Random EV thoughts.....

Yeah prices are nuts overall compared to a few years back.

I'm now on 22c/11c with SSE. Could have got a cheaper rate but this one gave a €200 credit and with my solar and battery capacity it'll work out cheaper.

I'm currently with flogas, they were briefly cheap but have had 3 price increases to i believe 27/14c day/night.

Yes, your previous usage is on your existing bill. Best package depends on your specific usage

i have a load balancer, thats grand, not sure why the fuse wasnt 80 amps to begin with, i gather most houses with a heatpump are.

all works fine for now so i wont be spending any wedge on it!

When you say main fuse are you referring to your consumer unit or the ESB fuse in the meter box?

The answer is very different depending on which you are referring to!

And when you filled in your NC6 form to get electricity connected to your house did you ask for a 12kVA or 16kVA connection?... you have to specifically tick a box on the form so you (or maybe your electrician) should know. That will also determine what your next steps are and whether you have to pay ESB anything for the upgrade.

Generally if you have a heat pump you would get the enhanced supply (16kVA, which gives you the 80A ESB fuse) but its possible that your HP isnt that heavy on juice and didnt require the enhanced ESB supply. What make/model of heat pump do you have? Is it rated <8kW?

Its also possible you have an 80A fuse but the electrician didnt give you an 80A fuse in your consumer unit and just left it at the standard 60A eventhough you had the enhanced supply.... that happened me and I had to rectify that later but it wasnt a big deal.

I think your starting point is to call ESB and ask them what MIC your supply is.... i.e. 60A or 80A.

If they say 60A then you would have to go the route mentioned earlier where you pay them €1700 to uprate their fuse AFTER you get an electician to provide a cert that your tails and consumer unit are appropriately rated/wired for 80A. So you'd have to pay ESB and your electrician in that case.

If they say 80A then you dont need to do anything with the ESB. Its all down to your electrician to check what tails you have (25mm² min required for 80A). If thats already in place he just needs to uprate your consumer unit and give you an 80A fuse on that and away you go. This was what I had to do.

So, start with the call to the ESB and find out your MIC and then proceed from there.

Is there a map of the supercharging points in the country?

What is the deal with the lack of chargers in the northwest? There's only one HPC in Carrick and that's literally it

I know it isn't the busiest route, but it's hardly devoid of traffic either. I think there'd be a lot more EV uptake out that direction with just a few more fast chargers

Pretty accurate. On seeing this line "Hybrids seem like a cop-out when, on long journeys, you’re mostly using petrol anyway." you can see it's a real opinion piece and and not a paid for hatchet job.

On winter range: I did Athboy to south Dublin to Athboy recently. A regular trip for us, 150km return all motorway and the Ioniq28 always does it with 5-10% remaining.

We had really bad rain, an hour of stop go traffic on the m50, and as a result had to queue for 20 minutes to charge for 10 minutes in navan - as we would have ran out otherwise.

EVs have their limitations (as do ICEs, the ICE would likely use a litre or two more in the same scenario but you dont have a 30 minutes wait) so there's no denying it.

But: The ioniq28 is a small battery car these days, most new EVs have 50kWh+ and would easily do 150 km in all weathers with range to spare

Glad he is not drinking the cool aid, he could have looked at phev's.