The cost of home charging

[Kaboom]

Hi All,

I've only just got my Outlander so have not arranged for any other chargers other than the one that came with the car.

I wanted to find out exactly how much it was costing me to charge up each night and so I bought a Wemo Insight Switch to help me achieve this!
Last night and with a fairly exhausted battery it cost £1.26 to charge up to full.

This sounds about right and I'm very happy with the result.

I assume one only needs a cheaper tariff or solar PV to bring the figure right down, right?

Certainly, the Outlander rocks!

 

[tarq]

Hi Kaboom and welcome.

I usually find it takes about 12Kw to fully charge from empty, so I just multiply by my night or day rate 'lecci cost. (.84p or £1.80 totals)

Unless the sun's out then I can charge for 'free'!

 

[gwatpe]

The battery on my PHEV is recharged only from Solar at home, and I live in Regional Australia. The solar would only be wasted and the PHEV has effectively doubled my house storage capacity. Just wish the Home power station inverter was available to allow the car to supply the energy back in the winter.

 

[Goldfinger]

12kw to charge??

So...

Our rate is 13.260ppkwh x 12 = 159.12pence to charge ours (WHEN IT ARRIVES!!!! :evil: )

 

[fozziebear40]

Ouch! So charge it every night and my electric bill is going to go up by £450 annually :O

 

[user 258]

Ouch! So charge it every night and my electric bill is going to go up by £450 annually :O

And your petrol bill will reduce by how much

My car seems to use 8.4KWh for a full charge and I pay 9p per unit irrespective of time of day. Use one of the energy comparison sites for a better deal.

Kind regards,
Mark

 

[maby]

Ouch! So charge it every night and my electric bill is going to go up by £450 annually :O

TANSTAFL as they say! At least your electric lunch will be a fair bit cheaper than the petrol alternative. The economics do vary a bit between summer and winter, but electricity is always cheaper - a full charge in winter will take you about as far as half a gallon of petrol, but cost slightly more than a quarter of a gallon. In the summer, a full charge is equivalent to perhaps three quarters of a gallon. So your running costs on electricity should be about 50% of the petrol costs in winter and perhaps as low as 25% of the petrol costs in summer.

 

[fozziebear40]

:mrgreen: I know it's all good, haven't got it yet, dealer said March. Might go the solar panel route, then it will be free to charge :lol:

 

[Hypermiler]

12kwh to charge? I thought the full battery capacity was 12 kw and someone here reported that the process was fairly efficient (not too much lost during charging) or at least that the car data per MMCS is fairly accurate. My car MMCS seems to think it takes around 10 kWh to charge - it rarely costs much more than £1.20 and I have 12p in as my unit cost. I hope it isn't taking 12kwh to charge - that seems a bit inefficient if the battery is discharged to the 20 or 30% level...

If you are mainly making within ev range trips, the reduction in petrol station visits is also a big bonus... you can't get a chocolate bar at your home charging point so that helps save money and the waistline too!
Cheers
H

 

[bdbdbd]

Mine never takes more than 9 kWh. 12kWh is the capacity of the battery but the reserve will be the difference.

 

[Ozukus]

At 9.9pence for electricity and average charge of 11.5kw that works out to about 125mpg based on current fuel costs for me

 

[RazMan]

I charge my car both at home and work (32 miles return trip no never completely flat) If my battery is fully depleted during extra weekend journeys it normally takes between 10-12kWH to top up. On average I use 18kWh per day commuting to work.

 

[anko]

10 - 12 kWh? That sounds wrong. Capacity is 12 kW of which normally 30% is not used up. This means a net charge of (at best) 9 kW. Converter losses are about 4.5%. So, 9.5 gross should be the max.

Did you guys perhaps include the cost of preheating in the morning?

 

[Lee]

Hi all, first post and all that...

Any way, I've just organised a new PHEV GX3h and all the related arrangements for my dad, the car, the 32A home charge unit AND an electricity company change to get the best value for his new, or rather soon to be EV household.

The reason I recommended the PHEV as his next car was that he's always been a 4x4 man, Discos, Jeeps, Freelanders and his most recent, a Skoda Yeti (great car btw), he needs an auto box, but the key part, he never does more miles than the EV range of the PHEV each day. So with all his regular mileage covered on full EV mode it seemed like a no-brainer even at the start.

However it wasn't until we started to look for an electricity/utility supplier with the most appropriate rates that we realised how much benefit we could drag out of it.

Obviously those of you in sunnier climates than us in the UK can get your juice for free using solar but at £5000'ish for the panels and too little sun where we live it's not a viable option.

His average household electricity usage is only 11kw a day so the overnight charging of the PHEV will double his electricity usage but seeing as that will be overnight usage I decided to look for an Economy 7 deal that would work for him.
I managed to find one deal that had a day rate the same as his current single rate of 12.6p per kwh (£0.125) but only has a night rate of 3.7p per kwh (£0.037).

This obviously means a full charge overnight will cost him just 40p (£0.40) and even taking the cars real world EV only range, at todays UK petrol/diesel prices that is the equivalent to getting 400 miles to the gallon :shock: Now that is game changing

My educated guestimates based on his style of usage, are that he will fuel the vehicle for a full year for around £180, including petrol usage for winter heating etc and that still allows him to cover almost 11000 miles.

The beauty of it for me though is, he's a careful spender and would usually think twice about nipping out for a drive on a whim or save a trip to buy something he wants until "he is going that way", it's just his nature but the PHEV can free him from this self discipline.
Even he now shouldn't have to think twice about nipping out whenever he feels like it and I really do hope he uses that freedom and enjoys it

 

[Regulo]

Welcome, Lee,

You've done his homework for him! Will he need to charge it every night? Might be better to go for an overall lower single rate deal. And do you need to factor in different standing charges, if any?

I've had solar panels fitted, as I can use the free electric in the summer months to charge up the PHEV. I know it won't supply all I need, but every unit I don't buy off the grid saves me money. And the FIT is paying me 16.75 pence for every unit I generate. Even now it's averaging at just under £1 a day (I'm not ideally situated). That's £365 a year at worst case. I expect to get a lot more when summer comes. Over 7% interest on a £5000 outlay, better than leaving it mouldering in the bank. If you've got it in the first place, of course!

 

[Lee]

Welcome, Lee,

You've done his homework for him! Will he need to charge it every night? Might be better to go for an overall lower single rate deal. And do you need to factor in different standing charges, if any?

I've had solar panels fitted, as I can use the free electric in the summer months to charge up the PHEV. I know it won't supply all I need, but every unit I don't buy off the grid saves me money. And the FIT is paying me 16.75 pence for every unit I generate. Even now it's averaging at just under £1 a day (I'm not ideally situated). That's £365 a year at worst case. I expect to get a lot more when summer comes. Over 7% interest on a £5000 outlay, better than leaving it mouldering in the bank. If you've got it in the first place, of course!

Hi and thanks Regulo, unfortunately both his and my properties aren't ideally suited for solar either, he isn't too interested in solar, never has been, however he may start thinking more favourably towards the idea now he has the PHEV

I have been considering it for some time but I'm always ploughing my money into other things it seems, live in renovation situation currently, so finished rooms come before solar at mo. I agree that ownership of PV generally is a good prospect as you say, though not so with 'rent my roof jobs' obviously.

On the utility provider, I did look into the daily standing charges and these 'are' higher but not so much that it effected the balance of overall value. If as you say he doesn't use it as often and charge it so regularly then a different tariff may suit but we can switch without penalty between tariffs so it's not a biggy if I've over estimated his usage. Even their low standing charge tariffs still have pretty good unit rates too tbh.
He'll actually be on the single rate for the first month until they fit the new smart meter for E7 and that is only 8.8p kwh so not half bad anyway, it only worked out £38 more a year for this over the E7 tariff for the same usage projection. I recall actually that they advise you on your bill if you would have been better off on another tariff so we will find out in June/July I guess

Like I said in my first post though, I'm kinda hoping that it will encourage him and my mum to go out everyday and enjoy it. They are just about to turn 70, live in beautiful Derbyshire and hardly ever explore it and there is loads of lovely places to visit, even just for a pub lunch within 10-15 miles of them. I'm quite excited for them and will encourage them to use it to the max

 

[Marksuk]

Just to point out before someone else does, if driven as normal in the present climate in Gx3h will not tend to use electricity drive for the first couple of miles when run from cold and uses petrol instead to warm the car. Dont expect to have astronomical mpg figures in the present climate, expect about 40-45 mpg. You might well be almost misled about how the car works in reality by the selling dealer.

 

[Lee]

Seems to be I wide range of opinions and claims Mark, maybe much of it is climate related more so than driving style. Obviously I was just talking from a theoretical point of view of the cost of cheap electricity and what you theoretically and technically get from that form of juice I guess.

At same time there's cars going into maintenance mode due to people not using enough petrol it seems, either way it will make for an interesting 3 year experiment

The one we test drove recently appeared to be running mainly off the batteries though, maybe it had had a good warm up beforehand by the dealer.

 

[Marksuk]

Lee, a lot of these postings and possibly the test car you have tried were not the same model car as the one your dad is having and the top spec model works quite differently in certain ways. Dont believe claims of 100mpg in this climate in the same way that a Gx3h will not go into a maintenance mode in this climate, it just wont happen on lower spec cars.
Works out around a £1 for a full charge for me.

 

[anko]

Simple: do not used the heater. Or at least, set it to the lowest possible temp. And you will be "fine", even in a model without electrical heater.

Last year between January 8th and March 23rd, I did about 3800 km on 39 liters. About 250 MPG? Not because I have an electric heater installed, but because I didn't try to use it. With the heater turned off, the 3 and 4 models work the same.