France is Cheap - thanks to Granny Charger

[BugEyed]

Blimey, Andorra must be bad. ?

Have you tried London?

 

[EVsince2016]

Blimey, Andorra must be bad. ?

Have you tried London?

haha

Much of it is a tax free shopping zone full of tourists, looney driving and huge border queues.

There are wonderful ski resorts in the north, a 4 hour transfer from the nearest airport and the highest road in the Pyrenees.

But, the ski resorts in France / Spain nearby are accessible, nicer and better in most ways.

You can imagine though, tax free booze and the isolation makes skiing holidays there cheaper but it also attracts a certain crowd. Workers seem to be imported & on poor pay & conditions due to no EU laws, & above average grumpy.

Visiting though is an experience not to be missed, the all year round West End Xmas shopping experience up a remote mountain! Mad place. I enjoyed the mountain passes in the north of Andorra & the Spanish side the most, but Andorra de Ville itself

I'm sure others have enjoyed their visit there, just

 

[BugEyed]

Much of it is a tax free expensive shopping zone full of tourists, looney driving and huge border queues.

Workers seem to be imported & on poor pay & conditions due to no EU laws, & above average grumpy.

I think that you are talking about London. ?

 

[smokie]

I did Andorra many many years ago while holidaying in Spain. I'm guessing '82/'82 ish. It wasn't so bad back then,...

I came away with a bunch of cassette tapes and a tape deck for the car, which was fitted for me before we came back by a bloke we met in our hotel.

I do recall really enjoying the mountainous drive, in a lively way, though the missus has never got over it LOL

 

[EVsince2016]

I think that you are talking about London. ?

London has at least easy access & escape by road, rail or air even ship.

Andorra has no airport, railway or of course ship, just twisty mountain roads

 

[Johnberg51]

I've been looking for a solution to measuring kWh input with some kind of resettable counter. There are monitoring plug/socket devices available - Screwfix and Toolstation both do one but if the plug/socket gets fried working at high load for several hours, you need a complete new monitor.
Instead I found one of these on eBay.
6 in 1 Color Display Digital Energy Meter (KWS-AC300-100A Solid Core CT) *Z | eBay
It uses a current transformer, so the mains cable is under my control (and will be nice and heavy)
The monitor will go into a nice plastic box with a couple of strain relief grommets on incoming and outgoing cables.
I'll see how it turns out and maybe make a how-I-done-it post in a month or two.

I use this one, single phase but no problem:

16.02￡ 44% OFF|1p Ewelink Single Phase Din Rail Wifi Smart Energy Meter Power Consumption Kwh Meter Wattmeter With Alexa Google For Smart Home - Smart Remote Control - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

You can see everything on your moblie phone.

 

[BugEyed]

Or even the less well known version of the Shelly One, the 1PM.

Shelly 1PM | Shelly Store UK | Smart Home Automation

 

[jpvdheijn]

Or even the less well known version of the Shelly One, the 1PM.

Shelly 1PM | Shelly Store UK | Smart Home Automation

Shelly is actually quite well known in the smarthome community. I have a few installed and opted for this instead of the Chinese alternatives because shelly uses certified transformers on their boards. The Chinese do not, implication here is that if you would get in to a malfunction of the device you insurance might not cover the damage if caused by a non certified device. IMHO going cheap for these items is potentially paying the price later in time.

Well, the meter arrived jolly quickly and I happened across a nice weatherproof box at my local Screwfix when I went there on another mission.

The meter mounted into a cutout in the lid. There was plenty of room inside for cable management, terminations and the current transformer.

There's a couple of feet of cable to a decent 13A plug and 3 or 4 meters to a 13A trailing socket which can feed out thru a convenient letterbox and the granny plugged in outside, with a suitable cover over the plug if the weather looks remotely dodgy (main usage will likely be if we stay at my son's place).

View attachment 10867
Meter displays V, A, Temp, Power Factor, instantaneous kW, Duration and accumulated kWh.

The little blue button on the right resets the timer and/or kWh meter. Long (>5S) press puts the meter into reset mode. Short press toggles reset selection between accumulated kWh and time readings. Double press resets selected variable (flashing) and a further long press saves the values and exits reset mode.

It happily monitored my bread maker overnight (0.4 kWh if you're interested)

Tried it out in earnest for a couple of hours on the car with no complaints from the granny diagnostics and nothing getting warm.

Quite pleased.

I think this is very nice, with this solution you could offer the home owner a insight in the energy used on your holiday destination and pay the amount per kw if they insist on paying.

 

[BugEyed]

Or even the less well known version of the Shelly One, the 1PM.

Shelly is actually quite well known in the smarthome community.

Absolutely, there's lots to recommend Shelly. My point was that the Shelly One is commonly used, but for another £3 the 1PM offers the required extra functionality of power monitoring.