Only one EV charger at home?!...

[Peeler]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 03:25:37 +0200, cretinous Carlos E.R., another brain
dead troll-feeding senile ASSHOLE, blathered:

Certainly. Here they charge you more the faster your contract is. You
want 15A? Fine. You want 30A?

He just wants you to FEED him, you dumb senile spick! <tsk>

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:53:54 -0700, T(wat), the idiotic trolling and
troll-feeding senile asshole, babbled again:


> Kinsey may have answered it above, but ...

He often himself provides the retarded answers to his own retarded
\"questions\", but will keep asking you troll-feeding senile assholes
nevertheless, so he can keep proving your answers wrong, etc.

And you senile asshole will start whining and complaining again, that you\'ve
been trolled again by a clinically insane asshole with \"superhuman\"
abilities and an IQ of over 140 (I believe his latest number 146 or so,
can\'t remember exactly). ROTFLOL

--
More from Birdbrain Macaw\'s (now \"Commander Kinsey\" LOL) sociopathic world:
\"Most animals don\'t attack me, even though their owners tell me they\'re
dangerous. I had to laugh at one woman who ran out to tell me her dog was
going to bite my hand off, then saw me petting it. I once bought a parrot
that was extremely vicious. I walked into his house and picked it up, then
cuddled it. He said he\'d never seen it do that in 10 years.\"
MID: <op.yta6wnb54tb0vt@red.lan>

 

[Theo]

In uk.d-i-y SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk> wrote:

That\'s the problem. The 100A (or lower) supply is based on the
assumption of relatively short duration peak load and longer periods of
partial load, not long, large, continuous loads.

Car chargers run for many hours at a time, so two or three of those,
plus washing machine and tumble dryer (moved to night time for a cheaper
tariff), electric heaters, immersion heater and the possibility of the
electric oven and hob (according to my son, it\'s not unusual for
households with students to be baking cakes at 4am, after the
night-club!), plus someone getting up early and using the 10kW electric
shower and you have a load that the supply cable was never meant to take
continuously, plus a higher than normal peak to an already stressed supply.

EV chargers can be configured to sense the total load being offered by the
property. If the supply is 100A then the charger can throttle back the
current being taken by the car so it stays within the 100A envelope.
Somebody turns on the 50A electric shower, the car drops down to a low
current, once the shower is finished the car ramps up the current again. If
there are multiple chargers they can be configured not just to obey this,
but to cooperate in sharing the load: eg charger 1 has priority over charger
2. That arrangement saves going outside at 3am to unplug one car and plug
in another.

So there isn\'t a problem of busting your supply, assuming everything is
installed right.

As well as that, if every house has something along those lines, the
entire street supply will be over-stretched.

That I agree is more of a problem. I expect we\'ll start to see tariffs that
encourage load shedding at times of high local demand (eg cooperation
between local cars to stagger their charging times), especially since the
miles people do in the average day might only require a few hours of
charging. Such already exist for national demand.

There is a reason for car charger installations having to be notified to
the DNO - most households have no comparably large loads that run for
such extended periods.

The DNO needs to know how to size their network, so it\'s useful data for
them.

Theo

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-04-17 09:51, Colin Bignell wrote:
> On 16/04/2023 20:06, Martin Brown wrote:

....

A wet string area, as it was known to the engineers when I worked in the
industry, implying that the overhead wires might as well be wet string
for all their capacity. However, in the days when the only electricity
uses in the home were lighting (probably a single 40W* bulb in each
room) and a radio, 40A was more than generous.

*When he came back from the war my father upgraded the 25W light bulbs
my mother had installed to 40W. For somebody used to oil lamps, 25W was
bright enough.

Now that you mention this, it is very true. I recognize that trait in my
late father.

I would go into the dining room, switching all the 8 bulbs (probably 25W
each), and he would come and switch half of them off and growl at me
(the lamp had a double switch, so 4 or 8 bulbs).

Now I have the same ceiling lamp with the biggest CFLs/LEDs I could find
at the time, for that lamp thread (E14).


Once we visited my mother village, a place that had no running water on
the houses. They had electricity, but no meters. The company charged a
fixed amount per number of bulbs in the house. There were no sockets.
Year 1969 or thereabouts.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 16/04/2023 19:44, Colin Bignell wrote:

On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you can
draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract with
the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

When the builders smashed my input cable from the substation,. the
electricity board replaced the 60A fuse in it with a 100A one. So it
blew the cable *properly*. They then identified where the break was. As
far as I know that 100A fuse still exists irrespective of any \'contract\'.

We had the same upgrade performance free when our company 100+PCs kept
blowing the main fuse after a power cut, again with no change on contract.




--
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established
authorities are wrong.”

― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 16/04/2023 20:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2023-04-16 20:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you
can draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract
with the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

Do you have some kind of hardware enforcing the limit?

A large fuse upstream.

And usually a main house circuit breaker,

The typical contract here for a flat is 3.6 KW. I think the max is
around 15 or 18.

Its colder in Britain.

--
“Some people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of
a car with the cramped public exposure of 
an airplane.”

Dennis Miller

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-04-17 10:18, Martin Brown wrote:

On 16/04/2023 22:02, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 21:07, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 20:32:36 +0100, Colin Bignell <cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2023 20:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-04-16 20:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell <cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:
On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which
means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other
words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you
can draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract
with the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

Do you have some kind of hardware enforcing the limit?

I didn\'t work in the Commercial section, which was responsible for the
meter and company fuses, so I don\'t know whether there was a
limiter. As
the standing charges were based upon the contracted supply, I assume
there must have been some way to enforce it.

There isn\'t.

That is a mere assumption on your part.

The meters only monitor how much you\'ve used, not how fast you were
using it.

They want you to use more, so they make more money!

\'They\' don\'t want anybody to exceed the capacity of the incomer.

The incomers in even quite old houses from the 1970\'s are typically good
for 100A though they are like mine often fused at 60A or 80A. Our VH has
exactly the same cabling and 100A on each of the two available phases.

I expect just like with he 13A fuse in practice the nominal 100A fuse
will pass a considerably higher current for a while before it fails.

My meter limits to 10A. This is an ancient contract, and the meter is
modern, so in actual fact it can not limit under 15A. Design fault.

However, there is an external fuse on the external house wall, which I
think is 60A, and that is a hard limit. It can not have a big margin
because the company wires will not take the current and will melt the
insulation.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-04-16 21:52, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 20:02:27 +0100, Carlos E.R.
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2023-04-16 20:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means
they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you can
draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract with
the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

Do you have some kind of hardware enforcing the limit?

For instance, in Spain the smart meter triggers if you draw above your
contract and switches off the whole house. In older times, there was an
electromagnetic current limiter switch, installed with an anti tamper
lead seal, which of course, was tampered with. Which is a reason they
installed smart meters in the whole country real fast.

The typical contract here for a flat is 3.6 KW. I think the max is
around 15 or 18.

Just how do you plan to charge an electric car?

Obviously, by contracting a charge point.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-04-17 11:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/04/2023 20:02, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-04-16 20:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means
they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you
can draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract
with the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

Do you have some kind of hardware enforcing the limit?

A large fuse upstream.

And usually a main house circuit breaker,


The typical contract here for a flat is 3.6 KW. I think the max is
around 15 or 18.

Its colder in Britain.

Oh, a house with electrical heating will have a bigger contract.
Possibly three-phase.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2023-04-16 21:43, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 20:02:27 +0100, Carlos E.R.
robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2023-04-16 20:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means
they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you can
draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract with
the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

Do you have some kind of hardware enforcing the limit?

For instance, in Spain the smart meter triggers if you draw above your
contract and switches off the whole house. In older times, there was an
electromagnetic current limiter switch, installed with an anti tamper
lead seal, which of course, was tampered with. Which is a reason they
installed smart meters in the whole country real fast.

The typical contract here for a flat is 3.6 KW. I think the max is
around 15 or 18.

3.6kW ROTFPMSL!  In the UK a kettle takes almost that.  I wasn\'t aware
you lived in the third world.

We just don\'t drink tea

I take it you have cold showers.

No, we have all the hot water we want. Gas powered, typically.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Joe]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:54:02 +0200
\"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

However, there is an external fuse on the external house wall, which
I think is 60A, and that is a hard limit. It can not have a big
margin because the company wires will not take the current and will
melt the insulation.

...

It depends what you mean by \'big margin\'. A High Rupture Capacity fuse
(which this will be) is guaranteed to fail within four hours at 1.5
times the rated current. It will blow in a shorter time under larger
overloads.

Fuses are very imprecise devices, circuit breakers not much better..

--
Joe

 

[Peeler]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:56:29 +0200, cretinous Carlos E.R., another brain
dead troll-feeding senile ASSHOLE, blathered:

I take it you have cold showers.

No, we have all the hot water we want. Gas powered, typically.

Yeah, you untalented spicks get your money for it by selling mostly
absolutely tasteless fruit and vegetables within the EU! It\'s a shame!

 

[Peeler]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:57:12 +0200, cretinous Carlos E.R., another brain
dead troll-feeding senile ASSHOLE, blathered:

Just how do you plan to charge an electric car?

Obviously, by contracting a charge point.

And how do you feed the troll, dumb spick? Obviously by taking every single
idiotic bait he keeps setting out for dumb senile assholes like you!

 

[SteveW]

On 17/04/2023 10:19, Theo wrote:

In uk.d-i-y SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk> wrote:
That\'s the problem. The 100A (or lower) supply is based on the
assumption of relatively short duration peak load and longer periods of
partial load, not long, large, continuous loads.

Car chargers run for many hours at a time, so two or three of those,
plus washing machine and tumble dryer (moved to night time for a cheaper
tariff), electric heaters, immersion heater and the possibility of the
electric oven and hob (according to my son, it\'s not unusual for
households with students to be baking cakes at 4am, after the
night-club!), plus someone getting up early and using the 10kW electric
shower and you have a load that the supply cable was never meant to take
continuously, plus a higher than normal peak to an already stressed supply.

EV chargers can be configured to sense the total load being offered by the
property. If the supply is 100A then the charger can throttle back the
current being taken by the car so it stays within the 100A envelope.
Somebody turns on the 50A electric shower, the car drops down to a low
current, once the shower is finished the car ramps up the current again. If
there are multiple chargers they can be configured not just to obey this,
but to cooperate in sharing the load: eg charger 1 has priority over charger
2. That arrangement saves going outside at 3am to unplug one car and plug
in another.

So there isn\'t a problem of busting your supply, assuming everything is
installed right.

My charger has no current sensing. It can operate co-operatively, but
only if your other charger(s) are the same make and model.

As well as that, if every house has something along those lines, the
entire street supply will be over-stretched.

That I agree is more of a problem. I expect we\'ll start to see tariffs that
encourage load shedding at times of high local demand (eg cooperation
between local cars to stagger their charging times), especially since the
miles people do in the average day might only require a few hours of
charging. Such already exist for national demand.

The trouble is that we are getting more and more away from simply plug
and charge, needing to use multiple apps for car, charger and
electricity provider, possibly with 3rd party apps and relying upon them
all working together smoothly.

I already find it a minor irritation that, on getting home, I have to
get out of the car, without locking it (or the charge flap will also be
locked), which leaves lights, radio and dash on; plug in; then lock the
car; then use the charger app to set charging and the car\'s own app if I
want to monitor charge state. That\'s before we introduce a 3rd app to
allow the car to charge at lower demand times, rather than a fixed period.

 

[SteveW]

On 17/04/2023 10:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 16/04/2023 19:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF?  A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks.  240V, 100A.  Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you
can draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract
with the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

When the builders smashed my input cable from the substation,. the
electricity board replaced the 60A fuse in it with a 100A one.  So it
blew the cable *properly*. They then identified where the break was. As
far as I know that 100A fuse still exists irrespective of any \'contract\'.

We had the same upgrade performance free when our company 100+PCs kept
blowing the main fuse after a power cut, again with no change on contract.

I put a new CU in when I moved in in 1993. The next time the meter
reader came, he noted the upgrade and booked to have the main fuse
upgraded from 60A to 100A. I didn\'t have to request anything or pay
anything.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

On Sunday, April 16, 2023 at 3:34:36 AM UTC-4, Commander Kinsey wrote:

https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars charge at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF? A UK home supply is 24kW. You can easily run two 7kW chargers, in fact three if you\'re not using much power for anything else. Why are people so stupid? 7 x 2 = 14, well under 24. 7 x 3 = 21, just under 24.

Most people are not going need anywhere near full charge every time they park their EV for the day.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 17:51:34 +0100, SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk> wrote:

On 17/04/2023 10:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF? A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks. 240V, 100A. Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you
can draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract
with the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

When the builders smashed my input cable from the substation,. the
electricity board replaced the 60A fuse in it with a 100A one. So it
blew the cable *properly*. They then identified where the break was. As
far as I know that 100A fuse still exists irrespective of any \'contract\'.

We had the same upgrade performance free when our company 100+PCs kept
blowing the main fuse after a power cut, again with no change on contract.

I put a new CU in when I moved in in 1993. The next time the meter
reader came, he noted the upgrade and booked to have the main fuse
upgraded from 60A to 100A. I didn\'t have to request anything or pay
anything.

Why didn\'t you replace the fuse yourself? They\'re only £7.

Just look at the incoming cable width. If it can take 100A, put in a 100A fuse.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:50:35 +0100, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid..invalid> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 19:44, Colin Bignell wrote:
On 16/04/2023 19:12, Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:18:20 +0100, Colin Bignell
cpb@bignellremovethis.me.uk> wrote:

On 16/04/2023 08:34, Commander Kinsey wrote:
https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/features/do-you-need-two-home-charge-points-if-you-have-two-evs/

\"Some products will have the ability to “load share”, which means they
will communicate with each if two vehicles are plugged in. In this
scenario, they will evenly split the power available so both cars
charge
at the same rate, but this will be at around 3-3.6kW – in other words
half of the available 7.4kW from the supply.\"

WTF? A UK home supply is 24kW.

The most common UK domestic contract is for a 17kVA supply.

Bollocks. 240V, 100A. Never seen anything else.

There are also 80A and 60A main breakers, but the limit to what you can
draw is not what the circuit is rated for, but what your contract with
the electricity supply company specifies you can have.

When the builders smashed my input cable from the substation,. the
electricity board replaced the 60A fuse in it with a 100A one. So it
blew the cable *properly*. They then identified where the break was. As
far as I know that 100A fuse still exists irrespective of any \'contract\'.

We had the same upgrade performance free when our company 100+PCs kept
blowing the main fuse after a power cut, again with no change on contract.

There\'s no such thing as a contract limiting current, I\'ve never been told such bollocks by an electric company. You pay for what you use. That can be up to what the cable will physically supply. The transformer feeding you feeds 100 houses, so you\'re not going to kill it.

 

[Theo]

In uk.d-i-y SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk> wrote:

On 17/04/2023 10:19, Theo wrote:
So there isn\'t a problem of busting your supply, assuming everything is
installed right.

My charger has no current sensing. It can operate co-operatively, but
only if your other charger(s) are the same make and model.

I think an electrician will only put one without current sensing if your
installation meets the usual diversity calculation. eg if the charger is
32A it\'s assumed to be running continuously at that current. That leaves
68A for the rest of the installation on a 100A feed. It\'s also possible to
configure the charger at installation time to only supply eg 25A if that\'s
all remaining after diversity.

The trouble is that we are getting more and more away from simply plug
and charge, needing to use multiple apps for car, charger and
electricity provider, possibly with 3rd party apps and relying upon them
all working together smoothly.

Agreed, \'apps\' are a car crash of interoperability. They all want to corral
you into their little walled garden where you can\'t do very much.
Thankfully there are also APIs that allow platforms to communicate, although
remains to be seen how long these stay working.

Personally I wouldn\'t buy anything without local control. But then I\'m
resigned to running a Home Assistant instance to glue it all together.

Theo

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:19:02 +0100, Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

In uk.d-i-y SteveW <steve@walker-family.me.uk> wrote:
That\'s the problem. The 100A (or lower) supply is based on the
assumption of relatively short duration peak load and longer periods of
partial load, not long, large, continuous loads.

Car chargers run for many hours at a time, so two or three of those,
plus washing machine and tumble dryer (moved to night time for a cheaper
tariff), electric heaters, immersion heater and the possibility of the
electric oven and hob (according to my son, it\'s not unusual for
households with students to be baking cakes at 4am, after the
night-club!), plus someone getting up early and using the 10kW electric
shower and you have a load that the supply cable was never meant to take
continuously, plus a higher than normal peak to an already stressed supply.

EV chargers can be configured to sense the total load being offered by the

Not necessary. The incoming cable will take 100A continuously. How do you think storage radiators manage to work? My parents had them put in, 3x15A heaters, 4x7.5A heaters = 75A, plus 15A immersion, all on at once for most of the night = 90A. Standard 100A feed, just like everyone else.

property. If the supply is 100A then the charger can throttle back the
current being taken by the car so it stays within the 100A envelope.
Somebody turns on the 50A electric shower, the car drops down to a low
current, once the shower is finished the car ramps up the current again. If
there are multiple chargers they can be configured not just to obey this,
but to cooperate in sharing the load: eg charger 1 has priority over charger
2. That arrangement saves going outside at 3am to unplug one car and plug
in another.

It cannot sense it unless it\'s talking to a smart meter which has been told the limit.

It could see a voltage drop, but the voltage isn\'t constant anyway.

So there isn\'t a problem of busting your supply, assuming everything is
installed right.

As well as that, if every house has something along those lines, the
entire street supply will be over-stretched.

That I agree is more of a problem.

No it isn\'t. They\'ll be happy to see more power being bought and will upgrade the transformer, just as they would if more housing was built.

I expect we\'ll start to see tariffs that
encourage load shedding at times of high local demand (eg cooperation
between local cars to stagger their charging times),

We used to have something called Economy 7, cheaper all night, not sure why they did away with it.

especially since the
miles people do in the average day might only require a few hours of
charging. Such already exist for national demand.

Probably happens naturally, not everyone plugs it in at the same time. Anyway the car (or ther driver) can say they want to charge it slower to save wear on the battery. There\'s no point in you using the full charger speed if you have all night and are only topping it up. Batteries love slower charges.

There is a reason for car charger installations having to be notified to
the DNO - most households have no comparably large loads that run for
such extended periods.

The DNO needs to know how to size their network, so it\'s useful data for
them.

Utter fucking unbelievable bullshit. It\'s not the case 1000s of people in one town all get a charger simultaneously the same day. It\'s a gradual change, which they can see with their metering at the substations.