21 September, 2010

Spend 40 dollars to save 40 cents

I rang CountryEnergy today and asked them about recharging from the controlled load circuit.  It's cheaper, about half the cost.  Trouble is that you're not allowed to have a normal socket wired to it for obvious safety reasons (so you can't plug in a heater and walk away only to have it come on by itself late at night)

They said it would be ok as long as I had a special purpose outlet installed, like a round pin earth.  http://www.accesscomms.com.au/reference/roundearth.htm

So I bought one today for the sparkie to fit.  40 dollars.  It will pay for itself after 100 full charges on the bike.  Zero officially say 1000 full charge discharge cycles, but I'm hearing around that 1800 isn't out of the question for a well looked after pack.  So potentially I'll save $720 over the life of each battery pack by using controlled load.  That's at current prices for electricity but I expect that will double over the next 3 years or so.

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