Bandersnatch

Before you reply it’s best to carefully read the post you are responding to so you don’t waste people’s time explaining the obvious. The solar system was installed to remove the need for a PEA connection.

Road Tax, Servicing Costs and Fuel costs for EVs in Thailand We have already discussed insurance costs for EVs in Thailand and thanks to all those who shared their quotes, do please keep them coming. The example I will be sharing is my 2023 BYD Seal AWD Performance and I will be comparing it to my previous ICE Car a Mitsibishi Triton 4 door. Fuel Costs: The Triton: ฿5,000 per month. The Triton was a thirsty beast. I should point out that Surin has an excellent 4 lane ring road system with protected left turns at most junction lights, meaning that if you turn left at every junction you never have to stop at any lights. It does mean that you can clock up the miles as nearly all driving is done at highway speeds. BYD Seal: ฿0 per month. Apart from the first week of ownership when I did some test charges on different chargers I have not paid for any driving as it has been 100% charged from excess home solar production. Road Tax: Triton ฿4,761 BYD Seal ฿380 Servicing: BYD: ฿0 per year My BYD comes with 8 years of completely free servicing (parts and labour) I have had only one service and it cost nothing. I watched the guy do the service from the customer lounge and it seemed to mainly consist of checking torque setting on some key bolts. Triton: ฿9,283 per year Mitsu insisted on 6 monthly servicing to maintain the warranty. You can see from the invoice that the biggest ticket items are #6 + #7 both for engine oil.

Only Electric Cars suffer from water damage ICE cars are waterproof, it’s obvious, it’s in the name: ICE is frozen water

The BYD route planner is a bit basic to say the least. It’s not been a problem for me as I tend to use Apple car play and Google Maps. I have yet to do a journey over 600km so never worried about charging on route, but this may change. saw this video about ABRP. What do others do?

I didn’t know that I was driving a BYD Seal Team 6

Sometimes posting here feels like being a Kindergarten teacher. ”Ok Children, today’s word is TOXIC. We are going to try to understand what it means and look at some things that are Toxic and some things that are not Toxic. It’s important to understand what a word means when we use it as otherwise people will think we didn’t study hard at school” Just for good measure: Your free education ends here

Only someone who has never grown anything in Thailand would say something like that. The one thing that Thailand has too much of is sunshine. My intensive veggies are all grown under shade cloth. agrivoltaics makes a lot of sense in Thailand Covering lakes is one of your better ideas apparently EGAT agrees with you 2.72GW capacity equates to 8TWH/year People always overestimate the amount of space needed for solar to power a country. So nobody is going to be cutting down forests for solar. In reality there is already enough roof space and car parks to meet Thailand’s PV needs

The citation I used was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Thailand I didn't post the link because the screen print showed Wikipedia in the title, I assumed it was obvious, apparently not! I don't know if you have ever contributed to a Wikipedia article but they are peer reviewed and most are pretty accurate. If you feel that the statistics quoted in the table were inaccurate, maybe you have some more up to date data you can edit the wiki yourself once you have signed up for an account. These are the refences that need your attention: This was a recent discussion on Nuclear in Thailand with a focus on SMRs https://aseannow.com/topic/1328635-thailand-urged-to-embrace-nuclear-power-to-meet-carbon-zero-goals This was my reply to that discussion: As of 2023, only China and Russia have successfully built operational SMRs The US Department of Energy had estimated the first SMR in the United States would be completed by NuScale Power around 2030, but this deal has since fallen through after the customers backed out due to rising costs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor I am not an expert on wind. I did test the wind speed on the third floor of my house using an anemometer, but never got more that 5M/s which is not enough for domestic VAWTs I would consider myself a bit of an expert on Solar having been off-grid with solar in Thailand for 7 years now. The payback on my solar system was 6 years so it's already making a surplus. Even if was 10 years that is a 10% return on investment and you consider that a "waste of money" You claim that solar is inefficient this shows that have no clue at all how solar works. Solar power for my home is 95% efficient panel to plug Powering my EVs it drops to 90% due to the double inversion required. The average efficiencies of power generation are 35% for coal, 45% for natural gas and 38% for oil-fired power generation. https://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2010/01/energy-efficiency-of-fossil-fuel-power-generation.html

The way things are going Renewables and Hydro have probably already overtaken Coal in the electricity generation mix in Thailand, particularly as published figures do not include domestic production (There is no permitting requirement for domestic solar here)

You need to support your comments with some evidence. Nobody is interested in uninformed opinions. I don’t pay to fuel my EVs as they are powered by solar. V2L helps me from having an electric bill. Road tax on EVs is considerably less than ICE vehicles. A diesel pickup can cost ฿5,000/yr “The DLT attributed the jump to the annual tax break for newly registered complete built-up EVs, which began in May last year and will run until November 2025. Under the measure, EVs weighing under 1,800 kilogrammes will be taxed 320 baht annually instead of 1,600 baht.“ https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanplus-news/2024/03/05/tax-breaks-triple-thailands-electric-vehicle-registrations

The usual negative fiction from the EV haters, so how about some facts for balance Several AN members, including myself, bought the BYD Seal when it was launched in Thailand last year. It comes with 8 years of 100% free servicing (parts and labour) 8 years warranty on the car and battery (guaranteed to not fall below 70% capacity) I chose the BYD Seal over the Tesla model 3 for the following reasons: It was considerably cheaper, it comes with LiFePO4 across the range which is far safer battery chemistry and has a far longer cycle life at the expense of energy density, it comes with bi-directional charging. As I am off-grid (no meter) I use the Seal for backup power for the house. If in 8 years time the battery capacity has really dropped by 30% (unlikely as that would mean BYD would have had to fork out for many batteries that had fallen below 70%) I would still have nearly 5 Tesla Power-walls of backup energy storage. Meaning the seal would be worth far more than the average 8 year old car just in terms of energy storage alone.

I wouldn’t worry too much about heat. It is a factor but not a significant factor in my experience. For every degree above 25°C, a solar panel's output can decrease by around 0.3% for a modern efficient panel. So for every 10 degrees you loose just 3% It is not ambient temperature that causes panel temperature to rise but Solar Radiance - which is the thing that makes solar power. So a cloudy day leads to a cooler panel but less solar production e.g. 10kW on a sunny day produces 50kW at 90% efficiency = 45kW 10kW on a cloudy day produces 30kW at 100% efficiency = 30kW Why are the biggest Solar Parks in the world all in hot places? 1st Golmud Desert Solar Park — China 2nd Bhadla Solar Park — India 3rd Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park — UAE 4th Pavagada Solar Park — India 5th Benban Solar Park — Egypt 6th The Tengger Desert Solar Park — China 7th Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Power Project — Abu Dhabi

Mine has been nagging me for updates via the app

I have had solar and batteries for 7 years now. Most people usually think batteries are to cover night time usage, but in fact their primary benefit is to act as a buffer storage for your solar production. e.g. Your load for 12 hours of daylight is 12kWh and your solar production is also 12KWh. So you might think you can cover your energy load 100% from solar, but your load will vary wildly during the day as will solar production as the weather changes. A small battery will help cover spikes in household load, cloudy times and wasted solar production that has to be curtailed as it exceeds demand. I would strongly advise adding at least a 5kWh battery to any solar system.

A larger inverter can mean that you can more easily expand your system cheaply with a few more panels. One thing that is often overlooked is the voltage requirements of the inverter. Inverters come with a minimum and maximum voltage range. So you not only have to consider the wattage of your panels but also ensure that the combined voltage of your panels match the inverter.

The cars aren’t even a year old yet. They know that they come with a free first year insurance so maybe we have to wait a few months

The MomoSpace comes with it’s own app and works fine as a stand alone system. My plan is to have a smart home display that shows energy usage in real time. Zigbee is a smart home communication protocol that requires a Zigbee gateway like Home Assistant, so I would recommend Tuya wifi and then the information would be displayed in the Tuya app with any other Tuya devices that you might have. All your monthly PEA bill tells you is how much energy you used in total. It doesn’t tell when that power is being used or which devices are using the most power. So you might think that your 700 units (kWh) bill for the month = 1 kWh per hour usage and on that basis you buy 5kW of PV and a 5kW inverter. Then you find out that your old inefficient aircons that you only run at night are actually using most of the power.

Here is a system I installed a few of years ago If I was installing it now, I would probably choose something that integrates with a smart home.

You have just demonstrated your total ignorance of solar. PV has a 20+ year life. I already had them for 7 years without any issues. As for batteries I chose LFP chemistry that have a 6,000 cycle life, but as I treat them gently and only use them down to 50% DOD that equates to a cycle every 2 days. You do know what the word recycle means don’t you? If so how is reusing the material I supported my comment with a citation clearly showing that SMRs have major issues. However your about solar was just your uninformed opinion with nothing to support it.

As of 2023, only China and Russia have successfully built operational SMRs The US Department of Energy had estimated the first SMR in the United States would be completed by NuScale Power around 2030, but this deal has since fallen through after the customers backed out due to rising costs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor Clearly Thailand should be concentrating on Solar and battery storage. Here we have access to cheap Chinese Solar and Batteries without any import duties and being located in the tropics we have good solar production for most of the year. I have had solar for 7 years and I am off-grid (no meter) with all power being produced by solar supported by backup power from my EV.

I often see quoted in this discussion by people who don’t own a EV in Thailand that EV insurance is crazy expensive and that EVs depreciate at an alarming rate here in Thailand. So I thought I would post a quote and insured value for one my EVs. It is an MG HS PHEV X with a 17kWh battery and it’s now 3 years old. Maybe other EV owners can post their quotes to do a bit of myth busting?

The thread was: Thailand Faces Economic Question: China and EV Cars in Thailand News His name was @WDSmart this is the car he wanted. I’ve already sent him the link

Thanks for this @Crossy very helpful. Questions about this come up all the time.

China Observer is a notorious anti-China Channel, they never post anything positive so they never give a balanced view. Most of the cars shown in the video aren't even BYDs! It's just a bunch of clips off the internet stitched together with a commentary over the top with no links to news articles. You would have to be a complete idiot to accept the video on face value without asking any questions. My BYD is currently outside charging so I just tested it for "electrical leakage" and found none - surprise surprise. All the BYDs sold in Thailand have 5 star euroncap ratings

No you asked if anybody else had any suggestions