Random EV thoughts.....

Don't exaggerate with the 3 phase though, it usually is 3 * 25A. Nice for charging your car with 11kW, but not an awful lot more than our 1 * 63A for a standard 12kVA connection. In fact most new houses here now have 16kVA or 80A consumer unit fuse

Our 25c FIT is far more generous than net metering, where the best outcome is you still pay full standing charge but you have a zero bill for units (this can not go negative)

Here you can actually make money on your electricity. A negative total cost of electricity, including standing charge 😀

And export limit not a problem. You can export 21 hours * 5.5kW = 115kWh per day (which nets you almost €30)

You would need an enormous setup for that not to be enough...

Between today and yesterday I’ve put 15kWh in the car from solar, which is over 100km or range, and over the 2 days only driven about 20km…

I will not need to grid charge the car now until at least mid April (and only then if the weather is crap) as I’ve now enough to get us up to Thursday when we go away, so car will be left plugged in for 10 days, so we’ll no doubt come back to it full..

Last year I went from April 1st - July 5th with 100% of charging coming from solar, so there’s a very good chance I’m now already back in that window of free driving for the next few months…

Anyone with an EV, off street parking and a roof, and not having solar is mad…

I think @unkel has a solar lawn at this stage...😁

btw good to see you back Mad_lad

Not enough to test the maximum allowed export of 5.5kW (times 21h)

We have a perfect back garden, with the rear ditch ideal for a lot of panels due south facing. Raised up they would catch the sun almost all year for almost all of the day.

But unfortunately the missus would prefer to look at unimportant things such as flowering shrubs and other green things..😋

You don't seem to understand that even with just an NC6, you can export over 115kWh per day. The sun don't shine 21h a day, so you obviously need a big battery for that too. Store during the day whatever you produce over 5.5kW and dump it during the less / non productive hours

The aim is to export as much as possible. That works financially a lot better than self use. Perverted as it is, it's far cheaper to heat your house with 10c gas than with 5c night rate electricity. Because you can export the latter and get paid 25c. Same applies to immersion diversion.

But yes the more PV you get, the quicker the payback period. And to save you doing the sums, to export 115kWh in one day on the best day of the year, you would need about a 14kwp array (producing 14MWh per year)

I had to drive my dear beloved Mother's 2010 1.4 Fiesta torque converter auto today and I found it quite a good experience why I don't know, not fond of torque converter or CVT autos and would rather Dual Clutch or Manual, anyway, having knobs and buttons at hand without looking at a screen was quite nice but I really liked how it drove, I think the fact it's incredibly light compared to the 2 tonne id3 vs around 1.1 tonne fiesta. Perhaps it was the "retro" feel, the analogue clocks, analogue gauges, buttons, knobs or perhaps the weight really dulls the id3 T5 driving experience, don't get me wrong, it's a great refined work horse but it's also incredibly boring ! perhaps why I got a 500 cc Maxi scooter ?

But for a 14 year old car with 156,000 Kms it drove really well for it's age.

Just like the Outlander I took off with the handbrake on.......

haha yeah funny how attitudes change, I remember many years ago getting scolded for mentioning electric cars in the regular motors threads long before the EV section by someone with a name similar to yours lol. 🤣

I didn't think 8 K Euro's for 8 Kw/p inc 5 Kwh battery was a bad price ? probably gone up now of course, can't remember the company ffs, I'll see if I can find their business card.

So why are you not mod any more ?

@unkel is the power grid equivalent of those folks on YouTube who look for exploits in video games to level up as fast as possible 😂

Interesting article on the current status of V2G (seems very focused on Germany)

There's also a V2G conference next month, I'm tempted to email it to ESBN and ask if they have anyone going

One interesting tidbit is they seem to see AC V2G winning again despite DC being able to integrate better with home solar (all you'd need is a DC-DC converter)

I guess poor Edison never catches a break

The biggest barrier seems to be grid operators and electricity suppliers (no surprises there). I assume that for Ireland it would mean the inverter (either in the car or not) would need to be qualified in the same way as a PV inverter and an NC6 would be needed for the V2G connection. I imagine a bunch of car manufacturers simply won't bother considering how small our market is

The emphasis seems to be on making the process as simple as possible for the customer which means some level of integration with the electricity provider

This could work well with something like the dynamic tariffs that were recently proposed here, however it generally requires the customer to be okay with giving up control of when their car charges and discharges.

Not sure how many people will go for it, but if the financial incentive is there then it might work

Trifecta, oooh fancy words of a Sunday morning 😊. With EV plans being so good @ 7c unit rates and FIT being good at the moment I think it makes more sense just to export and charge the car at night.

Rebadged Tesla V4 Superchargers have started appearing in the UK. That is, other networks buying them to deploy under their own brand. EG Group intend to deploy 20,000+ across UK and Europe.