I recently moved from Powershop to Red Energy as when I analysed it I found Red's rates to be much better, especially as I have zero power bills as a result of solar/PW2, so the daily connection charge is what is important to me. Having to export 7kWh vs 10-11 per day just to pay connection is a big deal.
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[Australia] Electricity Bills
- Thread starter Brian May
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- Australia New Zealand
Kiwiadventure
Member
My past 12 month numbers are 940kWh import, 4988kWh export, and I charge the car from excess solar as well from now until April
RossBrindleyAU
Member
I always charge from midnight AND I have a Tesla powerwall which I have configured to charge after midnight as well (during winter) so most of my Off-Peak usage is EV.
You can use the Advanced time based control and it will use some fuzz heuristics AI jumbo jumbo to work out how much to charge overnight. You can put in the tiered power charges and it will try to minimise the overall power costs for you... rainy days like today still throw it off however.
doctorwho
Active Member
Powershop offered an EV specific deal today, it looks worse than my existing Powershop deal: much cheaper off-peak power from 12-4am on a specifically metered circuit in return for a higher daily connection fee and exorbitant peak power rates. Disappointing, and far worse than their original EV offer a few years ago
Dborn
Confirmed
Their new rate is great for the car. I have written to them asking if the prices quoted are their basic rate or would they be discounted for using power packs as they do now > discount is around 15%. If discounted, i will be going for it. The quoted rates are otherwise unattractive.
Dborn
Confirmed
You know what... I never knew this existed. I open up the app and there it is... advanced time-based control. I’ll have a play around with it.
I’m in two minds whether this will help or not. On sunny days, our PW2 always gets filled but with EV charging is usually depleted overnight, and it gets full again the next morning on free sunshine. But if we use the grid to charge it overnight, then it’s being filled at a price instead of being filled for free and excess solar the next day gets exported to the grid instead of being kept. So on sunny days I think this would be a negative, but on a sequence of cloudy days you’d probably come out in front. Tricky!
The PW2 learns the patterns of use and sun, so if you have a run of sunny days it will adapt and not charge very much or at all overnight. If like this week, it learns not to rely upon the sun and will charge during off-peak to cover the shoulder or peak times when the power is more expensive.
We recently had a busted inverter, and were just running with the battery, it just took about 3 days for the battery to learn this and go into total power shifting mode. We were still saving considerably even without solar.
We only have 5kW of solar and a single PW2, but I trust that the system will adapt in a couple of days to any change so just leave it in Advanced Cost Saving mode all the time. Saves us about $100 a month at this time of year compared to no battery or solar.
I’m thinking along the same lines. I have the impression that the algorithm sorts some of that out. I think you would be ahead in the darker months and that would likely be able to offset the hit I would take in the summer months. My solar system is a few years old and gets me 16kWh/day at the winter solstice and peaks at 42kWh/day in summer. We have 1 PW2 attached.
PS:
We do dump a lot of power to the grid on sunny days, and as I get train to work, I plan to control the HPWC to charge the car from excess solar during the day, once the house battery is charged. Instead of only relying on off-peak or stored power.
Charging the car directly from excess solar will also be more efficient as the PW2 losses will be avoided.
We do dump a lot of power to the grid on sunny days, and as I get train to work, I plan to control the HPWC to charge the car from excess solar during the day, once the house battery is charged. Instead of only relying on off-peak or stored power.
Charging the car directly from excess solar will also be more efficient as the PW2 losses will be avoided.
If you charge a similar amount each night, the PW will learn to take that load into account when working out it’s target charge level each evening. But it may get thrown around a bit if the charge amount vary a lot each night.
Suck it and see.. there are a few modes to choose from.
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