Cycling UK Forum

GranvilleThomas wrote:Well I hope the installer knows how to remove the 100 amp fuse safely, because there's no other way to isolate the meter - I don't think a strictly mechanical approach will enhance their long term career prospects.

Removing the fuse doesn't really require years of training though...


As an aside (but sorta related).
Some time ago I had an electrician fit a consumer unit in my garage and remove it from the house electrics that it'd been hacked into and whilst they were at it they could wire up my wife's kiln which pulls 50A.
So now it has it's own 'tails' in the meter cupboard and is completely separate.

When I got my EV I got some silly quotes to fit the charger so I figured I'd do it myself properly (rather than the hack some where suggesting) and purchased a charger that doesn't need an earth rod (some eye opening reading on earth rods out there).
Got the cable, ran it, wired up the charger, went back to the consumer unit, opened it to fit a suitable 'fuse' and wire it in when I spotted discolouration around the somewhat hefty connections to the fuse where my wife's kiln connects.
Turns out they'd not tightened the screws properly...

(She's been complaining ever since that her "programs" aren't quite right and her glass stuff is overheating a bit, but there's no way I'm slackening off those screws again! She'll just have to redo her programs! )

kwackers wrote:

GranvilleThomas wrote:Well I hope the installer knows how to remove the 100 amp fuse safely, because there's no other way to isolate the meter - I don't think a strictly mechanical approach will enhance their long term career prospects.

Removing the fuse doesn't really require years of training though...


As an aside (but sorta related).
Some time ago I had an electrician fit a consumer unit in my garage and remove it from the house electrics that it'd been hacked into and whilst they were at it they could wire up my wife's kiln which pulls 50A.
So now it has it's own 'tails' in the meter cupboard and is completely separate.

When I got my EV I got some silly quotes to fit the charger so I figured I'd do it myself properly (rather than the hack some where suggesting) and purchased a charger that doesn't need an earth rod (some eye opening reading on earth rods out there).
Got the cable, ran it, wired up the charger, went back to the consumer unit, opened it to fit a suitable 'fuse' and wire it in when I spotted discolouration around the somewhat hefty connections to the fuse where my wife's kiln connects.
Turns out they'd not tightened the screws properly...

(She's been complaining ever since that her "programs" aren't quite right and her glass stuff is overheating a bit, but there's no way I'm slackening off those screws again! She'll just have to redo her programs! )

Well it is also true to say that fully trained electricians can make mistakes as well.

A few of years ago the builders outside cut through the main supply cable that feeds us and our next door neighbours. It is a looped service with one supply feeding the two property's.

Apparently they don't do them this way any longer (installed in the 60's) and now all property's have their own individual supply.

Western Power came out very quickly and did the main connection joint, but had to call in electrical contractors to finish the job off which included moving our meter into an outside box.

Anyway the contractors were very efficient and seemed like intelligent guys to talk to, with an impressive van and top rate tools, and had the job finished in a few hours, but they still managed to mess it up and connected our meter in such a way as to have our meter reading the electricity usage for both property's!

They didn't know it was a looped supply! Our electricity bill doubled and it took me almost a year before I managed to get Western Power out again to take a look (my supplier was a waste of time) and they couldn’t believe the mess up the contractors had made of it and immediately put the meter back where it was, problem solved.

I never managed to get the money back, everyone just blamed someone else, but it just goes to prove anyone can have a bad day

kwackers wrote:((Snip only for brevity))
......
The important bit in that statement is "IMV". The national grid says they can cope, most EV's charge overnight (and infrequently at that) when the grid has a problem with surplus.

EV sales are the only thing that's continuing to climb against a general decline in car sales.
IMO they're very close to a tipping point particularly as most folk buy cars on PCP and if you include the running costs they simply cost less per month to own and run.
Throw in the company car incentives for BEV's and for a lot of folk they're a no brainer.

They've still got a fight on their hands, some folk resist any change and look for reasons not to engage.
But in the end more money in folks wallets will always win.

I simply think you are over optimistic about the ability of the grid to supply the lion's share of transport energy.
I am not sure about your figures either.

Searching the net reveals a average EV draws 7.2 KW of power to charge and has a 50 KWH battery.
Seven hours to full charge from "empty".
Or 14 odd hours from a 4kw solar system. Full panel output and nothing over for a small fridge or a couple of lights. And also assuming full sun which is a very big assumption.

We have short winter days and days and weeks of heavy cloud cover. I know of no one that has installed solar that has lived up to predicted (by the salesman) total output.

Wind blows at night, and sometimes it doesn't. There is no doubt the British Isles are very "favoured"(!) in this regard and I have long been a supporter of offshore wind.
However I have seen Gridwatch running very close to maximum production on cold still winter's nights, with masses of imported French nuclear to help.
And that with relatively few EVs on the roads.

So I still think we have a way to go here.
The "everybody running around in clean leccy cars" scenario has a long way to go, I think.

Throw in everybody needing a newly manufactured vehicle and the battery issue and I am going to stay "old and stinky" for a while yet.

I have never have bought vehicles on credit. While it MAY make economic sense for some business users etc, it remains a living beyond one's means.
It can lead to economic problems.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I simply think you are over optimistic about the ability of the grid to supply the lion's share of transport energy.

Not me, I'm simply repeating what the folk in charge of the grid say.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I am not sure about your figures either.

Searching the net reveals a average EV draws 7.2 KW of power to charge and has a 50 KWH battery.
Seven hours to full charge from "empty".
Or 14 odd hours from a 4kw solar system. Full panel output and nothing over for a small fridge or a couple of lights. And also assuming full sun which is a very big assumption.

Yes, but you don't charge every night.
Looking at my usage my car hasn't been on charge for over a week.
10,000 miles a year is say 30 miles a day. That's about 7.5kwh of energy needed per day - 1 hours charge or 2 if from solar.

If I had solar (I don't yet) I can tell my car charger to use the surplus.
What happens then is if my solar produces more than my house needs the car charger will divert that power to the car until the car is fully charged.
And since it typically only needs 2 hours of sun a day...

Probably not that relevant but the car charger can throttle the car, i.e charge a far less than 7.2kw. So if you only have 2.5kw surplus then it'll charge at that instead of pulling power from the grid.
(My car charger is capable of monitoring power into the house, power from solar, exported power and state of charge of the car. I can then (for example) tell it to give me a minimum of 50 miles in the car, route any surplus into the car or charge if the price drops below 4p. Smart usage such as this is how you keep the costs down and the load on the grid low)

I'm not claiming that it'll all be perfect, merely that folk who know what they're talking about reckon we can cope and that the way cars work when hooked up isn't a case of 20 million cars suddenly pulling huge amounts of power from the grid.

In 15 years time when the last IC car rolls out of the showroom we'll have vastly more wind and solar than we do now. Over production of either of those is less important when you've got millions of small batteries waiting to soak up the surplus for future use.


As for buying vehicles on credit, suppose you could buy a second hand EV on credit for less than your monthly petrol bill costs?
Might not apply to you but for some people that's close to being a reality.
In fact for some folk it doesn't even need to be second hand - there's a reason there are a lot of EV's being used as private hire taxis.

Typical mileage is 8-10k. At 4m/kWh that’s 2.5MWh/year, not actually that much when basically all vehicles have the capacity to time their charging.

Sensible ev owners also don’t leave their vehicles charging at all times - only topping it up to 80% on a regular basis, and to 100% for long journeys.

GranvilleThomas wrote:They didn't know it was a looped supply! Our electricity bill doubled and it took me almost a year before I managed to get Western Power out again to take a look (my supplier was a waste of time) and they couldn’t believe the mess up the contractors had made of it and immediately put the meter back where it was, problem solved.

I never managed to get the money back, everyone just blamed someone else, but it just goes to prove anyone can have a bad day

Presumably if you had disconnected your meter, it would have cut off your neighbour's supply too ?

A bit extreme, perhaps, but at a guess it would have got fixed a lot sooner.

kwackers wrote:

PDQ Mobile wrote:I simply think you are over optimistic about the ability of the grid to supply the lion's share of transport energy.

Not me, I'm simply repeating what the folk in charge of the grid say.

((Snip for brevity.))
No you don't charge from solar any night. The moon doesn't work.
And of course you don't need to charge it much if you don't use it much.

But then the much vaunted cost benefits don't look so favourable?
20 k odd for the vehicle plus a solar installation at 5k, if you don't do the miles then it's making a single mile very very expensive.

Surely if what you say adds up, then you WOULD charge every day or at least every day when you can buy leccy cheaply. I imagine though you have to monitor pretty frequently to find the best rates?
What model did you go for that demonstrates such a built in sophistication that it can decide itself where and when to draw its charge?

4p a kwh is a gift, under the actual price of generation and delivery I guess. Under a quarter of what I pay.
While I am no expert I cannot see how generating and delivering it at that can work without subsidy from other customers.

If, as you expect, such a generated surplus will be used in the future then you will also expect to pay more per unit as a consequence?

Then there is the mileage.
Many folk don't do a nice 30 miles a day every day. They make one or two longer journeys a week and little in between.
A charging regime that you describe is unsuitable for such usage.

And however you spin it, it IS 20 million odd cars drawing their energy from the grid. It is a huge amount of energy. I am sure you could work it out (back of an envelope) much better than me.
I don't think we are anywhere near covering that capacity at the moment or in the foreseeable future, no matter what anyone says, for I do watch Gridwatch and quite often we get close to full capacity.

That capacity includes the big nuclear, gas turbine sectors etc which have downsides at least equal to a small efficient ICE powered vehicle- IMV.

Here is 9am today.
Demand is 39 GW. The amber zone starts at 45GW.
It's not particularly cold out.
Solar less than 2%. Wind managing a creditable 14 odd.
But still well over half from less sustainable (or desirable) sources.

PDQ Mobile wrote:No you don't charge from solar any night. The moon doesn't work.
And of course you don't need to charge it much if you don't use it much.

Who said anything about using solar at night?
The examples I gave are based on average mileage.

PDQ Mobile wrote:But then the much vaunted cost benefits don't look so favourable?
20 k odd for the vehicle plus a solar installation at 5k, if you don't do the miles then it's making a single mile very very expensive.

It's pretty simple really.
Average cost to me so far is around £10 per 1000 miles - sometimes more, sometimes less.
As we head into winter my guess it that could be as high as £15 assuming we don't get all our nuclear back online.

In terms of cost I've picked a "compact SUV" (which is apparently what folk want these days)
Taking numbers from the manufacturers website (which I know are inflated in the case of the EV by about £5k and about £2k for the IC version if you can be bothered shopping around) this is what I've got.

The EV is £345 a month, the IC £233 a month with no deposit (I can't be sure about the IC but I know the EV is available for under £300 if you shop around).
So in this scenario you're paying £112 a month more for the EV.
If you're doing the average 10,000 miles a year - 830 miles a month and you get 40mpg (based on the vehicle I'm using above) then you're paying around £100 in petrol (assuming £5 a gallon).
If we go for the worst case cheap electric I can find which is 8p fixed overnight then you need 200kwh @ 8p which is £16.

So worst case scenario the EV costs you £28, best case you're probably about the same in profit. Increase the mileage and the EV looks better and better.

Against this you've got no tax, cheaper servicing (no exhausts, brakes, timing belts), potential savings if you need to enter some low emission zones (the cost savings going in and out of London would be astronomical).
EV's are also better to drive, easier to sell on and in this case better specced. It's also more convenient for the majority of driving because you don't have the hassle of detours to the local petrol station, plus your own personal fuel station is always open.

Of course there may be reasons why the above may not apply to you but they apply to a significant proportion of the population.

PDQ Mobile wrote:Surely if what you say adds up, then you WOULD charge every day or at least every day when you can buy leccy cheaply. I imagine though you have to monitor pretty frequently to find the best rates?
What model did you go for that demonstrates such a built in sophistication that it can decide itself where and when to draw its charge?

No, you'd plug in every day - that doesn't imply charging. You let the charger make the decision, you simply tell it what the minimum miles you require are and it'll figure the rest out for you.
So if your commute is say 20 miles a day then you might be happy with a minimum of 40 miles, at weekends you might want 100 miles so you make that a condition of the weekend. If necessary you simply override it and tell it to charge up fully. It's just a simple app.

The charger I have is a Zappi, but other models are available and all modern chargers are smart. If you're an Octopus customer you can pick up an Ohme for half price which handles their pricing structure out of the box.
(I bought a Zappi so it'll handle my solar when I have it installed).

PDQ Mobile wrote:4p a kwh is a gift, under the actual price of generation and delivery I guess. Under a quarter of what I pay.
While I am no expert I cannot see how generating and delivering it at that can work without subsidy from other customers.

The price has been as low as -11p.
Subsidised? ish.

But you were paying the subsidy anyway. When too much power is generated those guaranteed prices we offer to generating companies have to be covered, or we pay them to shut the power station down.
You could argue that by preventing the cost of shutting power generators down EV owners are subsidising you by buying electricity when there are no other customers.

Electricity is sold as a bidding process, you buy electricity in advance and its price fluctuates. Sometimes the price is negative or very cheap.
My overall average since January is 7p/kwh.
Octopus tell you how the price is worked out, basically it's the wholesale rate multiplied by 2.2 with 13p added between 4pm & 7pm (capped at 35p). So despite the outrage I'm still paying more than the wholesale price.

It's not all good of course, tonight for the first time ever the price will hit the cap of 35p between 6 & 7 but for me all that means is I won't put the oven on during those times (or the dishwasher / washing machine).
(Which may well mean the wholesale price is above what you're paying - so I'd be subsidising you )

PDQ Mobile wrote:And however you spin it, it IS 20 million odd cars drawing their energy from the grid. It is a huge amount of energy. I am sure you could work it out (back of an envelope) much better than me.
I don't think we are anywhere near covering that capacity at the moment or in the foreseeable future, no matter what anyone says, for I do watch Gridwatch and quite often we get close to full capacity.

No, it isn't 20 million cars drawing energy from the grid.
For a typical car of average mileage it's one hour a day - usually when energy is in surplus not when the grid is loaded.
If it was evenly spaced out that's less than a million cars, if the majority happens during the night then it's about 2-3 million cars, so about 15-20GW.
Looking on gridwatch that's about the same as the usual fall in overnight demand.
(Incidentally according to Ofgen our installed capacity is 75GW and it's not often I see us get even close to that, currently we're running about 40GW. On top of that our energy use has been declining for years as homes and industry become more efficient - or move abroad).

And lets not forget this is now - not in the 10-15 years it'll take to replace the car fleet.
By then we'll have more renewables and vastly more storage.


As an aside I noticed you can buy a 330w solar panel now for well under £100.
If you've got a roof (doesn't even need to be "suitable" now since solar generation is so cheap it'll still be a plus) then fitting solar is an absolute no brainer.
Even battery storage is almost affordable, smooth you over those 35p peaks and charge the car using solar overnight - no moon needed...

DaveReading wrote:

GranvilleThomas wrote:They didn't know it was a looped supply! Our electricity bill doubled and it took me almost a year before I managed to get Western Power out again to take a look (my supplier was a waste of time) and they couldn’t believe the mess up the contractors had made of it and immediately put the meter back where it was, problem solved.

I never managed to get the money back, everyone just blamed someone else, but it just goes to prove anyone can have a bad day

Presumably if you had disconnected your meter, it would have cut off your neighbour's supply too ?

A bit extreme, perhaps, but at a guess it would have got fixed a lot sooner.

Yes that is correct and to prove this we knocked our neighbours door and told her we were going to cut our power off and to see what happens in her place.

Low and behold my suspicions were correct, and we cut my neighbours electric off as well when we hit the big isolator switch next to our meter.

It was a relief in a way because it proved I was correct about the wiring (tails) being incorrect and gave me evidence to get Western Power out to fix it.

They looked at the way it had been done by the contractors in disbelief, but it didn't take long to put right

Only problem we still have is that we are stuck with one main fuse (cut-out) for the two properties, but it has not proved to be a problem so far.

kwackers wrote:As an aside I noticed you can buy a 330w solar panel now for well under £100.
If you've got a roof (doesn't even need to be "suitable" now since solar generation is so cheap it'll still be a plus) then fitting solar is an absolute no brainer.
Even battery storage is almost affordable, smooth you over those 35p peaks and charge the car using solar overnight - no moon needed...

(Massive snip only for brevity)

Gridwatch shows maximum (top of the red zone) installed capacity as 55GW, so there's something well adrift somewhere.
Perhaps its not counting imported leccy from France??
I don't know.

I do know however that under those high load conditions the nuclear from France couldn't still be described as "base load" but rather "essential"!
And It's putting the problem elsewhere.

I am not very fond of nuclear. I can see its potential (as base load) but the consequences of Chernobyl where I live were pretty dire - for years livestock was restricted in movement. And one wondered about gardening etc.
And decommissioning of old Magnox stuff has proved incredibly and ongoingly costly.

I can see though that the low fuel cost (of EV)is attractive, especially for high mileage taxis etc, but it is only part of the overall equation.
Those high monthly rental costs are far beyond my means.
I hesitate to provide the astonishing figures from my own motoring endeavours.
But as a base figure a vehicle that cost 800 quid thirteen years ago and has done average annual milage since and just a few little repairs takes some beating.
I am "handy" though and such a scenario is not everyones cup of tea for sure. Though it happens to be mine!

Vehicle Excise Duty is unfairly high simply because of age (emissions are good) but it's a bit like subsidy on solar.
The low user and minimalist consumer is penalized in favour of the profligate consumer.
And I don't think it right, but then I would wouldn't I!!

I am puzzled why you, who has done the "no brainer" sums have still not installed a solar system? And now with an EV!
You would seem to be extremely handy and knowledgable, could you not DIY using the quoted chip as chips new panels?
I nearly had some installed myself many many moons ago but the payback from the outlay (even including generous cash subsidy) didn't seem to add up given my low consumption and bill.

I don't need "my own petrol station" happy as I am to simply put fuel in when I shop- around once or twice a month depending.

PDQ Mobile wrote:Gridwatch shows maximum (top of the red zone) installed capacity as 55GW, so there's something well adrift somewhere.
Perhaps its not counting imported leccy from France??
I don't know.

I don't know who's responsible for gridwatch but I got the numbers from Ofgem whom I'd assume has it right. (Lots of interesting reading on the Ofgem site btw).
<edit> I was thinking about the disparity; generation exists at two levels, instantaneous and sustained.
For example Dinorwig can provide nearly 2GW for about 5 hours and then it's finished.
If you include storage then perhaps that accounts for the discrepancy. One is max possible for a short period the other continuous.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I can see though that the low fuel cost is attractive, especially for high mileage taxis etc, but it is only part of the overall equation.
Those high monthly rental costs are far beyond my means.
I hesitate to provide the astonishing figures from my own motoring endeavours.
But as a base figure a vehicle that cost 800 quid thirteen years ago and has done average annual milage since and just a few little repairs takes some beating.
I am "handy" though and such a scenario is not everyones cup of tea for sure. Though it happens to be mine!

You're hardly typical though and you can only buy second hand vehicles if others buy new vehicles - effectively subsidising your motoring by absorbing the initial cost.

PDQ Mobile wrote:Vehicle Excise Duty is unfairly high simply because of age (emissions are good) but it's a bit like subsidy on solar.
The low user and minimalist consumer is penalized in favour of the profligate consumer.
And I don't think it right, but then I would wouldn't I!!

Well, old cars invariable have worse emissions than new ones. Wear and tear doesn't make IC engines cleaner.
OTOH EV's get cleaner with age. A 10 year old EV now is cleaner than it was 10 years ago as the mix of renewables climbs and coal etc falls.

As for the subsidy on solar, afaik there pretty much isn't one now.
If you're really bothered about subsidies why aren't you complaining about the not insignificant subsidies handed out to fossil fuel production?
You seem happy to use the stuff without complaining about it but begrudge the comparatively small subsidies handed out elsewhere.

PDQ Mobile wrote:I am puzzled why you, who has done the "no brainer" sums have still not installed a system?
You would seem to be extremely handy and knowledgable, could you not DIY using the quoted chip as chips new panels?
I nearly had some installed myself many many moons ago but the payback from the outlay (even including generous cash subsidy) didn't seem to add up given my low consumption and bill.

I need a new roof - or will do in a few years.
Plus panels have improved enormously and there are a few interesting developments on the horizon which I'm potentially keen on.

Ideally I want to over produce electricity so I want 8-10kw of panels arranged such that they maximise power production early morning and during the winter rather than the current trend to maximise annual production which usually means they're set up for midday sun during the summer.
I have little interest in producing power I can't use so doing that makes far more sense to me.

So in short I'm just waiting. My mortgage is paid off in a couple of weeks which saves me a small fortune each month and then I can start recouping the savings I've lost due to furlough.
Once I'm feeling a bit happier financially then I'll look into getting the roof replaced and panels installed - might do them myself, but then I might go for a 'tiled' solar system, depends what's available and whether it'll do what I want.

I did consider putting panels up during my furlough time but opted to spend a few weeks doing drive repairs instead. Since I was being quoted upwards of 25k for a new drive and my repairs will probably see me out then that's 25k I can put towards something else.

TBH I probably wouldn't have bought an EV had I known I was going to be furloughed.
My missus is the main user, driving her goods around the country to various shops and galleries but they're all closed now and I tend to use my bike.
So since I tend to buy cars cash and run them until they die it's a not insubstantial hole in my savings I could have avoided - or at least delayed with the benefit of cheaper and more choice in the car market in a couple of years.
But someone has to buy new EV's so they can trickle down to the more sensible amongst us who buy second hand...

^^
It's interesting.
I don't accept all of it, of course.
Dinorwig was built to store overight surplus leccy from now defunct nuclear Wylfa. Maybe it can use some of the Liverpool bay wind now?

But it's genuinely interesting.
And I wish you many happy cheap miles with your silent hi tech wheels.
A longer term reliability report would always be interesting too.

Wish you safe cycling and the other stuff.

PDQ Mobile wrote:^^

Dinorwig was built to store overight surplus leccy from now defunct nuclear Wylfa. Maybe it can use some of the Liverpool bay wind now?

There are wind turbines in north Ynys Mon too, close to Wylfa, so the transmission lines across the island are handy.
Tan y Grisiau/ LLyn Stwlan, is the first pump storage scheme, worked by the Ffestiniog station, nearer Trawsfynnydd ex-nuclear.
It is a striking piece of serendipity that these should now be useful for such a different form of generation.
Wylfa was first justified as supplying power for aluminium smelting at Holyhead.

sjs wrote:

Littgull wrote:

sjs wrote:
My meters were installed by a pair of trainees under the supervision of a much younger but evidently qualified person. When the power was switched on he found that the live and neutral had been connected the wrong way round.

This is termed a 'cross polarity' and as such is classed as a 'dangerous occurrence' under the R.I.D.D.O.R (Reporting of Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) 2013. Such incidents are legally required to be reported to the Health and Safety Executive (H.S.E) by the metering installer company/ electricity supplier. This enables the H.S.E to investigate the incident and if lack of competency is found then H.S.E will take enforcement action.

Well to be fair the error was spotted within about a minute by the competent one doing his checks. It does explain his state of panic though. I bet they never reported anything; I certainly never heard any more about it.

I moved into a brand new home where everything was wired ok at the distribution box but live and neutral was reversed on every single socket. The site supervisor’s response to correct the issue was immediate unlike the response to any of the other snagging works.

It also caused checks on 17 other homes.

All it takes is to plug something like this into any socket.

<SNIP>

How did you find out the polarity was reversed?