Search the Community

As has been in the press: From the 15th June 2022, new homes and buildings in England will be required to have EV charging points fitted. BUT now more: From December 30, 2022, new laws will be introduced to help electric car drivers charge their vehicles at home. The latest Schedule 1: Security compliance regulations are being applied at the end of the year, following on from the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations that came into force in June 2022. It will seek to ensure that any charge point should provide appropriate protection to the electricity system, the relevant charge point and the personal data of the owner. The EV charger must have smart functionality, including the ability to send and receive information and the ability to respond to signals to increase the rate or time at which electricity flows through the charge point. The charge point must have a unique passport and is not set by owner, in a bid to protect people’s personal information. New charge points will be pre-configured to avoid charging during peak hours, between 8am and 11am and between 4pm and 10pm on weekdays. https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1706612/electric-car-home-chargers-new-laws-december-2022

We are eying up an EV charger from their site and was wondering if any members have purchased from this site before? if so, what has been your experience dealing with them? Site https://evonestop.co.uk/ Thanks, Joe

Running all 4 in the winter is quite interesting: PV generation: About a week with overcast skies and then a couple of days of sun. January is supposed to be the low point for PV generation. Based on the EU calculator we should produce about 180kWh in January. We measured 195 which is about 6.3kWh a day on average. However generation happened spasmodically along with the weather. For example 14kWh on a good day and 0.86kWh on a poor day. EV Having the electric car meant that on the few days in the month when the PV generation was over 2kW we charged the car. We use a 3kWh plug in charger. Even with a 5.12kW system on the roof at peak generation during January we only saw a top of about 3kW, so rather than waste (send to the grid) maybe a kW or two we charge the car when generating 2kW or more and reduce the overall cost of charging the car. We calculate that over a ten year period that 1kWh used will have cost us about 10p. Hot water: Most of the excess was captured in the hot water tank using the Solic 200 controller and a 1kW twenty seven inch immersion. Twice even reaching over 60C resetting the countdown timer designed to warn us when the tank has not been over 60C for more than 10 days. MVHR The MVHR is now running smoothly with all controls working. One of the interesting items is the water coils that have been installed in the air ducts. These have increased the inlet air temperature from 17C up to 25C depending on the heating water set temperature and flow rate through the coils. Quite nice to have warmer air into the rooms in winter. Can't wait to use them in summer when cooling the bungalow using the ASHP and powering the ASHP using the PV. ASHP: ASHP kWh use over January roughly 9kWh a day for 100m2 for average 20 C over 24 hours indoor temperature. Had to move the ambient temperature sensor on the ASHP the other day because it was exposed to direct sunlight and effecting the temperature compensating mode. If it wasn't for Build Hub and the helpful contributors I would have struggled with half of this..... Thanks to everyone on here who helps. Many people who are new to the idea of ASHPs will find this a good place to start. Good luck with your project. M

Well the combo is coming together and my wife insists that I make the controls as clear as possible "in case your not here". I wondering what she means. Still a lot to do though..

Hi ashp, mvhr, pv, ev and duct water coils. I am just starting to bring all the above elements together in our bungalow and wanted to run the works on a blog on Buildhub. In order to show my appreciation of this site I have funded buildhub and PMed @newhome as requested. I have also PMed @BuildHub to ask about setting up a blog. I hope that the volenteers on buildhub will be able to help find the time so I can document what I'm doing. Also as I go I hope that feed back from the members will help me when I struggle. Here's where I am at present: Marvin

I have a house battery and an EV and want to take advantage of the time of use or EV tariffs. The problem I have is getting a 3 phase smart meter installed. I have had failed attempts where meter installer turns up expecting it to be single phase. So can anyone on the forum answer these question:- 1. Do you have a 3 phase smart meter? 2. Which energy supplier fitted it? 3. Are you able to benefit from 'smart' tariffs? Thanks D

This story seems to come up every so often, regarding people with electric boilers and massive electricity bills. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-7966625/The-eco-boilers-cost-5K-year-green-energy-deal-gone-wrong.html It allows the Daily Mail to pander to their older readers who believe everything new is bad. Reading this story though, I couldn't help but wonder did Falkirk Council deliberately install boilers that would be very expensive to run as I suspect installing electric boilers was a lot cheaper for them than installing gas boilers and the running costs weren't their problem. It is now exacerbated by people being locked into some very expensive electricity pricing, but anyone who knows the price of electricity versus gas knows that this would create a massive increase in heating costs. The story keeps calling them eco boilers. In no way should an electric combi be called an eco boiler, clearly people have no idea of the difference between these and ASHPs. The DM then have a further story today about banning every new home being connected to the gas grid, that ASHPs will cost £10k to fit and that they won't work in older poorly insulated houses. Assuming that gas boilers are eventually banned, then over time they can be replaced with ASHPs, however, I was thinking is this as simple as it seems? Even relatively modern houses will have heating systems designed to use 75C hot water from a gas boiler. Is the replacement of boilers as simple as it seems?

Not much depth to it, but some rare coverage of the issue of storing electricity. BBC website article on power storage