Out with the old, in with the new

You might remember from a few posts ago that I was having trouble with the charge point installed at my house. Well, I just thought I'd give you a quick update.

The old unit is a Chargemaster type, which is a well known brand of charger. It came free of charge (no pun intended) with the car when I bought it. Around about the end of October it started acting up, where it would trip the RCD switch at the fuse board, to the point where I couldn't charge at home. These units come with a 3-year warranty, so I sent the serial number off to the manufacturer, to be told that the warranty ran out in mid-2017. So, it's over 4 years old. Time for a change.

The new unit is a Rolec 32a charger, so it has an output of about 7kW. The unit was supplied by an Irish based provider, and was couriered within 24 hours of purchase. It is a much more modern unit, with better water resistance rating, and it has an RCD built in to the front of the charger, for safety. This design means that the RCD is no longer needed at the fuse board, and so it was swapped out for a higher rated MCB (40a Type C, if anyone is interested). This has been up and running for over a week now, with no issues with switches tripping.

For anyone looking for a recommendation about a supplier and installer, I would be happy to share the details of who I used if you want to send me a PM.

Live Lab #1 (November 2018)

Well, November has been a mixed bag in terms of costs. As you can see from the image above, the car is averaging 15.6kWh/100km (to put that in context, that is a cost of €1.96 per 100km), which is reasonably good for this time of year. I was achieving better economy in the summer, and I expect the economy to drop further as the weather gets colder still.

So, why is this a "mixed bag"?

Well, the charging unit installed at my house has started playing up. The unit is older than the car, and came 2nd-hand with the car when I bought it in November 2017. This meant that for the entire month of November, I was only able to do about one full charge at home. That equates to about €2.40, which sounds great: I did all my driving (1,090km) for just €2.40! How did I do this? A combination of public (mostly) and a small amount of workplace charging.

So far so good! A whole month's driving for the price of a decent coffee.

What's the downside? Well there are two downsides, really. Firstly, relying on the pubic charging network is risky to say the least. On one occasion, the rapid charge point (near Carnmore Cross) was out of action for a few days, and on another occasion I had to wait there for about 30 minutes while another EV was being charged. Not the end of the world in either case, but had the charge point been out of action for longer, I may have been in trouble.

The second downside is that I now need to replace the charge point at my house. All of the cabling and switches can be re-used as they are, so the installation process will be relative easy, but the cost of a new unit will punch a hole in the Christmas fund. More on this as it develops over the next week or so.

*A note on the stated CO2 Savings shown above:

This figure is calculated by Nissan, not by me. Please refer to the note on this page for more information about this.