Urbandreamer wrote:Presumably your concern about 2 way electricity has been solved for each solar panel installation.
It has, but that link indicated an additional cost to the EV charger of £5k, which they hoped would come down to an additional £1k.
Urbandreamer wrote:As for a car with a range of in excess of 100 miles being left discharged before the work commute, it would be unlikely in the morning and if plugged in at work (work being on a V2G tariff), then surely the car can know the likely commute distance and ensure that it has enough energy. That is unless you tell it that you need it to have a full charge. Indeed it's likely that the car would even roughly know when you are likely to use it.
The trouble is that people are used to just jumping in the car and driving, not hoping the car ‘thinks’ it knows how far you want to go - does it know that this Friday you are off to see friends 200 miles away not the usual 15 mile drive home?
Urbandreamer wrote:Extra computing power? Now you are having a laugh. All modern cars are computers on wheels and some receive software updates via the phone network as you use them.
I didn’t mean extra computing power, but the additional electrical wiring to allow the bi-directional flow of electricity - as noted in that link only the Nissan Leaf had the wiring to allow that, and EVs are built down to a price.
Urbandreamer wrote:Why would someone leave an EV plugged in? During winter or summer when they want to get into a car with a comfortable temperature? No need to drain the battery before you drive.
Mine will heat or cool plugged in or unplugged, and to be honest it is much nicer to jump in and drive away without faffing around in the cold, unplugging and storing away the cold wet cable.
Urbandreamer wrote:By the way, did you follow any of the previous links? The Ofgem one mentioned a possible payment of £725pa. I would agree that isn't substantial, but it might be significant. Especially were one to lease rather than own the car and hence battery. Others were large businesses who presumably are not doing it totally altruistically.
I noticed they didn’t say what the average payment was, only that was the maximum someone had been paid (and I am always suspicious when numbers are selectively quoted).
At the price they were buying the ‘exported’ electricity of 30p/kWh less the cost to buy it in the first place (at best 5p) then someone would need to be ‘exporting’ 8kWh a day, every day of the year. That seems unlikely for the average person. And it would still have taken them 7 years to be in profit given the extra cost of the charger.
Urbandreamer wrote:Finally, have you considered the possibility of regulation? The law now requires that a EV charger be fitted to any new house built. How large a stretch would it be for Ofgem, you know the author of the first link, to regulate on such chargers.
You could regulate their install, although at an additional £5k that would kill the EV charger rollout, but could you legislate that someone must plug their car in…
Urbandreamer wrote:Never? Well you might be right.
It is lIke a lot of things with EVs (and ‘green’ in general) - a lot of taxpayers money is being thrown against the wall and the politicians and lobbyists hope that some of it sticks - and if it doesn’t, ah well never mind as it wasn’t their money.