EV Charging in the UK

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

søndag den 16. juni 2019 kl. 11.34.53 UTC+2 skrev Rick C:

On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 4:58:17 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 16/06/2019 08:15, Tom Gardner wrote:

That's a good example of where the mean value can be misleading.

My normal daily travel is, I guess, less than 20 miles. But one
day last week it was 450 miles. I need a car that can do both.

That is more than twice the safe recommended daily journey length. I
have known travelling salesmen fall asleep on the way home doing those
sorts of distances.

Really? That's about 7-8 hours. Truckers do that without breaking a sweat. I do it when I drive to TN or back.

rules here are max 4.5hours then minimum 45 minute rest, max 9 hours total
then a 11 hour rest

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 12:06:37 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

> What people will do in desperation.

Yeah, you'd have to be desperate to want to get into the UK right now.




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[Winfield Hill]

John Rumm wrote...

Street charging is a more difficult problem to solve...

I can charge on the street, if I can park within two
car spots of my driveway. Apartment dwellers in a
crowded city have a problem. Several are like that
here at work, but they can charge up in our garage.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/06/2019 17:14, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:34:39 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

And that is a good thing. The UK has gotten themselves in a bind by not
expanding their capacity enough.

Yup. We have <5% excess generating capacity, so if two
major plants go offline unexpectedly, there will be
problems. And engineers in the generating industry
know that, but they don't control the finance and don't
control the politics of NIMBYism.

I think you are mixing up concepts.

That 5 % sounds about right as the running reserve or short startup
time (minutes) gas turbines to fulfill the N-1 criterion, i.e. to
allow the largest single unit (typically nuclear) dropping from the
net. There are time limits (like 30 min) how fast slower starting
power plants must be started to restore the N-1 condition. to allow
for the next largest unit dropping out.

No he is right. The available UK generating capacity in winter is now
only about 4% more than typical load and last winter but one they had to
pay big industrial users to drop off to keep the lights in homes on.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29794632

and

https://www.ft.com/content/be010f16-2a41-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca

This is from 2014 and it has got worse since then with various operators
mothballing unprofitable assets. They got dangerously close to running
out of gas in 2018 too - which would have taken a lot of electricity
plant offline (a result of the dash for gas a while back).

In any country there are different types of power plants, some are
expensive to build but cheap to operate, such as nuclear, other are
chap to build but very expensive to operate like natural gas aero
derived gas turbines (essentially jet engines). An emergency gas
turbine would be run for less than 100 hours including regular test
runs.

They are already running the ageing nuclear plants way beyond their
predicted lifetime and still dithering about building new ones.

If you add up the total nominal power output of all available units,
this is well larger than the annual peak load. However, running all
would be very expensive, so you try to optimize the power station
production mix at any time.

Not in the UK it isn't. Without the demand side industrial load shedding
the margin of generating capacity to anticipated winter load in cold
weather it is now touch and go as to whether the lights stay on.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 Jun 2019 09:06:33 -0700 (PDT)) it happened
keith@kjwdesigns.com wrote in
<7479a067-af59-42f8-bdca-9e85172aecf6@googlegroups.com>:

On Saturday, 15 June 2019 22:33:41 UTC-7, Jan Panteltje wrote:
...
I just wonder if UK leaves EU if they will go back to 240 V ;-)
Or maybe even 380 just to make a difference.
US 110 is also a possibility, if trump says so.
...

The UK never went away from 240V.

The standard is 230V -6% + 10%.

That covers nominal 220V and the UK 240V without actually changing anything.

kw

OK, but 230 V light bulbs last shorter...
Are you saying light bulbs in UK are 240V?
Yes LEDs too, see my previous test with those.

 

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:34:39 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

And that is a good thing. The UK has gotten themselves in a bind by not
expanding their capacity enough.

Yup. We have <5% excess generating capacity, so if two
major plants go offline unexpectedly, there will be
problems. And engineers in the generating industry
know that, but they don't control the finance and don't
control the politics of NIMBYism.

I think you are mixing up concepts.

That 5 % sounds about right as the running reserve or short startup
time (minutes) gas turbines to fulfill the N-1 criterion, i.e. to
allow the largest single unit (typically nuclear) dropping from the
net. There are time limits (like 30 min) how fast slower starting
power plants must be started to restore the N-1 condition. to allow
for the next largest unit dropping out.

In any country there are different types of power plants, some are
expensive to build but cheap to operate, such as nuclear, other are
chap to build but very expensive to operate like natural gas aero
derived gas turbines (essentially jet engines). An emergency gas
turbine would be run for less than 100 hours including regular test
runs.

If you add up the total nominal power output of all available units,
this is well larger than the annual peak load. However, running all
would be very expensive, so you try to optimize the power station
production mix at any time.

 

On Saturday, 15 June 2019 22:21:51 UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
....

If you only drive a few miles a day in a regular car, you won't use
much gasoline so you won't Destroy The Planet. You can spend 5
minutes, every few weeks, filling up. That's just about the right
amount of time to squeegie the windows.

Myself and many other people prefer the driving experience with electric vehicles.

It is not necessarily anything to to do with saving the planet, although that's a nice side benefit.

Normal charging is more convenient than with a gasoline cars as it is done while I sleep for a few seconds of plugging in when necessary.

If you drive long distances, charging an electric car becomes a
nuisance.

Agreed that requires more planning than with a gasoline car but eminently practical.

kw

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/06/2019 16:15, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 13:52:00 +0100, Martin Brown
'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/06/2019 04:50, Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 6:37:03 PM UTC-4, tabb...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Saturday, 15 June 2019 21:05:31 UTC+1, Rick C wrote:

To mitigate this a ground rod at the house is required which in
many cases is prohibitively expensive to install with an
adequately conductive path.

not really, nothing expensive about them. Where impedance is high
one uses an RCD - but those are universal now anyway.

So why didn't those guys tell me about the RCD solution? That's what

Perhaps they are not as expert as you give them credit for.

we call a GFCI I believe, trips on unbalanced current in neutral and
ground, right?

It trips if the flow of current in the Live and *Neutral* do not balance
out to within some fairly tight tolerance typically 10mA, 30mA or 50mA.

IOW any current escaping to Earth means it trips.

Do you get many false trips?

Almost none.

The only time ours would trip is if there was a genuine fault condition
- kettle or water heater element going bad or the old filament spotlamps
in the kitchen when they blew would generate an impulse plasma short
from live to earth that always plunged the house into total darkness.
They are all long since replaced by LEDs now and they fail very rarely.

So are these two problems being presented realistically?

I'm also being told it will be a huge problem to provide enough
charging capability for the many potential EV owners who park on
the street or in public facilities. I expect it is practical to
install curb side and parking lot outlets with some outlay which
is small, in fact tiny compared to the cost of a car. But I
kinda have to take them at their word for that one.

Rick C.

Everything I've heard indicates that kerbside charging would be
very expensive to install in quantity. The infrastructure to
support iy isn't there.

You sound like you can address this rationally. Can you verify the 2
kW per house typical usage? That seems awfully low. I understand

On average it may well be right since space heating and about half of
all cooking is done by mains gas or kerosene. My own house only the
computers, kitchen appliances and electric lights are on electricity.

Kerosene? Yikes.

1000L of 28s fuel oil - which is pretty much kerosene. We can also run
on solid fuel of either coal or wood in the wood burning stove.

The annual UK national average is claimed to be about 4kWhr/day. See

https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-electricity-does-a-home-use.html

coffee makers in the UK are designed to use the full 13 amps on a 240
volt circuit. That is 3 kW. So with a few other things drawing
similar loads I don't see how a distribution system designed for 2 kW
could ever suffice. Is this one of those things where the 2 kW
figure only applies to older neighborhoods? Any idea of what
percentage of the homes are like this?

The 2kW number is just hopelessly wrong! When the 1960's estates were
built night time Economy 7 electric central heating was all the rage
(the infamous nuclear electricity too cheap to meter promise) so the
distribution network in towns would have been sized accordingly.

Even prior to that the national grid system must have been designed to
handle electric cookers all being run at roughly the same time to cook
evening meals. They are hardwired because they are 6kW heating elements
(but again only on for a proportion of the time). Some modern designed
cookers will plug into a 13A socket being less than 3kW peak load.

I hate cooking on an electric range. Gas is great.

Ceramic hobs are fairly responsive. Induction ones even more so.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

On Saturday, 15 June 2019 22:33:41 UTC-7, Jan Panteltje wrote:
....

I just wonder if UK leaves EU if they will go back to 240 V ;-)
Or maybe even 380 just to make a difference.
US 110 is also a possibility, if trump says so.
....

The UK never went away from 240V.

The standard is 230V -6% + 10%.

That covers nominal 220V and the UK 240V without actually changing anything.

kw

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 02:34:49 -0700, Rick C wrote:

10 kWh per day in the winter seems very light. I've used $60 worth of
electricity in three days when the nights were really cold.

Gee. All that virtue-signalling comes at a price!



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[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:39:00 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <curd@notformail.com> wrote in <qe5nqk$4i3$14@dont-email.me>:

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 12:06:37 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

What people will do in desperation.

Yeah, you'd have to be desperate to want to get into the UK right now.

Yes I was wondering why he wanted to go there.
Probably was denied refuge here.

UK politics seems soooo confused these days...

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 08:11:39 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

We have 30KW, 120-N-120 at 125 amps. We have gas too, so we use a tiny
fraction of that capacity.

If you apply that same methodology to the UK supply, it comes out at 48kW.
If we're comparing systems, it's important to use the same methodology as
you will no doubt appreciate.




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[Cursitor Doom]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:22:53 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

OK, but 230 V light bulbs last shorter...
Are you saying light bulbs in UK are 240V?
Yes LEDs too, see my previous test with those.

LEDs *can* be run directly off 240V in the UK, but their service life
will be shorter.




--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via
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protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of
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[John Larkin]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:47:11 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
<curd@notformail.com> wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 08:11:39 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

We have 30KW, 120-N-120 at 125 amps. We have gas too, so we use a tiny
fraction of that capacity.

If you apply that same methodology to the UK supply, it comes out at 48kW.
If we're comparing systems, it's important to use the same methodology as
you will no doubt appreciate.

I multiplied the available voltage by the available current. Do you
use a different way of computing power?


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 6:29:00 AM UTC-4, TTman wrote:

So are these two problems being presented realistically?

I'm also being told it will be a huge problem to provide enough charging capability for the many potential EV owners who park on the street or in public facilities. I expect it is practical to install curb side and parking lot outlets with some outlay which is small, in fact tiny compared to the cost of a car. But I kinda have to take them at their word for that one.

Rick C.

UK house supplies are earthed. Typical current supply capacity to a
house is 60A- 100A at 230V. So no problem there....
The problem will come with mass takeup, which won't happen.Fortunately
there will always be just a gradual takeup.The infrastructure is just
not there to allow lots of households to charge their cars.
I often wonder what would happen if oil ran out... armageddan ?

I suggested in a Tesla forum that we could have a distribution capacity problem here in the US but many people didn't understand the difference between generation and distribution. Some others insisted there is adequate reserve capacity, unlike in the UK. So maybe both are right. It's a problem there that will require digging up streets to install higher capacity distribution and no problem at all here in the US.

--

Rick C.

+++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/06/19 18:04, Winfield Hill wrote:

Tom Gardner wrote...

Official "notices of insufficiency" are regularly issued.

If smart metering is introduced, with peak-load pricing,
people will start finding ways to time their usage. We
don't have that here, but I wish we did.

We already have a vestigial version of that, the so-called
"Economy 7" tariffs. They have separate internal wiring
to piles of bricks surrounding heating coils (i.e. storage
radiators), and only heat the bricks up at night.

Such tariffs and wiring were popular in the 60s and 70s,
but have fallen out of favour since then.

As for smart meters, we have them - provided you carefully
define "smart".

The government forced their introduction despite being
repeatedly told that there were fundamental problems.
Consequently, even though some are still being installed,
they will all have to be replaced with second generation
devices. You couldn't make it up.

Even then, the smarts are limited to:
1 telling consumers their instantaneous and total
energy usage
2 remotely disconnecting customers that don't pay the
bill
3 staying with the same energy supplier; change
supplier and it reverts to being a dumb meter

What could /possibly/ go wrong with the second
(mis)feature?

Given the third point, tell me again what the
benefit is supposed to be!

Consequently I and many people refuse to have smart
meters installed.

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 5:58:59 AM UTC-4, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 20:50:29 -0700, Rick C wrote:

I have to acknowledge that if this 2 kW number is correct and a large
fraction of homes in the UK receive such meager distribution, home EV
charging of any significant fraction of the cars would be impossible.
Otherwise adding a simple 13 amp outlet accessible to the EV would
suffice for charging up to 150 miles per night or more.

The maximum draw per single domestic socket outlet is 13A. HOWEVER, most
homes can legitimately have up to 60A -100A by taking a dedicated spur
off the house's consumer unit/distribution board. The general limit per
domestic installation is limited by the power co's fuse which is
generally 100A maximum. I'm sure that's plenty for even an American. ;-)

No one in the right mind would attempt to charge an EV from a 13A socket
(unless time was not a consideration.) ;-)

What are you talking about??? Overnight you can put on 150 miles on most vehicles. That's a lot more than Win is using and will work for a very large proportion of the population.

It's not like there aren't fast DC chargers for trips. Heck, I use 120 V at 12 amps. I did charge at the hospital parking deck one night at 5 kW to get a full charge and I won't need to charge again until I am back on the road tomorrow halfway home. I could go all the way home, but I'm charging on Tesla's dime these days as much as possible.

--

Rick C.

++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 Jun 2019 17:51:13 +0100) it happened Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in <6suNE.11770$H25.7886@fx27.am4>:

All true, but regrettably it doesn't change the fundamental
point that we are very near to the limit.

Official "notices of insufficiency" are regularly issued.
The audience is those commercial customers that buy cheaper
electricity on the basis that supply won't be guaranteed.
Summary: such commercial customers should be prepared to
be cut off.

We should all be prepared, just today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/world/americas/power-failure-argentina-uruguay.html

I was wondering if the virus US put into the Venezuela grid
spoiled over to the rest of S America,
but it could just as well be a local hacker, or somebody plugging
in their 'lectric car for charging.

Last weekend again the pay cards in some mayor supermarket here no longer worked.
This time KPN (telco here) blamed the firewall,
it no longer let anything through.

So fragile, all those people: no shopping, lasted till next day!.
In Dutch, third time
https://www.rtlz.nl/algemeen/binnenland/artikel/4742576/pinstoring-chaos-paniek-albert-heijn-pinproblemen-storing
probably... well I can guess who tought those IT guys

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:42:08 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <curd@notformail.com> wrote in <qe5rh0$4i3$18@dont-email.me>:

On Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:22:53 +0000, Jan Panteltje wrote:

OK, but 230 V light bulbs last shorter...
Are you saying light bulbs in UK are 240V?
Yes LEDs too, see my previous test with those.

LEDs *can* be run directly off 240V in the UK, but their service life
will be shorter.

Much short I suppose,
but I was referring to these:
http://panteltje.com/pub/LED_light_fix_IMG_6918.JPG
http://panteltje.com/pub/LED_light_circuit_diagram_IMG_6925.JPG

Made in the free peoples republic of China.

In your local shop NOW

 

[Winfield Hill]

Tom Gardner wrote...

And the effect of hills shouldn't be neglected,
particularly if you live at the top of a hill
and travel to the bottom of the valley.

I have that issue, but do my charging for a round
trip. What I lose in one direction, I get back
on the other.


--
Thanks,
- Win