Cost of a home charge?

[UKBoB]

Can anyone tell me how much a home charge is costing them please?

My 2015 Outlander is costing me £6 to £8 a time which is not what I expected. Using a smart meter with a handful of devices in use, laptop, phones and 1 lamp it indicates £0:14p for an hour. Plug in the car and consumption rockets up for the whole 3 to 4 hours of charge.

 

[ChrisMiller]

It (obviously) depends on how much you pay for electricity, but 14p per kWh is probably in the right ball park for a normal UK contract (you can get cheaper rates for off-peak electricity). On that basis you're saying that you're using roughly 1kW before you plug in. If you can charge the car from empty in 3/4 hours, you must have a dedicated charge point (rather than plugging into a standard 3-pin socket, as I do), which can draw up to 4kW. So I'd expect your smart meter to show around £0.70p an hour during charging. Does your smart meter automatically show the true cost, or do you have to manually set your price/kWh? If the latter, I think you may have the wrong price entered (or you're on an incredibly expensive contract).

It costs me about £1.50 to recharge from empty* (it's the same whether you're using a slow or fast charger - it's the kWh that you pay for), which should probably get you as far as £5 of petrol.

* The 2019 model has a slightly bigger battery so you would need to increase these figures by ~20%.

 

[twosout]

I think you are mis-measuring something.
The most I have been able to 'pump' into MY19 model has been 11kWh, costing around £1.50.
Although the capacity is 14kWh, the management system prevents you from consuming all of that.

 

[UKBoB]

That's great information, thank you. On checking my supplier's charges the cost is 13p per kWh so that puts me in the ball park you mention Chris. I'm now waiting for the washing m/c and dishwasher to finish their cycle then I'll set the smart meter on kWh to try again. We can't set the cost rate but, as you say, it's the kWh used that counts. I'm feeling a lot better about it now but I'll let you know.

Again,

Thank you

 

[twosout]

The car may tell you how much it's costing you to charge.
On MY19 (earlier ones may be different):
Touch the "Charging Cost" button to get the cost of charges completed by month.
You need to have entered the price you're paying for electricity
(I put 10p/kWh so that I can get a ready calculation of kWh consumed - I'm not too bothered with cost. It might work with £1/kWh, but I didn't want to overflow any of the accumulation fields.)
If you then touch the "Short Term History" tab, you'll get the cost of the last twelve charges as bars on a chart and the value for the very last charge. There is also the cumulative cost of all charges in the current calendar month.

Using a household (smart) meter is going to be difficult, but you could put on monitor on the socket you use for the 'brick' charger. You can assume 10kWh for a full charge (around £1.50's worth).

 

[UKBoB]

Well, just tested it for 1 hour as that was the last hour of the charge as I ran it for about 2 hrs last night then stopped it. I'm assuming the charge rate is not linear so the last hour may be a more gentle rate. The result does indicate that as I recorded 1.05 kW for that period. There is a chance it was only 3 quarters of an hour. Anyway, I'm happy now as it's in line with what you both tell me I should be expecting. I will do a full charge test in a couple of days but it looks like I was panicking for nothing by misreading the meter. Great now you've put me straight.

By the way, I use a dedicated charger point, a Chargemaster.

Thanks again,

 

[twosout]

The dedicated (wall) charger will charge faster than the household 'brick'. The Chargemaster may be able to deliver up to 32A but the car will only accept 16A. That's still one and a half times faster than through the 'brick', though (which only supplies up to 10A).

Regarding your household consumption, I'd look to se what else might have been running at the time you (thought you) observed such high consumption. There will always be a steady drain in a household due to all the things we keep on stand-by but they should not be significant at any point in time, they just add up over the months and years...

Glad you're now getting sensible readings.

 

[UKBoB]

The dedicated (wall) charger will charge faster than the household 'brick'. The Chargemaster may be able to deliver up to 32A but the car will only accept 16A. That's still one and a half times faster than through the 'brick', though (which only supplies up to 10A).

Regarding your household consumption, I'd look to se what else might have been running at the time you (thought you) observed such high consumption. There will always be a steady drain in a household due to all the things we keep on stand-by but they should not be significant at any point in time, they just add up over the months and years...

Glad you're now getting sensible readings.

Hi, yes, the dedicated charger can deliver 32A but the car accepts only 16A. The 'brick' is not in use at all now the charger is installed.
I was quite sure what was 'on' when I started my first observation. Fridge, TV on standby etc as you correctly pointed out. I am now convinced I looked at the wrong display when I got into a flap. I know it's not very gallant but HI was the one doing the reading so some confusion may have crept in there. We both agreed to take todays reading together. Result is good so we're happy.

Thanks again for your input

 

[ThudnBlundr]

The car will have a fixed overhead current for managing the charge whatever the charge rate. I'm not sure what it is on the PHEV, but the Zoe uses roughly 1A on a 240V system and I would guess that it's in the same ballpark. So a slower charge will use more energy than a faster one: for a Zoe, a 10A charger will "lose" ~10% and a 16A charger ~6%

 

[yardbird88]

Here in LA, It costs us 12 cents per KW, that translates into $1.44 per 12kw full charge at special overnight rate form 10pm to 8am. Our gasoline runs about $3.2 to 3.5 per us gallon for the regular unleaded lately.