Battery cars on holiday

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While overall generation capacity may cope you hit the nail on the head with residential infrastructure.

We recently had a power cut which lasted 9 hours. I got so fed up of waiting I walked out to our local substation and had a chat with the guys to find out what was going on. Turned out some prat from BT had dug up the 11kv feeder cable.

I have some previous experience with electrical distribution so It got me thinking, a typical residential substation is 1000 or 1500 KVA and serves several hundred houses. Come 2030 and beyond if every house fed by our local substation was to plug in their EV to a 7KW charger when they got home from work, I can tell you categorically that the sub couldn't meet the demand. As you say the move to heat pumps is not going to help. Bigger substations isn't a likely solution as there are 349,000 pole mounted transformers, 230,000 distribution substations, 4800 primary substations and over 1000 grid supply points in the UK. That's a lot of very expensive infrastructure to upgrade. It's more likely we will have to employ a smart means of ensuring that they are not all charging at the same time.
And then add on the infrastructure required to get it to your house from the transformer - cables - of which many are overhead in rural areas and the poles have a limit on how much cable weight they can take. Or for buried supplies just imagine the amount of roads that would need to be dug up to increase cable capacity to homes. It does also raise the question of how much CO2 will all of the required upgrades generate in terms of manufacturing and installation across the whole infrastructure - or will the Govt. just ignore that in its rush to convince EVs are our salvation?

We will probably see the government suddenly supporting WFH as only way to take the load of the inadequate infrastructure. Or will they promote a new home based diesel generators grant scheme in true Govt. twisted thinking.o_O
 
I'm not in favour of the EV revolution as I see it as a money making scam, another effective tax on the masses.
Until there are policies to address the root cause the rest is bs.

But most houses can accommodate a 7Kw load. Most will be using that and more during our waking hours., although not always for the prolonged period a full charge might require. But then how long will a 7Kw charge be necessary?

The answer is to have rotational charging of locations overnight, designed so as not to overload a locations electrical supplies.
Maybe smart @rsed meters can assist in this, in truth I have little knowledge of their functional abilities as I see that as more bs.
I don't need a flashing gizmo to tell me the lights are using power, if I want to save energy, and my cost, I turn 'em off.

But we will be paying for our city centres to have charging stations, car parks will likely be caused to create the facility like disabled parking bays. Is the CO2 cost of any additional upgrades factored in to the overall fallacy that EV's will save our planet.

I do wonder how places like Mumbai, Deli, Ho Chi Min, and another million cities of lower funding and high traffic flows will manage this. Or will they enjoy our cast off ICE cars and increase their traffic?

Questioned many times is the net effect of this scam.
 
I have some previous experience with electrical distribution so It got me thinking, a typical residential substation is 1000 or 1500 KVA and serves several hundred houses.
Your EV drivers won’t do that.

Only a small group are commuting to work with their EV and those that do will charge at work or while travelling, and will arrive home at different times. Any regular user will plug in but time the actual charge to the very low cost off-peak rate. (Modern equivalent of series 7 )

It’s not a case of everyone filling the equivalent of 250 miles worth of charge when they get home at 6-30pm each night.

i have a dozen recognisable EV’s “living” on my 200 household development, and it’s rare to see even one EV actually cabled / charging up.

As has been said before, the average EV is only doing 10,000 a year. Allowing for the high mileage commercial users, it’s easy to see that a good two thirds of EVs are doing less than 5,000 miles a year. A hundred miles a week doesn’t require daily heavy charging at 6-30pm
 
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Hi , If we forget all the pros and cons regarding battery cars this is the future mode of private transport until a future government changes its thinking yet again.

I suppose man may be be required to become nocturnal to travel any great distance with in the UK !
 
Hi , If we forget all the pros and cons regarding battery cars this is the future mode of private transport until a future government changes its thinking yet again.
I suppose man may be be required to become nocturnal to travel any great distance with in the UK !
Until several Western Governments change their thinking. This is not a UK thing.

The likes of California, Germany and the greener EU states kicked this process off as a Climate Change initiative.

Personally, it seems ridiculous compared to cleaning up ICE emissions, but it's the way that European and North American governments are heading.

More likely, perhaps, is that plug-in hybrids will be the compromise until the Hydrogen Cell arrives and changes the EV game again.

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Your EV drivers won’t do that.

Only a small group are commuting to work with their EV and those that do will charge at work or while travelling, and will arrive home at different times. Any regular user will plug in but time the actual charge to the very low cost off-peak rate. (Modern equivalent of series 7 )

It’s not a case of everyone filling the equivalent of 250 miles worth of charge when they get home at 6-30pm each night.

i have a dozen recognisable EV’s “living” on my 200 household development, and it’s rare to see even one EV actually cabled / charging up.

As has been said before, the average EV is only doing 10,000 a year. Allowing for the high mileage commercial users, it’s easy to see that a good two thirds of EVs are doing less than 5,000 miles a year. A hundred miles a week doesn’t require daily heavy charging at 6-30pm
Your basing that on your observations now of a very small market sample across a very small total owner base - it will be different when EVs etc. are the only vehicles sold - I can see electric vans becoming a huge growth sector as pollution taxes rise in cities. London has already been having power issues and I know of one university that was told it could not site a new data centre in central London because there wasn't the power capacity available so had to build it outside of the M25. Don't forget they are pushing us to Air Source Heat Pumps at the same time which will add massively to the overall load.
 
Your basing that on your observations now of a very small market sample across a very small total owner base - it will be different when EVs etc. are the only vehicles sold - I can see electric vans becoming a huge growth sector as pollution taxes rise in cities. London has already been having power issues and I know of one university that was told it could not site a new data centre in central London because there wasn't the power capacity available so had to build it outside of the M25. Don't forget they are pushing us to Air Source Heat Pumps at the same time which will add massively to the overall load.
As I said, vehicles don't come home at the same time and then top up 300 miles of range at 7pm. I've done that 40,000 miles a year company car game (a few decades ago). Commercial vehicles won't top up at peak period, "If" they're at home connected to a cable, they'll be topping up during the middle of the night, but more likely they'll be topping up at blistering speed during the course of the working day. Those delivery vehicles will be plugged in while they're being loaded and in the fallow times between deliveries. (Postman Pats vans aren't on the road 24/7)

Think of the way that we've distributed computing power. When I was a kid programming water-cooled IBM mainframes in the early 70's, all the computing power was in the mainframe, now it's distributed. The same process is already happening to electricity: batteries are enabling distributed storage, and localised generation as well as storage (see the solar roof panels below). We're well on the way to buying power "off-peak," and storing locally. And then our commercial and domestic power consumption levels are dropping radically as we use ever more efficient equipment.

And, in between, we've got hybrids and PHEV's around for the next three decades, and Hydrogen fuel cells reaching commercial applications such as the Police within the decade.

Is the network evolving? Of course it is. Where have the all the factories gone? Where's the light industry that was in every city? Will 35 million people still work in Offices and City centres - seems unlikely at the moment. We constantly reconfigure the Grid.

Look at the way we've reinvented petrol stations and food retail these last two decades. Remember when petrol stations just sold petrol ? Almost impossible to find a petrol station without food now. Did the corner shop, Tesco Metro, Supermarket and Hypermarket. Things evolve.

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Until several Western Governments change their thinking. This is not a UK thing.

The likes of California, Germany and the greener EU states kicked this process off as a Climate Change initiative.

Personally, it seems ridiculous compared to cleaning up ICE emissions, but it's the way that European and North American governments are heading.

More likely, perhaps, is that plug-in hybrids will be the compromise until the Hydrogen Cell arrives and changes the EV game again.

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Hi , you are quite correct in your opening sentence.
Let's hope your closing sentence is going to happen but I am an old guy so will not be about to see the benefit.

.Part of the year I live in Portugal and my neighbour purchased a BMW plug in hybrid and the plug in sequence became the main attraction in our little town.He now generally drive the car with IC only / if that possible.My mate is careful with money and had has a Toyota Prius 10 plate. The car has star ship mileage on it.
 
Part of the year I live in Portugal and my neighbour purchased a BMW plug in hybrid and the plug in sequence became the main attraction in our little town.He now generally drive the car with IC only / if that possible.
To be fair, if his BMW hybrid was this seven year old sucker, I'd still have the Audi R8.

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There's 1 thing i don't understand (i might be daft) how can you possibly charge your EV if you park on the street as most do? 🤔 an extention lead out the front window?
 
There's 1 thing i don't understand (i might be daft) how can you possibly charge your EV if you park on the street as most do? 🤔 an extention lead out the front window?
Car parks, place of work, service stations, etc. Refueling an EV requires a different mindset to refuelling an ICE, little and often rather than run to empty and then fill to full.
 
There's 1 thing i don't understand (i might be daft) how can you possibly charge your EV if you park on the street as most do? 🤔 an extention lead out the front window?
How can your chauffeur safely pour petrol into your car if you don’t have your own driveway and petrol storage tank in your garage?

When did the first roadside petrol pumps appear? - The National Motor Museum Trust

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How can your chauffeur safely pour petrol into your car if you don’t have your own driveway and petrol storage tank in your garage?

When did the first roadside petrol pumps appear? - The National Motor Museum Trust

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
That don't make sense the infrastructure for ice vehicles is in place its not for the EV,that was a genuine question. So basically the answer is you can't charge it at home .thanks bobby for a grown up answer!
 
So basically the answer is you can't charge it at home .thanks bobby for a grown up answer!
000s of lampposts are currently being converted to provide ev charging, in a programme that is spreading across the UK. It is early days yet but, like petrol stations, you have to start somewhere. And, in a sign of the times Shell have started converting Petrol stations to Charging stations.4A05B9C1-5213-4AC1-98FD-3A2AD36CDCBD.jpeg
 
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000s of lampposts are currently being converted to provide ev charging, in a programme that is spreading across the UK.
I guess that's going to be a charge by the watt type of delivery.

That wont get a bused by someone with an extension lead 'borrowing' the already paid for leccy.

I guess we can expect our streets to be dug up again as more points are needed here and there.
 
That don't make sense the infrastructure for ice vehicles is in place its not for the EV,that was a genuine question. So basically the answer is you can't charge it at home .thanks bobby for a grown up answer!
You asked a joke question, you got a history lesson as a reply, young bobby.

One hundred years ago, the AA opened the first "petrol station" in Aldermaston, wherever that is, and things moved on from there.
Buses no longer needed to feed and water their animals on the end of each bus route. Manure disappeared off the streets.
The tech changes - things move on.

Your belief that vehicles can only be recharged by running a cable out of your flat front door, down five flights of stairs and out to the street is "silly."

We will pick up power where we park.

Think about how power generation has moved on in just the last five decades. We've moved from coal to nuclear, North Sea gas, to solar and wind.

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How many threads saying the same thing have we had? The original proposition that in 6 years there will be 400% more evs on the road but the charging infrastructure will be the same as it is now is obviously a spurious argument.
To think that business will not want to make money from charging cars is obviously not right.
The more evs, the more charging points.
Oh and if you don't want one don't buy one, seems simple enough to me.
 
While overall generation capacity may cope you hit the nail on the head with residential infrastructure.

We recently had a power cut which lasted 9 hours. I got so fed up of waiting I walked out to our local substation and had a chat with the guys to find out what was going on. Turned out some prat from BT had dug up the 11kv feeder cable.

I have some previous experience with electrical distribution so It got me thinking, a typical residential substation is 1000 or 1500 KVA and serves several hundred houses. Come 2030 and beyond if every house fed by our local substation was to plug in their EV to a 7KW charger when they got home from work, I can tell you categorically that the sub couldn't meet the demand. As you say the move to heat pumps is not going to help. Bigger substations isn't a likely solution as there are 349,000 pole mounted transformers, 230,000 distribution substations, 4800 primary substations and over 1000 grid supply points in the UK. That's a lot of very expensive infrastructure to upgrade. It's more likely we will have to employ a smart means of ensuring that they are not all charging at the same time.
How many threads saying the same thing have we had? The original proposition that in 6 years there will be 400% more evs on the road but the charging infrastructure will be the same as it is now is obviously a spurious argument.
To think that business will not want to make money from charging cars is obviously not right.
The more evs, the more charging points.
Oh and if you don't want one don't buy one, seems simple enough to me.
I agree but people feel strongly one way or the other, and want to share their opinion. No one has the answer.
 

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