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My Tesla experience

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Thought I’ll provide brief commentary of my Tesla experience, may relate to some. This post is of my views, and I do not intend to impose my views on anyone.

I currently own 3 Teslas, 2022 M3P, 2022 MY and 2023 MYP, prior I had a 2021 M3 SR+. I have a MX Plaid and CT on order.

I am no Tesla fanboy or a nerd but I am into cars, bikes, aircrafts, anything in mobility.


Pre Tesla

I grew up driving VW - VWs, Audis, Porsches and Skodas. My last ICE cars were SQ7, RS3 and Skoda RS.

My earliest engagement with Tesla was in 2015, when I was keen on a MS. The 7 months wait and the support (concerned of the lack of) made me walk into an Audi dealership. Fast forward to 2021, when there were some 1500 Teslas enroute to Australia, so for the first time, I’m able to get into a Tesla in 3 weeks.


Preparation to electrify

Anxiety and questions questions questions! Thankfully, this forum is a great place. People here are generally helpful. So big thank you to those who reached out to me then.


My journey so far

Range - I travel 25K annually, there is no range anxiety with proper planning. I have a home charger installed, but have not used it regularly (2 times in the last 12 months). I rely on free Chargefox public chargers and solar to juice my EVs.

Savings - I have saved circa $4500 annually from fuel, more if I factor in scheduled services required for an ICE car.

Charging - Fortunately, I have a free 22kW Chargefox charger (3km) and a free council 50kW fast charger (5km) near me. Admittedly, I see myself ‘planning my visit’ now as these stations are getting crowded with the increasing EVs.

Behaviour - Moving into EVs will see some behavioural change. For me, other than planning my journeys in the days to come (I keep my cars’ SOC at 50%), one positive behaviour change I experienced is my health. Instead of paying for gym membership, I chose to walk back home when I charge, walking back when the charge is completed. Walking evolved to running earlier this year. I lost 4kg since.

Service - This is where legacy brands are put to shame. I have 20+ services recoded and every appointment (mobile and on-site) is seamless. Note there is nothing problematic here, just being my OCD self, I schedule a service for anything from stains to the seats, trims to rattles. The longest they had my car was 5 days (loaner provided), to diagnose a rattle on the rear parcel shelf. This issue was looked at before, but seemed to reappear. And after 5 days and 250kms of testing, the culprit is my plastic shopping basket handles vibrating while the car is in motion 😂😂. We missed that because the basket is contained in the boot’s well. Kudos to the service team.

Service costs - Had 2 alignments and balancing done, one cabin filter change so far, adding up to $600. Try that with Audi.

Accident - I had 2 unfortunate experiences, my M3 SR+ and my M3P were both rear ended. Both took 5 months and 3 months to get back into the road due to lack of parts. Hope Tesla has upped the game since.

Driving - A familiar theme, driving is different from an ICE car, in a good way to me. Acceleration is instant, speed is maintained up/down a slope and regeneration is great.

Quality - Having seen the MS, build quality is definitely better than Fremont. And it has gotten better since 2021.

Comfort - Comfort is generally good, but not on par with the premium brands. The new comfort suspension is way ahead of the previous set up.

Software - I am not fussed with the typical complaints - phantom braking etc, as we are still the beta testers in Tesla speak. I enjoy driving, I do not engage driving aids regularly. Still, I like how the car updates itself and I find something useful like the signal cancelling function.


Think the above covers the ‘daily facets’ of owning an EV.

To this day, Tesla has matured and progressed. I have tried other cars from BYD to Porsche to Cupra to Hyundai, none can match Tesla’s offerings. And it’s my own opinion. I look forward to the competition catching up, offering good options as we transition to more EVs.

Ta.

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But yeah i'm in Vic with Amber, so most days the buy price from the grid is 4 to 11c and you can sell back into the grid in afternoon or mornings at 30-40.. some days over 70c feed-in.
I must be missing something then. With amber when the grid price is 4c then what are the networks charge per kwh and wholesale energy production rate per kwh?
You seem to need to be an amber customer before you can even access their real time energy rates. Not sure why they cannot just have this up somewhere with some history in it.
 
Entirely agree.
I am always astounded by people who choose their electricity plan by the FiT.
In regional Queensland, we don't get a choice of provider. Mercifully, we get a good FiT (it is about to go up to about 13c!). We make very little use of the grid (none during winter, about 4kWh overnight in summer), and export at least three times our household consumption to the grid. Changes in FiT makes a considerable difference for us. In the past 12 months, Ergon paid us $1300 after they deducted our grid consumption and daily supply charges.

It would be totally different for people with small solar production and different usage patterns.
 
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I must be missing something then. With amber when the grid price is 4c then what are the networks charge per kwh and wholesale energy production rate per kwh?
It depends on the distributor, but for example for AusNet their network tariffs are here. The offpeak (before 3pm or after 9pm) network charge is 4.7720 c/kWh. That means an Amber price of 4c/kWh means the wholesale price would be about -$7.5/MWh (it's affected by loss factors), and an Amber price of 11c/kWh means the wholesale price would be around $62/MWh. Wholesale price from AEMO is here - at time of writing it's $9/MWh in Victoria.
 
But I think this highlights a current problem with most energy tariffs currently and even most/(some?) battery install configurations. During peak solar production we need to be targetting maximum battery, EV and home, consumption. In our price centric model this means low, lower than feed in solar rates, for these application. Even with amber and its wholesale rates I do not believe you achieve this on most days, the wholesale rate needs to be negative by the amount of the network charges before battery grid consumption is more cost effective than home solar production. Not sure I have nutted this out correctly but from a price signal point of view I think the fixed network charges need to be lower or zero and be charged/recouped as a percentage of energy price per kwh. Unless I am missing something about how pricing works at the wholesale level with variable per kwh and fixed network prices and what is charged to energy retailers and amber style prices direct to consumer.

I'm not sure I follow. We don't care about increasing consumption during peak solar for its own sake - we care about moving as many deferrable loads to that time as we can (including house batteries as a special case enabling generic loads to be deferred).

What matters for that is the effective price seen at the peak solar time versus the price seen at the time we're moving the load from. The effective price seen is the FIT for consumption up to the solar generation amount (zero, for those with no solar) and the peak solar time grid consumption price for consumption above that. So as long as the peak solar time grid consumption price is below the grid consumption price the rest of the time, it'll drive the behaviour we want (in the case of home batteries, also adding a margin for the round-trip efficiency of the battery). Solar sponge tariffs - that drive down the TOU price during the day - are one way to achieve this, but it doesn't require the price to be below the FIT.

The free two hour period on weekends seems like the right sort of price signal but I wonder with the current price structure how do the retailers make money here. I don't see the wholesale rates being negative by the amount of the network charges all that often to consistently offer two hours of free consumption.

The answer is they don't - it's a loss-leader, in order to sign up those EV owners and their high consumption during the rest of the week. That's why it's only available to EV owners. Nothing wrong with that - seems like a win-win from my point of view (in my last bill we managed to consume more power during those 4 free hours a week than the 35 peak hours a week in our TOU structure!).
 
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I'm not sure I follow. We don't care about increasing consumption during peak solar for its own sake - we care about moving as many deferrable loads to that time as we can (including house batteries as a special case enabling generic loads to be deferred).
Agree. For me EV charging is easily deffer-able to day time charging and a home battery which would be deffer-able for all for all. I guess I did not make that clear.

What matters for that is the effective price seen at the peak solar time versus the price seen at the time we're moving the load from. The effective price seen is the FIT for consumption up to the solar generation amount (zero, for those with no solar) and the peak solar time grid consumption price for consumption above that. So as long as the peak solar time grid consumption price is below the grid consumption price the rest of the time, it'll drive the behaviour we want (in the case of home batteries, also adding a margin for the round-trip efficiency of the battery). Solar sponge tariffs - that drive down the TOU price during the day - are one way to achieve this, but it doesn't require the price to be below the FIT.
My current plan is that I will track excess solar for home battery charging and the remainder for EV battery(ies) charging. What I would argue here is that is not actually ideal behaviour for the grid. My battery charging will be will be spread out across the whole solar production curve. From a grid point of view I would think it would be better if I charged to flatten the deepest part of the duck curve, to lessen the peak non-demand so to speak. I guess what I was trying to get at was that for this to be a monetary benefit, or neutral, then my grid charges, including the network tariff would have to match the feed in tariff that I get on the edges of the solar production curve. Looking at what I can interpret from Endeavor network tariffs then will just not happen, particularly in summer where the network tariffs appear to be around the 22c mark(more if you take into account the other overheads that will also add to this).
1686709207186.png

Anyone in Endeavor energy region and on Amber Electric know if this is correct? Or is there no one on it because of this.
I am assuming I should be looking at Residential TOU tariff here for Amber.
 
As you are on the gold coast, could you please let me know which power company you are with that gives the free power on the weekends?

Thanks :)

Red EV Saver​

  • Exclusive to Electric Vehicle owners who have a smart meter or interval meter
  • Free electricity use period 12pm - 2pm Saturday and Sunday only
  • Renewable matching promise
  • No contract term for electricity or gas
  • Solar FiT 5 cents/kWh
 
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My battery charging will be will be spread out across the whole solar production curve. From a grid point of view I would think it would be better if I charged to flatten the deepest part of the duck curve, to lessen the peak non-demand so to speak.
Nah, that's fine. The important thing is that you're working to flatten the highest part of the curve. The lowest point in the middle doesn't matter so much.
 
These are my electricity rates with Red Energy.
Unfortunately rates are not comparable unless within the same area. Remember the first thing they ask you when comparing rates is your postcode.

I have 3 places where I pay electricity and all 3 have completely different electricity rates

But those rates are competitive

The demand tariff is basically a charge based on the peak electricity demand during 4-9pm and not the total used in that time which is why it is charged at kW (Ie the highest flow rate ) and not kWh (volume)
 
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Yes looking at rates now
they all have a * Rates will change July-August.
So I wait to July or August and check again then move.
For me Jemena in Vic
Red 22 cents plus 2 hours free weekends 6.2 cents solar FIT
Momentum 18.15 cents.. 6.7 cents solar FIT
Simply is 29.67peak 18.23 off peak and 6 cents off so 12.23 cents between midnight and 6am for charging. Although 11 cents solar FIT
All $1.10 or $1.14 daily.