PEA/MEA Time of use rate (TOU)

[Bandersnatch]

I am interested in the transferring to time of use rate for charging an EV overnight. The off peak rate drops from about ฿4/kwh to ฿2.63, but the peak rate rises to ฿5.79. As I have solar and batteries I won't be using PEA during peak time.  The monthly service charge is either ฿46 or rises to ฿312/ month if you use over 22 KV. PEA units are in kwhs so how do I know how many kvs I am using? 
 

[blackcab]

Do you have a single phase or a 3 phase supply?

[Bandersnatch]

1 minute ago, blackcab said:

Do you have a single phase or a 3 phase supply?

Single phase on a 15(45)A meter. I want to upgrade to 30A as that is a requirement to have a 7Kw home charger installed. 

[Crossy]

9 hours ago, Bandersnatch said:

PEA units are in kwhs so how do I know how many kvs I am using? 

 

kV are kilovolts (1kV = 1,000V) and are not the units of energy. Everything is charged in kWh.

 

Since your normal domestic supply is at 220V you need to look at the "lower than 22kV" line. So peak rate is 5.7982 Baht/kWh and off-peak is 2.6369 Baht/kWh.

 

If your peak demand is provided by the solar you could be on to a decent saving.

 

Is the requirement for a 30/100 meter a PEA requirement, your 15/45 should be quite happy supplying a 7kW charger?

[Bandersnatch]

1 hour ago, Crossy said:

Is the requirement for a 30/100 meter a PEA requirement, your 15/45 should be quite happy supplying a 7kW charger?

Thanks Crossy, makes sense to me. The home charger is provided free and installed by the car dealer. They sent a team to do a site survey. Obviously they had never seen a solar setup so were only interested in how much power could be provided by PEA. They wouldn't do the install without a 30/100 Meter. Nobody from PEA was there.  

[Crossy]

Time to talk to PEA methinks.

 

Upgrade to 30/100 to keep the installers happy (they will simply be quoting their playbook, no point arguing), hopefully PEA won't want you to upgrade the cables between the meter and the house.

 

You can enquire about TOU whilst at PEA.

 

Do let us know how you get on, could be useful for others with hybrid solar.

[bankruatsteve]

4 hours ago, Bandersnatch said:

They wouldn't do the install without a 30/100 Meter.

Guessing they are uninformed.  Probably think you have a 15A meter.

[Bandersnatch]

10 hours ago, Crossy said:

Do let us know how you get on, could be useful for others with hybrid solar.

 

Back from PEA, in fact we went yesterday, but due to covid restrictions the office closes at 3pm for all business except payments. They said they had an incentive for EV owners, they offered a second meter just for EV charging, so you can see exactly how many kwhs you are using with your car. This is no good for us as we have 11kw of solar and plan to charge the ev from solar in the middle of the day if it's not completely empty.

 

Change to time of use rate will cost ฿3,500 but as Crossy said,  we will be in the under 22kv rate so only costs ฿46/month service charge.

 

Upgrade from 15A to 30A: they asked why we needed to do this just for a 7kw EV charger! Cost to change  - free, but they are coming out tomorrow to check our cable to see if it supports 30A. According to PEA there is only one store in Surin Province that sells the required cable  - the store where we bought our original cable! The Solar liaison guy at Surin PEA knows me quite well as he came to my house with a team from Korat to inspect my solar system. I heard him say to his colleague that a 25A cable would be fine as we won't be drawing much power. If it's not the rainy season our bill looks like this:

  

[Crossy]

7 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

If it's not the rainy season our bill looks like this:

 

I wish ours did. Even with the solar we are using 6-700 units a month ???? 

 

Anyway it looks like you had a successful visit to PEA.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Latest update:

 

We returned to PEA Surin to book our upgrade to a 30A meter after hearing that the inspection of our current setup had passed and no upgrades were required. 2 days later the meter change guy called us to inform us that he wouldn't change the meter as our cables weren't up to spec.

 

We visited the only electrical store in the Province of Surin that could source the required cables to be informed that they were not a stock item and had to be ordered from BKK and would cost ฿350/m. PEA also informed us that our 60A main house breaker would need changing to 100A. We would have to dig up all our existing conduit and replace it to support the new monster cable. I estimated the cost would be about ฿50,000 all to upgrade our PEA connection that we don't use.

 

We changed our plans from an EV to a PHEV which can be charged by 7kW wall charger in 3 hours in the middle of the day when our solar panels are producing 11kW.

Visit to MG Surin to see if they would allow us to have the required home charger installed with a 15A connection. The answer was no. 

 

[bankruatsteve]

Thai logic prevails again.  

[Crossy]

Try telling MG that you will use you own certified sparks to install the beast.

 

There is no reason whatsoever to increase your house breaker

[Crossy]

Try this.

 

Get a 100A MCB and put it in a weatherproof box. Run the fat cables to it. What size are PEA asking for? You could use 1 size bigger in aluminium which is a lot cheaper.

 

Run the car charger from the weather proof box.

[Bandersnatch]

I contacted MG call center hoping to bypass local ignorance. When they got back to me, it was to inform me that a 7kW home charger would require not only 30A connection but also a 3 phase supply.

 

So expect new warning messages on water heaters "Only works with 3 phase"

 

 

[Crossy]

Arghh!

[Bandersnatch]

 

7 hours ago, Crossy said:

Try this.

 

Get a 100A MCB and put it in a weatherproof box. Run the fat cables to it. What size are PEA asking for? You could use 1 size bigger in aluminium which is a lot cheaper.

 

Run the car charger from the weather proof box.

 

PEA but not MEA has a promotion to allow you to have a second 15A meter for free to charge your EV, so you can separate your EV charging from your home charging. Unfortunately for me I want to charge my EV from solar so I have to have a single meter and then draw no power from it. 

 

Regarding the cable require for 30A they sent us a chart. All our cables are currently NYY buried in conduit. The electrical store we visited had a single strand non NYY version.

[Crossy]

8 hours ago, Bandersnatch said:

Regarding the cable require for 30A they sent us a chart. All our cables are currently NYY buried in conduit. The electrical store we visited had a single strand non NYY version.

 

That explains the cost, you can't bury THW and PEA won't let you bury aluminium although you can get Al-NYY from offshore suppliers.

 

You could try talking to SK Universal https://www.sk-wires.com/contact-us-สายไฟอุตสาหกรรม/ for your big NYY, it depends how much you need as they only sell whole rolls ????

[Bandersnatch]

I am not only fighting with PEA, I am also fighting with MG. I emailed the president of MG Thailand. I didn't know his email address - not something they publish online, but it was pretty easy to guess. I put a bunch of guesses into the bcc line of my email based on the naming convention of MG Thailand and SIAC Motors email addresses. He replied saying he would help with this case and copied the Technical Director of MG Thailand.

 

I also reached out to a big YouTuber I know called Captain DIY. He is an airline pilot who posts videos about EVs and Solar in Thailand. I wanted to know if he knew anybody in Thailand with an ev charged from solar. Apparently, it's not big here - all EVs are coal powered.

 

Captain DIY `messaged me yesterday saying MG had contacted him asking if he could explain what a Hybrid Off-Grid inverter was. He said:

 "This is not about the Farang with the massive solar setup. Been trying to buy an EV for years, but no one will sell him one because he has solar?" The guy from MG was a bit shocked that Captain DIY knew about my case!

 

   

[tjo o tjim]

I think you might have a bigger problem— are you net-metering or do you have a separate meter for your PV?  You would need at least a 50A (continuous) rated service for the PV.

 

Can you just use a ~30A socket with a travel charger for your EV charging?  That would give you over 20 miles of range per hour of charging. It sounds to me like you have enough challenges that this is going to be an uphill battle.

[Bandersnatch]

56 minutes ago, tjo o tjim said:

I think you might have a bigger problem— are you net-metering or do you have a separate meter for your PV?  You would need at least a 50A (continuous) rated service for the PV.

 

Can you just use a ~30A socket with a travel charger for your EV charging?  That would give you over 20 miles of range per hour of charging. It sounds to me like you have enough challenges that this is going to be an uphill battle.

 

Hi tjo o tjim, I am not sure I completely understand your post but I will try to answer.

 

Feed In Tariff: When I installed my solar system a couple of years ago FIT was only ฿1.2/kWh and restricted to 5kW of solar on

single phase. I wanted to be off-grid most of the time and 5kw was too small. Also I didn't want to pay for 3 phase if I wasn't using the grid for 9 months of the year.

 

Meter: I only have one 15(45)A solar meter (cannot be turned backwards)

 

56 minutes ago, tjo o tjim said:

You would need at least a 50A (continuous) rated service for the PV

 I have been using my 11.2kW of PV and 38.4kWh of battery storage to power my house for 2 years. By 11am my batteries are full. My house is generally not pulling more than 1kW from my inverter. I think I have plenty of capacity to run a 7kW charger between 11am-2pm. Why do you think I don't? 

 

Travel Charger: Agreed it could charge a PHEV battery slowly with no problem and I might have to resort to that.

 

56 minutes ago, tjo o tjim said:

 It sounds to me like you have enough challenges that this is going to be an uphill battle.

 

You are not wrong there. I was the first Hybrid Off-Grid install in Surin Province and PEA Surin refused to allow me to connect to the grid for backup. I had multiple meetings with them over 6 months. Finally we agreed for the PEA Solar team from Korat be allowed to come down to inspect my system and it passed no problem. Once connected the meter reader refused to read my meter saying it must be broken as I wasn't using electricity. 

 

[Bandersnatch]

Latest developments on my saga of trying to buy an electric car.

 

I have had solar for 2 years and all that time I have been trying to buy an EV and no one would sell me one. I have finally discovered why. There is only one company in Thailand that installs EV home chargers and all motor dealers outsource their installs to them. They have never done a solar powered home charger and don't believe it is possible. At the MG dealer yesterday sitting with the manager I called them. I asked them why they wouldn't install for me.

 

"Solar cannot sustain enough power to reliably power a 7kW home Charger"

I replied: "You know I am buying a PHEV not an EV?"  - they said yes, they knew all the details of my case.

I asked "Do you you know what the on-board charger in the MG PHEV is rated at?" They said 7kw

I replied: "MG uses the same 7kW wall charger across it's range. The EVs can pull 7kW but the PHEV only 3.7kW"

They then changed tack saying that the charger could be damaged if the voltage drops too low.

I replied: "Then don't plug it into a PEA connection. I have seen PEA voltage fluctuate from 190-250v, but in my house I have pure sine wave 10kW inverter that produces a very clean current"

At that point they conceded and said they would do the install but would not offer any warranty  - we agreed and I ordered a new PHEV  ????

    

[Crossy]

Finally!

 

We will likely go BEV next new car so will be needing a 30/100 meter installing. I think I'll go for the "100A MCB in an outside box" solution, nobody is going to poke around in my house electrics. The charger can run off an MCB in the same box.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Sorry duplicate post

[Bandersnatch]

23 minutes ago, Crossy said:

We will likely go BEV next new car so will be needing a 30/100 meter installing.

 

PEA but not MEA has a promotion to allow you to have a second 15A meter for free to charge your EV, so you can separate your EV charging from your home charging.

 

Having a second dedicated 15A connection purely for the home charger is acceptable to the installation company instead of a single 30A

 

You could set the second meter to TOU and charge your BEV from 9:30pm to 8am at ฿2.6369/kWh