Buying another BEV(maybe)

unkel · 16-01-2019 6:41pm

Or eBay

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 11:21am

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

KCross · 17-01-2019 11:39am

Zenith74 wrote: »

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

Main reason for having two would be convenience and night rate electricity.

unkel · 17-01-2019 11:47am

Zenith74 wrote: »

first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm

You are paying 100% too much for the electricity charging the first car. With average annual mileage, that adds up to a few hundred euro per year to your bill!

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 12:06pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

On charging of the two EVs, I put in two chargers and tbh would not bother if doing it again. We tend to leave a long 10m lead plugged into one of the chargers, first car home at 5pm plugs into it and the days driving is replenished by 9-10pm when you're going for a walk or locking up, so just swap the cable over to the other car and leave it going over night.

Obviously depends on the car and driving habits, but two 3.3kW charging cars should be grand like this, if one is 6.6kW then you're 100% covered.

There's no grant for a second charger, so a good few quid to be saved by not putting one in.

The point of two electric cars would be use night rate as much as possible. I don't want to be using full rate electricity all the time. In that case it might be better to get rid of the night meter

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 12:07pm

KCross wrote: »

Main reason for having two would be convenience and night rate electricity.

I guess my point is just that I put in two, thinking it would be more convenient, but in reality it's been more convenient to just leave the single long cable out, rather than having two knocking around the place and having to be put away when not in-use (they're both untethered).

If you're doing night-rate then that certainly changes things.

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 12:25pm

Perfect scenario would be a single charger but solar PV, one car would always be at the house on/off during the day so let it charge off the PV and then at night just top up the other...long term plan, if I just won the lotto :-)

unkel · 17-01-2019 12:33pm

I got an extra 15m cable and leave it permanently connected for maximum convenience. The plug hangs in the bushes on the side of my driveway right beside where the charge port of my car is

If your two cars have fixed parking spots (more or less), you can do that * 2

KCross · 17-01-2019 12:34pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

I guess my point is just that I put in two, thinking it would be more convenient, but in reality it's been more convenient to just leave the single long cable out, rather than having two knocking around the place and having to be put away when not in-use (they're both untethered).

If you're doing night-rate then that certainly changes things.

Pretty much everyone with an EV should have night rate unless you have really low mileage or unusual charging patterns.
Charge an EV once or twice a week and it pays to go to night rate.

If you have two EV's you are screwing yourself if you dont have night rate.

unkel · 17-01-2019 12:35pm

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Perfect scenario would be a single charger but solar PV, one car would always be at the house on/off during the day so let it charge off the PV and then at night just top up the other...long term plan, if I just won the lotto :-)

Investment to do all that is not that much. 6 grand for a large 4kwp PV setup, including battery and Zappi charger. And the payback on it is far higher than on any savings account.

ELM327 · 17-01-2019 12:50pm

Shefwedfan wrote: »

The point of two electric cars would be use night rate as much as possible. I don't want to be using full rate electricity all the time. In that case it might be better to get rid of the night meter

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.

That's a mad decision.

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 1:14pm

ELM327 wrote: »

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.

That's a mad decision.

Oh I am not going to.

I think I seen it mentioned you need a high percentage at night rate to make the extra standing charge worthwhile.

So if you are constantly charging during the day then you are paying extra for standing charge and paying extra for day rate versus standard rate.

I am sure someone could work it out....:P

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 1:14pm

unkel wrote: »

Investment to do all that is not that much. 6 grand for a large 4kwp PV setup, including battery and Zappi charger. And the payback on it is far higher than on any savings account.

6k for the PV and 6k for the car. That's eating into the VW ID budget:P

unkel · 17-01-2019 1:17pm

Shefwedfan wrote: »

I think I seen it mentioned you need a high percentage at night rate to make the extra standing charge worthwhile.

Nope. Just 3 units on the nightrate per night for the average household and you'll break even. In most households you'd pretty much get that from the background usage (fridge/freezer, lights, TV / kettle used after 11PM, electric shower / kettle used before 9AM, etc.)

Everything on top of that is half price basically. Charge your EV just once a week and you are already well into the profit

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 1:19pm

Sorry going off track, I have night rate and currently I am running very close to 50/50 between night/day.

If I did go another BEV I would like to increase that by charging the second car at night....

Of course longer term investment is PV which would mean I could do some charging during the day

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 1:46pm

ELM327 wrote: »

Getting rid of the night meter means that instead of some @ full rate and some @ night rate, you have all @ full rate,.

That's a mad decision.

The daytime rate is slightly higher when you have the night meter, so it's not quite as simple as that. This discussion got me thinking about a night meter again, if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point

) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97 and my standing charge would go up by €3.81 a month.

Hard to make the next calculation to see what would happen if I moved the car charging to the night rate as I do not track car charging separately to the oven etc. But taking an educated guess I'd say my consumption bill would go down to about €70. Factoring in the increased standing charge it would be a saving of about €250 per annum.

I see the tender for smart meters was awarded this week, would make this much simpler

OK I'll stop derailing your thread sorry Shefwedfan

unkel · 17-01-2019 1:49pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97

Nope. You don't know how much you are using at the night rate. Probably significantly enough for your consumption bill to go down a few euro, not up. Even if you made no changes to your behaviour. See my previous post for the explanation.

Your standing charge would go up alright, by about €50 per year.

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 2:02pm

unkel wrote: »

You don't know how much you are using at the night rate.

My energy monitor suggests otherwise. I wouldn't have posted such specific numbers if I was picking them out of the air

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 2:20pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

The daytime rate is slightly higher when you have the night meter, so it's not quite as simple as that. This discussion got me thinking about a night meter again, if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97 and my standing charge would go up by €3.81 a month.

Hard to make the next calculation to see what would happen if I moved the car charging to the night rate as I do not track car charging separately to the oven etc. But taking an educated guess I'd say my consumption bill would go down to about €70. Factoring in the increased standing charge it would be a saving of about €250 per annum.

I see the tender for smart meters was awarded this week, would make this much simpler

OK I'll stop derailing your thread sorry Shefwedfan

No worries about derailing. When I put in night meter I swapped a lot of habits. Washing machine/dishwasher etc all had timers on them so they go on at nighttime maybe 98% of the time.

Anything I could move to night rate I have. Even the auto hoover kicks in at night time to charge and then hoovers everything and is ready in morning:D

Alkers · 17-01-2019 2:22pm

kceire wrote:

No, We bought the cars for â‚¬2k as a whole.

How did you manage that?

unkel · 17-01-2019 2:38pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

My energy monitor suggests otherwise. I wouldn't have posted such specific numbers if I was picking them out of the air

What energy monitor do you use? Does it monitor the whole house consumption? How many units does it tell you that you use during the 9 hours of night rate?

KCross · 17-01-2019 2:53pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

The daytime rate is slightly higher when you have the night meter, so it's not quite as simple as that. This discussion got me thinking about a night meter again, if I was to get a night rate meter and make no changes to my usage behaviour (pretty stupid, but just to illustrate the point ) my consumption bill for September18 would go from €94.50 to €97 and my standing charge would go up by €3.81 a month.

Hard to make the next calculation to see what would happen if I moved the car charging to the night rate as I do not track car charging separately to the oven etc. But taking an educated guess I'd say my consumption bill would go down to about €70. Factoring in the increased standing charge it would be a saving of about €250 per annum.

I see the tender for smart meters was awarded this week, would make this much simpler

OK I'll stop derailing your thread sorry Shefwedfan

The energy monitors can be unreliable. The figures speak for themselves though....

When switching to day/night metering the day rate goes up ~1c/kWh.
The standing charge goes up ~€45/yr.

The difference between day/night rate is about 8c/kWh (for me, 16.41/8.12)

To make back the extra standing charge you need to use 562 (€45/8c) units on night rate per year. Thats just 1.6 units per day on average.

Now, add in the background load that you would have at night time anyway... say 250W (being conservative), thats 2.25kWh over the 9hr night rate for that alone so the extra standing charge is already paid for before you make any changes to your habits.

The bit outstanding then is the extra 1c for the day rate. Lets say you currently are around average for the country and use 3500kWh/yr with 25% of that at night(250W background load). The extra 1c on the other 75% would cost you an extra €26/yr which equates to 328 night time units which is 1 extra unit you need to use at night to pay for that..... hence why people generally round it up and say at 3 units (1.6+1) on night rate you are covered.

Add in a car, put a dryer or dishwasher on delay timer etc will all save you extra money.

A washing machine will use a unit, a dryer about 4 units, a dishwasher about 1.5 units and the kicker.... an EV about 20 units (depending on mileage of course)!!

unkel · 17-01-2019 3:17pm

An EV doing 20k km per year with 15kWh per 100km consumption, uses 20000*(15/100) = 3000 kWh per year

This saves 3000 * (16c day rate if you don't have a night rate meter - 8c night rate) = €270 per year minus the extra €50 standing charge = €220

So even if you plug out your whole house at night for 9 hours, have zero background consumption and only charge your car at night (nothing else), your savings are very significant. Anyone who owns an EV is an imbecile if they don't get a night rate meter

KCross · 17-01-2019 3:19pm

unkel wrote: »

Anyone who owns an EV is an imbecile if they don't get a night rate meter

Tell us what you really think!

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 3:59pm

unkel wrote: »

What energy monitor do you use? Does it monitor the whole house consumption? How many units does it tell you that you use during the 9 hours of night rate?

I'm using the Efergy Engage (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00G5DZK8I/ref=pe_3187911_189395841_TE_dp_1) with the pick-up wrapped around the output side of the ESB meter in the meter cabinet (so yeah whole house consumption). Have to say I love seeing the data from this thing and would highly recommend it to anybody interested in all this stuff. The app/portal lets you see your live usage, hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly reports and download to CSV to crunch the numbers yourself, like I did here.

Cannot say how accurate it is, but it shows stable readings and turning on things like a 150W fan adds 150W to the live reading within seconds, same goes for 3.3kW/6.6kW car charger, oven, kettle etc. I would say the accuracy is more than sufficient for the average home owner and vastly superior to having nothing, if you're into this kind of thing :cool:

For the month of September the average nighttime (00:00-09:00) consumption was 2.6kWh.

KCross · 17-01-2019 4:03pm

KCross wrote: »

...hence why people generally round it up and say at 3 units (1.6+1) on night rate you are covered.

Zenith74 wrote: »

For the month of September the average nighttime (00:00-09:00) consumption was 2.6kWh.

QED

Get a night meter!

Zenith74 · 17-01-2019 4:07pm

KCross wrote: »

QED

Get a night meter!

LOL.

To be fair I wasn't asking if I should get a night meter or not, the savings are pretty obvious in the figures. I was initially just commenting on one vs. two chargers from a convenience point of view, and then just providing some hard numbers on the effect of a nighttime meter.

Nedved85 · 17-01-2019 4:18pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

I'm using the Efergy Engage (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00G5DZK8I/ref=pe_3187911_189395841_TE_dp_1) with the pick-up wrapped around the output side of the ESB meter in the meter cabinet (so yeah whole house consumption). Have to say I love seeing the data from this thing and would highly recommend it to anybody interested in all this stuff. The app/portal lets you see your live usage, hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly reports and download to CSV to crunch the numbers yourself, like I did here.

Cannot say how accurate it is, but it shows stable readings and turning on things like a 150W fan adds 150W to the live reading within seconds, same goes for 3.3kW/6.6kW car charger, oven, kettle etc. I would say the accuracy is more than sufficient for the average home owner and vastly superior to having nothing, if you're into this kind of thing :cool:

For the month of September the average nighttime (00:00-09:00) consumption was 2.6kWh.

Is it not about time that electrical companies provide this information to users as part of their service with a smart meter of some sort.

Knowledge is power

KCross · 17-01-2019 4:21pm

Nedved85 wrote: »

Is it not about time that electrical companies provide this information to users as part of their service with a smart meter of some sort.

Knowledge is power

Its on the way. Smart meters being rolled out at huge cost (€1B... yes billion) to everyone over the next few years.

https://www.cru.ie/smart-meters/

Shefwedfan · 17-01-2019 4:21pm

Zenith74 wrote: »

I'm using the Efergy Engage (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00G5DZK8I/ref=pe_3187911_189395841_TE_dp_1) with the pick-up wrapped around the output side of the ESB meter in the meter cabinet (so yeah whole house consumption). Have to say I love seeing the data from this thing and would highly recommend it to anybody interested in all this stuff. The app/portal lets you see your live usage, hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly reports and download to CSV to crunch the numbers yourself, like I did here.

Cannot say how accurate it is, but it shows stable readings and turning on things like a 150W fan adds 150W to the live reading within seconds, same goes for 3.3kW/6.6kW car charger, oven, kettle etc. I would say the accuracy is more than sufficient for the average home owner and vastly superior to having nothing, if you're into this kind of thing :cool:

For the month of September the average nighttime (00:00-09:00) consumption was 2.6kWh.

I bought an Owl, 10 quid off adverts....does the same job :P

Buying another BEV(maybe)

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