gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
When you say you keep it “fully charged”, you don’t mean 100%, do you?
also, how far away is your hospital?
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Is there any point in installing a home charger?
- Thread starter deftelf
- Start date
When you say you keep it “fully charged”, you don’t mean 100%, do you?
also, how far away is your hospital?
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Another advantage to a high power charger is that it will warm the battery while charging, which is great in the winter as this allows for regen if you time it to finish charging before you drive. Granny charging doesn’t warm the battery, at least not anything noticeable.
apparently in a galaxy far far away , so that would explain needing 100 % charge 'just in case"
Remember the charger is in the car except for Superchargers.
Being able to charge at home and add 30 miles of range per hour is luxurious and not necessary for most.
That can be done with (maybe) the addition of a circuit. I have added two myself. One for me and one for my wife.
Being able to charge at home and add 30 miles of range per hour is luxurious and not necessary for most.
That can be done with (maybe) the addition of a circuit. I have added two myself. One for me and one for my wife.
Another way of looking at it is that it probably adds a commensurate amount to the value of the house,
As time goes on and EVs get more and more popular, that value might even increase. Could be the tipping point between someone buying your house and next doors, etc.
In that respect it’s not really an expense. The installation labour cost is obviously a sunk cost, but the charger itself is worth money.
That being said, 2 to 3 times a month usage of ~200 miles each time would be doable on the granny charger. As said before assuming you’re on an EV tariff being able to fully charge during the off peak period would eventually mean you’re saving money vs 20 odd hours of granny charging for each trip, although I suppose you could use a timer on a plug for that too.
As time goes on and EVs get more and more popular, that value might even increase. Could be the tipping point between someone buying your house and next doors, etc.
In that respect it’s not really an expense. The installation labour cost is obviously a sunk cost, but the charger itself is worth money.
That being said, 2 to 3 times a month usage of ~200 miles each time would be doable on the granny charger. As said before assuming you’re on an EV tariff being able to fully charge during the off peak period would eventually mean you’re saving money vs 20 odd hours of granny charging for each trip, although I suppose you could use a timer on a plug for that too.
Unless you don't want another EV having a home charger is a no brainer. It offers much more flexibility than a 3 pin, and lets you for example take advantage of E7/Go/Agile traiffs to only charge the car in short times during the day.
Charging at 7KW is also more efficient than at 10amps.
Don't be so tight, its £500 worth spending....though those of us who have jumped on the EV bandwagon early got chargers fitted for free, three in my case at different address through past trials and grants
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Charging at 7KW is also more efficient than at 10amps.
Don't be so tight, its £500 worth spending....though those of us who have jumped on the EV bandwagon early got chargers fitted for free, three in my case at different address through past trials and grants
.I survived with free supercharging and the 13A UMC for about 9 months, I was doing a contract that meant driving 110 miles a day so I'd stop at the charger for 30 minutes on the way home every other day which wasn't bad.
Now the contract is done the supercharging is a pain so I went half way and put the 40A to the garage and put in a commando socket to use 32A on the UMC. This was middle ground for me and halved the price (just the electrical work not the charger) which might be an option for you depending on the power lay out near your parking?
Now the contract is done the supercharging is a pain so I went half way and put the 40A to the garage and put in a commando socket to use 32A on the UMC. This was middle ground for me and halved the price (just the electrical work not the charger) which might be an option for you depending on the power lay out near your parking?
I am in the same boat. I planned to install one, then lockdown happened and I realised that the 3 pin is sufficient for my needs. Realistically I could always get 12-14 hours per evening/night (6pm - 8am) and this would add around 100miles so as long as im not driving around 70-80 miles daily then it is not an issue. currently no plans to install one, but I do have an outside socket that is convenient. I would install one if I had to use extension lead/cable through the window to charge.
We got our Model 3 and BMW i3s a couple of months before we were due to move house, so there was no point in getting chargers fitted, we just used the 3 pin chargers for both.
When we moved we had 2x EO chargers fitted.
We didnt really struggle without the EO chargers, I would say the faster charger makes it a tad less stressful as you are always full in the morning, whereas with the 3 pin you might not be.
And we certainly dont need 2 EO chargers, that was excessive.
When we moved we had 2x EO chargers fitted.
We didnt really struggle without the EO chargers, I would say the faster charger makes it a tad less stressful as you are always full in the morning, whereas with the 3 pin you might not be.
And we certainly dont need 2 EO chargers, that was excessive.
For those saying "don't be tight, it's only £500" I would say even with a relatively expensive car bought, an extra £500 still has to justify itself. Money isn't in infinite supply, especially now with oncoming recession.
The "home improvement" argument is a good one though, it could be argued that it is free / negative cost with grant as it should raise the value of the property, so in that sense it doesn't in itself need to have benefit to me.
The "home improvement" argument is a good one though, it could be argued that it is free / negative cost with grant as it should raise the value of the property, so in that sense it doesn't in itself need to have benefit to me.
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Not to mention, you get to enjoy its benefits while you are still living there. A win-win situation.
UncleCreepy
Member
Actually it will warm the battery as much as necessary, however that power won't be available for actual charging. In other words: charge times will be longer in winter.
Also keep in mind that the car does not sleep while it is charging. It uses about 300 W while it's awake which amounts to about 3 kWh in ten hours just because it is awake. This energy is basically lost. If you can finish charging in let's say two hours the loss would be only 300W x 2h = 0.6 kWh, so it would save you 2.4 kWh. I don't know what your electricity rates are but the charger might actually pay for itself over time.
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
It warms it enough to accept a charge, but not enough to enable regen braking. Once you get accustomed to regen, its disappointing whenever you don't have it or it's limited.
This is poor thinking. Almost nothing in life is 100% safe, and few things are so dangerous you can't do them at all. So it's a matter of risk and how much risk you are prepared to take.
The granny charger is higher risk than a properly installed permanent chargepoint, but both are very low risk in the first place and so it may be that the slightly higher risk of the granny charger is still below your personal acceptance of risk.
There is also the question of how often you use it - if you use the granny charger a handful of times a year, but the permanent charger every day, then the added risk is minimal.
One analogy is with a spare tin of petrol for an ICE car. Filling up at a petrol station is lower risk than keeping a stash of petrol cans at home and filling up there - you'd think I was crazy to suggest that - but most of us are happy to use a spare tin once in a blue moon if we run out.
Some of the risks associated with the granny lead are higher in the general case - plugging it into the "average" socket around the UK - and can be lower (or higher) for the particular socket you happen to have chosen for your daily use.
Technical issues giving rise to the difference in risk include: earthing (most random 13A sockets will use a PME earth, forbidden for outdoor charging), type of RCD (most random sockets will have at best type AC and might not have RCD at all), contact quality of the 13A socket itself (most have limited life if used at full power every day, especially after they become worn from repeated plugging/unplugging), and the fact that the 13A plug/cable is live at the point of plugging/unplugging. So you could install a 13A socket specially for charging, make suitable earthing arrangements, fit a good RCD, choose a metal-clad socket of high quality to reduce overheating risk, and never unplug it to avoid wear - you'd now have a setup almost as safe as a dedicated chargepoint. But it would have cost you almost as much!
However, for me the decisive argument is not the safety issue but this: only one UMC came "free" with the car. Unless you buy another one, you either leave it permamently plugged in at home (in which case you will probably find you've forgotten to take it with you on a trip and cause yourself inconvenience worth well over £500), or else you unplug it, roll it up and stash in the boot every morning before setting off in the car, getting your hands dirty and wasting time (again, to me this is well worth £500 to avoid the trouble). Furthermore, this way you are relying on your UMC as your one and only means of charging: if it breaks (or perhaps "when", given you are using it every day) you are in big trouble. Conversely, with the permanently installed chargepoint you have your UMC always there in the boot for any emergency, including the case of your home chargepoint having broken down.
Subsidiary arguments include the fact that slow charging makes it hard to use off-peak electricity (both a cost driver and a green issue), winter time defrosting (where the 13A socket won't supply enough power to run the heater, so you will run down your main battery and lose range).
UncleCreepy
Member
That is of course correct. My point was that it can happen that the car will use most of the provided energy to heat the battery without actually charging. This is how it is in a harsh Canadian winter anyway which is why I'm charging at 11.5 kW.
The BMS doesn't care if the energy comes from an attempt to regenerate or from the socket. If the battery is too cold, it simply won't charge.
I've actually seen a guy at the supercharger with his brand new M3P that he got delivered just minutes before. He was wondering if there's something wrong with the supercharger. Temperatures were freezing that day and he only got <10 kW. So yeah, temperature is key, otherwise the car won't charge. If you use all the available energy to heat the battery it won't charge at all.
The entire EV proposition wouldn’t work for me at all if I couldn’t charge it overnight at home. In fact, never having to get in the car in the morning and think ‘aw crap, I must visit a garage on the way to work’ ever again is one of the benefits of EVs IMO.
You mean you don't miss being in a queue with half a dozen other people whilst they choose their sandwiches or sweets or asking how to use the self serve coffee machine .. and try to get out whilst pushing the door when you need to pull it ... and then realising you just got into your car with diesel on your shoes and then look across at the forecourt where someone is angrily blaring their horn because the car in front is being too slow pulling away from the pump ... why would you miss all that I wonder ... Yes, not visiting petrol stations is a big bonus!
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Hopefully that person has-since learned to set navigation to the supercharger to precondition the battery.
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