Battery charging - cost of

[guerney]

ES has some knowledgeable folks and some grandee's who know it all and have been there.
Some of the responses to the lesser knowledgale folks esp with programming and battery issues on the big threads can be quite poor, because they know the answer and to them it is easy to fault find or find the answer.
A typical answer is look on the web there are plenty of film clips of how to etc,etc, problem is for some is knowing what is good or bad advice.

Googling for answers can work, if one is familiar with the terminology used and knows afair bit about computers already. The reason why I initially offered to talk you through it by phone, is because in my experience people who aren't overly confident with computers often don't know what certain terms mean, therefore it's hard to detrmine what the exact issue they're experiencing is. If I can hear what they describe seeing, it all moves a lot faster. But we got there in the end, when you pulled that rabbit out of a hat in the form of a not so fooked Windows 10 laptop and managed to get most of it done. That first laptop probably had a problematic update, or was upgraded from Windows 7 or 8 before sale (instead of a fresh install using a Windows 10 installer disk), or the JAVA installation script for your laptop's AMD had faults or had installed incorrectly because that particular version of Windows 10 or a program on it, was partially blocking it's installation. Antivirus, software firewalls or Microsoft themselves can make installing JAVA problematic.

JAVA stands for Just Another Vague Acronym - geek joke. Not terribly funny.

 

[nigelbb]

Would you believe that in these days of very high British electricity bills, there are over 5,300 charging points for electric cars that are completely free:

Zap Map Link

Not only that, our e-car charging at home can be at only 5 pence per unit by using the car's built in charge timers to charge in off-peak hours:

Charge Anytime EV add-on | OVO

Get the UK’s lowest rate whenever you smart charge your electric vehicle at home. Just 7p per kWh when you add Charge Anytime to any OVO Energy plan.

www.ovoenergy.com

It's an unfair world, those rich enough to afford e-cars get the benefits.
.

It's an unfair world, those rich enough to afford a Tesla get subsidised so much by taxpayers.Each of those Tesla company lease cars you see driven by middle managers & sales reps is receiving an effective subsidy of £4,000-£5,000 per year. Tesla even boast about how little tax businesses, users & owners will pay.

Vehicle Incentives | Tesla Support United Kingdom

All Tesla vehicles are zero-emission rated and may be eligible for financial assistance to promote clean energy.

www.tesla.com

 

[matthewslack]

£10 each or so on ebay.
Or go to Scotland where the landlady at the tea shop will charge £2 for a battery charge.

An absolute one off, I'm sure! Tour here with no cost fear from that source!

But tongue in cheek answer to this topic, that 40 minutes I was allowed is 2/3 of an hour, so with a 4.6A charger, battery at 36V and assuming 80% charger efficiency, I consumed 4.6 x 36 / 0.8 x 2/3 = 138Wh.

My cost per kWh was therefore £2 / 0.138 = £14.49.

Is this a record?

 

[matthewslack]

On the related topic of energy cost per mile, for my typical figures of 10 to 16Wh per mile, the 138Wh input to the charger put 0.8 x 138 = 110Wh into the battery, enough for between 7 and 11 miles. Fuel cost therefore 10p and 15.5p per mile.

 

[guerney]

On the related topic of energy cost per mile, for my typical figures of 10 to 16Wh per mile, the 138Wh input to the charger put 0.8 x 138 = 110Wh into the battery, enough for between 7 and 11 miles. Fuel cost therefore 10p and 15.5p per mile.

How many miles before the solar panel system has paid for itself vs charging from domestic plug sockets?

 

[matthewslack]

How many miles before the solar panel system has paid for itself vs charging from domestic plug sockets?

The main costs were a shade over £200 per panel, so three is £600, and a shade over £50 for each of two charge controllers. £700 on the cost side, then.

Take the midway cost per mile from my previous post, say 12.5p per mile, breakeven at Special Cafe Energy price occurs at 700 / 0.125 = 5600 miles.

At a more normal(!) say 30p per kWh, more like 270,000 miles!

However, the cost case I look at is against the saved diesel. Every mile that I would otherwise have driven, even in my 55mpg small van, would be costing about 15p. Payback of £700 against that takes only 4667 miles.

My solar trailer has done 1965 miles so far.

 

[guerney]

The main costs were a shade over £200 per panel, so three is £600, and a shade over £50 for each of two charge controllers. £700 on the cost side, then.

Take the midway cost per mile from my previous post, say 12.5p per mile, breakeven at Special Cafe Energy price occurs at 700 / 0.125 = 5600 miles.

At a more normal(!) say 30p per kWh, more like 270,000 miles!

However, the cost case I look at is against the saved diesel. Every mile that I would otherwise have driven, even in my 55mpg small van, would be costing about 15p. Payback of £700 against that takes only 4667 miles.

My solar trailer has done 1965 miles so far.

Can you cycle to work with your solar trailer instead? A diesel vanning holiday stopping every 100 miles or so to camp, wouldn't have been much fun!

Dragging such weight is beyond my physical capability, therefore I look forward to the day when highly efficient smaller solar panels exist at sensible prices, which would make a significant difference to my ebike range when mounted on the rear pannier rack, or deployed overnight folded out from a rucksack.

Scientists invent solar panels that work at night

Harvesting infrared light at night provides ‘continuous renewable power source’

www.independent.co.uk

 

[guerney]

A typical answer is look on the web there are plenty of film clips of how to etc,etc, problem is for some is knowing what is good or bad advice.

Googling for answers is a lot more productive if using Firefox and addons: one simply switches Javascript off - no more popups or cookie choice panels, and if you do see a cookie selector simply disable CSS too, then after some knowledge is gained remove cookies with a right click or button based cookie removal addon, before leaving the target website. Becomes habit after awhile. Even slow computers can cope with today's internet, they can't handle all the ridiculous amounts of tracking and handshaking and pulling and slurping of multiple sets of data from many sites and your computer when you only want to look at one website, which can be broken and confounded somewhat by disabling Javascript. This also saves data usage if you're in a low signal area with poor internet speeds. Finding useful answers can thus be far more rapid, and less successfully advertiser tracked. Sadly, the preceding isn't always or as easily possible using phones and tablets running Android or iOS - that is intentional

 

[flecc]

It's an unfair world, those rich enough to afford a Tesla get subsidised so much by taxpayers.Each of those Tesla company lease cars you see driven by middle managers & sales reps is receiving an effective subsidy of £4,000-£5,000 per year. Tesla even boast about how little tax businesses, users & owners will pay.

Vehicle Incentives | Tesla Support United Kingdom

All Tesla vehicles are zero-emission rated and may be eligible for financial assistance to promote clean energy.

www.tesla.com

.
Similar has been going on a long time, I was one of those privileged for almost 20 years up to my retirement 32 years ago.
.

 

[guerney]

The main costs were a shade over £200 per panel, so three is £600, and a shade over £50 for each of two charge controllers. £700 on the cost side, then.

Take the midway cost per mile from my previous post, say 12.5p per mile, breakeven at Special Cafe Energy price occurs at 700 / 0.125 = 5600 miles.

At a more normal(!) say 30p per kWh, more like 270,000 miles!

However, the cost case I look at is against the saved diesel. Every mile that I would otherwise have driven, even in my 55mpg small van, would be costing about 15p. Payback of £700 against that takes only 4667 miles.

My solar trailer has done 1965 miles so far.

One thing I'll be using a solar panel for is charging a battery which powers a pump to move roof harvested rainwater from a set of 180ltr barrels (which feed into each other) to a much larger multi-thousand litre water container about 100 yards away (lifted into place using a crane, I can't move it), throughout late autumn and winter as the barrels fill up, activated by switches on ballcocks. A simple off-the-shelf solar kit charging a 12V motorcycle or car battery would do, or perhaps my ebike battery when it's near it's end.