Monitoring Electricity Cost

[phevman]

Hi All

Is there a way for the PHEV to tell you how much energy it's using per charge? Can it be configured with cost per kWh?

 

[jdsx]

Yes if you have a 4h or 4hs it can be done through the MMCS. Can't remember exactly how off the top of my head..... Can probably look it up if required!

 

[phevman]

Brilliant! Thanks.

Waiting on my PHEV to be delivered so will figure it out when it arrives.

 

[maddogsetc]

And as far as we know (unless you're in Australia) this is one part of MMCS which actually works quite well! The car displays the cost of the last charge, the total cost for the month so far, plus the option to display long term and short term history on a bar chart.

I've input a slightly higher cost per kWh than I actually pay to account for efficiency losses.

 

[Graham]

Maddogetc, I do not think you need to overprice the electricity to allow for efficiency losses. I have carefully checked the charge cost, divided by the unit cost, hence Kwh, against my main meter and also an energy monitor clipped to the EV charge cable. I believe the car records very accurately exactly the Kwh used per charge. The Chargevision software however grossly over estimates the electricity used, and also garbles the time on charge! I am in contact with Marcus at Chargemaster to see if there is a recording problem with my charging unit, or if they are all as inaccurate as mine?

 

[Hypermiler]

Graham
Mine is terrible too. I've stopped looking at it, which is a shame. I haven't bothered going back to Chargemaster about it yet, but might do if I get a chance. There is charging data for 2013, and the timings since I had it installed are all over the place with plenty over 12 kWh. Am now solely using the car's info set to actual kWh cost per my tariff - good to hear it is fairly accurate!
H

 

[pheverish]

I have 3 entries for November 2013 of around 7000 hours duration a day after each other.
So, nearly 900 days on charge, through a charging point I didn't have, connected to a car I didn't have.
I know we got it installed virtually for free, but this is unacceptable.

 

[Graham]

What is perhaps more worrying is that the figures are supposed to be analysed by "the government" to assess how successful their OLEV programs and grants are!

The overestimates I have seen on my Chargevision account are around 25%, if this applies to all data collected then it will colour the future judgement of EV's.

 

[Regulo]

Fat lot of good the figures will be, if the government are involved! :roll:

And how accurate will it be if there are a lot of us who can't have a data enabled charge point? Me, for one. My garage is detached from the house, with just a fused 13 amp spur. I'm not paying for a charge point to be installed over there, as it would involve a new higher current capacity cable to be run, for a start. So I'll be charging from a normal 13 amp household socket. The government won't know anything about it! In fact, the less the government knows about me, the better I like it.