Credit: Bridie schmidt
Two years ago, the EVC produced a report on home EV charging and the grid, looking at global data and local trials. In the time since, lots more has been learned, so the EVC refreshed the report with new content.
The new version went up on the EVC website last week and can be downloaded from here:
One of the things the EVC collected and published data on was that where EV drivers are on retail plans that incentivise charging at non-peak times, their contribution to peak demand is tiny.
For example, on the highest demand day of the year in Queensland, EV drivers on retail deals that reward grid friendly EV charging behaviour contributed about 40% less to peak demand (on average) than typical residential customers without EVs or Solar.
Far from presenting a risk to the energy system, the uptake of EVs, coupled with the right pricing structures being on offer is improving network utilisation and putting downward pressure on energy bills for everyone.
The EVC also learned through our EV driver survey this year that while typical home EV charging behaviour doesn’t contribute much to peak demand, there’s a large gap between the number of EV drivers who want to pay less for electricity by making their home EV charging grid-friendly, and the number of drivers who are actually getting a cheap rate for grid-friendly EV charging from their retailer.
In some parts of the country, this is because good retail deals aren’t available. The availability of good retail deals correlates very strongly with the degree to which the retail market is competitive – in parts of the country that lack effective competition among energy retailers, state governments are going to need to step in to sort this out.
For most of the population, however, it’s an awareness / education issue. One thing the EVC team knows for *sure* is that the average EV driver isn’t going to read a long report from us on this topic to help them pick a retailer!
With this in mind, the EVC has stood up a simple tool to showcase excellent retail deals available for EV drivers around the country:
To qualify for the EVC’s list, the plan needs to offer 10c/kWh or less overnight, coupled with a peak-time price that’s no more than 30% higher than the typical flat rate in the area.
The EVC isn’t looking for plans that ‘theoretically break even’. The goal here is to get the average person to change their retail plan and their behaviour, so the deal needs to be *better* than the local flat rate product, passing on some of the benefit the EV driver is creating through ‘well behaved’ EV charging.
A retail plan that gives a small discount for overnight EV charging, but couples it with a very high price in the afternoon for heating or cooling the house, is not what we’re looking for.
Synergy’s offer in Western Australia, which has been in place for a couple of years, is an example of a product that was well intentioned, but didn’t quite hit the mark.
The flat rate on offer in WA is about 32c/kWh. The EV plan drops the overnight rate to about 19c/kWh, but lifts the peak time rate to about 53c/kWh… so, there’s a 13c/kWh discount for EV charging, but a 21c/kWh increase for typical home usage in the afternoons.
Perhaps not surprisingly, while there will be some drivers for whom this stacks up – especially among the growing community of ride share drivers in EVs – general uptake of that offer has not been particularly high among EV drivers in WA. The EVC understands that the WA government is looking into this one.
Queensland is a bit of a unique circumstance: The south-east corner around Brisbane has retail competition, with multiple good retail deals available for drivers… but regional Queensland does not.
The EVC has tried to address this through engagement with Ergon Retail and the Queensland Competition Authority on multiple occasions, without any luck so far – at time of writing, charging an EV at home overnight in regional Queensland is about three to five times more expensive than doing so in Brisbane.
Middle-of-the-day EV charging is of course the best, to soak up excess solar. Future work on this tool will look at that, but the EVC is starting with really simple thresholds, on the basis that most EV drivers already have rooftop solar – so the cheapest electricity available to them is already in the middle of the day, if they’re at home to make use of it.
Making the overnight rate cheap, while keeping it slightly higher than the typical solar feed-in-tariff is about saying, “if you can’t charge your car in middle of the day, please charge it in the middle of the night, instead of in the afternoon”.
Ross De Rango is head of Energy and Infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council
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Incentivising destinations (workplaces, carparks, shopping centres etc) to install EV chargers for its employees and customers for use during the day should be priority number 1.
Wasn't one of the problems that some suppliers were forcing EV charging onto dedicated circuits that meant they couldn't use their own solar? So I think first priority is removing any barriers or disincentives to using home or business solar, followed by encouraging workplaces etc to provide trickle charging for longer daytime parking and some faster chargers for say less than 2 hour stays in solar hours. And try to avoid destinations encouraging charger use in peak grid times.
Oh there are lots of priorities. Destination charging is one.
Cheap deals to charge at home are another.
I'd argue that promoting plans which encourage cheap overnight charging isn't really the direction we should be encouraging consumers to head given the inevitability of lower daytime wholesale electricity costs and the likely transitory nature of lower overnight costs. I think we should prioritise getting configured for daytime charging and plans which incentivise that instead.
Yep, Ross missed Synergy's latest offer in WA, the EV add - on tariff where all electricity used between 9am and 1500 is 8c/kWh, as well as (from memory) 19c 2300-0600. The peak rate isn't much more than our old time -of-use tariff. The add-on is there precisely to soak up as much excess solar as possible, and possibly increases renewable power use by reducing any constraints on renewable generation. We now run a largeish old fully electric house and two EVs for $21/week and can't believe our luck as we spend more on coffee. It can't possibly last, so we will update our tiny 16YO 2 kW solar PV when the honeymoon ends.
Cheers I'll look into that one. I'm on the flat rate with Synergy a 6.6 kW solar.
Workplace or Home charging are between 50 to 60% during 9am to 5am. This is because of rooftop solar at homes being free/really cheap time. The workplace charging is also similar times but, more workplace charge at power sockets is cheaper spreading charge times to avoid small peaks.
Low overnight tariffs are only a temporary measure and as coal shrinks and eventually is gone the tariffs will be highest from 5pm to 8am to reflect the lack of solar. Perhaps 5 to 8pm may remain as the highest tariff unless battery prices continue to get cheaper.
Home and work EV charge usage is still less impact than electrifying homes and will be for the next few years.Home EV usage is only 1% of cars and in those lucky homes charging them is less than average home electric hot water usage. With 40 or 50% of homes with rooftop solar it has reduced energy usage during day swamps aqny EV usage.
Point of 2nd paragraph is that our reliance on coal at times requires coal generation 24 hours. As an add on some coal generators have claimed to stop burning coal for short periods. This may reduce excuse for cheap overnight energy and if so, could avoid megatonnes of emissions.
I was watching Sky News last night;
There is a Chinese spy in the work carpark!!
Somone bought a BYD at drives it to work.
Is it the police I call to let them know there is a Chinese spy connected to an explosive bomb at work!?!?!
Disappointing that OVO Energy is not on the list for south-east QLD. I get 8c/KW 12am-6am plus free electricity between 11am-2pm everyday. Much better than the three other retailers listed in the EVC tool. If you do your washing, dishwashing, pool pumping, EV charging etc during the free period it really is incredible how cheap power bills are. With the $1000 QLD government rebate and the federal government rebate plus OVO welcome rebates I'm up for about 12 months of no bills (including free EV driving).
We had the OVO offer in Victoria and it was excellent, until they changed their peak rates from 36 cents per kilowatt hour to 66 per kilowatt hour! We moved very promptly to AGL. No free power in the middle of the day but a much more reasonable 31 cents per kilowatt hour peak and the 8 cents per kilowatt hour midnight to 6am.
Powershop has free power 12-2 or another plan overnight I think from 12am- 4am at some real che price like 6 cents a kwh
Your article uses an undefined acronym 'EVC'. What does it stand for?
Yeah fair enough. Electric Vehicle Council. It isn't defined until the byline
Electric Vehicle Council peak national body representing the electric vehicle industry in Australia
Cheap power during the night underpins the need to be generating electricity at that time. This means more demand for coal powered electricity.
Better deals are available through retailers offering variable pricing, especially wholesale price plus the cost of delivery. This means very cheap power during the day for most of the year; typically, 0 to 5 cents per kWh. The more electricity demand that can be shifted to this time of day, the better the market for renewable energy and the cheaper it will be for all electricity consumers.
Not so sure about all of that. Have seen no studies yet which focus on the longer term effects of solar charging at home (ie, sip, sip, sip) vs generally regarded best charging practices - for LFP EV batteries in particular. Would seem that the solar fanboys are a little at odds with EV manufacturers & other similar recommendations for EVs.
eg: BYD recommend that their cars be run down to 10% then fully charged to 100% every six weeks or so for best battery health and most accurate GoM. Similar for many others; have had this experience with MG & including the battery balance phase. Tesla simply recommend plugging in all the time …
Point being that it is virtually impossible to comply with EV manufacturer routines by casual charging during solar peak hours. The only way to do this at present would be via lengthier overnight charging. Conversely, the solar industry seems very uninterested in this while some EV owners only consider a partially attractive ‘free charging’ period. You have to wonder about longer term effects on the car.