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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.7%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.4%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 38 19.2%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.6%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    198
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Here is a graph of my personal solar production and usage, Blue is solar production and orange my electricity usage.

I was away when this was happening but you can see very little demand all day because it was just my fridge and other minor things on, but you can see two big spikes in usage first is the car charging at 9am, and second in the hot water system switching on at 11am.

The reason I have my car and hot water set up to charge during the day is to make the most of my solar, my production exports are limited to 5kW/h, so if I am not using anything during the day my production is idled back to 5kW/h, you can see the flat spot in the graph once the hot water system stops, (dark blue Is exports, light blue is production I used myself)

 
Do a bit of checking up on that, when you install a home battery, from memory you lose your feed in tariff.
Well that is the case in W.A.
 
sptrawler said:
Do a bit of checking up on that, when you install a home battery, from memory you lose your feed in tariff.
Well that is the case in W.A.
Click to expand...
That’s definitely not the case over here in QLD the feed in tariff remains the same when you have a battery, AGL even had a deal at one time that as long as you signed over control of the battery to them, they would make your feed in rate the same as your buy rate, so essentially by buying a battery you got unlimited storage, because your buy and sell was both 25cents per kilowatt.
 
Value Collector said:
The 10amp charger is more like running a heater or boiling a kettle than it is running a fridge.

It pulls about 2000 watts/H where as a fridge uses about, 50watts so charging the Tesla is like running 40 fridges.
Click to expand...

Not quite. With my personal example, I don't use the full 10A unless I'm preparing for a long drive the next day, I set the Tesla charge to 6A each charging night.
 
sptrawler said:
Do a bit of checking up on that, when you install a home battery, from memory you lose your feed in tariff.
Well that is the case in W.A.
Click to expand...

I have asked my suppliers and they said only if I mess with the panels, but I will confirm again when the day comes.
 
JohnDe said:
Not quite. With my personal example, I don't use the full 10A unless I'm preparing for a long drive the next day, I set the Tesla charge to 6A each charging night.
Click to expand...
Mine is set to 7A, and as you can see in the graph it’s pulling a lot more than a fridge.

But if you are pulling 6A that’s still 1,400 watts per hour, so in 1 hour you are using more than your fridge would use in a day.

Here is a live chart from today,



You can see the fridge is pulling next to nothing all night, where as my car and heater pull a lot.

Not here to argue, just pointing out that if comparing different appliances, the car will be much closer to a heater than a fridge, and about half the power of a hot water system .

 

Don't be so pedantic, I agree with you. I was just making general remarks about different charging devices. Like the AGL & Origin home charging stations that charge at 16A or 32A, compared to my general 6A charging.

I'm confident that the way that I charge my Tesla is less stressful on the grid.




Power consumption and energy usage of electric kettle

Calculate the energy usage of electric kettle here. The power consumption of electric kettle is 1500 watts.
www.electricalclassroom.com
 
I am just giving you the info, because if you use that example with an EV hater that knows a bit about different appliances then they will call your whole argument BS. Not trying to be pedantic just pointing out your comparison to a fridge is off by about 40 fold.

As for your charging being less stressful on the grid as long as you are charging after 11pm or during the middle of the day your charging will be very beneficial to the grid, definitely try and avoid charging between 4pm and 9pm each day.
 
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Spot on a fridge cycles on the thermostat, the E.V is a constant drain, same as an element heated HWS.


Value Collector said:
As for your charging being less stressful on the, as long as you are charging after 11pm or during the middle of the day your charging will be very beneficial to the grid, definitely try and avoid charging between 4pm and 9pm each day.
Click to expand...
Also a bad time for the grid is early morning when everyone gets up to go to work and businesses that close overnight start winding up 5.30am-9am.
The low period overnight, is as you say 11pm to about 6am.
 
So this is the demand chart from Victoria, it’s a similar story in all states.

You can see demand spikes between 3pm and 9pm, this is a Terrible time to charge, it’s the time when electricity demand is the highest and any extra demand will put pressure on the grid and cause over all rates to rise.

But you can see demand crashes after 10pm until about 6am in the morning, this is a great time to charge, more usage during this time helps support the grid, and can lower the over all costs by increasing utilisation rates, and providing more demand to wind turbines etc that produce through Those times.

 
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sptrawler said:
Also a bad time for the grid is early morning when everyone gets up to go to work and businesses that close overnight start winding up 5.30am-9am.
The low period overnight, is as you say 11pm to about 6am.
Click to expand...

Yep, mornings differ a bit depending on state, for example the morning peak here in Queensland is normally much smaller than the night peak, and solar production quickly causes the morning peak to disappear from about 7.30am onwards on sunny days and causes a big low point in the middle of day compared to other states.

This website is filled will a lot of great info, I use all the time, particularly as I am tracking demand and supply as part of my constant attempt to understand the future of APA, which so far looks great as their gas is used during the transition to renewables.

NEM data dashboard

The NEM's key data points including price and demand, dispatch, and short and medium-term outlooks.
aemo.com.au
 
Ford are fighting back, ensuring that they have a Lithium supply.

 
At last @JohnDe ,the penny is starting to drop with the reporters, all of a sudden they want the money spent on infrastructure rather than incentives.
I wish they had thought of that, before they started screaming for incentives, in the first place.

Opinion: Pull the plug on electric-car tax breaks, rebates, and other cash incentives

Demand for electric vehicles in Australia is off the charts and waiting lists of 12 months to two years are now the norm. So why on earth do we need taxpayer money to incentivise vehicles that money can’t buy?
www.drive.com.au
From the article:
Governments should switch from providing generous tax incentives to buyers of electric cars – who clearly can afford such an expensive vehicle anyway – and instead put that money towards infrastructure which could eventually benefit everyone.
 
Devils advocate:
Infrastructure should not mean charger but readying grid..
Why should we as taxpayer fund chargers which benefit long distance idle travelers and not workers.
No worker is or should be stopping for one hour for a reload in the middle of nowhere charger.
Tax payer charging stations are like giving subsidies for holiday resort or RV purchases.
Think about ANY advantage in term of productivity? Or community wide returns..so in a non twisted way, these charger are encouraging idle useless travel.
Readying the grid is a different business and less technology picking.
We might get ultrafast charging or swap based in 5y and all these charging stations might become obsolete.the need for grid will remain
 
The two issues need to be running in parralel.
would be foolish to put all the incentives in only one area.
Not point in putting in heaps of chargers if network or local supply cant run them.
Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
The two issues need to be running in parralel.
would be foolish to put all the incentives in only one area.
Not point in putting in heaps of chargers if network or local supply cant run them.
Mick
Click to expand...

What is the criteria for supply?
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
A mate of mine who used drive taxis says that the Prius is the best for people living in the Regions.

The ICE gets it up n running and then the EV component takes over.
Click to expand...
But the demagogues are spoiling that party

" EU countries this week okayed proposed laws to combat climate change including one requiring new cars sold in the EU to emit zero CO2 (carbon dioxide) from 2035....
..... It could be carmakers like Toyota, Nissan and Samsung that struggle to meet the target because of their continuing belief in hybrid technology for EVs, rather than battery-powered EVs alone....."

EU Keen to Drive ICE Vehicles off the Road - ShareCafe

EU countries this week okayed proposed laws to combat climate change including one requiring new cars to emit zero CO2 from 2035, making it impossible to sell internal-combustion engine cars from that date.
www.sharecafe.com.au
 
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