ESB eCars

I wonder if there's also a significant price increase when the grid connection goes above 200kW

Looking at the ESBN connection fees there's only €3k in the difference (presuming everything else stays the same) but I know things like PSO levy increase dramatically

I wish they'd use the Tuam layout for smaller sites, 2x 200kW units with 4 spaces. Basically it's Obama plaza cut in half, much smarter layout

EDIT: Nevermind, the PSO levy is €0 for commercial customers as well from October

I guess it's just Ecars being stingy with the number of spaces they're renting

To be fair I was talking about the site as a whole. 4 plugs can be used simultaneously. However the Tesla shown in the pic, or say my Ioniq 5 can only use 2 of those chargers. If both of the compatible bays are in use, or ICE'd, then I simply have to wait. Typically there's a wall / tyre stop / kerb or even bollard in the way meaning I cant just drive further forward to get the plug to reach.

The problem is that you can adjust the location of the charger to better facilitate those with side-rear charge socket location, but you then have problems with front charging cars (Leaf / Zoe /Niro / Kona). You could make the cables longer, but they weigh more and need inertial reel support. I've seen that recently with Applegreen and the reel pulled the CCS plug so much it stopped charging whilst we were eating lunch. Seen the exact same thing happen a few weeks later at the IEVA meet at Castlebellingham.

I wouldn't want to navigate to a site knowing it was a total gamble if the spaces that were free were the right ones. Makes Ionity even more irresistible with 1 charger per space.

Energia announced a 20% price cut today. Electric Ireland won’t be too far behind. So hopefully we’ll see a reduction, although I doubt it’ll be 20%

Honestly charging in ireland is nothing compared to chargers in the UK and US, its so annoying

This is one of the weirder parts of having multiple companies owned by a single umbrella company

You'd think they'd just be able to give stuff to each other for free, or offer extremely large discounts, but they don't

If Electric Ireland agrees a contract to sell electricity to Ecars, then something of value is leaving EI and has to be accounted for. Similarly Ecars has to record an expense for that electricity in their accounting books

So Ecars is paying EI actual real money for electricity, it isn't just made up monopoly money*

*I'm assuming that Ecars are actually buying electricity from EI, they aren't bound to doing that and can seek better deals elsewhere

Okay, so why doesn't EI sell electricity at an extreme discount to Ecars, say 0.01c/kWh?

Well why would they? They're a profit driven enterprise, their executives bonuses are typically linked to how the business performs so I doubt they'll sell electricity to Ecars at a loss just because they're buddies

I also suspect they'd fall foul of the CRU and some fairly serious competition laws if they did that

Now, sometimes a big company will tolerate some subbrands not making money (e.g. any major streaming service except Netflix). This happened last year when EI elected to return all its profits to customers, ESB Group made money elsewhere

However, this isn't the norm, so don't expect Ecars prices to automatically follow EI prices

So what you're saying is they won't give sweet deals because profit would be affected? That's my point!

They are not the same company. It’s very complex.

The company that operate the toll plaza and the company that operate the services have zero to do with each other, why would one be directly subsidising the other? Completely daft suggestion.

And the revenue from the tolls goes to repay the hundreds of millions in loans still outstanding from building the motorway....

Help please, I'm signing up with ecar connect as PAYG account, but when I get to the pay page (20€ and below 5€ top up) my revolut app says pay 1€ ,I should be paying 20€ to get a ecar card. Am I doing something wrong.

I think the point is that if the top companies incentivise the service station to get more chargers in that more people would then use the road and more toll income would come in

In theory it's a good idea but the toll operator has an agreement with the govt that if they don't get a minimum traffic flow they get paid for the missed revenue so they have no real incentive to raise traffic flow

I suspect ecars is a supplier rather than customer, so they would buy from ESBn as a supplier and not from EI as a customer but could be wrong on that one. If they were buying from EI, EU/state aid/anti competition laws would force market opening and tenders. I know from my time in large energy company supply years ago, extremely large companies were free to either contract with a supply company or buy from the network operator directly.

I guess that goes into the second part of ELM's discussion about how a large customer can interact directly with the market, Ecars is probably big enough to fall into that category

I do think there's some creative accounting going on there. For example I've noticed that the planning applications for charging hubs are from "ESB Innovations Inc" and not Ecars

My guess is Ecars is a subsidiary of that company which is a research arm of ESB group (probably so they can claim the R&D tax credits)

So it's possible Ecars power purchases are similarly being bundled in with other stuff

I wonder how that may affect the prices they're getting

Ecars isn’t an extremely large energy user and not a supplier.