EVs and solar panels

Having an ICE car is not beneficial unless you have an oil field in the back garden.

It's incorrect

Going on public charging alone is probably the hardest way to own an EV, but it can be done (and has been done by a few people here) and can be done for a cost generally lower than diesel. You sometimes need to sign up to monthly payment plans to avail of cheaper rates, but I'm fairly certain if I opened a petrol station and offered a significant discount for a monthly fee I'd have ever taxi and van driver biting my hand off 😂

Home charging is the most convenient way to own an EV. Just plug in when you need to and charge overnight. More suppliers are moving away from night rates to shorter EV charging times which give 3-4 hours at a very low price. This is typically enough to add several hundred kilometres of range so is likely enough for most users

Adding solar panels into the mix is the best way to own an EV IMO. It's hard to beat free fuel and that's exactly what solar panels give you. I've been tracking my driving and charging in the thread below, but the tldr version is I'm getting usually more than 60% of my driving this year from solar power, even in the miserable summer we've been having

For September, I've yet to charge the car from the grid

Solar Panels and a home charger is the optimum solution (I didn't pay to charge my car in July or so far in September for example). I charge off Solar when I can and then fill the car battery on the cheap night rate when I know I've a longer journey ahead.

Having an EV with a home charger but without Solar is still excellent (as I did for 1.5 years in a BEV and 2 previous years in a PHEV), just make sure you're on top of your electricity tariff to make sure you've a cheap charging time during the night.

Having an EV without a home charger would be more difficult I'd imagine, I see 5 or 6 ID4's with on street parking within a KM of my house and they just seem to take turns on the closest ESB AC charger (signing up to a subscription in this scenario to reduce the cost would be advised). But you still have the advantage of driving a comfortable, smooth, fast, cheaper to run EV.

You can't really put it any clearer than that, can you? Then throw in the €120 per year road tax and 50-75% reduction on tolls and you're laughing even louder.

Is there a case to be made for charging the car at night on the low rate and using the solar energy in the house and sending excess back to the grid during the day?

BS**2

In fact it is flip side of the new sales patter from PV installers if they find out you have an EV: free driving all summer long (iff the car is at home plugged in, factor 50 applied and ray bans in place)

An of course to avail of the night rate/ free Saturday/Sunday etc mumbo jumbo you need to keep the car plugged in again

so just get a bus pass

Nobody sane would spend €43k on a PHEV Skoda Octavia. That is mad money. PHEVs were only a tax dodge, worst of both worlds. Feel sorry for most people who bought one.

Let's not forget the enormous amount of electricity you'd need for the refinery

Could get a 2nd hand ID.3 for €23k, much easier to recoup the price difference

There's simply no denying that. The less miles you do per year, the less favourable an EV is financially. People with huge commutes have huge savings. People used to buying cheap second hand cars, not doing much mileage, might be better off with a combustion car financially. That said there are some great bargains out there in older second hand EVs too, provided the car's range would suit your driving circumstances.

And the day, peak and night rates are? Just asking for people like me who don't have a zillion solar panels and batteries around the house and are using 9000 plus units per year.

Hmmm, battery storage with no solar... that's worth considering especially with that rate.

I sold a no-name 5kWh battery pack a few months ago for €895. Buy a Sofar ME3000SP for about €600 and have an electrician hook the inverter up to your consumer unit for €150. The battery is click and play with the inverter. Take in 5kWh into the battery every night for 5c and release it for 28c on a timer. That's a revenue of 23c * 5kWh * 365 days or €420 per year, say 20% conversion losses for both ways, so €335 per year (tax free if 2 people on the bill), that's a pay back period of under 5 years, or a tax free return on a low value low risk investment of over 20%

Imagine what the pay back period is if you have a bigger system, buy your equipment much cheaper than that, build your own batteries and have a mate RECI who hooks things up for free. I bet you believe me now when I tell you it is more like 2-3 years

I'll try make it a bit simpler, maybe that helps?

For Pinergy. Buy at 5c, sell at 28c

Graeme's system has 14kWh, of which he has 11kWh as usable (that's very conservative), so you can load up 11kWh per day and sell it. You will have about 20% losses, so 11kWh minus 20% is 9kWh. So you make 9kWh (28c - 5c) per day times 365 days = €755 per year

The system cost €3300 to install (including €200 fee for an electrician that Graeme didn't include), so a pay back period of about 4-5 years

It's taxable but there is a €200 per person exemption on the bill. I have 5 people on the bill 

😂



Inverter and battery should last 10 years without maintenance. So after the system has paid off itself in 4-5 years, the next 5-6 years are pure profit of €755 per year. Also this cost was for an assembled system, paying an electrician and going rates for parts. Personally I buy a lot cheaper than market rates, build my own system and have a mate electrician, so go figure the payback period is more like a bit over 2 years rather than 4-5 years

And indeed, nobody knows where the rates are going, but it is near certain that the difference between peak rate and cheapest rate is getting bigger, not smaller. That is natural in the transition to renewables (feast or famine). Not so sure if this generous FIT regime is going to last though...

@Mr Q - "I had thought it was a max of 2 but obviously not."

Same. If you remember most of us here weren't expecting much more than wholesale rates of about 5-6c around the time just before the first providers started announcing FIT rates. That said, they make a lot more profit on all other rates these these than they did a few years ago. Looks at the profits of the utility companies.

@Mr Q - "But it is not realistic for most to put 5 people on their bill."

Any 16+ year old in the house with a job can be put on the bill as you can claim they pay towards said bill from their earnings

slightly off topic, but do we know how much energy FIT provides/has provided to the Grid - are those figures available or buried?

System Generation

System Generation represents the total electricity production on the system, including system losses, but net of generators' requirements. It includes an estimate of the power produced by wind generators, but excludes some non-centrally monitored generation (e.g. small scale combined heat and power and microgeneration).

There's no such thing as a set lifespan, finite life of a battery. They will last much longer than the rest of the car. They will degrade but this is a slow process (except in a Nissan Leaf). It is standard in the spec sheet of any battery cell to state the number of cycles of life. But this is not until the cell is dead, it is until the cell "only" has 80% capacity left. In the case of LiFePO4, this is generally 6000 cycles. Or in practical terms, a car with say a 60kWh battery that does two cycles a week, can have 3000 weeks until it is has lost 20% capacity. That's roughly 60 years and 2 million km

You've been a regular in this forum for many years, surely you would have picked up on this sort of stuff along the way?

The whole point is that an old ICE need expensive maintenance / fixes to keep going. The old EV needs nothing. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend serious money to replace degraded battery cells with shiny new ones. If the range is no longer sufficient, you just sell it on to someone for whom the range is no problem

And yes I know there are loads of eejits queuing up to pay thousands for newer / bigger batteries for their old Leafs and anyone can do with their hard earned what they like, but those are not rational decisions...