Home charger options
Discussion
Casa1862 said:
Anyone recommend a not too expensive tethered charger 7kw. Podpoint seems quite big and around £600
£600/700 is likely a price you will pay certainly for a tethered charger. (more towards the top end).Podpoint in my opinion are typical too large compared to others on the market.
Complete a survey first as well, as Podpoint will ask you get any additional electrical work required completed first before they send one of their installers. (If any is needed).
As the saying "you get what you pay for". So best not go too cheap.
Thanks, I’d pay the money for the PP but I find it too big, particularly where it will go, so I’m not 100% with it.
Other thing is I have a Volvo S60 T8 recharge and that doesn’t make use of a 7kw charger, the 3kw is cheaper but not much so thinking maybe spend the extra now. I’ve not had the car long, the 3 pin charger takes about 4 hours, the wall charger may save 1 hour, the car only has a 23 mile range, not sure it’s worth chucking £700 pounds at it to save an hour which I do overnight anyway, a tethered wall charger would just be neater and save me opening the garage door, I can’t see myself recovering the £700 in a hurry.
Other thing is I have a Volvo S60 T8 recharge and that doesn’t make use of a 7kw charger, the 3kw is cheaper but not much so thinking maybe spend the extra now. I’ve not had the car long, the 3 pin charger takes about 4 hours, the wall charger may save 1 hour, the car only has a 23 mile range, not sure it’s worth chucking £700 pounds at it to save an hour which I do overnight anyway, a tethered wall charger would just be neater and save me opening the garage door, I can’t see myself recovering the £700 in a hurry.
voram said:
This may seem an odd question, but if a car is parked-up all day (i.e. most of the daylight hours) what would be the chances of charging it from solar panels on the roof at home?
You can do it and people do do it but solar only generates a fairly low level of electricity and a car battery is huge in comparison. Some people have very large solar installations which helps but really, if you're going to do it, you do it for eco reasons, not cost reasons as the cost of installing solar would take forever to recoup. Many energy suppliers have environmentally friendly electricity generation tariffs so your car can charge in a 'green' way (I mean the electricity is generated from wind/wave/solar power.)
voram said:
This may seem an odd question, but if a car is parked-up all day (i.e. most of the daylight hours) what would be the chances of charging it from solar panels on the roof at home?
on a sunny day, panels should generate enough for quite a few miles.trouble is they won't be generating at 7kwh, that your charger will be supplying so use a granny charger.
this obviously limits how much charge you get but it will be free.
voram said:
This may seem an odd question, but if a car is parked-up all day (i.e. most of the daylight hours) what would be the chances of charging it from solar panels on the roof at home?
It part depends on whether your charger has flow options as for many you will just charge at 7.2kW regardless and so so much of the power supplied will be from your day time tariff.Hopefully quick explanation on possibilities, though a little vague as I've learnt through having a commercial package home solar panel and battery install and looked at what I have and how it works, there are others on here who have done their own research and even their own installs.
With a home install package you will have a number of panels depending on your roof size and roof position. These at present will be 300, 330, or 360 watt panels. I've a reasonably sized roof for a semi detached house and west facing so I get very good sun coverage so I have 12 360 panels giving me a theoretical production of 4.32 kW per hour. Except my house will not see that. Thing is this power has to go through an inverter before going in to your house/battery/the grid and those tend to be limited to 3.6 kW. Now remember that depending on the angle of the sun depends on how efficient your panels are, so having more panels means you can generate that 3.6 kW for a longer period during the day (and more juice as the suns rises/drops).
Now if you can not reduce the charge rate then that 3.6 kW is going to mean you still draw 3.6 kW from the grid - at day time prices, except you will actually draw more as your house will be drawing power and if you have a battery (which adds the real cost, but from my perspective is the only way solar can be financially viable), then you will also be charging that to run the house once the sun drops or moves to the wrong angle.
Some chargers, such as Zappi and Hypervolt can link in to your solar system and if they see a certain amount going free (think it's a minimum of 1.4 kW) then they will start to charge just drawing from your panels. Certainly I've had days in recent times where if I had one of those chargers I would have put 2-6 kW in to my car, so granny charger rates without you having to keep an eye on your power production. Alas I do not have one of those though in two years time when the warranty runs out on my Chargemaster (which was free with my car) then I might consider upgrading to one of those two or a suitable rival to them come that time).
voram said:
Some interesting thoughts there. My (south facing) roof needs replacement and solar could easily be installed at the same time. I suppose, inevitably, you'd get more "free charging" in summer than in winter. Will have to investigate further.
The difference in summer/winter generation versus home electricity usage is massive, its effectively inverse. When you use most energy (winter) solar is the least useful.
The difference will be even more obvious when everyone is forced to use electric heat pumps for home heating versus gas.....
The cost difference between our winter and summer bills is partly down to solar PV, but most of that is down to not needing heating in the summer and general less electricity usage in summer, our January home electricity usage was nearly double of that in may .
Overall though electricity is so cheap installing solar PV these days without the FIT payment doesn't quite make sense, and as you can see in winter it's useless, so if you are than forced to install an electrical heat pump your electricity bill in winter will still be massive regardless of the solar PV install.
Ideally you really want wind to complement solar, and than put in enough battery storage to see you through a few days of either no wind or sun - so at least 30-40kWh worth....
A local farmers has a few of these + a big solar array, its possible - providing you are prepared to invest in it (and have the land). But the costs needed for this kind of stuff really take you into extreme hippy/preparing for zombi apocalypse situations where you don't care about money
gangzoom said:
Ideally you really want wind to complement solar, and than put in enough battery storage to see you through a few days of either no wind or sun - so at least 30-40kWh worth....
Granted I'm using lighting far less as it's summer time, but I've had a few days with no generation and I've found I normally use 7-8 kW on those days if I'm not charging the car, and that's with a gaming PC. Gas cooking and gas central heating it should be noted.Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff