The key elements include six high speed charging hubs on motorways capable of charging eight vehicles simultaneously; 16 high speed charging hubs capable of charging four vehicles simultaneously; additional high power chargers at 34 current 50 kW locations; upgrading over 50 22 kW chargers to 50 kW, and replacing up to 264 locations with 528 charge points at the pre-existing pilot grade of 22 kW to next generation high reliability models.
The generation business isn't allowed to charge less, generators are paid the price of the last kWh. If the grid needs 5000 MWh and ESB can supply 4900 MWh at 10c/kWh there's a missing 100 MWh. The next cheapest supplier is Red's Spin Classes, they can supply 100 MWh at 90c/kWh.
We buy 4900 MWh from ESB at 90c/kWh and 100 MWH from Red at 90c/kWh. It's a system was designed to encourage investment in cheap energy sourcing by giving profits to cheap suppliers justifying further investment in lower price sources. This led to a decent mixed system of cheap renewables + gas turbines to be dispatched to fill the gaps.
The gas price issues highlighted a huge flaw in the system, and it's being changed. However, it's an EU level system so takes some time to reform. In the interim energy suppliers have made excessive profits. Some countries have implemented taxes to claw back the excess energy profits, our government didn't. For ESB in particular the excess profits will be returned to its shareholder (the Irish Government).
Yes but if the generation business decided to charge less and to cut its profits they would then pass the savings on to the retail businesses which would allow them to reduce costs to us
As you've been told many times and mentioned in the article
Its generation and supply businesses are required to operate separately - so increased profits from its generation division cannot be used to subsidise its Electric Ireland business.
€1.1bn pre-tax profits
Not bad going 👍
I'm sure they couldn't have achieved it without screwing us over
They are getting away with it for two reasons. the main reason is that no one really cares how much public charging costs (to a point tbf) as for most EV owners, nearly all charging is done at home. The second reason is a lack of competition. All providers are in a race to pay for their infrastructure costs as quickly as possible because they may fear their assets could become stranded (especially if huge batteries and revised charging tech becomes the norm). Most chargers are isolated where if you need to charge you currently do not have choice.
A market where the customer is not price sensitive and where providers need to pay back huge capital costs is one where prices stay high.
ESB Ecars were actually very sneaky with their price reviews, they reviewed their prices twice in 2022 upwards blaming wholesale prices (set by their sister company ESB) and haven't looked at them since the wholesale prices started dropping. It's blatant profiteering that somehow they are still getting away with
As in Ecars or Electric Ireland?
Ecars seem to review their rates a couple of times a year, at times they seem to track price changes from EI
With all the suppliers going down I'd expect a drop but it'll probably lag the domestic suppliers by a few months, commercial rates are still pretty high AKAIK
Are esb network rates fixed for charging or might they adjust them? Curious how it works they seem pretty high
I rarely use them, but if I was topping up it would be with €20. But last year you could not start a charge with less than €5 in your account.
I went back this morning and the same charger worked fine. Must have been a glitch last night.
We definitely paid a €20 top up with no option of changing it when we signed up. The only configurable thing was the auto top up, which defaulted top up by €20 if your balance dropped below €5, but you could turn this off
I thought the minimum balance had been reduced to €5. They came under a lot of stick a year or so ago when the minimum balance was €20 for a short period.
I signed up to the app today and I had to top up by €20, no mention of minimums other than that.
I think the minimum balance is 30 euro, no, you dont have to charge to full on an esb charger, you can charge as little or as much as you want, once you maintain the minimum balance.
https://esb.ie/what-we-do/ecars/faqs
Apologies in advance if I have this in the wrong thread.
I wanted to try my hand at charging this evening on a local CCS 100kW ESB charging point.
I had put 20 euro into my ESB ecar account on Friday when I joined up. I've been charging at home here since though using the 3 pin charger. We have a fairly large solar system so I'm awaiting the installation of a Zappi to compliment it.
Back on point, the charging station would not permit me to charge as it mentioned there was not enough in my wallet or something like that. Am I correct in thinking then that you need to charge to full when using the CCS100kW ESB charging points?
I had assumed you could stop and top up what you wanted. Not a biggie as we don't take too many long journeys anways but would be interested to know.
Had pre conditioned and was 11c outside. Didn’t pre condition 36 hours later and it was doing 110kW with 50% SOC. Same type of charger, different location.
Are ESB rates fixed. Can we expect any change in their ev charge rates any stage
ESB eCars at J14 on the M7 isn’t much better. Consistently poor DC charging speeds there. Usually chaos also due to the cables being too short.
What was the SOC? Was your battery cold ?
Something wrong with that one. Tried to charge an i5 M60 last night and wouldn’t go beyond 70kW. Nobody on the charger, brand new car, optimum temperature. The day ESB are properly challenged on this island, the day charging will be taken seriously.
Max I got on that unit was 86kW. On plugshare I see that's a record with most check-ins putting 70kW as an average. E-tron should charge over 100kW in most cases even at medium SoC.
Maximum speed depends on the exact model of the car.
https://support.fastned.nl/hc/en-gb/articles/360000815988-Audi#:~:text=The%20charge%20speed%20for%20the%20Audi%20e%2Dtron%20GT%20is,minutes%20(50%20kW%20charger).
But also very critical is battery temperature. Most cars need a battery temperature around 30 Celsius for peak speeds. At this time of year your battery is probably 14 Celsius. Then if you look at the graphs on the link you see you need a low state of charge. Lastly the charger typically has limits, both in terms of sharing power across multiple connectors but also sites may have maximum grid limits and some sites these are low.
Some cars have an option to precondition the battery temperature before charging but even if you have this option it can take 1+ hours to go from a freezing winter battery to a toasty battery ready to peak maximum charge. Tesla cars automatically plan routes and charging stops and they try precondition battery and time stops and charging % at each stop to reduce total trip time.
Knocklyon Shopping Centre. Car is an E-tron.
Yes but it depends on the car and battery State of Charge (SoC). Also some units are power limited. Which HPC?
When charging at a High Power unit and both CCS are in use, once one leaves shouldn’t the charge for the other one increase to 150?
I see that the high power ESB units (>50kw) are only 50 cent on the new Volvo card ( used to be over 80 cent previously)
It was a platitude as it was the in-thing at the time was to be talking about price reductions.
Costs such as inflation have risen since, so those reduced prices lost their allure when the bean-counters saw red on the spreadsheet.
Good post, nobody can disagree with anything you've said there, what's going on with energy and fuel prices is disgraceful.
Unless I am incorrect, the last price change ecars made was effective 20 December 2022. I am not aware of any recent announcements.
I've recently posted here to say that the Head of e-cars signalled in August a price reduction would likely come in Autumn 2023.
I know that ecars have fixed price contracts that by definition do not track wholesale rates. That said, the CSO now say wholesale electricity cost fell by 67% in the 12 months to Dec 2023. Link below.
E-cars at the timeof their last increase blamed "sustained higher wholesale energy costs" for the increases in 2022; it's fair to now ask why sustained reductions have not been followed by reducing tariffs.
E-cars also assured their customers that they would "keep our prices under constant review in the coming months'.
Again, it's only fair to ask why those reviews have not resulted in any movement as yet by e-cars.
We are well into 2024, prices are comparable to 2021, yet we are still priced at or about peak 2022.
He didn't have an attitude towards me to be fair, just came out with a face on him. Though he had trouble grasping the question when I asked was his battery almost flat - I was really trying to understand why he chose to wait there the good part of an afternoon rather than just find another local point. He just wanted a free charge.
