EV Discussion thread

1961Nick

Grumpy_chap said:

Martyn1981 said:

Not sure about your 'too hot to sleep' comment, I think you may be taking the issue a tad too far, you can run the HP at a lower target temp at night.

I am not sure how I can put heat in the house at night to use as a battery.

In our house, we will have the temperature at 19 - 20 degC in the evening.
The gas CH switches off about an hour before bed.
The coldest the temperature drops to overnight is around 13 - 14 degC (even the current cold snap).  We have a min-max thermometer.
The heating will switch back on about an hour before we get up.  This is probably still after cheap rate electricity would have finished.  We get to about 18 degC in the morning heating cycle.
If we are out, the heating is off during the day.  If I am home alone, the heating is off during the day and I use a local electric heater (250 W) in the study.
The heating then comes back on late afternoon, so we have 19 degC again for the evening.

Using an ASHP at night would only be heating the house when I am sleeping.  Not convinced I'd get to save any energy / money.

It works for us because the heat pump ramp up (poor COP) is done during the off -peak period. By the time peak rate starts & the batteries take over, it's running at a sensible COP. The CH also has less work to do so I can use a lower flow temperature & benefit from better condensing.

Martyn1981

Grumpy_chap said:

Martyn1981 said:

Not sure about your 'too hot to sleep' comment, I think you may be taking the issue a tad too far, you can run the HP at a lower target temp at night.

I am not sure how I can put heat in the house at night to use as a battery.

Hiya, I gave a short list of ideas and suggestions in my last post, but there will be many others I'm sure. If you don't like the idea of heating any of the air space during the night, then think more along the lines of thermal stores, thermal mass etc..

Martyn1981

Just watched this vid from Fully Charged, and thought it was a pretty decent run through of some of the second hand BEV's out there. Not meant to be comprehensive, but might be something worth suggesting as a starting point if someone asks you about 'cheaper' BEV's.

The BEST Used Electric Cars To Buy Right Now!

Grumpy_chap

Martyn1981 said:

The BEST Used Electric Cars To Buy Right Now!

Didn't have time to watch the whole vid but noted that the iPace is included in the list of models covered.  There certainly are some very good offers on used iPace at present, with finance incentive and home-charger solutions as part of the package.

Not sure if we can buy a used EV though as Elon is feeling a bit hard-up and his family might suffer a tough Christmas if we don't all order a new Tesla:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63963239

JKenH

Somewhere else chipping away at EV ownership. This won’t affect many people on this board but, in the past, having booked a garage at Donington Park, I have been fortunate enough to be able to get enough of a ‘free’ granny charge to get me back home but now MSV want £50 for the privilege (on top of the £100 garage rental!). 

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

 in the past, having booked a garage at Donington Park, I have been fortunate enough to be able to get enough of a ‘free’ granny charge to get me back home 

That £50 per day is probably more than you can draw from a 3-pin plug.  3kW x 12 hours = 36kWh. 
The rate is therefore set to be punitive.
I suspect this is less to do with the cost of charging and more to do with the capacity of the installed infrastructure within the site.  If one or two people plug a car in all day, that can likely be tolerated. If lots of people do it, that is likely more than the site network is designed for, bearing in mind all the kettles and such like will still be in use.

Petriix

Grumpy_chap said:

JKenH said:

 in the past, having booked a garage at Donington Park, I have been fortunate enough to be able to get enough of a ‘free’ granny charge to get me back home 

That £50 per day is probably more than you can draw from a 3-pin plug.  3kW x 12 hours = 36kWh. 
The rate is therefore set to be punitive.
I suspect this is less to do with the cost of charging and more to do with the capacity of the installed infrastructure within the site.  If one or two people plug a car in all day, that can likely be tolerated. If lots of people do it, that is likely more than the site network is designed for, bearing in mind all the kettles and such like will still be in use.

I agree that it's punitive, but I sincerely doubt there's such a logical rationale. It seems more ideological to me.

I tend to vote with my feet with this kind of thing. I don't shop at Lidl since they removed the free charging. I suspect they made far more in profit from the £200 per month I used to spend than the £10 worth of electricity I used.

JKenH

I would hope it isn’t ideological as it would be good to see more EVs like TM3Ps and Taycans on track days. 

Garages are also equipped with 16amp commando sockets so someone could in theory charge at 4kw over 8 hours (32kWh) with an Ohme charging lead but that’s unlikely to happen and it’s still £1.56/kWh. I think they are trying to deter someone like me with a granny charger using 8(hours) x 2.3 (kw) “stealing” around 20kWh of juice worth say £6.

There isn’t that much choice of motor racing circuits and all the major ones (except Silverstone and Thruxton) in England are MSV owned. It’s a captive market so tends to encourage profiteering. 

I think destination chargers at places like IKEA, big retail parks and attractions like theme parks will be a lucrative source of income as more people without home charging buy BEVs. Is it not worth paying a bit extra to charge while you shop/are entertained rather than go on a detour and wait at a rapid so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see fast chargers at these locations charging similar prices to rapids. If you are going to Alton Towers for the day you either need a charge to get home again or you don’t so why not charge there rather than break your journey with a rapid?

silverwhistle

1961Nick said:

Intelligent Octopus is 6p/kWh more expensive than the price cap - 40p v. 34p. With some load shifting to the 6 hour off peak period, the extra cost of daytime electricity can easily be recovered.

I found that fairly easy to achieve with an average somewhere around 17p, as a low mileage driver, no heat pump and solar which even at this time of year occasionally helps on the hot water front - today one and a half kWh.

The GCH heating hardly gets used as I have a wood burner in the lounge, and on Martyn's point about thermal mass find a heavy cast iron stove and a chimney breast result in the lounge being 5 degrees warmer than the kitchen first thing in the morning.  Presumably anybody with a heat pump would have zonal heating and can avoid bedrooms getting too hot if it is run overnight? 

Petriix

For me it's almost the opposite. I would be actively deterred from going to a location with extortionate charging while I'm drawn to places where I can charge for free. 7kW is ~£2.50 per hour. That's nothing compared to the profit of having a customer on site.