939182#Comment_117939182

So what's the subsidy in the above, that's an procedure to allow renewables to sell to the grid.

And as for revenue, they just collect the taxes/duties/etc it's up to the government to make the decisions on how to, and how they tax us all in the future, we'll just have to wait and see, and don't forget to vote.

To answer the OP.

When we got our ev, we switched to a day/night meter, and because we had that we moved some of our heavier loads, (dishwasher etc) - didn't see a noticable change in the bill, but that also was coming out of winter too.

Did notice the drop on fuel bill though(400odd km/week, doing 45mpg on a good day...)

slave1 · 25-09-2021 10:53pm

With Smart Meters there will be EV charging levies, it's only a matter of time

KCross · 26-09-2021 12:36am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117939182#Comment_117939182

Hold on a second... your statement was “... pay for the full economic costs of electricity for charging EVs,”

the link you provided has nothing to do with charging EVs. That’s about renewables which covers your cup of coffee, your dinner, your shower, your EV.

Fossil fuels are subsidised too ( and taxed too of course). What about when those tax breaks stop

the fact remains that ICE ownership will continue to be more expensive to run than EV no matter what way you slice and dice the numbers over the long term. Any increases to EV ownership will be higher in ICE land.

the government still needs its tax intake but it won’t suddenly result in EVs costing more than ICE because of electricity costs.

ted1 · 26-09-2021 9:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117939182#Comment_117939182

the state will benefit from money not leaving the state. We import our oil and gas. By using RES, we’ll have slot more money staying in the local economy

26-09-2021 10:41am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117936420#Comment_117936420

Don't knock the unreliable poster on Facebook, at least this time he knows what he's talking about, he is correct, you are in no way legally obliged to take a smart meter no matter what any power company tells you.

People will be at some point or another be forced to take them for micro generation and the likes won't be possible without the smart meter. But from what I read on a farming site recently micro generation will be another failure as it's rumoured only 5000 Kwh can be exported and only the first household connected to the transformer on a pole can avail of exporting. Joke.

We were promised cheaper bills but they introduced a 3rd peak band between 5-7 pm to screw as much as possible people cooking dinner. No who would have believed the Government when they said smart meters were going to benefit us ? lol. Night rate has also greatly increased too if I remember correctly for smart plans ?

Question is, if it's free now during the roll out will they screw us to have it installed at a later date when we're forced to have a smart meter ?

26-09-2021 10:49am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117939721#Comment_117939721

They don't need smart meters to put a Levy to screw ev owners they could do it now if they wish to anyone without a smart meter or just increase EV tax to 300-500 a year which would generate significant income when there are substantial numbers of electric cars, they don't need to touch electricity, I can't see this happening anyway.

They're already screwing People on smart plans anyway by introducing a peak 3rd band between 5-7 pm to screw people making the dinner so I would encourage those with piped gas to change to gas hobs and ovens because gas is substantially cheaper than electricity to cook anyway.

"smart meters will make electricity cheaper" said the politicians, they always lie, lie and more lies. They're absolute scum, Ireland.INC will always take care of the company first.

electric bill with ecars

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