Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[Count Steer]

So there will be fewer people using charging points resulting in a smaller queue for them.
I get the thinking but in a city or town with Victorian terraces and flats that won't count for much.

Nor will it help me, my parking space is remote from the house and getting a cable from my meter to the space would involve PP ( I live in a listed building, in a conservation area inside a world heritage site), wayleaves from 4 people and 1 company, as well as costing a fortune. Charging at home is not a viable option.

When the lack of charging facilities at the site starts to impact on the value of the properties I predict that a solution will be found.

[Horse]

So there will be fewer people using charging points resulting in a smaller queue for them.
I get the thinking but in a city or town with Victorian terraces and flats that won't count for much.

Nor will it help me, my parking space is remote from the house and getting a cable from my meter to the space would involve PP ( I live in a listed building, in a conservation area inside a world heritage site), wayleaves from 4 people and 1 company, as well as costing a fortune. Charging at home is not a viable option.

When the lack of charging facilities at the site starts to impact on the value of the properties I predict that a solution will be found.

And the cable probably wouldn't run from individual houses, it would be one main connection at the nearest point to the parking. Probably. Perhaps. Maybe. Just an idea.

[Count Steer]

Nor will it help me, my parking space is remote from the house and getting a cable from my meter to the space would involve PP ( I live in a listed building, in a conservation area inside a world heritage site), wayleaves from 4 people and 1 company, as well as costing a fortune. Charging at home is not a viable option.

When the lack of charging facilities at the site starts to impact on the value of the properties I predict that a solution will be found.

And the cable probably wouldn't run from individual houses, it would be one main connection at the nearest point to the parking. Probably. Perhaps. Maybe. Just an idea.

Yeah. The freeholder will probably stick a charger in the old stable or somesuch and the leaseholders get a chargecard/key card each. Stick a few p per kWh on to pay for it. When the leaseholders all want Teslas it'll happen.

[MrLongbeard]

[Couchy]

That existing install is piss poor and dangerous. Done to the lowest price which is the story all over with domestic work. It’ll prob be a boil in the bag spark working for a local builders.
There’s many reasons we don’t do domestic and this is one of them

[MrLongbeard]

Done to the lowest price which is the story all over with domestic work. It’ll prob be a boil in the bag spark working for a local builders.
There’s many reasons we don’t do domestic and this is one of them

Seems the auditors that follow later for grant purposes ain't much better;



And now I'm going to take myself outside and give myself a proper talking to about watching video's about sparkies.

[Couchy]

Done to the lowest price which is the story all over with domestic work. It’ll prob be a boil in the bag spark working for a local builders.
There’s many reasons we don’t do domestic and this is one of them

Seems the auditors that follow later for grant purposes ain't much better;



And now I'm going to take myself outside and give myself a proper talking to about watching video's about sparkies.

He’s a prick, one as he’s called artisan electrics and two as he’s no idea he’s wrong. The codes they’ve used are done because not labelling something correctly can cause electric shock if someone is working on the system. He’s making out it’s a conspiracy to cover his own arse. Typical domestic sparky thinks he knows it all.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I'd watch that video but he'd probably try and bill me for it.

[MingtheMerciless]

At work we are looking to switch the maintenance staff vans to predominantly EV’s so they are investigating installing the charging infrastructure.

According to the Surveyor/electricians that came to the trial site for meetings the DNO’s are beginning to get a bit twitchy about domestic chargers as they are causing some very uneven phase loading at night.

For those that don’t know, electricity is supplied over the network in 3 phases (used to be known as red/yellow/blue) that’s 3 lots of AC out of phase by 120 degrees, domestic properties then get fed one phase and the neutral, so you might find in a street that some of the houses run on different phases (which is why you should never try to link electricity from different houses). The idea being that all the load is spread evenly across all three phases with no one phase taking a lot more load than the other two.

What they are finding with EV chargers is Sod’s law that people with them end up being on the same phase in a street so the night time load on the network starts getting unbalanced.

The other issue is older houses (like mine) have a 70 year old cable from the street designed when houses maybe had a TV and a kettle, fridge etc, maybe a cooker as well. Now we’ve got all our IT, electric showers, hot tub heaters and other goodies increasing the load and then you dump a 7KW charger on as well. So the DNO’s now have to be informed if you’re installing a 7KW charger and will state if you need a throttable one so as not to overload anything.

Reading between the lines I can see domestic chargers being held up until the DNO’s beef up their infrastructure to cope with the uneven loading and then also the general increase in load across the network (yes most of the night load will I suspect be within capacity already but I suspect there will still be charging during the day (shift workers, oh I forgot to charge it last night etc) which will be new additional load.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Balancing I can see being a huge issue, ironically one which having loads of batteries plugged in to the grid can help with.

Its not by accident that I've invested a chunk of my pension into firms who deal with grid storage and power systems

Overall capacity though, I'm not so sure. The national grid have already said that if everyone in the UK switched to an EV tomorrow total demand would still be less than the UK historic peak was (in about 2010). Since then UK electricity demand has been dropping steadily due to savings elsewhere, introducing EVs nationwide wouldn't even bring us back up to the highest demand ever.

[MingtheMerciless]

Is that lost industrial load? It’s the local networks supplying housing estates that I think may have the capacity issue, not the “Grid” as a whole.

[Horse]

According to the Surveyor/electricians that came to the trial site for meetings the DNO’s are beginning to get a bit twitchy about domestic chargers as they are causing some very uneven phase loading at night.

Is this all of the posh houses having EV owners, on one phase, and nasty cheap polluters on the others?

As mentioned in the linked first domestic charger video, smart charging may be internet- connected, so potentially remotely switchable to reduce total demand at any one time (or £charge accordingly).


Hoss stable built in 1933. We have (now both disconnected) original 1930s metal electricity conduits and gas plumbing in the walls for lighting.

But we probably are in the lower supply level from the street, as you mention.

[Count Steer]

According to the Surveyor/electricians that came to the trial site for meetings the DNO’s are beginning to get a bit twitchy about domestic chargers as they are causing some very uneven phase loading at night.

Is this all of the posh houses having EV owners, on one phase, and nasty cheap polluters on the others?

As mentioned in the linked first domestic charger video, smart charging may be internet- connected, so potentially remotely switchable to reduce total demand at any one time (or £charge accordingly).


Hoss stable built in 1933. We have (now both disconnected) original 1930s metal electricity conduits and gas plumbing in the walls for lighting.

But we probably are in the lower supply level from the street, as you mention.

Had a 30s place with all the electric run in screwed conduit. It made rewiring an absolute doddle.

Re: all this Internet connected meters etc, is it just me that thinks the end of civilisation won't be a virus or aliens? All it will need is for the Internet to go off.

[Horse]

Had a 30s place with all the electric run in screwed conduit. It made rewiring an absolute doddle.

Not ours - it was buried in the (horsehair reinforced ) plaster.

[Cousin Jack]

Reading between the lines I can see domestic chargers being held up until the DNO’s beef up their infrastructure to cope with the uneven loading, and then also the general increase in load across the network (yes most of the night load will I suspect be within capacity already but I suspect there will still be charging during the day (shift workers, oh I forgot to charge it last night etc) which will be new additional load.

So, yet another reason to wait for the infrastructure. Not only will you have difficulty finding a public charger, and need to wait for ages to fully charge, but the holy grail of overnight domestic charging may turn out to be a poisoned chalice too.

[Mr. Dazzle]

A car charger is what...7kW?

That's like having your kettle and your iron on at the same time pretty much. Obviously you don't run them both simultaneously for hours at a time, but you also don't fret about turning them on.

[Count Steer]

Had a 30s place with all the electric run in screwed conduit. It made rewiring an absolute doddle.

Not ours - it was buried in the (horsehair reinforced ) plaster.

Ours was buried in the walls/under the floorboards...they just pulled new cable through it.

[Horse]

Wouldn't have helped where we wanted new wall lights

[Mussels]

Balancing I can see being a huge issue, ironically one which having loads of batteries plugged in to the grid can help with.

Its not by accident that I've invested a chunk of my pension into firms who deal with grid storage and power systems

Overall capacity though, I'm not so sure. The national grid have already said that if everyone in the UK switched to an EV tomorrow total demand would still be less than the UK historic peak was (in about 2010). Since then UK electricity demand has been dropping steadily due to savings elsewhere, introducing EVs nationwide wouldn't even bring us back up to the highest demand ever.

I've heard that a few times but it doesn't answer the question as we don't know how much generating capacity has reduced since 2010, I'd expect investment has reduced in line with demand.

A car charger is what...7kW?

That's like having your kettle and your iron on at the same time pretty much. Obviously you don't run them both simultaneously for hours at a time, but you also don't fret about turning them on.

Both poor and rich people have kettles so averages say poor person is boiling a cuppa at the same time as rich person, if all the poor people had their kettles taken away and rich people boiled theirs at the same time then there would be the same problem.

[demographic]

This comparrison is worth a watch, its US based so the numbers don't work out the same but our petrol costs a hell of a lot more so if anything our numbers are even more stacked in favour of the lecky car.