The Alternative Green Energy Thread
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When do you get your V2H charging station installed?
That now is temporarily on the back burner as apparently there is no signal where I live to operate a Smart meter. The cost of the Wallbox Quasar is £1200 (presumably plus fitting less £500 government grant). Would it be worthwhile on E7 saving about 7.5p/ kWh?
If the installed cost was £1200 (ignoring any battery degradation) I would need to save 16000 kWh to break even on bought in day rate electricity or about 8000 kwh of solar. I am not sure how much solar I would have spare in summer after charging the Leaf and heating water, cooking, TV and base load etc and after we move into the shoulder months there are the ASHPs to feed as well. I have not yet been through a winter with ASHPs but at a rough guess my annual net (after solar contribution) day usage which a battery could potentially cover is about 3000kwh of which about 1800 kwh is November to February. If I was to cover all the day time usage from the EV battery that would only leave an average of 15 kWh/day available for driving those months.
Realistically if I could maybe save 1500 kWh of daytime usage from E7 stored in the battery over this winter period I would save £112. 50
If the sun shone consistently from 1st April to 31st August and I didn’t use the car too much I could potentially save another 900 kWh (average 6 kWh/day) by meeting all the household demand from the battery but the sun doesn’t shine consistently and some days I would empty the battery using the Leaf as a car, so perhaps a summertime saving of 500 kwh at an average (day/night rate) of 12p/kWh might be achievable - £60.
March and September would be somewhere in between- say another £30 over the two months.
The total saving per annum would be of the order of £200. Payback of the Wallbox would take 6 years. Then of course there is the battery degradation to consider - I’m not sure how to express that but maybe 120 cycles per annum for 3000 kwh of a 30 kwh battery? Then there is the warranty issue.
So I am not sure whether it is worth it at this stage. I would welcome any thoughts.Northern Lincolnshire. 7.8 kWp system, (4.2 kw west facing panels , 3.6 kw east facing), Solis inverters, Solar IBoost water heater, Mitsubishi SRK35ZS-S and SRK20ZS-S Wall Mounted Inverter Heat Pumps, ex Nissan Leaf owner)0 -
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Contract hire companies have remarked upon the number of cars that have been returned with the charging cable still inside the sealed bag! Clearly giving someone a tax incentive to lug 200kg of batteries & sundries around for 3 years is crazy ... especially as it's probably using more fuel than the equivalent ICE vehicle.
When do you get your V2H charging station installed?
A plug in hybrid even if not charged is still more efficient than an equivalent ICE
ICE
Hybrid
plug in hybrid with small range
Plug in hybrid with long range
BEV
Jumping from ICE to BEV makes little sense and simply isn't possible to build 100 million full BEVs anytime soon
The best bet for the medium term is plug in hybrids
I think somewhere around the 30-60 mile mark is the sweet spot
Achieving 95%+ annual electric miles but with less cost less mass less battery limited no range problems or charge time problems
BEVs can take the premium market
Long range plug ins 50-100 mile the upper middle market
Medium range plug ins 30-60 miles the mid market
Short range plug ins 10-30 miles the low ends
If the aim is to achieve low FF useage the best bet is plug in hybrids
Building 5 million plug in hybrids that are 90% electric miles is better than building 1 million pure BEVs with 100% electric miles with the same batteries. 450% Vs 100%0 -
Even normal hybrids are good and in some cases better than a BEV. In some countries like China and Germany the marginal production of electricity is from coal at around 800-1000 grams /KWh which means a model 3 will be indirectly emitting more carbon than a Prius
BEVs and plug in hybrids make sense where the grid isn't marginal coal
So France Norway UK etc they make sense
China or Germany they don't make sense right now and probably not for the next 10-15 years (which is about the lifetime of a car)
If it was actually about CO2 and fossil fuels Germany would extend the life of its existing nukes by a decade. Doing that will save 60 million tons of CO2 per year equal to the emmissions of 37.5 million cars0 -
I'm sure the BEV incentives were only ever meant as a 'pump priming attempt' just as the FIT scheme was designed to increase the take-up of RE and was removed when price reductions had made it redundant.
I hope BEV prices do indeed drop in response to increased demand and would therefore welcome reduction or even removal of artificial subsidies.
Its the way the taxes are raised afterwards that will also be an issue.
Various think tanks have put their oar in from road charging, mileage charging, extras taxes per kwh charging (reasons not to have a smart car charger) to even including taxing the free electricity from solar panels.
The last one will have a lot of people crying but again it could be a taxing the rich policy, rich enough to own solar panels, rich enough to own an ev, then pay up.
I dont expect the solar feed in tariff over here to be honoured for the 20 years and expect it to be cut off at some point (like the doomed RHI scheme over here). Likewise I suspect early BEV adopters might get away with no road tax for the lifetime of the car but might get hit in future and will certainly get hit on the charging at some point.
Wait until you see the crying if we get hit by taxes per CO2 of electricity generation...
death and taxes....0 -
The point being made was that the scheme was withdrawn for new installations. Contractual terms for earlier installations were fixed at time of joining scheme (and RPI linking was part of those)Albeit FIT was inflation linked for a 20 or 25 year period.;)NE Derbyshire.4kWp S Facing 17.5deg slope (dormer roof).24kWh of Pylontech batteries with Lux controller BEV : Hyundai Ioniq50 -
This is the big question for the future.Its the way the taxes are raised afterwards that will also be an issue......
At the moment EV owners are fortunate to be in a group with cyclists & pedestrians who use the roads paid for by ICE vehicles for nothing.
At some point EVs are going to have to pay their way. Taxing electricity isn't an option because there's no way of differentiating between what goes into a vehicle & what is consumed domestically. Increasing VED won't work because it would unfairly penalise those with very low mileages. That leaves road pricing as the only option. Every vehicle will have to be fitted with a box & pay per mile travelled. It may even help reduce congestion if smart pricing was introduced at some point.
I really don't like the idea of 'the freedom of the open road' being replaced by 'Big brother is watching you', but I really can't see any other option.
Never mind, I suppose there's always the option of the newly nationalised railways which will of course run on time & at speeds of 250 mph & with no overcrowding ... can't wait to try them!!:rotfl::rotfl:4kWp (black/black) - Sofar Inverter - SSE(141°) - 30° pitch - North LincsInstalled June 2013 - PVGIS = 3400Sofar ME3000SP Inverter & 5 x Pylontech US2000B Plus & 3 x US2000C Batteries - 19.2kWh0 -
I don’t contribute anything with my Golf or the wife’s Picanto and only £30 a year for my Merc. Some Tesla, the odd Leaf and all IPace owners are going to have a hefty VED bill.
At the moment EV owners are fortunate to be in a group with cyclists & pedestrians who use the roads paid for by ICE vehicles for nothing.
Except maybe if electricity from public chargers attracts a tax.At some point EVs are going to have to pay their way. Taxing electricity isn't an option because there's no way of differentiating between what goes into a vehicle & what is consumed domestically.Increasing VED won't work because it would unfairly penalise those with very low mileages.
It already does. I had a Toyota MR2 for 9 years and never did more than 1k miles pa in it. I also have an MX5 sitting in the garage. It would only have occasional use but I would pay as much to tax that for one year as the other four cars for 10 years, so it is SORNed. I have always argued for VED to be abolished and the tax added to fuel - it’s fair as those who use the roads and have the high CO2 cars pay the most.Northern Lincolnshire. 7.8 kWp system, (4.2 kw west facing panels , 3.6 kw east facing), Solis inverters, Solar IBoost water heater, Mitsubishi SRK35ZS-S and SRK20ZS-S Wall Mounted Inverter Heat Pumps, ex Nissan Leaf owner)0 -
This is the big question for the future.
At the moment EV owners are fortunate to be in a group with cyclists & pedestrians who use the roads paid for by ICE vehicles for nothing.
At some point EVs are going to have to pay their way. Taxing electricity isn't an option because there's no way of differentiating between what goes into a vehicle & what is consumed domestically. Increasing VED won't work because it would unfairly penalise those with very low mileages. That leaves road pricing as the only option. Every vehicle will have to be fitted with a box & pay per mile travelled. It may even help reduce congestion if smart pricing was introduced at some point.
I really don't like the idea of 'the freedom of the open road' being replaced by 'Big brother is watching you', but I really can't see any other option.
Never mind, I suppose there's always the option of the newly nationalised railways which will of course run on time & at speeds of 250 mph & with no overcrowding ... can't wait to try them!!:rotfl::rotfl:
It's either monthly road tax or per mile useage
The monthly VED while unfair on low mileage users but it is easier to do it also will reduce the number of second cars and people who do very very low mileage which is probably a good thing
Something like £50/month road tax on BEVs would cover the lost fuel taxes without the need for a central government IT system to track 35 million cars every second of every day. Government hasn't had a great track record with big IT projects not to mention the cost in energy and resources to do all that monitoring just easier to charge a monthly or yearly road useage £50pm/£600pa no additional infrastructure just BEVs pay more road tax to cover the lost fuel tax
Don't see it being a big issue for at least the next 5 years or perhaps even the next 10 years depending on how fast BEVs and plug ins develop. Certainly firstly the subsidises will be removed before taxes are imposed.0 -
Or perhaps a mileage tax per mile at 10p a mile paid at the yearly MOT
So if you've clocked up 1,000 miles you'd be charged antax of £100 of you've clocked up 10,000 miles an MOT tax of £1,000 etc
But cars mileage will have to be tamper proof or near enough so as to avoid people faking it as exists now especially with taxi drivers cars0
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