EV charging

[Fulmen]

On Fulmen Said:

They tried that nonsense here in Norway as well, but in the end the government required all charging stations built after 2023 to have a card option.

We were given a pre-pay EV charge card with our car. I’ve not looked into it yet as we’ll be charging at home 99% of the time. We were led to believe the card is an accepted by many charging networks?

Having to use an app to pay for parking has always annoyed me. I think the government should mandate on this as well to ensure you can always pay with a credit card.

[David AmbroseParticipant @davidambrose86182]

At least the government has said the parking industry must introduce a universal app for all carparks. I have several on my phone.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Having just bought an EV and reading up on away-from-home charging, I read that all new charging points in the UK are obliged to include credit card facilities. How true and whether older charge points will be updated I have yet to discover.

Coming back to the original question, though – of course it is theoretically possible to charge an EV’s battery directly from solar panels, just as many people charge 12V car batteries that way (just ask a typical small-boat owner or see the occasional solar panel on the dashboard of a car). In practice, though, whether you could put together a solar panel array to produce the voltage needed in a way that is compatible with a car’s charging socket and internal charge controller is another story. Personally, I am looking to install solar panels and a battery to help charge mine although things like pay-back period are fiendishly difficult to calculate given the plethora of tariffs, power output calculations, and so on. And I trust the “figures” from solar panel vendors about as far as I could throw a double-glazing salesman…

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Deleted.  Edit – I’ll send a  PM to Neal.

[Nealeb]

On Nealeb Said:

Having just bought an EV and reading up on away-from-home charging, I read that all new charging points in the UK are obliged to include credit card facilities. How true and whether older charge points will be updated I have yet to discover.

 

I looked at the Tesla website and it says you can choose a payment method but you have to download and use their app first.

Edit: More importantly, (for me) is when are Tesla going to fit longer cables to all their superchargers so that any vehicle can use them.

 

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Oh dear, behind the curve by a long way.  All new Tesla chargers (apart from a few that were designated for sites that have had problems with installation) are the V4 versions.  Tesla only make one model of supercharger dispenser.  Clever Tesla.

All V4 Tesla charge points are fitted with leads long enough for (nearly) all cars, along with card payment readers.

As an aside, all Tesla cars charge from the same point on the car (rear left corner).  That meant shorter leads could be fitted to all earlier chargers and the mode of use was 1) Reverse in, 2) plug in and charge and 3) disconnect and drive out forwards.  The safest way of parking is always to reverse in and drive out forwards!  Clever Tesla.

Tesla owners have a choice of payment details because they are automatically charged at the Tesla owner rate – which is approx 10p/kWh less than non-Tesla users (unless, of course, a monthly/yearly subscription is effected by the user) – without any need, whatsoever, of carrying a payment card.  Clever Tesla.

I have only subscribed when I fully expect to exceed 100kWh in the subscription month (the obvious cut-off point for me getting the best deal).  Clever me.🙂

[not done it yet]

On not done it yet Said:

Oh dear, behind the curve by a long way.  All new Tesla chargers (apart from a few that were designated for sites that have had problems with installation) are the V4 versions.  Tesla only make one model of supercharger dispenser.  Clever Tesla.

All V4 Tesla charge points are fitted with leads long enough for (nearly) all cars, along with card payment readers.

As an aside, all Tesla cars charge from the same point on the car (rear left corner).  That meant shorter leads could be fitted to all earlier chargers and the mode of use was 1) Reverse in, 2) plug in and charge and 3) disconnect and drive out forwards.  The safest way of parking is always to reverse in and drive out forwards!  Clever Tesla.

Tesla owners have a choice of payment details because they are automatically charged at the Tesla owner rate – which is approx 10p/kWh less than non-Tesla users (unless, of course, a monthly/yearly subscription is effected by the user) – without any need, whatsoever, of carrying a payment card.  Clever Tesla.

I have only subscribed when I fully expect to exceed 100kWh in the subscription month (the obvious cut-off point for me getting the best deal).  Clever me.🙂

If that was aimed at me, why the puerile comment? Tesla V4,s apparently only account for about 25% – 30% of their network at the moment. I’ve seen a number of videos of drivers struggling to get the cable to reach because the charging point is in a different place to a Tesla. Earlier chargers with short cables are apparently going to be retrofitted with longer cables like other networks. As a point of interest the most common location at the moment is the right rear – opposite side to a Tesla.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I suppose it is a bit like filling your car with petrol, you soon get used to which side the flap is on and pull up to the appropriate pump. Just a case of learning what is the best way to position the car to charge it.

Right hand side in the UK is not good for kerb side charging, no doubt due to a lot of cars being built for driving on the opposite side to us

There are also a lot of people who are not good at reversion and would rather pull in forwards and then have a bigger space to reverse out into particularly if dark. Also sometimes a pain to back in when at the supermarket or DIY shed when you want access to the boot for loading.

Strangely most of the EV owners down my cul-de-sac all tend to pull into their drives forwards and run the charging lead out to the car be that Telsa, Polestar, Volvo, Mini, BMW, Porsche and a couple of others.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Having just had an EV charger installed – a typical 7kW unit – I discovered that part of the installation process was that the installer requested permission from, in my case, National Grid before making the connection. The response came back that permission was granted but that my property was fed by a looped connection and would need to be de-looped which would happen in due course at NG’s expense. It seems that my property is not fed directly by underground cable from the pole in a neighbour’s garden but is fed via a daisy-chained connection from a different neighbour’s property. All of which means that two neighbours and myself are likely to get trenches dug to run a new cable. Neighbours are overjoyed… On the other hand, the neighbour with whom I share a connection recently had an EV charger installed himself and NG didn’t say anything about a looped connection in his permission letter. Maybe NG records are not correct? That kind of data seems notoriously uncertain.

It seems that around 15% (number uncertain as no hard data actually exists) of UK properties are connected like this, and a Government-sponsored report says that this could have a significant impact on the roll-out of both EV chargers and heat pumps. Given that most looped properties are probably in urban areas, there’s another damper on the spread of EVs, on top of everything else (like being able to park somewhere that you can charge your EV).

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Looped supplies are mostly found between a pair of semi-detached properties – but not always.  No real problem for the property directly connected to the grid and no real problem if neither property draws too much current.  Not the case if both properties used 7kW EVSEs and charged up large storage batteries (these days) or night storage heaters (mostly in older properties, nowadays).

Another issue may be that the main fuses had been increased from 80A to 100A since the properties were built.  An 80A supply is only good for about 19kW (probably less, if continuous for several hours?).  24kW (100A) is not likely sustainable for more than short periods.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Nealab,

Two possible reasons why the first charger installation didn’t result in de-looping:
1/ the feed to the two houses could only support 1 charger and firest come first served.
2/ your property is the end of the connection so it makes more sense to run a new connection to you rather than upgrade both the existing feed and the loop.

Robert.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Local electrical supply infrastructure is likely to be an increasing issue for EV charging installations. I know the transformer supplying my house has no excess capacity. We only have a 60A (14kW) supply. With heatpumps, electric cooking and an electric shower we are already close to that at times.
No chance of us installing a 7kW charger without a supply upgrade.

Robert.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Robert, it won’t necessarily be just on the transformer size.  It will if single phase, but three phase transformers might get ‘unbalanced’ if, for instance, all  the 7kW chargers happened to be installed from just one of the phases.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Robert – both situations are very likely. My neighbour beat me to it by a couple of months, and his house is on the direct line between the pole feeding this group of houses and my own.

I’m reasonably happy that the supply to us all is up to spec – another neighbour recently upgraded from single-phase (apparently only having a 60A feed for a large house) to three-phase. Partly to meet his own potential requirements and also, I believe, because he has installed a large ground-mounted PV panel setup. This led to him having to pay for an upgrade to the pole-mounted three-phase transformer feeding all 6 properties in this little group.

This looping/delooping thing rather reminds me of the old telephone party line arrangement – it made sense at one time when demand was low and still developing but turned out to be short-sighted with the benefit of hindsight!

A more immediate problem is getting all the ducks in a row with regard to EV, charger, apps, tariff, etc. Turns out that my charger is not supported by my electricity supplier so I have to configure the supplier’s app to talk to my car via my car’s app. I then suspect that something went wrong when I set up my EV charging tariff with the supplier; my feeling is that it does not have my location accurately enough to know when I am charging at home so my last charge was at standard rate rather than cheap rate. But their support team only work Mon-Fri so I’m having to wait for an answer to my query. I can’t imagine what a non-technical person would make of all this when the best part of 50 years in IT barely qualifies me. But then, I think of my father in a car where there are more than two dozen controls on the steering wheel alone when he could just about cope with his Morris Minor…

NDIY – just seen your post. We now have one house here with three-phase and an EV charger. Don’t know if that is across all phases or just one. Three houses that I know have EV chargers now, plus two that I don’t know about. I presume that the National Grid have all the data available to put me on the right phase but I bet that they will need to actually look at what’s there anyway!

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