Bandersnatch

Today in Surin back to normal raining season: Light Rain; Cloudy; Partial sunny periods - House and Car Batteries fully charged and servers switched back on. ฿50 spent on PEA this month

My house is Single phase on a 15(45)A meter. I was told by the company chosen by MG to install the wall charger that an upgrade to 30A is a requirement to have a 7Kw home charger installed or I could have a second 15(45)A meter dedicated to powering the wall box. Many people choose to have a second meter installed and select TOU and the charge the EV over night on cheap night time electricity.

My MG wall box was installed under cover so no box was required to protect it from the sun and the rain If like most Thai houses you don’t have a wrap around roof a box is required like this one. I don’t have a dedicated meter as I persuaded MG to allow me to charge my MG from my solar system.

PEA was down from 8pm to 4am. I have a lot of tech in the house such as servers and managed switches which I tend to leave on powered by solar I switched most of it off and managed to reduce the house load to 360 Watts I managed to run the house for 2 nights on batteries without charging in between Has been raining all day sometimes quite hard, but I have switched off PEA now and see how we do tomorrow.

8pm, the storm hasn’t even ramped up yet and the grid is down! I have switched over to my backup solar batteries, looking to delay the possibility of power-cut as long as possible.

I discharged my batteries to 50% last night and they are now at 39% Solar production today looks like this across my three inverters

Having solar and batteries I am am very reluctant to use grid power if i can avoid it at all. I tend to set my inverter priorities as Solar first, then Batteries and finally and very reluctantly Grid power. However during storm season like we are currently experiencing in Thailand my thinking changes. I have made a short video to explain my plan.

Interesting article by the South China Morning Post (published in Hong Kong) about the state of the EV industry in Thailand. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3193163/chinas-byd-launch-new-suv-thailand-effort-spark-countrys

@LukKrueng Christian who runs this group does solar UPS systems https://www.facebook.com/groups/300126774329850

No batteries are extra with Growatt. I went win nRuit more info on my blog EcoHouseThailand.com

Clamp - it’s pretty clear in my second video

The clamp meter records the power used in the the house in real time, so switch on the aircon and monitor it on the app. In total you can compare the kWh used for the month on the app with the PEA bill, if there is a big difference maybe your neighbors are borrowing some ????

No problem at all, just thought it was funny

17kWh

It’s a drip coffee maker with an insulated jug and no warming plate. Takes about 5 minutes.

17kWh Is the most I have used in a month. That happened when I charged my EV in the afternoon with lots of sun it then clouded over and I drained my house batteries into my car. Currently I can’t feed power back from my car batteries into the house batteries. My next EV will have V2L and will be able to.

@Yorkie I had a bill just like that this month ???? @MJCM - Yes that's my bill for this month. Like others have posted I have several smart plugs that can be programmed to switch off devices at certain times and record the power used by devices attached to it. I also have a Home Energy Monitoring System - in fact 2 one for household power usage and one for the power my EV uses. Short video I made of the system in operation: Here is a much longer more detailed video that I made of the system:

I am very happy with my Growatt SPF 5000 ES inverters that I paid ฿36,000 delivered. They can be programmed to do all the things that you asked for.

You can set your priority order in the inverter. My standard settings is solar first then battery then grid. My LFP batteries are kept at a minimum state of charge of 22% by the inverter. Above this point they are only charged by solar as I have chosen that setting as I don’t want to wake up in the morning with batteries that charged to 100% from the grid just as my solar panels start producing. My solar panels power the house and my EV then any excess is put into the batteries. I occasionally use the grid to help power my house load, but never to charge my batteries.

My Plan is to is to use a transfer switch to alternate between grid power and power from V2L into my inverter. I made a video about how it could be done

The link is a blog for a solar installer but doesn’t have references to any official sites or documents. When I met with the Head Office Manager at PEA Surin I asked him for a link to PEA’s rules for home solar installation, he could not give it to me. The meeting that went on for a couple of hours consisted mostly of him and his staff on the phone trying to find answers to my questions. To my knowledge my system complies with only one of the rules listed in the link (not to export) yet I have had 3 inspections by PEA including the solar team from PEA Korat and my system has passed every time.

Having never driven a Tesla I have to rely on owner reviews on YouTube. The ones I have seen agree with what you say. I have previously posted about BMW and Mercedes-Benz's EV plans in Thailand. Mercedes-Benz will build electric vehicles in Thailand, starting with its flagship electric EQS sedan this year. The Mercedes EQS has a RRP range of £105,610 to £119,610 in the UK so will be probably close to ฿5,000,000 here. BMW EVs start at ฿3,500,000 - no word yet on the BMW iX1 in Thailand. By comparison a RWD Model Y in Australia is about ฿1,700,000. The price in Thailand remains to be seen, but I would consider a less luxurious Tesla EV if the price is right.

My experience in Surin from a few years ago may not be relevant to you. I asked at Surin PEA head office if permission was required. I said I didn’t want to join the rooftop solar program, at the time the feed-in credit was only ฿1.68 with a 5kW max for your system if you had single phase electric. I was told no permission was required. After it was installed I visited again to ask if it needed inspecting. There was a new guy there who said my system was illegal as it was over 10kW. I later found out that he was referring to the 10kW max for feed in on a three phase system and he knew nothing about solar. A team from Korat came down to confirm that my off-grid inverter could not feed back to the grid. since then I have had my meter changed 5 times as new meter readers see it has not moved and reported it as broken. PEA offices seem to have different understanding and interpretations of the rules. The feed in credit is now ฿2.2 per kWh and your equipment needs to be on the approved list. I am not an expert on FIT as I self consume - my solar system powers my house and EV 99% Probably not up to date: https://solar-thailand.com/pdf/PEA.pdf

Ok sorry about that. With most electric motorbikes sold in Thailand having 1-3kWh batteries fast charging would not be necessary. They are designed to be charged at home or the battery swapped. I saw this swap station at an EV show recently