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Electric Cars.


Cuban8
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Our valley in Snowdonia, as well as others locally and nationally, a ripe for solar power exploitation.

 

Only a few houses in the valley have solar panels on the roofes, perhaps a proper government backed scheme to exploit the situation is needed, as it is officially a "poor area" money wise.

 

There is a vineyard just outside the village.

 

Joined up thinking needs to take place but Me thinks a change of government needed for that to happen.

 

Charging ev cars during the day is not liked....

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2 hours ago, MattyB said:

 

Good to hear ?. We know that our battery won't be big enough to soak up all the excesss solar on good days, but we will have an EV within 18 months whcih will do that job whenever it is on the drive.

 

I started out with the same idea, as we have two EV.  However, at the moment we get a four hour window with Octopus during which electricity costs us 5p/kWh (0030 to 0430).  We charge the cars in this window.  If we generate excess electricity during the day Octopus pay us 4.1p/kWh.  So the difference of 0.9p/kWh makes it hardly worth the effort of linking up the granny charger for a few hours.  Our Pod Point charger isn't intelligent in the way that a Zappi charger is so its a manual process for us to manage EV charging.  Our deal with Octopus is up for renewal in October and the 5p/kWh rate will certainly increase.  That will likely make hooking up the charger worthwhile. 

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Been in a garage today (main dealer) with a faulty battery in new MPV stuck on a maintenance lift.

 

The garage has already been waiting for the replacement battery from the manufacturers (who they represent) for 6 weeks with no indication of new delivery date.

Not a good representation for electric vehicles.

 

Personally electric is no use to me as I tow a 1.5t caravan with my car.

Electric cars towing are not much use as the range is hopeless and there is no way to charge at the end of the journey.

Charging points are not big enough for car / caravan combinations and service stations don't have electric points at caravan parking points.

Hybrid may be possible but way to expensive to get something useable.

 

I will be sticking to my 2004 diesel estate thank you very much.

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3 hours ago, Tim Kearsley said:

I started out with the same idea, as we have two EV.  However, at the moment we get a four hour window with Octopus during which electricity costs us 5p/kWh (0030 to 0430).  We charge the cars in this window.  If we generate excess electricity during the day Octopus pay us 4.1p/kWh.  So the difference of 0.9p/kWh makes it hardly worth the effort of linking up the granny charger for a few hours.  Our Pod Point charger isn't intelligent in the way that a Zappi charger is so its a manual process for us to manage EV charging.  Our deal with Octopus is up for renewal in October and the 5p/kWh rate will certainly increase.  That will likely make hooking up the charger worthwhile. 

 

Yes, I am not sure that tariff is even available to join at thsi point. As we don't yet have an EV I am looking at the Octopus Outbound tariff which give 7.5p/kWh for export which is the best you can get at the moment by some margin, so whilst we are EV-less, it seems the logical choice. The other factor is that you will pay more in the day for anything you do use from the grid if you have a time of use tariff, so calculating the overall best choice is somewhat "fun". I suspect I will end up with a very complicated spreadsheet once our array starts creating electiricty, and data!

Edited by MattyB
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On 04/05/2022 at 20:18, IDD15 said:

Seems I goofed trying to upload the pics from Fully Charged, quite how I could see them and everyone else couldn't seems a bit bizarre. So anyway we'll try again one at a time.

 

First up my dream future model carrier, the VW IDBuzz. Given the length of the queues just to sit in it I think it will be a bit popular.

 

idd

vwbuzz1.jpg

 

 

One of the interesting things on the Buzz is that the socket is dual-direction.  The car can act as a storage battery for your house electrics.

Definitely on my short list once our Mitsubishi PHEV has reached end of life.

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On 10/05/2022 at 12:04, Andy Meade said:

 

One of the interesting things on the Buzz is that the socket is dual-direction.  The car can act as a storage battery for your house electrics.

Definitely on my short list once our Mitsubishi PHEV has reached end of life.

 

V2L (vehicle to load) and V2G (vehicle to grid) are super important technologies, but the industry seems to be very slow to roll them out. The only off the shelf option for V2G is are in Nissans which use the CHAdeMO charging std; that allows a lot more communciationbetween the car and load (necesary to protect your battery in the long term), but doesn't charge as fast. CCS (the most common fast charging std) doesn't have that capability by default, but it is possible to do as these clever Dutch types in Utrecht have proved. Get on with it manufacturers...

 

 

Edited by MattyB
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Given that new builds apparently have to have an EV charger, I don't understand why the government don't go further and mandate they also have solar panels and storage batteries, where appropriate. This would probably cost less than £10k per house, negligible when new builds where I live start at around £400k. Surely that would significantly reduce the grid's average gas consumption? 

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2 hours ago, Trevor Crook said:

Given that new builds apparently have to have an EV charger, I don't understand why the government don't go further and mandate they also have solar panels and storage batteries, where appropriate. This would probably cost less than £10k per house, negligible when new builds where I live start at around £400k. Surely that would significantly reduce the grid's average gas consumption? 

£10.000 you wish !, looking at the whole package, panels, battery's and charger probably more like £30.000 plus,,,and another £30.000 for an electric car,,,

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Given that new builds apparently have to have an EV charger, I don't understand why the government don't go further and mandate they also have solar panels and storage batteries, where appropriate. This would probably cost less than £10k per house, negligible when new builds where I live start at around £400k. Surely that would significantly reduce the grid's average gas consumption? 

 

I wasn't wishing, I remembered what this guy said on this video, which admittedly is a year or so old.

About 14 minutes in, he says a solar array and battery come in around 8-9k. Even if this is a bit light, in commercial volumes I would expect 10k to be realistic.

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We've just installed solar PV. 14 panels, inverter and 5.2 KWh batteries. The effect on our consumption from the grid has been astonishing, often down to 1 or 2 KWh a day, and we are heavy users, something like 11000KWh annually. I also run an EV. doing about 12K annually. I return on average 4.8miles/per KWh. The PV installation cost just over £11,000.  I live in the south of England. My challenge is persuade my EV charging set up to allow me to charge during the daytime. For example on Monday early afternoon the panels were producing just over 4Kw over 3 of which were going to the grid instead of into my car ?. Prices of solar PV installations have dropped substantially. I first looked in 2008 8 panels on one roof only plus inverter, battery storage was still in the future £12,000

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2 hours ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

£10.000 you wish !, looking at the whole package, panels, battery's and charger probably more like £30.000 plus,,,and another £30.000 for an electric car,,,

Well we've just installed a 4kW PV array, inverter and 5 kWh battery for under £10k.  The charger cost around £500.  Would you like to tell us where your figure of £30k comes from or was it plucked out of thin air?  I really wish we could stick to something vaguely factual.

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4 hours ago, Martin Harris - Moderator said:

The principle of using the vehicle battery as off grid storage looks great for the environment at first sight but I wonder if the additional cycles have any significant effect on battery life?  Has anyone costed out this aspect?

Yes. Nissan and Cranfield have been working on V2G for quite some time and the conclusion was because of the quite small amounts of power taken and the fact that the EV battery is carefully managed by the V2G system battery life was not degraded and was (counter intuitively) enhanced.

 

BBC article

 

There have been quite a few V2G projects in the UK since the above article was published and I’ve not seen anything to suggest Nissan vehicles taking part have experienced problems with their drive batteries as a result of these projects.

 

idd

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9 hours ago, Tim Kearsley said:

Well we've just installed a 4kW PV array, inverter and 5 kWh battery for under £10k.  The charger cost around £500.  Would you like to tell us where your figure of £30k comes from or was it plucked out of thin air?  I really wish we could stick to something vaguely factual.

Fact ! the price of my 20 x300 watt panels in 2018,  in France 18.000€,,,no battery's or plug for a car, we also looked at the price of a Fiat 500 'red' 180 kilometre range ( you wish )  two weeks ago, 26.500€ !.

Edited by Paul De Tourtoulon
2 weeks
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Wow, looks like prices of home generation/ storage in France is much higher than here in the UK, for whatever reason.

Presumably that's the smaller battery 500 - the 40kWh version has a WLTP range of around 200 miles, although this equates to about 160 in real world use.

Most cars, electric and combustion, don't readily achieve their WLTP figures, although the Hyundai Kona, Kia e-Niro and Soul seem to get close.

 

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16 hours ago, Martin Harris - Moderator said:

The principle of using the vehicle battery as off grid storage looks great for the environment at first sight but I wonder if the additional cycles have any significant effect on battery life?  Has anyone costed out this aspect?

 

Of course it is likely to have some effect, and a full financial analysis would be handy (but pretty hard to do at this point, at least from the data avaialbe to us as private individuals). However, given the larger battery sizes in play in the newer EVs (frequently 60-80 KWh usable, often more) and the incredibly low C ratings of discharge we are talking about for V2L/V2G use, this should have a pretty small effect. Any negative impact on the EV cycle life will also be offset by the fact you won't need a 2-4KWh domestic battery, and the avoided costs of using premium electricity iof you are on a time of use tariff.

Edited by MattyB
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1 hour ago, Rich Griff said:

Hyundai, Kia, hope it's just the ice cars that are having fire problems...

 

Why do you post this without any link for context and add your own (entirely invalid) FUD-inducing question? Anyone who reads what has been published can see this is nothing to do with the powertrain, it is the ABS system that is at fault...

 

"These vehicles all use the same faulty component, called the Hydraulic Electronic Control Unit (HECU), that’s part of the anti-lock braking system (ABS), according to documents Kia provided to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The component is manufactured by Mando, a major automotive supplier. Neither automaker has determined the cause of the fires."

 

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/park-recalled-hyundai-kia-vehicles-outside-due-to-fire-risk-a1002120529/

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Matty, there was in fact a fire related recall on the Kona electric a couple of years ago.

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2021/02/25/hyundai-recalls-electric-cars-due-to-battery-fire-risk#:~:text=Hyundai will recall 82%2C000 electric,well as the Ioniq Electric.

 

Although this article doesn't mention it, I think there were a couple of dozen fires worldwide.  Hyundai have done the prudent thing and issued a recall to sort it, and its not a factor that would put me off buying an EV. They are still rather pricey, and the charging infrastructure is still pretty rubbish, but I'll get one sometime soon hopefully. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Trevor Crook said:

Wow, looks like prices of home generation/ storage in France is much higher than here in the UK, for whatever reason.

Presumably that's the smaller battery 500 - the 40kWh version has a WLTP range of around 200 miles, although this equates to about 160 in real world use.

Most cars, electric and combustion, don't readily achieve their WLTP figures, although the Hyundai Kona, Kia e-Niro and Soul seem to get close.

 

Fiat  51 klw Red 500 this is what Fiat announce,,,,

 

190 km en mode électrique, that's 120 miles !!!! nooo 200 milos

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On 09/05/2022 at 17:10, Andy Gates said:

The garage has already been waiting for the replacement battery from the manufacturers (who they represent) for 6 weeks with no indication of new delivery date.

Not a good representation for electric vehicles.

Specious argument. Supply chain issues are a fact of life across all industries at the moment, the fact that it's an electric vehicle makes no difference. 

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