I recently drove my EV from Taupō to Auckland and back.

ChargeNet is great and all, very nice quick charging. But wow is it expensive.

$0.99/kWh on a Sunday afternoon. That is 2.5x what I pay at home, and probably 10x the wholesale rate which they are buying power at.

I am an engineer, so I understand the complexities of delivering huge power loads at a moments notice. But is it really worth the 10x markup?

For context my EV gets approx 5.5km/kWh ~20c/km; vs my ute at currently 32c/km. It would be cheaper running a small petrol car rather than an EV using public charging.

I mostly charge at home at ~19c/kWh; or ~4c/km which is much more reasonable. Long trips are a killer.

  • Dave@lemmy.nzM
    2·
    6 days ago

    I just looked up that plan and it has a daily fixed charge of $2 per day higher than our current one 😮, and the daytime rates are higher per kWH as well.

    Admittedly their main non-EV plan is also super expensive. I would expect that they probably pay Chargenet more than home rates but significantly less than full rates. Genesis charge more in the plan to account for it, and Chargenet get more users feeding into what is effectively fixed costs outside of the power use itself.

    The actual chargenet costs are probably covered by the $5/month extra fixed line cost (about a 15c/day difference in their EV and standard plan fixed daily charge for my house). Because most people on the plan are probably there for the 50% night time rate and the cheaper chargenet is likely just a bonus, and outside of some high users the average use is probably pretty low.

    50% night rates is interesting. Average wholesale power costs are often something like 3-5c/kWH. We have to pay 25-30c because at certain times of the year it can get to hundreds or occasionally briefly thousands for 1kWH. Plus the whole thing above about company costs. But night time 50% off probably doesn’t actually cost that much for them considering their huge daily charge, which I’m still flabbergasted by😆.