Or install the Android app "GridCarbon" which provides an up to date analysis of consumption and breakdown. As of now 15:37 0n the 18th Wind at 26%, Nuclear at 25% Gas at 24% Solar 10% Coal is at 0.1%

Edited by WillZander on 18/08/2018 at 16:27

You have some valid points but your energy mix data is out of date. Coal is now a tiny part of the UK energy mix. You can even check out the latest data here gridwatch.co.uk

You're also comparing whole energy usage of an EV to just what a ICE car consumes after its been filled. To get the fuel to the petrol station uses a huge amount of energy.

Electric cars will be the most popular within the next 10 years. Hybrids will be worthwhile for some but the added complexity and weight will mean that this option will an expensive one.

The biggest problem is not just the generation but largely with the distribution of this Electricity both nationally and locally, if you think about how many fuel pumps there are in an average petrol station and replace each pump with a fast charger, you will be looking at the demand of 12 x 50kw or 12x 100kw fast chargers and that is 600kw - 1200kw of demand per petrol station which is roughly the same capacity of a medium sized manufacturing facility or a reasonably sized housing estate, multiply that for every petrol station in the Town and the requirement for several new substations and some serious upgrading of overhead lines feeding the Town immediately becomes obvious. This equates to £ billions of infrastructure investment, and if you really think that this isn't going to be added to either our standing charges or cost of Electricity (or both) then you are deluded - we still have the £11 billion cost of the smart meter roll out to foot the bill for yet!. Of course any increase in Electricity costs in relation to massive infrastructure and street capacity upgrades also means the domestic cost of lighting & heating homes also increases, whether you have an EV or not.

There is also the thought that the reason that the Government have such an hard on for installing smart meters, is because they soon want to levy the full 20% VAT on the car charging aspect of your energy use, or a higher per kw/h cost for the Electricity consumed by the car charging point, both of which will eventually enable them to claw back the pro-rata slice of the £27 Billion revenue it will be losing as the years pass by in tax and duty losses from the drop in conventional forecourt fuel sales. They can't do this with conventional metering. Lets not forget that the Government are not Saints or your Mum and so they are really not looking after your best interests, so beware of being told that something is being done for your betterment, whether its selling you an EV or installing a Smart Meter!.

Of course there is the more practical aspect of EV's like where to plug the things in, millions of houses don't have driveways and street park bumper to bumper. so inevitably there will be extension leads draped over garden hedges and down garden paths and crossing the pavements to their street parked cars, how long before somebody walking past or pushing a pram trips and puts an 'injury' claim in against the householder and the ambulance chasers begin to cash in on the 'risk'?. You watch our house insurance premiums triple when they begin covering the outlay of such claims!.

Any thoughts that there will be a charging point on every lamp post on every street or on every bin on A road layby's is simply laughable, around here the Highways can't even keep our streetlights maintained and the Council struggle to reliably empty our bins every two weeks, let alone fit, maintain and annually safety test thousands of street charging points, the cost of which is also likely to eventually be added to the charging cost!.

All in all, the current costs of charging EV's are to lure people in to giving up their existing cars and buying them, just the same as they did with diesels and once there are a few million EV's in daily use, just like with the diesel example, you watch the costs escalate as everybody in the charging point and energy companies want an ever bigger piece of the action as will the Government through taxing them.

Add all of these potential variable costs to any monthly battery lease charge (which somebody will still be paying even when the car is several years old and worth very little) and it won't be many years before the EV owners are all fondly reminiscing about how much cheaper those petrol and diesel cars were to run.....

Edited by Chris James on 18/08/2018 at 23:29

The meter doesn't need to know how much charge is going into your EV, it just needs to find out the mileage so they can slap 6 or 7p/mile onto your bill. The local distribution system is the problem, not the national grid. If you have the time, go and find the transformer that supplies your house. It's probably tucked away in a corner in a fenced compound. With any luck you might be able to read the rating plate that tells you the size in kVA or MVA. Divide that by the number of homes it has to supply, then you'll know the average consumption each home can take without overloading the transformer. You may have an 80A fuse to your meter, but the transformer isn't sized to allow every consumer to draw 80A simultaneously.

The sort of capacity and ability for most to switch to EV's is a very long way off according to my neighbour, who is an Infrastructure Manager for SSE.

Edited by MARK L. on 24/08/2018 at 16:32