Interest only, electric car charging points 7 kW or 22 kW?

[Avocet]

You are assuming the car is owned by the driver, and when that is the case it is likely they can charge at home, but next door had an EV for a week, so not able to charge at home, he had to select where to charge so there is some thing else to be doing while it charges, or get his wife to collect him and take him back once the car has charged.

No, I mentioned nothing about charging at home. However long people spend plugged into their charger at home, is irrelevant. That's their business. I was talking only about public fast chargers.

I want an EV tariff for my battery which is part of the solar panels, at the moment with British Gas, but Octopus is cheaper, so looked at moving to them, but they will not give me the EV tariff without details of the EV car and charger fitted, so I would need car first, before I can set up home charging, chicken and egg situation.

That's odd? I'm with Octopus and signed up for their Intelligent Octopus tariff, (Now called "Intelligent Octopus Go", I think). They didn't ask me anything about my car, although I guess that might have changed since a couple of years ago.

They certainly have a similar tariff for people without an EV though:

Octopus Go

The UK's most awarded energy supplier. We're doing energy better - for you and the environment.

octopus.energy

The other neighbour who had an EV an early Kango, it had a range of 140 miles on paper, he used it for a milk round fixed distance of 68 miles, and some times it would run out before getting home, forget the last 50 miles of range, it was the first 50 miles which mattered, just because your car has an extended range does not mean all EV's have an extended range. His problem was if he did not get home early enough, then he could not fully recharge for the next day, and the charge rate for the van was not even 7 kW seem to remember 3 kW did not matter what he plugged into to charge it, so if the public fast charger is the only charger in range, he would be forced to use it at 3 kW as that was all the van would charge at.

I think if it was mine I would carry a generator in the van, but that does kind off defeat the whole idea of an EV.

I can't think of any Renault EV that could only charge at 3kW We have friends with a Zoe, which charges at 7kW (max). Renault backed the ChaDeMo charging plug, (now becoming obsolete), but if you have such a vehicle that can't charge at more than 7kW, then just go to the next suitable charger. The car's sat-nav will have them all programmed in, or you could use ZapMap and just set the filters to only show the chargers suitable for your vehicle.

 

[Avocet]

15 minutes of free charging is a failure of the charge point operator. Absolutely no reason for such a thing to exist.
You pay - you charge.
No payment - no charging, not even for 1 second.

If a car park charges for parking, then whoever is parked in it should pay. Doesn't matter whether they are charging a vehicle or not.
The presence of an EV charging facility does not alter the fact that they went there to park a vehicle.

People need to forget about driving to a special place to charge - you charge when it's available at wherever you were going to anyway.
You drive to the destination, and if that is a place that charges for parking, you pay for parking.
If that place also has EV charging then you pay for that if you use it.

It really is that simple! And if you feel aggrieved by paying for charging and parking at the same time, just pay for your parking, and go to some special place to charge your car, where they don't charge you to park but they charge you to charge... like ICEs do...!

 

[Avocet]

I've been to the Ludlow Food Festival on Friday, staying in Tenbury Wells.

Started with full charge, which I did at home over Thursday night, for less than a fiver.

Drove from nr Lichfield to Tenbury, left the car at the hotel and taxi'ed to the. FF and back, and drove back today. With a divertion via Carding Mill.
AC on most of the time.

Just gone shopping, and am now in the pub for a swift pint, with 120 miles of range left.
I'll charge it back up overnight.

Suits me

Similar here. Just back from a couple of days at a show in Edinburgh. 140-odd miles each way. Left home in Cumbria with 100% charge and drove to Annandale Water services on the M74. Stopped for a wee and a can of pop. Didn't really need any electricity, but the chargers were available so I plugged in. Charged for 9 minutes, during which time, I added about 35 miles of range. I wasn't in any real danger of exceeding my 2 hours free parking!

Got to Edinburgh with about "half a tank" (so to speak) left. No chargers at the hotel, so just left it there for a couple of days, parked like an ICE car. (Turns out, they had no petrol pumps in their car park either...). Got back in it this evening and set off for home. Charged again at Annandale on the way back (plenty of empty 350kW chargers). Charged for 12 minutes this time. (A bit longer than I needed to, but got chatting to another EV driver for a few minutes). Added about 90 miles of range this time. (They charge much faster if the battery is nearer empty). Left with "only" 108 of my 120 minutes of free parking left...

 

[Avocet]

No, I'm not.

You are assuming that the way people will use their EV is different from how they would use an ICEV.

For the 30% of households/30-50% of drivers who have no access to off-street parking, and don't go to a "destination" every few hundred miles, how do they charge their car?

They visit the EV charging equivalent of a filling station. They have the potential to be much more flexible in where they are located than pumps delivering petrol or diesel, but drivers will still have to visit them, and when they do they will be visiting just to charge their car, not to park-oh-and-while-i'm-here-i'll-charge-my-battery.

What I'm saying is that it is problematic when the only off-motorway locations are in chargeable car-parks when drivers are there not because they've decided to go for a Nandos, or to buy a sofa in DFS, or a roof-rack in Halfords, or to do bit of 10-pin bowling, or to watch a film, but because they need to fuel their car and there is nowhere else they can go.


How many people regularly have "destinations" where they spend that log there?



They're going to a charging point.



The "whatever" is charging their car.



"2,4,6 or even more hours" is not an irrelevant amount of time.



Ignoring the advisability of charging to more than 80%, it is not irrelevant whether you've now got a car you can use for a week or only 3-4 days.



I don't drive to hotels to stay overnight, or even for an afternoon.

How many people do on a weekly-ish basis?



I don't drive to locations where I spend a couple of hours or more. How many people do?



Mine spends most of its time outside my house, but I'm not one of the 30% of households/30-50% of drivers with no off-street parking, so I could charge an EV there.



If they are installed in "car parks" there are always going to be problems. If EV charger spaces are not reserved for EVs then EV drivers will arrive to find no free bays with chargers. If they are reserved then there will be a reluctance on the part of the car park owners/operators to have many of them because then they are cutting the number of spaces available to the over 95% of cars which are ICEVs. EV drivers will again arrive to find no free bays with chargers, and then the problems start because the mindset of the car park operator is "you went past that ANPR camera because you came here to park", when actually the driver went past it because he went there to charge his car.



It's also a requirement for people who cannot charge at home and who are not all the time visiting these "destinations" where they remain overnight or for several hours.



People who cannot charge at home and who are not all the time visiting "destinations" where they remain overnight or for several hours have no choice but to use an EV like that.

I'm not sure how many times we have to say: "If you can't charge at home, don't get an EV yet"?

 

[Avocet]

And if you can't because you have no range left because the last "elsewhere(s)" also had none available?

Probably the same as if I'd driven an ICE car down to empty before I started looking for somewhere to refuel and found they had none available?

...which is why I don't drive it until the battery is nearly flat and then start looking for somewhere to charge!

Indeed they will, but also it should not be beyond the wit of man to design fast-charge points which just shut off below a certain minimum draw.

I'm sure that could be done very easily, but developing one that then unplugged said EV and parked it somewhere else to free-up the charger, would probably be a bit more of a challenge...

 

[Avocet]

My nearest town centre has 2 "shopping centres" serviced by 3 integral car parks. One has 2 car parks, each with about 450-500 spaces, and each with 1 AC charge point (3-ish kW). How many should it have?

We have about 35 million cars in the country, of which about 1 million are EVs. I drive both and EV and an ICE, but I can't drive both at the same time, so every time I'm driving my ICE, and I'm looking for somewhere to park, I won't b wanting to take up a parking space for an EV, and every time I'm in the EV, I won't be looking for a parking space for an ICE.

If it has 500 parking spaces, the it would seem reasonable for it to currently have: (rounding it to make the sums easy):

1,000,000 / 35,000,000 x 500 = 14 EV parking spaces.

The other has 1500 spaces, and a heady 5 charge points, 2x7-ish kW AC, and 3 Tesla Superchargers. How many should it have?

Using the same maths, I reckon about 43 EV spaces.

The EV charging infrastructure in this country is a classic example of how the ideology of leaving it to the market as that is always the best way is a complete fiasco.

Yes and no... I spend a lot of time North and South of the Scottish border. In England, the public charging infrastructure, is almost entirely private sector. As we know, the private sector runs mainly on greed. That means you get generally the latest, fastest EV chargers, in the most popular areas and more often than not, they work, because a charger that's out of order, isn't making any money for its owners. You get naff-all chargers in rural areas, and they're very expensive.

In Scotland, however, there are a lot of publicly-owned chargers (Chargeplace Scotland). These are often older, lower-tech designs that are less powerful. They're often broken (in my experience) and take forever for a low-paid public sector worker to go out and fix them. However, they are better spaced in rural areas where a private operator wouldn't be arsed putting one because it wouldn't make him much money, and the tariffs are (also generally) far more reasonable.

Swings and roundabouts, really...

 

[ericmark]

I can't think of any Renault EV that could only charge at 3kW We have friends with a Zoe, which charges at 7kW (max).

Latter they got a larger battery and faster charge option, the early versions the battery was rented.

Battery rental is £35pm plus VAT (£42pm inc) for 9,000 miles pa. Typical range in summer is 80 to 85 miles, in mid winter around 65 miles.

Yes I know the new version have a lot bigger range and a heat pump for heating, but the old series 1 was a resistive heater.

Other cars often have only single phase charging, so you can plug into a 22 kW charger but still only charges at 7 kW, I had some one complaining the charge rate was low, and I had wondered if the was a phase down, but it seems if a phase fails it auto isolates, the system is to isolate with loss of PEN but it means also isolates with loss of a phase.

The early Kangoo had a 20 kWh battery, this I think went up to 33 kWh with latter models, so 20/3.3 = 6 hours to charge, so if charging at home the low charge rate was not really a problem. Only when larger batteries were fitted did the lower charge rate cause a problem, and when they fitted the larger battery they also went to 7 kW charging.

Latter versions the battery was not rented.

 

[Avocet]

View attachment 355536
Latter they got a larger battery and faster charge option, the early versions the battery was rented.

Yes I know the new version have a lot bigger range and a heat pump for heating, but the old series 1 was a resistive heater.

Other cars often have only single phase charging, so you can plug into a 22 kW charger but still only charges at 7 kW, I had some one complaining the charge rate was low, and I had wondered if the was a phase down, but it seems if a phase fails it auto isolates, the system is to isolate with loss of PEN but it means also isolates with loss of a phase.

The early Kangoo had a 20 kWh battery, this I think went up to 33 kWh with latter models, so 20/3.3 = 6 hours to charge, so if charging at home the low charge rate was not really a problem. Only when larger batteries were fitted did the lower charge rate cause a problem, and when they fitted the larger battery they also went to 7 kW charging.

Latter versions the battery was not rented.

Only a very few of the first ones. From 2017 they could all chrge at 7kW:

Renault Kangoo Z.E. EV charging guide - Zapmap

Guide to charge your Kangoo Z.E.. Zapmap's Renault Kangoo Z.E. charging guide will help you get the most from your electric car.

www.zap-map.com

Mine will only charge at 11kW from an AC charger, even if it's 22kW. That's just the limit of its on-board charger.