Motoring Discussion > Electric cars at home charging Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Bobby Replies: 13
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 Sun 15 Oct 23 22:10 
 Electric cars at home charging - Bobby
Watching the latest Harry’s Garage video on PHEV/ electric cars.

Apparently about 10% of your electricity is lost to heat etc if using a standard home AC charger, but not with a charge point DC charger.

Any electric owners on here experience this? Had never heard this stat before.
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 Mon 16 Oct 23 00:22 
 Electric cars at home charging - Lygonos
Is about right.

Converting 230V AC supply in the car's onboard inverter to DC to be stored in the battery is about 90% efficient.

Direct DC to DC is more like 98% I believe.

Of course the DC unit is fed by an AC supply (grid) so it has already lost a few % by the time it feeds your car..
Last edited by: Lygonos on Mon 16 Oct 23 at 00:24
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 Mon 16 Oct 23 09:04 
 Electric cars at home charging - smokie
And my home charging costs under 5p a mile, if that, but I've paid as much as about 20p a mile for DC charging, so it's best avoided from a cost pov if poss!!
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 Mon 16 Oct 23 12:11 
 Electric cars at home charging - CGNorwich
Of course o10% approx of generated power will already have been lost in transmission before it reaches th charging unit
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 Tue 17 Oct 23 08:39 
 Electric cars at home charging - Lygonos
And whatever you use fossil fuel for will lose at least 60% in the conversion from chemical.to kinetic energy.

Not to mention the 10% lost refining crude to an end product.

Or the energy transporting and storing it.
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 Tue 17 Oct 23 09:25 
 Electric cars at home charging - Zero
>> And whatever you use fossil fuel for will lose at least 60% in the conversion
>> from chemical.to kinetic energy.


Of course electricity has no energy loss in generating it, transmission of it, conversion of it many times along the way, and storing it in your car, not to mention pulling its considerably heavier weight around.
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 Tue 17 Oct 23 09:32 
 Electric cars at home charging - smokie
...but of course much less risk of exploding in airport car parks :-)
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 Tue 17 Oct 23 09:35 
 Electric cars at home charging - Zero
Several thousand Tesla owners will disagree with you.
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 Tue 17 Oct 23 10:19 
 Electric cars at home charging - Lygonos
Last year 100,000 car fires in the UK.

240 were EVs.
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 Tue 31 Oct 23 14:09 
 Electric cars at home charging - CGNorwich
Just received email from OVO Energy. My EV charging going down from 10p per KWh to 7p per Kwh. That’s less than 2p per mile.

A bit of a price war with Octopus I suspect.
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 Tue 31 Oct 23 16:53 
 Electric cars at home charging - smokie
Yeah sounds like it, Octopus is (I think) 7p for 6 overnight hours (plus some random daytime ones).

They also have a tracker tariff which I've been on since 1 July for elect (Jan for gas). The price changes daily. the most expensive day was last week, somewhere around 22p. The cheapest was a bit over a week ago, at 11pi-sh. I guess it's been around 16 - 18p most of the time. I believe it varies mainly depending on the anticipated renewables generation, and demand.

Before changing my average was about 17p per kWh. It's a bit less at the moment but not hugely, though it is nice to not have to load shift other stuff into the cheap periods. If I were charging the car more frequently then it would probably not be the most economical tariff.

But the alternative tariff would be (I think) 27p daytime and 7p overnight. Anyway, halfway into my 6th and last week in Portugal (till March) I'm quids in this month :-)
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 Tue 31 Oct 23 19:08 
 Electric cars at home charging - Crankcase
Octopus have this autumn given us some "powerhours", where all your electricity is free.

We had four hours worth in each of weeks one two and three, and six hours last week. They say these powerhours, which they tell you about the day before, will continue for "at least a year".

You use as much electricity as you want/can in those times, and they credit the bill. Each hour, we get about a fiver back I guess, so it all adds up.

They've just also said they will be doing the National Grid "powersaving" hours as well that most companies offer, where you get paid back if you use less than your average use for that particular hour on previous periods. So that will be another bit back if we are able to reduce power during those times, though probably not a lot.

And finally, they this week launched their latest EV offer. If you lease an Atto Dolphin from them (I know), you get a free charger and you also get all your at home EV charging for free. I rather bet the lease price isn't that competitive though.

Can't be bad, all in all, really, when you remember they offer six hours at 7.5p per night which covers the whole house. If you plug your EV in to charge outside those times, they sometimes also give you other hours outside and in addition to the core ones at 7.5p, and that covers the whole house too.

Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 31 Oct 23 at 19:09
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 Mon 13 Nov 23 17:30 
 Electric cars at home charging - sooty123
archive.li/GCcVu

DT article on ev chargers. No idea if the figures are true, however it looks like we are miles behind on numbers of EV chargers compared to the target.
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 Mon 13 Nov 23 18:00 
 Electric cars at home charging - CGNorwich
We are cetainly not where we need to be in the provision of chargers. However in reality the expereince is not as bad in reality as it would seem. Most people charge mainly at home (around 90% in my case) and I have never had to wait fo a charger or been stranded on long journeys. I do tend to plan aheas and note where I intennd to charge
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Mon 13 Nov 23 at 18:00
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