Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.9%

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

    Votes: 78 39.8%

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

    Votes: 37 18.9%

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

    Votes: 24 12.2%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    196
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sptrawler said:
Getting everyone ready for electric vehicles, lets put up the price to charge them.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/...-half-the-cost-of-petrol-20190715-p527g6.html

A bit rough when it is a lot dearer than residential tarif.
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Charging at home will be at your regular rate or offpeak rate.

But obviously charging at out side charging stations needs to cover the cost of the electricity + charging bay infrastructure.

I believe NRMA electric charging will be free for members.

———-

As I said before, charging stations will only really be needed for road trips etc, because if you wake up each morning with a full battery, you won’t need to charge again that day until you get home unless you are traveling on a road trip or something.
 
I should have my car in the next 2 months or so.

I plan to have it set up to be slowly charging from my solar when I am home during the day, and boost it with offpeak at night once a month of so if the day charging doesn’t keep up, and then use super chargers on road trips.
 
Value Collector said:
I should have my car in the next 2 months or so.

I plan to have it set up to be slowly charging from my solar when I am home during the day, and boost it with offpeak at night once a month of so if the day charging doesn’t keep up, and then use super chargers on road trips.
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Have you got a final price on the model 3 , VC
 
moXJO said:
Thats not bad. What were the extras?
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I took the paint upgrade and the autopilot package, and I think there maybe was something else I am forgetting.

I basically took all the upgrades except the performance package.
 
SirRumpole said:
I haven't seen anything in the media about the nuts and bolts figures as opposed to blue sky aspirations.
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It has been looked at seriously in Tasmania quite some time ago by the Hydro and more recently by AEMO at a national level.

Both reached much the same conclusion - from an energy perspective, that is total electricity consumed, it's no big deal but there's the potential for problems if consumers try to charge them at the wrong time which plausibly they will in the absence of action to make sure they don't.

Where that charging concern arises is that most homes are currently on flat rate tariffs and a substantial portion of vehicles are parked at home sometime around 6pm and left there until the following morning. That being so, it seems logical to assume that most will plug the vehicle in to charge at about 6pm - and that's the very time when electricity demand peaks even without EV's.

It then splits into an issue of engineering versus reality in the real world.

From an engineering perspective well a $20 timer from Bunnings will fix it no worries. Just like using the delay start on your dishwasher or clothes dryer fixes the same problem.

Trouble is - about delay start on the dishwasher. How many here really load it up at 7pm and set the timer to run it at 2 in the morning? The odd energy fanatic might be doing it but in the grand scheme of things no, consumers don't do that they tend to run it straight away. Same with anything else where there's no real reason to run it at a particular time - very, very few will consciously shift that load unless there's a financial incentive and even then a lot won't do it optimally.

What's needed there amounts to engineering + marketing but no politics. We need systems that are dead easy for consumers to use (marketing), which charge the car by the morning (both) but which don't lead to a huge spike in demand whilst doing nothing to lift minimum load at 3am (engineering). It could be done with some smarts but by default it won't simply happen - currently for sale EV's don't do that for example.

So it's all in the implementation. Do it right and EV's can bring a lot of benefits to the grid, increasing minimum load more than they increase peak load is about as a good a concept as it gets when it comes to electricity supply. Done wrong however, and that's the likely default, it'll be the exact opposite - increasing peak load whilst adding little if anything to minimum load isn't at all nice.

My view is firmly that the time to get it right is now not once there's been a few blackouts and $ billions wasted by ignoring it. And please, please, please keep politicians as far away from it all as possible - there's a role for engineering and since it's a consumer device also marketing in the approach to how it's done but there's no need for clowns.

FWIW - I don't own an EV but some recent electrical works have made provision for it most certainly. That's for controlled load (off-peak) charging of course not peak :).
 
Value Collector said:
Charging at home will be at your regular rate or offpeak rate.
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A related issue is that what time is off-peak is itself shifting due to the use of solar. Already we're seeing days where minimum load is around midday in SA (to the point of renewable energy going to waste in some cases) and it's rapidly going the same way in Victoria. Add in EV charging at night, plus the increasing use of solar, and that's all bearing down rather quickly.

That being so, there's a need to shift the timing of other off-peak loads (eg water heating) increasingly to daytime and that's part of what needs to happen with EV's assuming they're mostly charged at night.

Solar generation and heat water plus a bit of EV charging in the daytime. Low demand for everything else apart from EV charging overnight. That works as a concept - point being that pushing up the load at midday or 3am is useful in itself with more wind and solar being built.

In some states that's dead easy just do it. In others it's a slow plodding progress but will happen. In others it's :banghead::banghead::banghead: with state governments too wedded to the past not the future standing in the way. :2twocents
 
sptrawler said:
Don't forget in those low load periods, we will be pumping water up a hill or charging storage batteries.:xyxthumbs
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That's certainly true but the idea is to avoid that step so far as possible when the end use is via a storage device anyway.

Eg go straight from the surplus generation into the car or hot water, since those are storage devices, and avoid the step of going into and out of some other storage system along the way. Reason = cheaper and more efficient.

There will be a need to do it to some extent though. Eg someone on a road trip who simply has to charge at whatever time and that's it, non-negotiable but if the average person isn't doing that daily then it can be lived with. :2twocents
 
Value Collector said:
I should have my car in the next 2 months or so.

I plan to have it set up to be slowly charging from my solar when I am home during the day, and boost it with offpeak at night once a month of so if the day charging doesn’t keep up, and then use super chargers on road trips.
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Great, good luck with it.

I'm sure we would be interested in knowing how you fare with it.
 
566B1570-3531-403A-BF23-40305CF9718A.png
Smurf1976 said:
A related issue is that what time is off-peak is itself shifting due to the use of solar. Already we're seeing days where minimum load is around midday in SA (to the point of renewable energy going to waste in some cases) and it's rapidly going the same way in Victoria. Add in EV charging at night, plus the increasing use of solar, and that's all bearing down rather quickly.

That being so, there's a need to shift the timing of other off-peak loads (eg water heating) increasingly to daytime and that's part of what needs to happen with EV's assuming they're mostly charged at night.

Solar generation and heat water plus a bit of EV charging in the daytime. Low demand for everything else apart from EV charging overnight. That works as a concept - point being that pushing up the load at midday or 3am is useful in itself with more wind and solar being built.

In some states that's dead easy just do it. In others it's a slow plodding progress but will happen. In others it's :banghead::banghead::banghead: with state governments too wedded to the past not the future standing in the way. :2twocents
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I have put a timer on my hot water system to heat in the middle of the day, look at my solar production chart from yesterday in the photo above and you can see the signature of the hot water system operating.

I plan on charging my car using 2kw/ hour from 8am - 3.30 pm when ever I am home, and boosting it over night when needed.

———

I have an 8.2 kw system, but my power provider made me put an export limiter in that limits exports to 5 kw per hour, hence why I switched my hot water system to middle of day.
 
Value Collector said:
View attachment 96203

I have put a timer on my hot water system to heat in the middle of the day, look at my solar production chart from yesterday in the photo above and you can see the signature of the hot water system operating.

I plan on charging my car using 2kw/ hour from 8am - 3.30 pm when ever I am home, and boosting it over night when needed.

———

I have an 8.2 kw system, but my power provider made me put an export limiter in that limits exports to 5 kw per hour, hence why I switched my hot water system to middle of day.
Click to expand...

Just to explain the chart above.

Each bar is 15mins.

Dark blue is exported production
Light blue is consumed production

Dark orange is imported consumption
Light orange is solar consumption
 
Value Collector said:
View attachment 96203

I have put a timer on my hot water system to heat in the middle of the day, look at my solar production chart from yesterday in the photo above and you can see the signature of the hot water system operating.

I plan on charging my car using 2kw/ hour from 8am - 3.30 pm when ever I am home, and boosting it over night when needed.

———

I have an 8.2 kw system, but my power provider made me put an export limiter in that limits exports to 5 kw per hour, hence why I switched my hot water system to middle of day.
Click to expand...
I did similar, originally I had gas hws and cooking, now all electric and rooftop solar.:xyxthumbs
 
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