Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

I signed up for BWG offer for electricity day/night on the 20th March. I got a letter in the post today from Flogas (no email)

No mention of the word BWG and no mention of the day and night rates in the letter, just to the generic price plans

Not sure if this is BWG or not - Anyone have any ideas?

Letter states:

full details of your electricity tariff please visit www.flogas.ie/residential/price-plans

We're delighted to confirm that you have successfully switched your electricity supply to Flogas.

Your Offer: DG1 NSAV AFF Fixed Elec 12 Mar24 RN

On a standard house built about 20 years ago, what is the max kW they are rated for?

above example has 7+2+2+2.5=13.5kW

My house was built about 25 years ago and has a 60Amp fuse before the meterbox. I don't know if any work was done on the electrical since it was built (other than the smart meter was installed a months ago). That example is pushing on the limits of the fuse.

I assume the zappi that is installed is configured to back off much earlier than that, but I don't actually know

Where are you getting 15kW?

230V X 60A = 13.8kW. that's assuming a 230V, when it could be 220V (which would be 13.2kW)

im not saying its exactly 15kw, just roughly about 15kw

Electric Ireland say 230V

https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/help/safety/what-is-the-standard-voltage-in-ireland#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20standard%20voltage,volt%20AC%20(frequency%2050Hz).

Although if it is a 63 amp fuse ( I couldn't remember if it's 60 or 60- something) it would be higher alright.

Ah cool.

You should be good to run them all and charge your car all at the same time. Your charger should reduce its charge rate if required. I’m presuming you have a CT clamp set up correctly.

I'm very new to EVs and looking for some help on electricity rates. I've just put a deposit on an ID3, 2022, 58kw battery. I don't do a lot of driving, mainly just town driving, with once a week a 100km round trip. I usually would do around 300/350km a week in total. We have solar panels, with no battery. Getting a Zappi fitted shortly.

At the moment we pay around 26c per unit with electric Ireland and get 21c per unit back for any solar we don't use. Where I'm getting confused is whether I should be changing tariffs for the EV or not. With my driving I'm hoping to only need to charge the car fully once a week. I WFH most days and can plug the car in during the day when we have surplus solar (although I know this essentially costs the 21c we would have gotten back had we not used that surplus).

When I look at day/night rates what's making me question a move is that the peak/daytime rates are so much higher. Yes I could then charge the car a lot cheaper, but if that's only once a week would the savings not be swallowed up by the higher rates the rest of the day when we're most likely to use electricity? Again, because I WFH a lot I tend to use the washing machine/dryer/dishwasher etc during the day esp on bright days when solar can be used. I don't really want to switch to using those at night every time.

I also have the option to charge the car at work once a week, although from looking at the charging system there it's a 7.7kw AC charger and costs 0.22 per kWh to use - again I'm new to this but I think that's a very slow charger?

Sorry that's longer than I expected! Appreciate any help.

Everybody's use case is different. By the sound of it, you probably should stay on the rate you have currently. The best night rates are in and around 14c/kWh which is a difference of 7c/kWh based on your solar. Taking a full charge from 0 to 100% (something you'll never do, but just taken as an indicative measure of your full fill) that's a difference of 7c x 58 = €4 a week.

You can use that figure to see what you'd lose on the roundabouts of a possibly higher day rate taking solar into account.

The work charger is pretty much the same speed as your home Zappi (7.2kWh). And it would be costing you 1c more than your solar microgen rate, so much of a muchness. Assuming you're at work for 7 to 8 hours, it would fully charge your car (again unlikely that you'd be charging from 0 to 100%).

Am I correct in thinking if the car is 58kw battery, I just multiply the 58 by unit cost to get the price per full charge? So at 22c/kw it would be around 12eur to charge.

And then 58 divided by the speed of the charger (7.7kw for example) gives the time it would take to fully charge from 0?

Spot on on both counts. Also worth bearing in mind that you will never be charging from 0 to 100. Firstly because manufacturers recommend you don't routinely charge beyond 80 to 90% and you'll very seldom (probably never) run the car down to 0%. So your charging session at most would be from 10-90% which is 46kWh.

Thank you both, between this and the solar panels it's been a steep learning curve the last month or two!

I've seen on the map for chargers that some chargers locally are AC and some are DC - is that something I need to understand!?

Also, if the home charger charges at around 7kw, if I'm in say my parents house where the won't be a home charger and I use a granny cable what KW would I get from that charger?

If you're only charging fully once a week, have a look at the EI weekender plan with free electricity 8am-11pm. I think BG do something similar but shorter window and usage limits.

I'm in the same boat as you, and it works for us, as the EV consumes by far the most electricity of anything each week.

Have to work out how many units you're using from grid at the moment on the other 6 days and see if it would work out. Most Sundays we do 80kw and far less than that during the rest of the week.

If you're running the house and dishwasher etc during the week from solar, and then charging the EV on Sat/Sun for free (plus anything else you want to run that day), then you could significantly reduce your bills I'd say?

Granny charger will probably be around 2.3kwh.

Yes, AC will be your home charger connector and is up to a max of 7kw on ID3.

If you open your charging port flap you'll see a rubber bung, that once you open it, there's some extra pins, for DC connections. DC chargers are usually significantly faster than AC chargers. I think the 58kw ID3 can DC charge at up to 100kwh, so using a DC charger of over that speed can theoretically* charge your car at 100kwh. These will be the ones you'll want to use if doing longer trips and needing to charge quickly mid-journey.

*actual speed will depend on the heat in the battery when you start, and if the charger is delivering the full load, some charging units will have two cables allowing two vehicles to connect at the same, and split the load, eg. a 150kw DC charger delivers 75Kw to two cars at once.

If you look at the picture two posts above. Under the europe section you will see the two charger connections for AC and DC. CCS2 is the fast charger connection which is basically the AC connection(type 2) with two extra connections at the bottom.

Unless your car is Chademo

Worth going to a few public chargers and testing them. Make sure you have the app all working and know how to unplug and plug in. They all seem to too it a little differently.

Having a fob for different networks is handy. Keep them in the car..