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Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:58 am
by PHEV1
Hi, I am considering buying a Niro PHEV and would want to take advantage of cheap rate electricity. Does anyone know whether the Niro PHEV has a built in timer that can be set to control when the car takes a charge, similar to a Nissan Leaf? Alternatively, is there a Kia Niro smart App that can be used to set charge times etc?
I currently have a Nissan Leaf as my second car and the savings that I make by charging it at night have been huge. I pay less than 7p a kwh.
Look forward to hearing from Niro owners. Cheers

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 6:06 pm
by Old Salt
If there is an significant increase in overnight demand, I can see the demise of economy 7.

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 7:50 pm
by PHEV1
Can any current owner of a Niro PHEV tell me whether it comes with a timer to delay start time for charging? Also, is there a smart phone app to do something similar?
Thanks

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 10:11 pm
by NiroMax
Hi,

You can schedule charging via the AVN screen by entering the "departure time" of the car. I believe this means the time that you require the car to be fully charged. (I have not tried this myself as I do not have a economy 7 supply).

Granite Grey PHEV Niro 3

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:26 am
by PHEV1
Thanks

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 10:55 am
by Topicalcat
Economy 7 was originally brought out to fit in with nuclear, which runs 24/7. But then as long as it is windy so do wind turbines!

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 8:51 pm
by djbobbins
I work in the electricity industry and I would hazard a guess that economy 7 will disappear soon, but not because of the uptake of EV charging. Smart meters will move many more domestic tariffs onto shaped prices, where there will be cheap blocks overnight and potentially during the middle of the day (owing to higher solar generation).

It will be an eye opener for some people, during the winter working day evenings from 4pm to 7pm prices will be about 40p/kWh because of the way network costs and capacity market costs are incorporated into energy bills (but where the supplier just acts as a staging post and has to pay the money on to other parts of the industry).

Sorry for the derail but thought it was worth mentioning. My personal bet is that price-sensitive EV charging will be the norm, whereby you will be able to dictate how much you need the car to be charged by a specific time, then clever software will optimise the cost of doing so.

The next step will then be using the EV battery to charge at cheap prices then discharge into the house when prices are high; the software for this will be easy to do (not a lot different to the above) but I understand most EV chargers will only do AC to DC conversion, not the other way around. That'll be a new hardware challenge but I am certain the change will come with time, not least because the cost of batteries in an EV is about 40% of those for static applications, so their use will get leveraged.

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:15 pm
by Topicalcat
I can live with that, charge the car or put the washing machineon, 1 when the rate is at its cheapest or 2 when the solar PV on the roof are providing free electricity (in summer)

I understand Nissan are working on this concept of putting energy back from the car into the grid.

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 10:47 pm
by Mike8
Your answer is ‘Yes’ the Niro PHEV has an inbuilt timer (two actually) that you can set to start and stop to coincide with your Economy 7 hours.
When you plug in the green charging light gives a slow flash for 3 minutes to let you know charging will start at the set time.
Should you need to charge straight away there is an override ‘charge now’ button that commences the charge even though the timer is set. The next time you plug in it will revert to the timer.
I hope that helps.
Mike

Re: Using Economy 7 electricity to charge Niro PHEV

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 8:35 pm
by Akula
Im with SSE (so the missus said) , so had a look on the site , thought this could be a handy tariff .............

"Heatwise Tariff"

Heatwise offers 10 hours of cheaper electricity split across three periods each day. You'll know if you're on this tariff, as it's only available for approved, hard-wired loads. It also has to be in combination with the Standard Domestic or Standard Domestic plus Economy 7 option.

One rate records all the electricity you use during the afternoon and the other records electricity used in the evening/night and boost. To get the best from this particular energy tariff, you should control your heating to come on during the off-peak times.

What are the cheaper off-peak times?

You get three times over the day where your electricity is cheaper; one in the afternoon, one in the evening and one overnight.

Afternoons

Monday to Friday – 3 hours between 1pm and 4.30pm
Saturday and Sunday – 3 hours between 1pm and 5.30pm
Evenings

Monday to Sunday – 2 hours between 5.30pm and 10pm
Nights

Monday to Friday – 5 hours between midnight and 7am
Saturday and Sunday – 5 hours between midnight and 8am"

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