I wasn’t sure of the best section to post this in but as there is a focus on charging our electric car I though here might be as good as any.
This morning EDF is fitting a Linky smart meter to our rented home. We’re renting in France while we look for a house to buy and live in permanently (South Vendée, possibly Over the border in Deux Sevres, maybe also s bit further south in Charente Maritime).
We drive an electric car and it’s been happily charging off a socket in the stone shed attached to the house. But we’re currently on the standard dual tariff (Pleine/Creuse) and there is only about 4 cents difference per kWh for the off-peak rate.
Last month about 60% of our electricity was for charging the car, though we did drive over 2,000 miles (house hunting!). But the bulk of heating the house when it gets really cold this winter will be via electronic wall heaters. The hot water is also from electric immersion heating. We have a small wood burner but this will only supplement the electric heating, not replace it.
So I’m on the look out for a better tariff with the above in mind. I realise the domestic energy market here is nowhere near as competitive as in the UK, but if anyone has any suggestions for better value electricity I’d be most grateful.
Happy to chat about public car charging and anything else about EVs as well
I’m with Mint Energie and I’m very happy with them. I like that the energie is green, they plant a couple of trees in Haiti when you join and I’m saving I think it is €12 / month. If you decide to go with them let me know and I have a code to get you some money off.
You can also check out comparison sites where you will get a list of all available providers and costs.
As you are renting the property you will presumably need the consent of the property owner to change the electricity supply arrangements, so probably good to check with the owner before you go too far.
I thought that too but the letting agent says it’s completely our responsibility. Our Linky meter was installed on Wednesday. I mentioned this as a courtesy in advance to the landlord and he didn’t seem very interested. Apart from the meter, we’re not making any electrical changes to the house. We will probably fit an EV charge point to our ownhouse once we’ve bought one though.
Of course but it’s barely 4c/kWh cheaper. On the other hand 2000 miles worth of driving our big Tesla has only cost us about 100 Euros But at our house in the UK it would have been nearly half that.
Well that’s interesting. We arrived at our rented home on 1st October. My calculation is that the electricity we used amounted to just over €200 (around half for charging the car) worth during October.
We had our Linky meter fitted on 3rd November. We’ve just had a bill for €40-odd so we queried it with EDF and they say that’s the standing charge and that there is no outstanding charge for electricity because the Linky meter was fitted.
You can charge in 5 mins but not very much
Its the solid state batteries but whilst several are being trialled they seem to have only a short number of recharge cycles. Its not important to charge that fast normally. By the time the car battery is getting low you could use a break yourself for 20-30 mins.
Except of course those macho men on french forums
The Guardian report on the development Graham linked says that research in Nature Energy yesterday showed this new generation of batteries could be both affordable and eliminate range anxiety. “Finally we are achieving parity with gasoline vehicles in both cost and convenience. We have the technology for $25,000 electric cars that race like luxury sport cars, have 10-minute rechargeability and are safer than any currently on the market.” Although the current StoreDot battery can only be recharged 1,000 cycles while retaining 80% of original capacity, the forthcoming EC power battery can do so 2,500 times.
Yes Geof, all in good time. I have followed this tech for around 3 years and its always a promise for the future.
Plenty of companies on this trail with a few on test but mainly they are laboratory experiments on very small scale. It will almost certainly be mobile phones and tablets where they will appear first as small production is far easier and cheaper.
Tesla is already producing cars with Lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP) and these are cheaper to produce and the cells are more robust and can withstand higher current rates when charging. Charge density is a bit lower and there are reports it doesn’t like cold weather as much, but it’s still promising
