Battery Vehicle Society

I believe that he has been away, but is back home now, just.

Mary.

Many thanks... I've made contact

Kevin, I look forward to meeting you soon and throwing some ideas around.

The idea of installing cheap charge points is great. I guess you or a colleague is a qualified electrician as I am.

The conventional charge point seems to cost many thousands per unit.

As you know, you only need an RCCD protected supply for it to be safe so why the crazy cost.
They are very nice with their swipe card systems etc. but no use for high volume roll out which EV's need until battery technology can achieve the range to match or hopefully exceed ICE's.

In my quest to get a large amount of charge points rolled out I have found several reasons behind commercial produced points and their costs, at the end of the day they are all valid.
You cant just stick a 13A or any power outlet on the highway without it going through a lot of approval channels, certification and testing before you can go anywhere near the highway with your charge point.
Next you need to make them muppet proof, while you an I understand RCD's and other such things many folk just dont understand them.
Also you need to meter the supply, while giving free electric is all well and good while numbers are low do you think folks are going to be too keen to give way upwards of £800 of electric a year (based on a 20kwh load per day for a year at a price of around 12p a unit ) if the charge point gets used a lot.
How do you stop any Tom Dick or Harry using the point to supply say their motorhome, hedge cutter, boil a kettle for a cuppa, or just plug a lead in and run it striaght into their house (its been done with streetlights )
How do you go about making sure you charge the right people for the power/parking etc when they use the point, thus the requirement to have a fob based system with a secure access to the power.

Would you be happy to have anyone just plug in to your home and suck up that sort of power, could you afford it ?

You can'nt just bung power points up willy nilly in the street with no thought to how the end user can pay for the power or the safety of the user or other members of the public I'm afraid

Obviousely charge points that are on private ground need little of the above and the owners are very generous allowing us to plug in but I have to wonder long they will survive once the points start to get used considerabley and the owners find their electricity use start to increase beyond the levels of their orginal generosity

ChrisB

We can all find lots of reason not to undertake this exercise.... however, I have found the response to be overwhelmingly positive with people coming forward to offer sites and support.

The free sites are never intended to be a long term solution. However, they are desperately needed if we are to deploy any sort of practical network in a meaningful timescale. The idea that any individual or small business is going to spend thousands of pounds installing a commercially produced charge point is simply ludicrous... the return on the expenditure makes no commercial sense. My answer is to keep the installation costs to an absolute minimum, to fund those costs personally in the short term, with sponsorship in the medium term, and to install in private locations to avoid the bureaucracy.

I have a EV capable of 200+ miles on a charge and I still have to plan ahead very carefully when I undertake a 'long distance' trip.... access to large numbers of 32A charge points would make my EV a realistic alternative to a ICE vehicle. Access to the 63A network would make EV's a no brainer for many people.

If we don't deliver a practical charge point network quickly then the next wave of mass produced EV's will falter.... no one outside of the EV community will accept the idea that charge points are scarce.

That will be great!

I'm not an electrician by trade. My background is in electronics and computing, and my business interests are in Medical IT in the US (we produce both computer hardware and software).

My brother owns an electrical contacting company. They cover a complete spectrum of commercial and domestic work, including marinas and caravan sites. My brother has agreed to undertake installation of the charge points at cost, and to minimise these costs by piggybacking the installations on the back of other work that they are undertaking.

Well, it's understandable that a commercial organisation has to cover it's costs... especially if they are running complex management systems. However, I don't think that's the only model of network by any means. The Park and Charge network (http://park-charge.ch/e/index.htm) has installed almost 1000 ultra low complexity charge points in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.

Whooops,
I didn't expect that tone of reply from ChrisB

At the Highcross Shopping Centre car park in Leicester there are over 100 charging bays. All they have is a single 13A RCCD outlet behind each.
They must conform to IEE regulations or we would not be allowed to use them. They are also free.

I am guessing that most of the charge points Kevin is talking about are on private property where the supply can be controlled.
Many people would like to have one but cannot afford the full up front price and virtually all supplies can handle a 32A connection as it is less than electric shower.

For a high quality kWh measuring device, you can purchase ex equipment domestic electricity meters on Ebay for £5 or less.
They are often less than 10 years old. I purchased two recently and one was identical to the one in my house.

You can also purchase coin operated meters which would be excellent for our requirements as £1 will be enough for a full charge in many vehicles.

ChrisB is so right in many ways but if we don't start somewhere, the lack of infrastructure will stifle EV's before they start.

We simply have to use electricity to push our vehicles around as soon there won't be any oil left for my children, never mind children's children.

Chaps, please dont think I'm against this type of re-charging as you say the more the merrier

My point was really at trying to show the reasonings behind the higher cost of commercially available points a lot is to do with allowing them on the highway, your average street light costs around £1000 and that just lights up a bit of road

I was also just warning of the possible issues that private points that are available for public to use could have.

I do feel the inclusion of some sort of energy measuring device would be advantageous for the private units, or we could end up with the whole scheme back firing on us and EV users may end up being labelled as scroungers of electricity While £1.70 doesnt sound a lot for an hours usage on a 63A point, if that point started to get used a large amount £1.70/hr can soon start to mount up

At the end of the day keep up the good work, like I'm doing currently with the on street ones here in the south

ChrisB

These are all valid points... however, if we ever get to the point where the cost of electricity at the 'free' charge points is excessive then I'll be a very happy man... this would indicate to me that the charge points are being used and that electric vehicles are here to stay.

The site owners will always have the option of turning off the site. However, before this happens I would hope they would allow us to upgrade the site so that they can charge for the parking, or indirectly for the electricity.... what I want to avoid is the upfront costs of installing this ability on day one when it will not be used. I believe that I can install 10 charge points for every 1 of the commercial points installed.... all of these will offer at least 32A charging. I'm also expecting a significant number of 63A points at commercial locations.

Can you give us some idea of when this will go live? What capacity sockets will this deploy? We have a number of locations in the Hampshire, Wiltshire, and West Sussex areas and it would make sense to avoid duplication if possible.