Energy Bills

[rjw63]

7 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Been running a electric car this week, should do around 250 mile on a full charge, it's doing 170-180 miles, even had to stop at Knutsford services to fast charge as didn't want to risk it to Manchester.  Cost £22.50, so that works out around £10 cheaper than to fill up my Deisel car? Are they really worth paying the premium and buying one unless your a tree hugger. It'll cost more too as the temperature drops. 

IMO, no.

[andyjsg]

So my wife's car is electric and we only do local(ish) miles with it so other than having to pay for charging out a couple of times we mostly charge overnight at home with Octopus and it approx costs us £2.20 for 150 miles of driving which is significantly cheaper than any diesel or petrol. So if you are using fast chargers etc then it probably isnt worth it, but charging at home makes a huge difference.

[sidcow]

33 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Been running a electric car this week, should do around 250 mile on a full charge, it's doing 170-180 miles, even had to stop at Knutsford services to fast charge as didn't want to risk it to Manchester.  Cost £22.50, so that works out around £10 cheaper than to fill up my Deisel car? Are they really worth paying the premium and buying one unless your a tree hugger. It'll cost more too as the temperature drops. 

Do you seriously only think that "tree huggers" think something needs to change in the world? 

How much does it cost to fill up your diesel car at home by the way? I don't think the cost of electricity at Knutsford services is going to be the main driver of cost for the vast majority of electric car drivers 

[bobzy]

5 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Do you seriously only think that "tree huggers" think something needs to change in the world? 

How much does it cost to fill up your diesel car at home by the way? I don't think the cost of electricity at Knutsford services is going to be the main driver of cost for the vast majority of electric car drivers 

I always just replace such flippancies in my head as "people who care".

"Are they really worth paying the premium and buying one if you don't give a shit about the environmental impact?" is probably the more accurate line.  In which case, it likely depends on how far you're driving your car, what the infrastructure at home allows you to do with charging etc. etc.

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, andyjsg said:

So my wife's car is electric and we only do local(ish) miles with it so other than having to pay for charging out a couple of times we mostly charge overnight at home with Octopus and it approx costs us £2.20 for 150 miles of driving which is significantly cheaper than any diesel or petrol. So if you are using fast chargers etc then it probably isnt worth it, but charging at home makes a huge difference.

£2.20 for 150 miles? What car is that a Zoe, must be small. Just been working it out, at home a 12 hour charge on a average size electric car to full, would be around 12 quid now. Taking into account the premium you paid for it, you aint buying it to save money, you must just be "doing ya bit"

[andyjsg]

34 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

£2.20 for 150 miles? What car is that a Zoe, must be small. Just been working it out, at home a 12 hour charge on a average size electric car to full, would be around 12 quid now. Taking into account the premium you paid for it, you aint buying it to save money, you must just be "doing ya bit"

corsa e which is yes a small car, basically 5.5p kw/h for 5 hours a night, but yeah it was a bit of both. If we get panels/battery then it gets even cheaper.

I also have a phev Rav 4 and do most of my mileage on the battery (it goes about 45 miles which is fine for 90% of my driving), when its not on battery I get circa 75 mpg on the hybrid.

[Genie]

35 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

£2.20 for 150 miles? What car is that a Zoe, must be small. Just been working it out, at home a 12 hour charge on an average size electric car to full, would be around 12 quid now. Taking into account the premium you paid for it, you aint buying it to save money, you must just be "doing ya bit",

 

MG sell brand new EV’s for £25k, that’s comparable to an ICE car of the same size/spec. 

If it can do a full charge for anything less £70 then it’s saving money and better for the environment.

[sidcow]

And when they decouple electricity from Gas, which they surely must do so, electricity will get even cheaper so the gap over ICE vehicles will get wider.  Anyone think Petrol and gas is going to reduce in the future? No?

There are more massive wind farms coming on stream next year and grid scale batteries are becoming a big thing in the UK currently.  Loads of installations are going on round the country apparently, we're the global hot spot for it  because of the amount of wind power we're installing.

So things like electric cars and heat pumps will become much cheaper to use in the future and the near future at that.

[sidcow]

We're a bit off topic but Seat and VW are releasing fully electric cars that start from £17k in 2024.  That's when the real shift begins I think. Plus Ford are going to surely bring out a mass market electric car in the next couple of years.

[bickster]

13 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Plus Ford are going to surely bring out a mass market electric car in the next couple of years.

Then you just have to wait until it reaches mark III before it doesn't suffer from reliability issues

[Xela]

Submitted my meter readings. From 1st October to a couple of days ago. Total was about £90. Plus i've had £66 back in my account. My DD is currently £111 per month and about £300 in credit. 

£24 in October for gas and electric. That'll do! 

[Lichfield Dean]

4 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

£2.20 for 150 miles? What car is that a Zoe, must be small. Just been working it out, at home a 12 hour charge on a average size electric car to full, would be around 12 quid now. Taking into account the premium you paid for it, you aint buying it to save money, you must just be "doing ya bit"

Our car is more like £17 to charge on a standard tariff now I think (it's a 64kwh battery). The £2.20 will be on one of those "cheap at night" tariffs (although I've not seen any that are even close to just 5.5p/kWh) but what you need to realise is that your electricity at all other times is usually more expensive or you pay some kind of fee to be on it.

It doesn't seem to us (when we charge our car about once a month) worth moving onto one of those tariffs, but I could be wrong and it's something I'm considering if I can work out all the factors involved.

[ender4]

4 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

£2.20 for 150 miles? What car is that a Zoe, must be small. Just been working it out, at home a 12 hour charge on a average size electric car to full, would be around 12 quid now. Taking into account the premium you paid for it, you aint buying it to save money, you must just be "doing ya bit"

Nah, even if you pay £5 or £12 for a full charge that’s so much cheaper than filling a full tank of diesel for like £80.

And if you get your electric car through work, you get a much better BIK rate, so it’s actually cheaper to have an EV car rather than a ICE car. 
 

I know 2 households who really don’t care about saving the environment but they have both gone to 2 EV cars in the house just because it’s so much cheaper.  
 

In fact one of them worked out that his Tesla through work is cheaper overall than his wife’s Fiesta was (before they sold that for an EV Nissan Leaf). But that’s a little more complex due to salary sacrifice and cliff-edge tax issues for higher earners.
 

[tinker]

3 hours ago, sidcow said:

And when they decouple electricity from Gas, which they surely must do so, electricity will get even cheaper so the gap over ICE vehicles will get wider.  Anyone think Petrol and gas is going to reduce in the future? No?

There are more massive wind farms coming on stream next year and grid scale batteries are becoming a big thing in the UK currently.  Loads of installations are going on round the country apparently, we're the global hot spot for it  because of the amount of wind power we're installing.

So things like electric cars and heat pumps will become much cheaper to use in the future and the near future at that.

I don't think they will de couple electricity from gas. We can't rely on wind and solar as a secure form of generating electricity. We have to have the capacity to generate all our electricity from gas and someone has to cover the capital outlay for the gas turbines, hence the link. 

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, tinker said:

I don't think they will de couple electricity from gas. We can't rely on wind and solar as a secure form of generating electricity. We have to have the capacity to generate all our electricity from gas and someone has to cover the capital outlay for the gas turbines, hence the link. 

Aaaaggghhhhhhhh. 

It's not about getting rid of gas. 

Currently the way the market works is we can generate all our electricity from super cheap renewable energy all day.  But if they have to turn on just a single gas tubine for the last 10 minutes of the day then the whole day's electricity is charged for on the expensive gas price, even though it's only provided 0.5% of the days power. 

Decoupling means that we pay the cheap renewables price for the 99.5% and only pay the gas produced price for that last 0.5%

We will regularly be producing 80% plus of our electricity from cheap renewables within 2 years. 

And you can rely entirely on this because 

1) we are installing oodles of grid scale battery storage currently to store the renewable power when we're getting over supply and

2) domestic batteries and plugged in electric vehicles will provide a virtual power grid allowing for long delays on windless days. 

Nuclear will plug the remainder of the gap. 

It's just dumb that we pay the gas price for everything when it's going to be a tiny part of the mix going forwards. 

It didn't really matter when it was supplying 90% of all electricity but those days are long gone. 

[ender4]

What % of our electricity comes from gas nowadays on average?

[The Fun Factory]

I think I am still in the september 39 phoney war stage in which my current gas and electric bill hasn't risen since April and they are giving me money instead.

[Mozzavfc]

10 minutes ago, ender4 said:

What % of our electricity comes from gas nowadays on average?

39.8% in 2021 according to office of national statistics 

[sidcow]

11 minutes ago, Mozzavfc said:

39.8% in 2021 according to office of national statistics 

And shrinking all the time. 

Since 2021 we've opened the largest offshore wind farm on the planet. And we're opening a bigger one next year. 

If the frickin government would allow more onshore wind we could also add a ton more very quickly and onshore is the cheapest by far as well. 

We've got the worst government at the worse time to deal with this. 

Edited November 8, 2022 by sidcow

[Mozzavfc]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

And shrinking all the time. 

Since 2021 we've opened the largest offshore wind farm on the planet. And we're opening a bigger one next year. 

If the frickin government would allow more onshore wind we could also add a ton more very quickly and onshore is the cheapest by far as well. 

We've got the worst government at the worse time to deal with this. 

Yeah it's amazing how much renewables is increasing