Has owing an EV or PHEV made you more conscious of home energy use?

[Mach13]

Just a ponderance... but has owning an EV or PHEV made a difference to the way you use energy at home? Its possible of course that the fact you bought into one means your already energy/planet conscious.

I thought I had already been quite energy conscious.... but since having my HS PHEV i've found myself monitoring what's left on and how we're consuming energy... being more creative with making more use of night time tariffs looking for phantom power usage. which has helped me reduce our day to day back ground use by around 50% its amazing the amount its projected to save (around £180 a yr)

I doubt I will move to solar panels as the outlay just does not seem to offer reasonable returns, but I am far more conscious of the energy I'm using at home now that I'm using a charger....

I'm curious has owing an EV or PHEV made you more conscious of home energy use?

 

[Lovemyev]

Only speaking for myself here, but of course your electric consumption has / will increase when you purchase a PHEV or a BEV.
Therefore, being on a decent "Off Peak" tariff is very important, of course.
I did own a PHEV for over four years, before switching to a full BEV almost two years ago now.
99.9% of our charging needs are done from home, so the cost of external charging is extremely low.
The increase energy costs where that small, they where very hard to see.
This was because the PHEV HV pack is so small and charging at 3.5 kw's would still only take about 2.5 hours from a low SOC to a fully charged pack !.
Now the charging cycles on the BEV are almost three times as long and are pulling 7 kw's most of the time.
This has not affected our usage though, in fact we have covered more miles in the BEV than we even did in the PHEV !.
Low running costs is a huge factor in this.
After observing three C19 lock down's in Wales, we have still managed to cover 14,500 miles in 21 months !.
The cost savings alone on the fossil fuel, has completely canceled out any increase in our energy bill and MORE !.
I would brag to friends about just how economical the PHEV was to run, but the BEV is in a totally different ball park altogether !.
I paid a visit to a fuel station a few weeks ago, to get fuel for my old faithful fossil lawn mower.
Wow ......... I was completely knocked over by how expensive the price of fuel has now become in that short space of time !.
I did honestly find that service costs can increase sharply, as a PHEV starts to age and pile on the miles.
In effect, you are trying to satisfy two masters really.
On one hand, you have the standard service demands of an ICE - Plus any additional EV service costs on top of that.
Some thing I never really considered at the time.

 

[RichardC]

I never used to bother with what we were paying as my wife paid the energy bills. However, since getting my EV I have become more conscious of what we pay. Our contract with our current supplier runs out soon and I need to get my arse into gear and research who we will be moving to,

 

[macd2401]

In fairness, my electricity use was already pretty low before I got the car. Total background power usage is only around 300-350W, and the single biggest load there would be the fridge or the security cameras. I'm on a standard tariff, so there's no advantage to washing machines at weird times, and I still don't have a charge point yet, so my shower is probably the biggest power hog. Probably the easiest and biggest immediate change that can be done is getting all household bulbs onto led, especially if they're replacing a load of those gu10 style 50W monstrosities.

 

[Jomarkh]

I had already swapped out all my light bulbs for let's but have put timers on other appliances, to use the 5p KW overnight rate, including the water heater in the loft conversion and gone back to using the emersion heater on the hot water tank as I think the electric is cheaper than gas at that rate. Washing machine has a timer function so the program is set to end at 4am

 

[Mach13]

I had already swapped out all my light bulbs for let's but have put timers on other appliances, to use the 5p KW overnight rate, including the water heater in the loft conversion and gone back to using the emersion heater on the hot water tank as I think the electric is cheaper than gas at that rate. Washing machine has a timer function so the program is set to end at 4am

Lol my wife was asking the very same question about the hot water heating this morning... Now that I'm retired I have the time to think on such things . Just crunched the numbers and for us gas still seems cheaper.. (also we don't have a timer on the immersion heater) but we do have LEDs everywhere and have started using the night time rate for washing etc... Am also setting up a timer in the garage to use the night time rate for charging mower, hedge trimmer and strimmer batteries when they need doing. Also I don't let anything stay on standby unless its essential (TV recorder box)... That way we dropped our daily phantom usage to from 350ish to around 120w (currently at 2p per hr)

It's effectively saving us about 1 1/2 months of electric bills for little effort.

 

[AnonymouseDriva]

No. I'm from Yorkshire. I was always tight. kept an eye on consumption and energy costs, switch supplier every year for the cheapest price etc.
The only difference is that some items are now scheduled to charge / run in the Octopus GoFaster period. I try to avoid making our lass's evening cup'o'tea until after 8:30...

I do need to look at the gas water heating / electric immersion costs now to see if it's worth scheduling for GO times though. That'll mean installing some sort of smart switch on the immersion heater, and the potential that the water is at it's hottest at the wrong time! The cost of that might offset the savings though as we have a log burner in the living room that also does the hot water tank. Not cost effective as a home heating source, but a lot nicer!

 

[Kompins]

Being another Yorkshireman I researched the whole solar PV/EV concept very well before going ahead. About 50% of our reason was environmental plus I was running a medium van along with an ICE car which at our age no longer made sense as I don't tend to lug heavy tools around anymore. I work from home, we rarely drive more than 50 miles one way so being on a standard tariff is OK. I charge the car when the there is plenty of sun and it needs charging, obviously trying to make these occur at the same time! It's worked so far, winter will be more of an issue but it's still cheaper than petrol and diesel. Now I do monitor our usage more closely, particularly on days the car is charging and the plan is to save for battery storage so we export as little as possible and to some degree future proof us.

 

[Lovemyev]

Switching out to LED’s for ceiling spot lights etc, has the benefit of reducing the heat displaced by the old GU halogen lamps as well.
They get crazy hot when left on by children.
Have you noticed that when children live at home, they leave everything switched on.
Even if the room is empty !.
But when they leave the nest and get married, this behaviour changes over night.
I would why that happens ????? .

 

[Mach13]

No. I'm from Yorkshire. I was always tight. kept an eye on consumption and energy costs, switch supplier every year for the cheapest price etc.
The only difference is that some items are now scheduled to charge / run in the Octopus GoFaster period. I try to avoid making our lass's evening cup'o'tea until after 8:30...

I do need to look at the gas water heating / electric immersion costs now to see if it's worth scheduling for GO times though. That'll mean installing some sort of smart switch on the immersion heater, and the potential that the water is at it's hottest at the wrong time! The cost of that might offset the savings though as we have a log burner in the living room that also does the hot water tank. Not cost effective as a home heating source, but a lot nicer!

I think my mums' a Yorkshire lass...maybe her upbringing's rubbed off on me a tad.. although I have stopped short of asking the wife to use the electric shower between 1 and 4am