The EV fact thread

[ALFAitalia]

Why is that? 11 kw is only 46 amps.... most houses, including mine, can go to 100 amps.

 

[190]

Why is that? 11 kw is only 46 amps.... most houses, including mine, can go to 100 amps.

Though it's cutting it fine, you are right, it is possible to have a big enough circuit breaker on a 100A single phase distribution board but that won't help if the EV 11 KW chargers all require a 3 phase supply input by design.

Another possible issue is that your 100A single phase supply is one phase of a 3 phase supply back at the local substation and the supply company would rather the 3 phases were reasonably load balanced. Having very large loads on one phase isn't ideal in that respect, bearing in mind that the typical house at present consumes only 0.3 to 0.5 KW per hour averaged over a 24 hour period.

 

[Petrol Pete]

Mate of mine took delivery of a new MB EQB for his girlfriend to use, had a wall charger fitted and it will not work because of fluctuating incoming voltage keeps shutting the thing down .
Regular house on a suburban street , single phase.

The electric board have been around and tested the incoming supply , it fluctuates (from their side) 205v to 260V , they say thats within spec and no one else on the street has complained .

He points out that he is the only house on the street with a EV charger installed . In fact the next nearest one (Tesla) is 3 streets away and has been there 'forever' (it was the fist Tesla I ever saw on charge at a private home) .

My mates house is 1950 (ish) and has had full refurb , and I mean FULL ! ,he is developing various properties . In the recent past he has experienced lights in the house flickering (bear in mind it has had a full re wire just a year ago) , but so have I in my house (he lives on the next street down) , The flickering light thing in my house came and went over about six months and has now gone completely. I wired up my entire house when I re furbished it and had no problems for at least 10 years .

I am guessing because their are massive new estate builds going on all around our area 'they' are juggling power supplies .

What I am trying to get is that he has bought an EV on good faith and of no fault of his or that of MB he is immediately having problems charging it . I have no doubt it will be sorted but he is already disillusioned with the whole experience. After just a few month of ownership.

As an aside The bloke at the end of my road took delivery of a brand new full EV BMW i4 about six months ago and does not seem to be bothered with fitting a home charger on his drive ? my guess is that he charges it at work.

I will see my mate this weekend and get more info out of him regarding his charger , if I remember correctly it is not one supplied by MB

 

[grober]

In the UK, the declared voltage and tolerance for an electricity supply is 230 volts -6%, +10%. This gives an allowed voltage range of 216.2 volts to 253.0 volts.
https://www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx

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[Petrol Pete]

In the UK, the declared voltage and tolerance for an electricity supply is 230 volts -6%, +10%. This gives an allowed voltage range of 216.2 volts to 253.0 volts.
https://www.spenergynetworks.co.uk/pages/voltage_changes.aspx

TLC Electrical Supplies

TLC Electrical Supplies - fast online sales of electrical cable, wiring accessories, lighting, heating and security equipment

www.tlc-direct.co.uk

I know , but when they connected to it they saw the 'spikes' and have told him it's 'ok' . Trust me , he is not the kind of bloke to be fobbed off . I am curious to see how this issue progresses . Would be nice if his next door neighbour went out and bought an EV and a home charger !

 

[KennyN]

I am guessing because their are massive new estate builds going on all around our area 'they' are juggling power supplies .

We have had major issues with our incoming supply over the last year or so in our 1930`s house , lights dimming to almost no light , a 3min microwave heating taking 7mins , couldn`t use the oven at certain times as it just wouldn`t heat the food up properly , the boiler would not work at peak times due to the lack of the supply voltage.

We record the lowest voltage at 186V , regularly fluctuating around 190v - 200v between the hours 19:00 -> 22:00.

Talking to some neighbours they have also experienced similar issues , thankfully now resolved after six months of calling to SP Energy but they seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul as now others will experiencing similar problems as no new supplies have been ran in locally as far as i know.

We have a few new housing estates that have sprung up locally recently , most houses in our area are a shadow of their former size having been extended outward and upward plus the increase in home EV chargers all of which are putting a huge extra load on cabling that was ran in before Hitler started bombing Clydebank.

K

 

[Petrol Pete]

We have had major issues with our incoming supply over the last year or so in our 1930`s house , lights dimming to almost no light , a 3min microwave heating taking 7mins , couldn`t use the oven at certain times as it just wouldn`t heat the food up properly , the boiler would not work at peak times due to the lack of the supply voltage.

We record the lowest voltage at 186V , regularly fluctuating around 190v - 200v between the hours 19:00 -> 22:00.

Talking to some neighbours they have also experienced similar issues , thankfully now resolved after six months of calling to SP Energy but they seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul as now others will experiencing similar problems as no new supplies have been ran in locally as far as i know.

We have a few new housing estates that have sprung up locally recently , most houses in our area are a shadow of their former size having been extended outward and upward plus the increase in home EV chargers all of which are putting a huge extra load on cabling that was ran in before Hitler started bombing Clydebank.

K

Just like my own (124 year old ) house and all the others along the road , pretty much all of them have extensions and loft conversions. The extra power needed is obvious to all, but the issue you had sounds a bit bloody serious !!

 

[markjay]

Just like my own (124 year old ) house and all the others along the road , pretty much all of them have extensions and loft conversions. The extra power needed is obvious to all, but the issue you had sounds a bit bloody serious !!

Ah yes, Hydroponics requires a lot of electricity...

 

[clk320x]

Why is that? 11 kw is only 46 amps.... most houses, including mine, can go to 100 amps.

32A max for the onboard charger (single phase)

 

[190]

We record the lowest voltage at 186V , regularly fluctuating around 190v - 200v between the hours 19:00 -> 22:00.

Talking to some neighbours they have also experienced similar issues , thankfully now resolved after six months of calling to SP Energy but they seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul as now others will experiencing similar problems as no new supplies have been ran in locally as far as i know.

If they didn't add additional supplies they may have increased the voltage at the local substation transformers.

Even within the existing capacity of a distribution system, an increase in load will always have an effect on the voltage that the end users sees. In simple terms this is a combination of increased voltage drop on the supply cables and transformer regulation. An inherent feature of transformers is that voltage output will drop as load increases. Within limits the electricity companies have ways of adjusting the voltage to compensate. All transformers have taps which enable the connections to me made with more or fewer turns on the windings to adjust voltage output according to load. This is called changing the taps and it applies at every level throughout the transmission and distribution network. Tap changing can be done off load or on load and in some cases it is done automatically. The 11kv transformers I worked with 30+ years back had off load manual taps which meant the transformer had to be shut down in order to adjust the voltage output as needed. Possibly part of reason it took so long get your supply voltage back in spec.

As EV charging is rolled out there will be a lot of tap changing going on.

 

[Bellow]

Still not getting the significance of two cables on one recharging station. Choice (CCS or Chameda) or, two EVs charging simultaneously (one CCS, the other Chameda)?

No definitive answer for the above?

 

[BTB 500]

As EV charging is rolled out there will be a lot of tap changing going on.

Out in the sticks where we are the power comes via thin overhead cables on telegraph poles ... not sure how much extra load those could handle

 

[pioneercollector]

Interesting topic, my home and the rest of the houses in our lane are listed and built around 1760 ish ( No one seems to know ) And out of the entire length of the lane ( 26 homes), no one has an EV, Probably because the garage / driveway is 140' from the house, and also i suspect that some of the houses have VERY old wiring.
Moving on to where i charge up which is at work, we have 5 charging points installed for the fleet of vehicles i purchased 9 years ago, and now we are at the point of replacing them with the latest 'Townstar' vehicles ( Renault / Nissan collaboration ) and we have been informed by both the electricity providers AND our electricians that we cannot add anything more than ANY appliance that will draw more than 3KW from the three phase supply.... and we occupy 5 industrial units. The new vehicles do have a slightly bigger draw on the grid, but so far we only have the first one ( LWB is not available until March apparently )

Lately, including today and Monday we have had power outages, and massive fluctuations which have effected our servers / network as well as setting off the alarms.

Today the supply company were in our carpark with smoke detector machines and big drills as they were anticipating serious power draw somewhere on the estate..... There are a number of EV vehicles now on the estate.... Makes you wonder.

Sigh

 

[Anandyma]

Then there is the way manfacturers should be going- cheap and cheerful.

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Hi grober, sorry for offtopic. Can i send you an email for some help?
i have a problem with my m111.978 on viano. I have seen your older post and i think you are capable for helping me out. Thx

 

[markjay]

Interesting topic, my home and the rest of the houses in our lane are listed and built around 1760 ish ( No one seems to know ) And out of the entire length of the lane ( 26 homes), no one has an EV, Probably because the garage / driveway is 140' from the house, and also i suspect that some of the houses have VERY old wiring.
Moving on to where i charge up which is at work, we have 5 charging points installed for the fleet of vehicles i purchased 9 years ago, and now we are at the point of replacing them with the latest 'Townstar' vehicles ( Renault / Nissan collaboration ) and we have been informed by both the electricity providers AND our electricians that we cannot add anything more than ANY appliance that will draw more than 3KW from the three phase supply.... and we occupy 5 industrial units. The new vehicles do have a slightly bigger draw on the grid, but so far we only have the first one ( LWB is not available until March apparently )

Lately, including today and Monday we have had power outages, and massive fluctuations which have effected our servers / network as well as setting off the alarms.

Today the supply company were in our carpark with smoke detector machines and big drills as they were anticipating serious power draw somewhere on the estate..... There are a number of EV vehicles now on the estate.... Makes you wonder.

Sigh

Intersection, thanks. I wonder what motivated you to get EVs for the business in the first place, if the power supply isn't strong enough to charge them? Or did I misunderstand your post?

 

[markjay]

ICE isn't dead... in some places it thrives:

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[DaveE320CDI]

Been using first York buses as usual they have replaced a lot of there diesel buses with electric over the last few months and in this weather the electric buses are freezing cold compared to the toeste warm diesel ones when asked the driver of one of the electric buses he replied managers tell us not to have the heating on because it cuts the range down too much! back to the horse and cart days

 

[Smiley]

No definitive answer for the above?

It is to provide for the two different standards of charging connector, CCS and Chademo. I don't know all of the history but CCS has "won" and Chademo will be phased out over time.

 

[pioneercollector]

Intersection, thanks. I wonder what motivated you to get EVs for the business in the first place, if the power supply isn't strong enough to charge them? Or did I misunderstand your post?

Hi Markjay, To be quite honest i made the decision to change all of the diesel vans for the fully electric Nissan eNV 200 vans initially as a cost saving reason, with the incentives at the time and claiming back the VAT etc, the vans worked out at around £15k per van. A lot of our business is in and around the county ( Neighbouring sometimes ) and cities ( Bristol / Bath ) and i could sense what was likely to happen with the CAZ ideas that were being floated around at the time.

So city driving and 20 MPH speed limits aren't much fun in a manual diesel van - Almost a non concern in an EV !!

Charging up the old vans we were close to the capacity, but never over it, even with all 5 vans having a good go on the circuits, The new van / s ( Nissan Townstar ) has a larger capacity battery and does draw more power from the circuit, add to that some of our neighbouring businesses have Hybrid / EV company cars ( MB, TESLA etc ) and some quite energy greedy kit ( Plasma cutters, 200 ton presses etc ) all together we all must drain to much from the electric network lately, as we have all had issues with power failures and a phase, sometimes two phases dropping out .....

I was one of the first to buy the eNV200 vans in our area and do not regret them for one minute. The new Townstars are a much better equipped vehicle ( If you go for the TOTL model ) but they are nearly £48k per van!!!

I reiterate these vans are perfect for what we do and will continue to do so hopefully for the next 9 years - I do have a new Diesel Luton van ( Just in case ) ....

For my own personal use i still feel that the leap to an EV is not quite there yet for me - Just dug the SL500 out of my lock up...... love it just as much...

As an aside, when i collected the Renault 3.5t Luton from City motors in Bristol, they drove me to their commercial site in a brand new Citroen EV, I have to say that it was probably the most comfortable vehicle i have ever sat in !! And i have owned a lot of vehicles in my 42 years on the road....

 

[markjay]

Just received an email from Westminster Council saying that as of April this year, my EV is no longer exempt from paying for the Resident Parking Permit.

It's £40 for EVs with under 70kWh battery, and £80 pa for 70+kWh. My EV's battery is 72.6kWh and so I'll be paying the higher rate.

In spite of me having to incur an additional cost, I think it's a move in the right direction - Councils shouldn't be encouraging residents in urban areas to own private vehicles, EVs or ICE.

That been said, I'm not sure I understand why there's a distinction between large and small batteries - why punish people for having cars with a longer range? The battery size (Cadmium mining etc) has no effect on anything that's related to the Council.

But overall, I think that the removal of the exemption is a positive step.