Garo Electric Vehicle Charger - monitoring usage

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Jmcelroy

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Has anyone installed one of these for their EV with a monitoring system? I need to monitor usage for business use.

There are two additions to the basic unit that we have been quoted for. Both are:

1. An energy meter fitted in charger will record the power used during charging. It is similar to your esb meter, it records the TOTAL power. Cost €105 + VAT

2. Additional WIFI module can be added ,to access this you sign in on your phone WIFI. This shows 3 pages, control, energy and settings. In energy settings you can see total energy used and monthly energy used. You record this by way of screenshot. You can pre-set charging times and limit control of charger. Cost, additional €205 + vat.

I do not have my Wifi on during the night, so not sure the additional monitoring would work?

Also, is it worth €310 + VAT for both?

Would be great to get some feedback if anyone has this unit.
 
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If you install a night-rate/off-peak ESB meter to charge your car exclusively, you'll get 1. for free with the ESB installation, just read the meter.

Can you have 2. without paying for 1.?

If these are the people who got the Norwegian government contract, I'd be very slow to ignore them.

What facilities does the car manufacturer's unit offer?
 
mathepac said:
If you install a night-rate/off-peak ESB meter to charge your car exclusively, you'll get 1. for free with the ESB installation, just read the meter.

Can you have 2. without paying for 1.?

If these are the people who got the Norwegian government contract, I'd be very slow to ignore them.

What facilities does the car manufacturer's unit offer?
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I will call the ESB - not sure the night rate will work for us, as the business is from the house, so occupied during the day when we don't want increased rates.

No, 2. is not available without 1

We are only due to have the new car this week, so I have not seen the meter inside it. I was hoping to get all this in line before getting it.
 
Will you be using the car manufacturer's wall charger unit or a 3-pin plug to charge the car? If your car will be used during the day, you can't afford to have it plugged into a charger, unless its a public rapid-charger, for extended periods.

Believe me, night-rate is the only way to go if charging at home. Differentiating domestic electricity usage from car-charging usage will be impossible otherwise.

I get the impression that you may have jumped on a band-wagon without much thought. Why all the questions when you've already bought a car?
 
mathepac said:
Will you be using the car manufacturer's wall charger unit or a 3-pin plug to charge the car? If your car will be used during the day, you can't afford to have it plugged into a charger, unless its a public rapid-charger, for extended periods.

Believe me, night-rate is the only way to go if charging at home. Differentiating domestic electricity usage from car-charging usage will be impossible otherwise.

I get the impression that you may have jumped on a band-wagon without much thought. Why all the questions when you've already bought a car?
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I actually haven't received the car yet - its due in any day, but we wanted to get the wall charger in first - which has now been installed. We will use the night-rate as suggested by others too. Thanks.
 
mathepac said:
Believe me, night-rate is the only way to go if charging at home. Differentiating domestic electricity usage from car-charging usage will be impossible otherwise.
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The charger itself can monitor usage with the add-on, or something like an Efergy monitor with CT clamp around the live feed, or a simple DIN-mounted energy monitor added to the fuse board that the supply to the charger runs through would do it. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but this is very possible to do.

Not sure it’s economically sensible to do however, unless the OP is doing mega mileage then the amount of electricity used will be small beans and the tax saved even smaller...
 
Jmcelroy said:
We will use the night-rate as suggested by others too.
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Just bear in mind the night rate hours and your use of electricity during these times e.g in winter months night rate commences at 11pm so depending on what time you go to bed you could use quite a bit apart from your car charging.

In order to take advantage of the night time rate a lot of people would switch on appliances during these hours. We would leave it until 11 to put on dishwasher, cycle is completed before we go to bed. Put clothes in washing machine at night time and set timer so clothes are washed in morning just before day rate kicks in. Also used for night storage heaters. However for you such usage would really skew your figures.

I'm not sure from your posts if the purpose of this monitoring is to prove the usage to Revenue. If it is I don't think using domestic night rate would be of much value for the reasons above.
 
There are many reasons to charge EVs with off-peak electricity, one being the cost of the electricity, another being increasing the demand for electricity at peak times, putting extra demand on generation and distribution networks thereby potentially increasing infrastructure costs, and increasing the fossil fuel demands where no green generation alternatives exist.

If we are serious about accruing any benefits from EVs, we need to look beyond next year's automotive fuel or tax bills or BIK charges.
 
mathepac said:
There are many reasons to charge EVs with off-peak electricity, one being the cost of the electricity, another being increasing the demand for electricity at peak times, putting extra demand on generation and distribution networks thereby potentially increasing infrastructure costs, and increasing the fossil fuel demands where no green generation alternatives exist.

If we are serious about accruing any benefits from EVs, we need to look beyond next year's automotive fuel or tax bills or BIK charges.
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Yep agree with all that. Was querying this -
“Believe me, night-rate is the only way to go if charging at home. Differentiating domestic electricity usage from car-charging usage will be impossible otherwise.”

Why would differentiating domestic from car-charging be impossible without a night-rate meter? Plenty of ways to do it.

OP should get a night rate meter either way, but dedicating it to the EV only, when it could also be reducing the cost of running the fridge/washing-machine/dryer/dishwasher overnight doesn’t sound like a good idea. The savings on these other items would pay for an energy monitoring meter in a few months.
 
I don't agree with running high-demand electrical appliances (washers, dryers, etc) at night-time or unattended, there are too many risks and too many delayed or failed recalls of faulty equipment resulting in too many fires. Will overnight EV chargers pose similar dangers? I guess only time will tell.
 
mathepac said:
I don't agree with running high-demand electrical appliances (washers, dryers, etc) at night-time or unattended, there are too many risks and too many delayed or failed recalls of faulty equipment resulting in too many fires.
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Fair enough. Still don't understand the point about it being impossible to differentiate domestic from EV charging without night-rate, but let's move on...
 
The off-peak electricity meter from ESB (or another supplier) results in a detailed, monetized bill for electricity consumption from that off-peak meter at that address. I don't understand how any other method of capturing consumption can do this for an EV or another consumer device without estimates, percentages and manual interventions, particularly where multiple devices are powered via the same meter.
 
mathepac said:
The off-peak electricity meter from ESB (or another supplier) results in a detailed, monetized bill for electricity consumption from that off-peak meter at that address. I don't understand how any other method of capturing consumption can do this for an EV or another consumer device without estimates, percentages and manual interventions, particularly where multiple devices are powered via the same meter.
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Ah gotcha, the ESB meter would give you a nice bill in the post each month, already in Euro and all that, you'd just file it with your accountant. Whereas the likes of this you'd need to go to your fuse board each month and see what the reading says, it would be in kWh which would need to be converted to Euro, and a basic model would not understand day vs. night rate either of course...
 
nor would it understand Standing Charges, calculated per day since the last bill, PSO Levies, calculated per month, discounts applied by paying on time or paying by direct debit, variations in rates charged, and you're still left with all the manual calculations and record-keeping given that all you have (at best) is consumption in kWh/device.
 
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