EV Charging in the UK

g capability for the many potential EV owners who park on the street or in public facilities. I expect it is practical to install curb side and parki ng lot outlets with some outlay which is small, in fact tiny compared to th e cost of a car. But I kinda have to take them at their word for that one.

I suggested in a Tesla forum that we could have a distribution capacity pro blem here in the US but many people didn't understand the difference betwee n generation and distribution. Some others insisted there is adequate rese rve capacity, unlike in the UK. So maybe both are right. It's a problem t here that will require digging up streets to install higher capacity distri bution and no problem at all here in the US.

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Rick C
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I multiplied the available voltage by the available current. Do you use a different way of computing power?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

I didn't know you had hills in Boston :)

More seriously, I know someone in Bristol that can't/won't charge his EV fully overnight, since he recharges the battery going downhill in the morning.

Since I can't measure it, I really ought to calculate X ft hillclimb equates to - Y miles on the horizontal in zero wind - ditto +25mph headwind / tailwind - Z 0-30mph and 0-30-0mph transitions

In the UK, city driving fuel consumption is dominated by the number of stop-starts in traffic; the open-road fuel consumption is relatively unimportant. For example, a Ford Fiesta: 34mpg urban,

57mpg extra-urban, 46mpg combined.
Reply to
Tom Gardner

Lol, you are funny.

Whaaaa...? Battery sizes range from Win's very small, I don't know, 20 kWh ? to 100 kWh in my Tesla. The majority of EVs on the road in the US are T eslas, can't say about the UK. Charging units are rated in kW, anything el se is just fooling yourself.

"Charging sessions usually last 45 minutes" So I don't know where you got the 20 minute number.

Tesla's batteries will accept their highest rate at around 20% capacity lin early tapering off in either direction. The new 250 kW chargers will shave some minutes off the charging time since you get faster charging from 20 t o 50%. In addition it relieves the loss of charging rate when sharing a pa ir of chargers.

I'm told there was a program to get people to use heat storage tanks which are powered at night and release heat all day. They have to be a significa nt power level.

Yeah, I can't find any hard info on this figure for either the US or for th e UK. One guy says the UK is 2 KW, but that just seems too low. They ment ioned how when a team is in the finals and a commercial break comes on, the tea kettles are fired up and the grid has trouble keeping up. At 3 kW, al l at the same time, it only takes a quarter of the homes to stress the enti re grid!

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Rick C

action of homes in the UK receive such meager distribution, home EV chargin g of any significant fraction of the cars would be impossible.

ce for charging up to 150 miles per night or more.

Those are entirely realistic numbers. My model X is the battle ship of the Tesla fleet and gets 3 miles per kWh. The model 3 can get 5 miles per. S o 6 km/kWh should be no problem for most EVs. Here in the US the Nissan Ki a has sold well for some years and there are a lot of them out there. Some have pretty small batteries, 50 mile range I think, but for around town th at's fine.

Who drives 240 km each day? I suspect that is no more than 1% of the popul ation. For most people they can charge every night for a few hours and be topped off or they can go for a few days without charging and then charge a ll night once or twice a week. Someone posted a Google map link of a urban street to show all the cars on the curb. But when I explored a bit there were as many parked off the street right in front of the house as on the st reet. It looked like one house would have two or more cars often. They co uld rotate charging and have no problems.

Yeah, even here that is an unusual commute.

EVs are coming to a driveway near you. If you don't want one, you can put up with the mess and expense of the oil leaking, gas guzzling, carbon spewi ng beast you are currently driving. I think it is Ford who is saying all t heir cars will be electric by some date. I bet the F150 is still gas for a long time though.

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Rick C

Seems that regardless of the lack of consistency, any EV connection require s an earth rod with sufficiently low resistance. I'm willing to bet EVs ar e designed to be the same as double insulated tools so electrifying the bod y simply won't happen. But you still need the earth rod!

kWh/day doesn't really tell you much. With 25 million homes that comes to

100 GWh per day or 4 GW average capacity. Assume that varies 2:1 during th e day and has a peak of... maybe 8 to 10 GW? Compare to the range of 30 to 60 GW peak usage over the day depending on the season.

a-home-use.html

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

That it is a time average doesn't matter. EVs tend to be on for hours, so each EV has to be counted fully unless there is a way to essentially multip lex them in a coordinated fashion.

Exactly, so I can't dispute the 2 kW average number.

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Rick C

On Sunday, 16 June 2019 10:47:26 UTC-7, Rick C wrote: ...

...

Win's Prius Prime has an 8.8kWh battery - it is a plug-in hybrid with ~25 miles electric only range.

kw

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keith

It's not like we don't have any Brits in this group. Some have already con tributed. I'm curious if this differs much in other countries. I think pa rts of mainland Europe may be similar. I'd be willing to bet Australia is not so similar, rather more like the US.

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Rick C

On Sunday, 16 June 2019 11:12:36 UTC-7, Rick C wrote: ...

res an earth rod with sufficiently low resistance. I'm willing to bet EVs are designed to be the same as double insulated tools so electrifying the b ody simply won't happen. But you still need the earth rod! ...

On all EV's all of the high-voltage circuitry, including battery and motors , are galvanically isolated from the chassis.

There is leakage detection from the HV circuitry to chassis to detect any f aults and there are separate positive and negative HV contactors that are n ot engaged until after an initial fault check. Even if one of the contactor s fails short the system is still safe.

The level 2 charger has an isolation barrier to the HV circuitry.

The EVSE used fr AC charging has a built-in RCD to detect other ground faul ts

kw

Reply to
keith

On Sunday, 16 June 2019 10:57:04 UTC-7, Rick C wrote: ...

he Tesla fleet and gets 3 miles per kWh. The model 3 can get 5 miles per. So 6 km/kWh should be no problem for most EVs. Here in the US the Nissan Kia has sold well for some years and there are a lot of them out there. So me have pretty small batteries, 50 mile range I think, but for around town that's fine. ...

I think you mean the Nissan Leaf.

The original Leaf had ~24kWh battery (~21kWh usable) with an EPA range of 7

3 miles.

It is not the most efficient so it also only gets about 3-4mi/kWh.

Be careful about the various efficiencies quoted - all EVs display consumpt ion from the battery on their internal instrumentation, it does not include charger or battery losses.

In the case of my Tesla M3 the displayed consumption is ~240 Wh/mi (4mi/kWh ). The charger has only about 75% efficiency when powered by 120V so the ac tual consumption from the wall is about 3mi/kWh.

The charger efficiency from 240v is about 85-90%.

Your Model X is probably closer to 2.5mi/kWh when charging from 120v.

kw

Reply to
keith

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Wouldn't it be rather pointless to burn fossil fuels inefficiently to produ ce electricity, then use the electricity to make heat? We do it in the US because many homes don't have gas and heating oil requires a tank which tak es up space many homes don't have and is a bit of a bother requiring mainte nance. It was only in the 80s or so that we started using heat pumps where before the electric utilities encouraged direct heating from the ceiling, floor or baseboard.

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What the incoming feed is rated for is not the issue. The important part i s the distribution. You say they average a measurement, but this is done w hen the homes were built or power added. Now adding EV charging may be a s ignificant additional load even at 13 amps. 13 amps will be more than adeq uate for most since it equates to about 150 miles in 10 hours or 210 in 14 hours. That's a lot more than either the typical or average use (mode vs m ean).

Trust me, I am well versed in the various systems now. The TN-C with the PEN conductor is the one they say will require a new earth rod for any EV c harging, by code. I had trouble correlating that will other electrical pow er used outside, but it seems they get away with that somehow even though i t is not safe unless a separate earth is installed to make those outlets TT .

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Yeah, as in virtually impossible for portable tools that aren't double insu lated.

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The fly in the ointment of that approach is the code specifically calls for EV charging to be TT, local earth with low impedance... or so I am told.

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Again, I can only go by what I am told. First it was TT is needed, then so meone here said RCD so I went back to them with that and they said, not cod e! Now it sounds like you are saying a special RCD can be used with EVs?

That conversation and some others are being ended today by the moderators. I think it is wise, it wasn't really contentious, but some there didn't li ke being questioned. To me this is all just exploring to find the ultimate ly right answer, no ego or recriminations involved.

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Fast chargers have limitations. I don't think they will ever be as fast as filling a gas tank. This shifts the power consumption to peak times of th e day, the worst thing you can do... literally, not to mention the huge num ber of rather expensive charging units needed.

Home and work charging is the way to optimally match the energy availabilit y going forward. Solar in California is so abundant that the daily minimum is at noon. That is the time to charge EVs evening out the demand for oth er power facilities improving the economics.

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Installing level 2 charging for virtually every home parking spot is not so enormous an effort that it's not practical. It's much cheaper than buying a car! Is everyone buying cars such a significant effort? We do it every day!

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Rick C

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Are you saying there won't be viable solar generation in the UK? Your comm ents are a bit like Larkin's and Trump's, saying something without saying a nything.

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None of that makes night time charging of EVs impractical. In fact night c harging of EVs improves utilization and provides more profits to plow into building infrastructure.

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Really? I like what I've seen of the UK (TV mostly). It's not like you ar e only growing potatoes.

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I would be looking for a daily graph from the winter, not the winter averag e. Here...

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Not a large increase from summer to winter, but a more significant evening peak. Night charging of EVs should not be started before 8 or 9 PM.

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Why exactly??? Everyone says this because they can't picture it. But they aren't looking at any real info, just picturing crews digging up streets a nd sidewalks with chaos and terror reigning. A charge point would be $1000 or maybe as low as $500 per when done in mass. I'm talking about a 13 amp connection. I guess a credit card reader would be needed, so a smart unit rather than a dumb outlet and $1000 per. So how much is a car? $30,000, $40,000? A one time cost of $1,000 seems small in that context, no?

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Ok, when you guys want to catch up, let us know. The US is pretty good at helping third world countries... ;-) Just kidding.

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Rick C

On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 11:06:14 AM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen w rote:

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weat. I do it when I drive to TN or back.

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About perfect for EV use. Charge overnight, drive 4.5 hours, charge while resting, 4.5 hours drive, lather, rinse, repeat.

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Rick C

There is no point in continuing to discuss this with you. "Impossible" is a strong word. If that really applies in the UK, then you guys have some v ery seriously large problems. I have had posters from the UK talk like the y don't expect any new generation capability to be built even in 30 years. What happened to the UK, one time ruler of the waves, breakers of the Enig ma code? You guys can't even figure out how to install electric outlets???

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Rick C

vehicles.

OMG! Driving my model X is such a joy! I had an S for a few days and that is much sportier with quicker handling, but I have to accordion to get int o it. Seems the windshield rakes back pretty hard and my shoulders and hea d bump things.

that's a nice side benefit.

e while I sleep for a few seconds of plugging in when necessary.

It's also about a third the cost even in my huge model X, the worst fuel ec onomy in the Tesla fleet.

practical.

That depends on whether you want to plan ahead or just use the navigator in the car to tell you where to charge. I was thinking of going to a place i n Kentucky once. That would have actually required planning since one rout e was lacking a charger in a location so there would have been a side trip needed. Go on the other main route and no problem. The only part that nee ds planning is what to do when you get where you are. Sometimes there aren 't any convenient charging facilities and people's homes don't typically ha ve anything but level 1 accessible. Hotels often have level 2, overnight c harging though. Free too. :)

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Rick C

Once EVs become more popular and it starts to be an issue for people, businesses and apartments will start installing level 2 charging. They won't need to convert every spot, just enough to keep up with demand.

In California a law requires apartments and condos to allow a resident to pay to have a charger installed. At least that's a start.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

No need to get hysterical. I'm just referring to the desperately overcrowded streets and the fact that many people in towns and cities simply cannot park outside their own homes due to the sheer numbers of cars and the narrowness of the streets.

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Blimey. Here's a remarkable event: I'm going to side with CD.

Yes, the UK is rather different to the USA.

Yes, in quite a few locations installing electrical outlets will be difficult to the point of being impossible.

Yes, installation is only part of the problem; there are others, as mentioned by people that actually know the UK.

And, quite frankly, it is ridiculous to mutter about rulers of the waves, enigma code etc, when the US can't even give healthcare to all its citizens, and refuses to reduce its appalling infant mortality rate, etc.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

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duce electricity, then use the electricity to make heat? We do it in the U S because many homes don't have gas and heating oil requires a tank which t akes up space many homes don't have and is a bit of a bother requiring main tenance. It was only in the 80s or so that we started using heat pumps whe re before the electric utilities encouraged direct heating from the ceiling , floor or baseboard.

here waste heat from the power-plants and waste incineration is distributed to most homes here. When making electricity and heat the powerplants reach ~90% efficiency

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

No, exactly the same method as you, as I said.

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