The Queensland proprietor of a Hyundai Ioniq 5 has stored his electrical car working prices for the month of September decrease than the price of a single litre of petrol (at present costs) by charging at dwelling utilizing principally grid-sourced electrical energy.
Andrew Wilson, a self-confessed vitality nerd who lately shared his learnings from 4 years of dwelling photo voltaic and storage with The Pushed sister web site One Step Off The Grid, took to LinkedIn this week to share information on his battery on wheels.
“In September my dwelling EV charger delivered 120 kWh of vitality, sufficient to drive ~750 km,” Wilson writes, including that whereas round 30 per cent of this got here from his dwelling photo voltaic system, the huge bulk – 70% – got here from the grid.
“What was particular about this month? It was the primary being uncovered to the spot value as a substitute of an ordinary tariff.
“How did it go? The entire price of charging for the month was $1.90!
“That’s proper – a month’s value of driving for lower than the price of a SINGLE litre of petrol at present costs!”
Wilson is with the retailer Amber Electrical, which expenses a $19 a month flat charge in return for entry to the spot tariff and software program to handle it, plus sensible controls by way of an app.
His charging set-up presently features a 32A Wallbox Pulsar Plus, used at the side of the Cost HQ configured with Amber Electrical actual time pricing and a “easy cost beneath X threshold.”
The concept behind Amber’s retail supply is to incentivise prospects to vary their vitality habits, together with by consuming extra throughout the center of the day when there are ultra-low (and in the intervening time, usually detrimental) grid costs attributable to rooftop photo voltaic flooding the grid.
As Wilson notes, the flip-side of having the ability to entry the actually low grid import costs is that there’s successfully a cost to export photo voltaic at these occasions of detrimental grid costs. That’s, you pay to have the ability to ship your extra photo voltaic to the grid.
“This generally is a large psychological barrier, however may be managed by charging the house battery and shifting hundreds run throughout this time. As a final resort, rooftop PV manufacturing can be curtailed to keep away from detrimental costs (similar to giant mills do),” he says.
Amber’s publicity to the wholesale market additionally encourages prospects to minimise their consumption throughout every day demand peaks within the late afternoons and early evenings, when costs are excessive.
Households with batteries can do that by utilizing the solar energy they saved by way of the day. They’ll additionally make a bit of cash by sending their saved photo voltaic to the grid throughout peak durations.
“You’ll see [in the table above] that almost all of my exports occurred within the early night when export costs have been excessive. That is as a result of battery promoting ‘spare’ vitality to the grid throughout these durations whereas nonetheless leaving sufficient left over to get by way of the evening,” Wilson says.
“That is the wholesale market value sign working precisely as designed – incentivising provide and demand to align as intently as potential.
All up, Wilson says his first month with Amber has delivered nice outcomes.
“[It’s] proof that incentivising shoppers to reply to market alerts may be good for the grid and profitable for the patron.
“And a very good excuse for extra roadtrips.”