Oct price cap increase likely to push energy bill to over £10k... for a family of 4...

peter3hg

xzibit said:

michaels said:

Mstty said:

MariaAH said:

I have done lots of number crunching today, and with the help of our EV charger hypervolt app, have worked out that approx 1/3 of our electricity kWh is charging EV - based on the 9 months usage, I would estimate that EV charging usage would be approx 4453kWh per annum, approx £1,246 per annum. Even taken this into account, remaining electricity usage still very high.

Interestingly, the month when my son and daughter were in LA for almost 3 weeks (March) the electricity usage was at its highest - that has me totally baffled as no gaming PC nor air con etc?!

Given that 1kwh of charge is approx 4 miles have you done over 16000 miles in 9 months not sure you said you did that much mileage earlier in the post hence why I ask.

Lastly find that crypto mining machine 🤣🤣🤣

The Tapo will help and threaten everyone with an individual bill

It might be 4 miles per kwh from the battery (although that is pretty good, normally only achieved in summer tbh) but from the plug will be about 10% more due to charging (in)efficiency.

This is worrying for electric car owners isn’t it? If you get 4 miles per kWh at best, and soon many people could be paying nearly 60p/kWh if they haven’t managed to fix or get on an EV specific tariff it could cost them more than a petrol car to run. It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p. I know luckily the majority would have managed to fix much less than 60p to charge their cars. 

You would need to be doing 96 MPG for it to be costing you 8p per mile. There are very very few cars that will do that.
To even get to 15p a mile you need to do 51.5 MPG which is better then the vast majority of vehicles do in the real world.

For most with an electric vehicle a time of use tariff of some sort will be cheaper. Mine costs about 2p a mile to run, accounting for the slightly more expensive day rates.

QrizB

xzibit said:

It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p.

That's impressive, 96 mpg. I barely beat that on my motorcycle. What make and model of car are you driving?

wild666

MariaAH said:

isasmurf said:

I'm puzzled as the OP had a smart meter with their previous supplier why they are asking BG for one? Where did the smart meter with the previous supplier go? Do they mean they have a smart meter but it's gone dumb on switching to BG? 

We were with People's Energy and had a Smart Meter (a pretty rubbish one)...we were moved to BG when our supplier collapsed, but according to them we are not suitable for one! It's madness, but what can you do! 

MariaAH said:

Zolablue said:

isasmurf said:

I'm puzzled as the OP had a smart meter with their previous supplier why they are asking BG for one? Where did the smart meter with the previous supplier go? Do they mean they have a smart meter but it's gone dumb on switching to BG? 

We have a Version 1 smart meter fitted to our electricity supply but it only worked with the supplier that installed it. As soon as we changed our supplier the smart meter was (and still is) useless

Yep - exactly our situation!

If or when switching suppliers becomes an option again when stating the type of meter put in "SMART METER" even if it works in dumb mode it's still a smart meter.

xzibit

QrizB said:

xzibit said:

It currently costs me about 8p a mile at the current prices of circa 169.9p.

That's impressive, 96 mpg. I barely beat that on my motorcycle. What make and model of car are you driving?

It’s a Canyon Ultimate. Very economical!!

Okay apparently my cars app is lying to me about the cost. The car is saying 68mpg average at the moment since last reset. I did think it strange electric cars would cost more to run. 

Edit: yes on further inspection the fuel cost was set to a default in the app. That’s depressing. 

markin

Also look into getting solar, £5-6K for a 4kwh peak system making around 3600-4k kwh a year.

ihatetrump

MariaAH said:

10) Yes - son uses an air con unit as his bedroom overheats due to gaming PC (but in summer gaming PC helps heat his room and the rest of upstairs)

@MariaAH - You started this post and initially & I felt sympathy feeling as if I'm in a similar position as you (albeit fortunately I'm on an EDF 3 year fix paying 19p per KwH for Elec and 3.7p for Gas until September 24) - it was only until I got to your post on page 3 and came to the aircon comment that I realised that you're far from being an average family of 4. I invested in ceiling fans years ago in all bedrooms - and treat this as a poor man's A/C - works great for us - although I admit it will do little to cool down an overheating gaming pc!

Maybe time to wean your son off the addictive gaming habit or get him his own sub-meter and treat him as a tenant paying his own rent!

pochase

My experience from having electric cars for three years (Leaf 24KWh and Leaf 30KWh  from early  2016 until late  2019) is that best I was able to get out of it was about 4.5 miles driving mainly at 60mph on the highway.

Normal use in town with aircon/heating and especially preheating or pre aircon was more like 3 to 3.5KWh.

Also I never tried to squeeze the last 0.1 miles by driving extremely careful.

Less than 2 miles per KWh sounds really bad and expensive. That soon will be a cost of over 30p per mile. Going from a current price of 8£ per gallon a car better than 26mpg will beat the cost of the electric car. And that does not take into account the higher cost of a EV, or that it will be very costly to replace the battery.

Good luck with the plans for only electric cars soon. Who will be able to afford this? Don't forget that tariffs like Octopus Go are loss makers and they are still testing the market here.

ispookie666

Adding solar panels might bring your consumption levels down to a national average. 

The computer equipment will be likely the culprit. I would not be surprised if he has a switch, server and a few other power hungry devices. 

I do know my Poe switch and server consume 3kw/day  and they are running at the lowest. 

Mstty

pochase said:

My experience from having electric cars for three years (Leaf 24KWh and Leaf 30KWh  from early  2016 until late  2019) is that best I was able to get out of it was about 4.5 miles driving mainly at 60mph on the highway.

Normal use in town with aircon/heating and especially preheating or pre aircon was more like 3 to 3.5KWh.

Also I never tried to squeeze the last 0.1 miles by driving extremely careful.

Less than 2 miles per KWh sounds really bad and expensive. That soon will be a cost of over 30p per mile. Going from a current price of 8£ per gallon a car better than 26mpg will beat the cost of the electric car. And that does not take into account the higher cost of a EV, or that it will be very costly to replace the battery.

Good luck with the plans for only electric cars soon. Who will be able to afford this? Don't forget that tariffs like Octopus Go are loss makers and they are still testing the market here.

It's good to get real life comparisons and direct comparisons as I did think 1kWh to 1.9 miles was particularly bad👍

peter3hg

pochase said:

My experience from having electric cars for three years (Leaf 24KWh and Leaf 30KWh  from early  2016 until late  2019) is that best I was able to get out of it was about 4.5 miles driving mainly at 60mph on the highway.

Normal use in town with aircon/heating and especially preheating or pre aircon was more like 3 to 3.5KWh.

Also I never tried to squeeze the last 0.1 miles by driving extremely careful.

Less than 2 miles per KWh sounds really bad and expensive. That soon will be a cost of over 30p per mile. Going from a current price of 8£ per gallon a car better than 26mpg will beat the cost of the electric car. And that does not take into account the higher cost of a EV, or that it will be very costly to replace the battery.

Good luck with the plans for only electric cars soon. Who will be able to afford this? Don't forget that tariffs like Octopus Go are loss makers and they are still testing the market here.

Electric cars often get better mileage in town than on a dual carriageway/motorway.
The long term average for my car is 4.7 miles per kWh and that is usually 5 or slightly above in town traffic or slower country roads and more like 4 on A roads and motorways.

Obviously driving style has a big impact on it. A driver who tends to brake late when slowing down or coming to a stop is not going to get the full benefit from the regeneration in town for example.