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ESB eCars

liamog

Details from the dail on the eCars €10,000,000 expansion programme.

The key elements include six high speed charging hubs on motorways capable of charging eight vehicles simultaneously; 16 high speed charging hubs capable of charging four vehicles simultaneously; additional high power chargers at 34 current 50 kW locations; upgrading over 50 22 kW chargers to 50 kW, and replacing up to 264 locations with 528 charge points at the pre-existing pilot grade of 22 kW to next generation high reliability models.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2019-01-24/10/?fbclid=IwAR1eGLQjNFuywCoaB__FJADns7gNOD09DaR9XLueHAKZ8vljfd-kL-_LpDs

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the_amazing_raisin

Kramer wrote: »

Mrs. K was well aware of every charger/charge point/domestic socket in the east Limerick/north Cork areas, as much of the 50k km we accumulated on the Ioniq was done there. She always had the fallback of a 7kW AC in the train station car park in Mallow, or Centra (Easygo), or Charleville.

We got the Ioniq in January 2019.

Now, over 2 years & €10 million later, there's still nothing. Not a single DC along that road.
What use is 7kW AC to anyone, save for people overnighting in hotels or apartment dwellers without home charging.

The Ioniq has since gone, replaced by a Model 3 (11kW AC - woo hoo!). I expect that too will be gone before we see an actual, tax payer funded, eCars hub :rolleyes:.

See the trick is in that interview with IEVOA, €10 million allocated, €1 million spent

That's government spending trick #1, you pledge a large amount of money towards some project. Then you put some government agency or semi state in charge of that project. Said agency does a rubbish job of it and the project takes forever to get moving, and in doing so fails to spend the vast amount of the money pledged earlier

Political spend = €10 million
Actual spend = €1 million

That's a €9 million budget saving to the government without taking any of the blame

As for the ESB, it's unlikely the government will change tack now and go with someone else, so they've got a nice easy contract to install chargers at a snails pace and crank out a nice cash flow

It's a win-win all round, as long as you discount the customers :rolleyes:

[Deleted User]

They're just waiting for a private company to come in so they don't have to spend the money, this is obvious, they probably thought Ionity and Tesla would flood the Island with thousands of chargers.

ELM327

Ionity have pretty much said they are done in Ireland (the group is in financial difficulties recently, rumored, so will likely not expand more at the moment)

Tesla are stating still that they will be adding more SuC here. They have been "coming end of this year" since 2016!

the_amazing_raisin

ELM327 wrote: »

Ionity have pretty much said they are done in Ireland (the group is in financial difficulties recently, rumored, so will likely not expand more at the moment)

Ionity seem to be focused on Southern Europe at the moment, there's a lot of stations under construction in Spain & Italy

About time too, Spain's charging network was almost worse than Ireland's

There doesn't seem to be more stations planned for Ireland but they could expand existing ones (the M1 stations only has 2 chargers for example)

The difficulties mentioned seem to be more around the owners arguing over more investments. Some of the partners want to put more money to in speed up the expansion, others are reluctant to do this. I guess because it's a partnership, they all invest an equal amount (although VW owns 40% via Audi & Porsche)

Hopefully they get the problems sorted soon, but I don't think we'll be seeing any more Ionity hubs here in the near future

KCross

Private enterprise will not deliver whats required here anytime soon. The island is too small.

That unfortunately leaves us with government backed schemes.

I wonder why EasyGO didnt tap the Climate Action Fund like eCars did... maybe there are too many strings attached.

[Deleted User]

Truth be told the Government aren't giving out the money because they have crippled the country with lock downs and restrictions and covid payments have to be paid, it's all a joke.

liamog

KCross wrote: »

Private enterprise will not deliver whats required here anytime soon. The island is too small.

That unfortunately leaves us with government backed schemes.

I wonder why EasyGO didnt tap the Climate Action Fund like eCars did... maybe there are too many strings attached.

Given that ESB had to provide matching funds, I wonder does the government expect EasyGo to provide 50% funding of their own. If they do, it's very short sighted.

the_amazing_raisin

liamog wrote: »

Given that ESB had to provide matching funds, I wonder does the government expect EasyGo to provide 50% funding of their own. If they do, it's very short sighted.

Another government spending trick, offer the money with enough terms and conditions that no-one will bother

To be fair, I think a lot of the government funding is done this way, if they were putting up 100% of the capital then I'd say the government should retain ownership of the chargers and merely contract out the installation and operation

the_amazing_raisin

KCross wrote: »

Private enterprise will not deliver whats required here anytime soon. The island is too small.

That unfortunately leaves us with government backed schemes.

I wonder why EasyGO didnt tap the Climate Action Fund like eCars did... maybe there are too many strings attached.

They'll deliver on routes that can turn a profit

Dublin to Cork/Limerick/Belfast is an easy enough money maker

Cork to Limerick or Sligo to Letterkenney, not so much
On those routes, there should be more funding available to offset the high initial costs

KCross

cruisey1987 wrote: »

They'll deliver on routes that can turn a profit

Dublin to Cork/Limerick/Belfast is an easy enough money maker

Cork to Limerick or Sligo to Letterkenney, not so much
On those routes, there should be more funding available to offset the high initial costs

Of course, and thats exactly what they said in that recent webinar. Like every business they are in it to make money, not save the planet, so that means focussing on high usage areas only.

However, if they got government funding they would be able to go to the less profitable areas and still make the same margin.... that was the basis for eCars submission to the CAF.... "we need the money because we are not just providing chargers for the most profitable areas".

EasyGo could do the same but its possible that the red tape and conditions are too onerous.

Kramer

KCross wrote: »

Private enterprise will not deliver whats required here anytime soon. The island is too small.

New BEVs generally have far better range too, invalidating the need for public DC charging for many, compared to earlier Leafs/Ioniqs/i3s etc.

I think a different model was required - some type of PPP, similar to the toll roads maybe. No easy answers really.

No private operator is going to sink capital into DC charging between Limerick & Cork for example, when the new motorway could bypass it a few years down the line. Ultimately, that's bad for EV adoption & bad for the environment.

eCars priority should have been 10 decent interurban hubs. They really are the only game in town now though, so fingers crossed they eventually deliver.

KCross

Kramer wrote: »

eCars priority should have been 10 decent interurban hubs. They really are the only game in town now though, so fingers crossed they eventually deliver.

I think they will. They've only a fraction of the government money spent (€1.5m out of €10m) and there are signs of real hubs appearing now. The timeframe is the problem. They are just too slow.

[Deleted User]

Kramer wrote: »

New BEVs generally have far better range too, invalidating the need for public DC charging for many, compared to earlier Leafs/Ioniqs/i3s etc.

I think a different model was required - some type of PPP, similar to the toll roads maybe. No easy answers really.

No private operator is going to sink capital into DC charging between Limerick & Cork for example, when the new motorway could bypass it a few years down the line. Ultimately, that's bad for EV adoption & bad for the environment.

eCars priority should have been 10 decent interurban hubs. They really are the only game in town now though, so fingers crossed they eventually deliver.

ICE cars have far more range than Today's electrics and there's a hell of a lot more Petrol/Diesel pumps, they're everywhere and we need the same Infrastructure for Electric cars, no less so you can be guaranteed that wherever you go you can charge without having to think or plan.

There's a lot of People with no possibility of home charging.

Black_Knight

[Deleted User] wrote: »

ICE cars have far more range than Today's electrics and there's a hell of a lot more Petrol/Diesel pumps, they're everywhere and we need the same Infrastructure for Electric cars, no less so you can be guaranteed that wherever you go you can charge without having to think or plan.

There's a lot of People with no possibility of home charging.

Ridiculous! Sure, lots can't home charge, but a hell of a lot more can. Far less charge points required for EV Vs petrol pumps.

EVs occupy a charge point for longer than a ice car at a petrol pump, but anyone (with a home charger) driving around their locale will never need to public charge.

I don't deny we need more fast chargers around the country, but a 1:1 ratio with petrol pumps is foolish thinking.

Kramer

Black_Knight wrote: »

I don't deny we need more fast chargers around the country, but a 1:1 ratio with petrol pumps is foolish thinking.

But doable you think? In other words, you're not ruling it out?

ELM327

They need to be that ubiquitous though. So you can pull into any town in the country and theres going to be at least a 50kW point. Same as there is now for fuel

Black_Knight

Kramer wrote: »

But doable you think? In other words, you're not ruling it out?

.

For the end user, 1:1 would be a double edged sword. Loads of charge points, so never have to worry about finding one, but massive expense to install them all for tiny returns per unit, so they'd have to whack up the pricing.

AndyBoBandy

Kramer wrote: »

New BEVs generally have far better range too, invalidating the need for public DC charging for many

Yes & No I would say.

Yes because most people will do 99% of their charging at home (like me).

But No because folks will still want to drive around the country, and will still need fast charging wherever they go, so the baseline infrastructure is absolutely needed, and once installed, then commercial enterprises will add additional capacity where it's financially viable.

Take my trip to Cork last week (in a Tesla Model 3 SR+)... I left Ballacolla at 95%, and arrived in Frankfield (after dropping herself off in Wilton) at 28% SoC.. I charged up to 89% (44mins 45 seconds), and then headed over past Midleton to Aghada, before heading back to pick herself up for the drive home.. On the way back I saw Frankfield was in use, so headed for Rochestown instead and arrived there at 56% and charged up to about 92%, picked her up in Wilton and arrived in Ballacolla at 17%.
When I arrived in Rochestown the unit was kaput, so had to call eCars to get them to reset the machine (overall lost 10 minutes before charging started).

The weather from Balacolla down to Cork and back to Ballacolla was atrocious (snow/wind/rain/1-3 degrees), so this would account for higher than average consumption (consumption for the entire 686km trip was 200Wh/km (20kWh/100km) going at speed limits all the way).

Had I not been able to get the 2nd charge at Rochestown (or Frankfield), I 'may' have made it to Cashel on the way back up, but I'd have had to slow down a bit to make it. (Fermoy would be a pain in the ar$e to divert to, and you're still hoping the unit is available, whereas Cashel has 5 CCS units, so almost a given that one will be available).

What this trip demonstrated to me was that the eCars network is hopelessly inadequate down in Cork, and if you want to do things while you are away somewhere, you absolutely need multiple DC charging options in the region you are visiting.

AndyBoBandy

ELM327 wrote: »

They need to be that ubiquitous though. So you can pull into any town in the country and theres going to be at least a 50kW point. Same as there is now for fuel

Promisingly, it looks like EasyGo are going to fill a large chunk of this gap with their phone box & SuperValu chargers.

Black_Knight wrote: »

Loads of charge points, so never have to worry about finding one, but massive expense to install them all for tiny returns per unit, so they'd have to whack up the pricing.

But isn't that why eCars are being state funded? to install the network where it's (currently) uneconomic??? A sort of 'if you build it, they will come' type scenario?? - People start seeing a sh1t ton of chargers all over their local towns & villages, and then the thoughts of going EV don't become so alien to them..

liamog

Black_Knight wrote: »

Ridiculous! Sure, lots can't home charge, but a hell of a lot more can. Far less charge points required for EV Vs petrol pumps.

EVs occupy a charge point for longer than a ice car at a petrol pump, but anyone (with a home charger) driving around their locale will never need to public charge.

I don't deny we need more fast chargers around the country, but a 1:1 ratio with petrol pumps is foolish thinking.

I think if you look at the math's it's less clear cut than it appears.
If we assume that a future EV get's the same range from a charge as an ICE vehicle from a fill-up. Around 85% of EV charging is done away from rapids, so we need 15% of the number of petrol pumps to adequately supply the population. However the charger is occupied for much longer, let's assume 800V charging becomes the norm, and that 30 minutes is a decent average charge time.
If we use a figure of 6 mins for the time taken to fill a petrol car, that means each petrol pump can fill 5 cars in the same time as one EV charger, meaning we now need 75% of the number of petrol pumps to serve the same population.

We can now delve into the wonderful world of queuing theory, there is a wonderful tool called Erlang Calculations, that is used for call centre planning, it can be used to predict how many endpoints are needed to handle a given number of inputs with a particular handling time. (calculator here)

If we set a service level for a petrol station that 90% of customers should be able to start fuelling within 60s for an average of 6m each. If the incoming volume is 100 vehicles per hour, then we need 14 pumps to reach that level of service. To meet the same service level for an EV charger with an incoming volume of 15 vehicles per hour (that 85% rule) then we need 12 pumps.

So by the time you look deeper into the numbers, it would appear a roughly 1:1 ratio of EV rapid chargers to Petrol Pumps seems justified. The main difference will be the location of these chargers, instead of placing them at dedicated locations (i.e. Petrol Stations) we should see them co-located at either suburban locations with a suitable dwell time, or motorway service stations with a higher number of individual chargers.

slave1

Black_Knight wrote: »

Ridiculous! Sure, lots can't home charge, but a hell of a lot more can. Far less charge points required for EV Vs petrol pumps.

EVs occupy a charge point for longer than a ice car at a petrol pump, but anyone (with a home charger) driving around their locale will never need to public charge.

I don't deny we need more fast chargers around the country, but a 1:1 ratio with petrol pumps is foolish thinking.

Have not public charged our Leaf since eCars decided to charge for their utter scutter of an infrastructure, have around 16k kms done since

kanuseeme

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Yes & No I would say.

Yes because most people will do 99% of their charging at home (like me).

But No because folks will still want to drive around the country, and will still need fast charging wherever they go, so the baseline infrastructure is absolutely needed, and once installed, then commercial enterprises will add additional capacity where it's financially viable.

Take my trip to Cork last week (in a Tesla Model 3 SR+)... I left Ballacolla at 95%, and arrived in Frankfield (after dropping herself off in Wilton) at 28% SoC.. I charged up to 89% (44mins 45 seconds), and then headed over past Midleton to Aghada, before heading back to pick herself up for the drive home.. On the way back I saw Frankfield was in use, so headed for Rochestown instead and arrived there at 56% and charged up to about 92%, picked her up in Wilton and arrived in Ballacolla at 17%.
When I arrived in Rochestown the unit was kaput, so had to call eCars to get them to reset the machine (overall lost 10 minutes before charging started).

The weather from Balacolla down to Cork and back to Ballacolla was atrocious (snow/wind/rain/1-3 degrees), so this would account for higher than average consumption (consumption for the entire 686km trip was 200Wh/km (20kWh/100km) going at speed limits all the way).

Had I not been able to get the 2nd charge at Rochestown (or Frankfield), I 'may' have made it to Cashel on the way back up, but I'd have had to slow down a bit to make it. (Fermoy would be a pain in the ar$e to divert to, and you're still hoping the unit is available, whereas Cashel has 5 CCS units, so almost a given that one will be available).

What this trip demonstrated to me was that the eCars network is hopelessly inadequate down in Cork, and if you want to do things while you are away somewhere, you absolutely need multiple DC charging options in the region you are visiting.

That particular trip would do nothing to help sell electric cars, way too much , planning, possible detouring, praying for a charger to be free/working and then waiting for 1 hour, possibly more as you did not say how long after the 10 minute wait on ecars to get the charger working.

Even with an improved network, your still waiting, a 60 mpg car would do that trip for 40 euro, its a hard sell if you ask me, to go through all that and still wait and save only 40 euro, then if electric cars sales are not growing as fast, you won't be getting any improvement in infrastructure, chicken and egg type thing.

Black_Knight

[quote="AndyBoBandy;116310072"
What this trip demonstrated to me was that the eCars network is hopelessly inadequate down in Cork, and if you want to do things while you are away somewhere, you absolutely need multiple DC charging options in the region you are visiting.[/quote]

Thankfully ecars suggest they're putting in a "hub" in Cork. 2 units only, but it's something.

Kramer

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

What this trip demonstrated to me was that the eCars network is hopelessly inadequate down in Cork, and if you want to do things while you are away somewhere, you absolutely need multiple DC charging options in the region you are visiting.

Why no criticism of Tesla? You paid well for your Tesla (as did taxpayers, another €10k :eek:) & it's said that Tesla add €2/3/4k to their cars, to cover provision of superchargers.

Yet they have done nothing in Ireland for what, 4 years now? Not a single new location, just "coming soon". A supercharger on the outskirts of Cork would have been well justified over those years & you wouldn't have had any issue.

Everyone gets a free pass here, apart from poor eCars.

I agree though, you made what, 4 stops? You left with a fully charged car too presumably. 4 stops, probably 2+ hours charging/detouring? In a super efficient Tesla.................& it probably cost just as much as a combustion engined car.

Backwards, backwards we're going

ELM327

Kramer wrote: »

Why no criticism of Tesla? You paid well for your Tesla (as did taxpayers, another €10k :eek:) & it's said that Tesla add €2/3/4k to their cars, to cover provision of superchargers.

Yet they have done nothing in Ireland for what, 4 years now? Not a single new location, just "coming soon". A supercharger on the outskirts of Cork would have been well justified over those years & you wouldn't have had any issue.

Everyone gets a free pass here, apart from poor eCars.

I agree though, you made what, 4 stops? You left with a fully charged car too presumably. 4 stops, probably 2+ hours charging/detouring? In a super efficient Tesla.................& it probably cost just as much as a combustion engined car.

Backwards, backwards we're going .

If the Tesla supercharger mooted for Cork gets installed you can do Dublin to cork to Dublin with one stop. Not 4.
The 4 stops are only because of poor network coverage (from ecars and others including Tesla).

Tesla have updated their "coming soon" list with ETAs in Q2 and Q3 of '21, would be good to get Galway, cork and Sandyford online this year.

garo

liamog wrote: »

<snip>
We can now delve into the wonderful world of queuing theory, there is a wonderful tool called Erlang Calculations, that is used for call centre planning, it can be used to predict how many endpoints are needed to handle a given number of inputs with a particular handling time. (calculator here)

If we set a service level for a petrol station that 90% of customers should be able to start fuelling within 60s for an average of 6m each. If the incoming volume is 100 vehicles per hour, then we need 14 pumps to reach that level of service. To meet the same service level for an EV charger with an incoming volume of 15 vehicles per hour (that 85% rule) then we need 12 pumps.

Mad props for mentioning queueing theory. The arrival process can be modelled as Poisson and while the service time is deterministic for a petrol pump, it is less so for an EV charger. Different customers will take a differing amount of time at the charger. You will probably have different types of charger too so you'll have multiple queues so your wait times are likely to be worse again.

the_amazing_raisin

garo wrote: »

Mad props for mentioning queueing theory. The arrival process can be modelled as Poisson and while the service time is deterministic for a petrol pump, it is less so for an EV charger. Different customers will take a differing amount of time at the charger. You will probably have different types of charger too so you'll have multiple queues so your wait times are likely to be worse again.

Well, you can optimise the chargers around this. For example the current ECars model of having a 50kW and 150kW charger falls flat on its face when a Zoe with CCS plugs into the 150kW. The problem is the chargers have a mixture of maximum power ratings and the customer might be unaware, it just doesn't care

The usual argument against having say 12x 150kW chargers is that it requires a very powerful grid connection which end up being poorly utilised (Zoe example above)

So the best thing to do is to have chargers that can supply high power but the site load balances the requirements of each charger

Say 12x 150kW chargers, that's 1.8MW grid connection in theory

But, since it's highly unlikely all chargers are going to request 150kW at once, you can cut the grid connection down to a smaller value. Using the example above, you end up with a utilisation rate or around 60% for 12 chargers, so you can probably reduce the grid connection down to 1.2MW and not suffer any power limitations except in rare situations

If you had batteries on site as well, you could probably get this below 1MW and just use the batteries for peak shaving

The Kempower chargers can already do this and they've modelled their design around the idea of load balancing multiple chargers at once.

liamog

cruisey1987 wrote: »

Well, you can optimise the chargers around this. For example the current ECars model of having a 50kW and 150kW charger falls flat on its face when a Zoe with CCS plugs into the 150kW. The problem is the chargers have a mixture of maximum power ratings and the customer might be unaware, it just doesn't care

...

The Kempower chargers can already do this and they've modelled their design around the idea of load balancing multiple chargers at once.

The chargers shown in the photo of the 8 car hub are also capable of load spreading across the multiple units (at least according to the artists impression) they look the units that Circle K use in Bjorn's video of the charging trucks.

the_amazing_raisin

liamog wrote: »

The chargers shown in the photo of the 8 car hub are also capable of load spreading across the multiple units (at least according to the artists impression) they look the units that Circle K use in Bjorn's video of the charging trucks.

True, as I recall the ones Bjorn showed in that video have 2 modules per charging pillar. They can do 150kW at 400V to 2 plugs or 300kW at 800V to a single plug. That's why it's good for those trucks to use a single pillar because they charge at 800V

It's not massively useful from a load balancing perspective since only a few cars at the moment can take 800V

Personally I think site level load balancing is better than between 2 chargers, and I would imagine works out at a similar cost since you probably don't need as strong a grid connection

MJohnston

I’m curious as to whether we’ll ever need a 1:1 petrol pump to charging station ratio, considering the changing technology and the rate of adoption.

In other words - we can fairly solidly predict that battery range, charging speed, charging station capacity, and various other aspects will continue to improve.

We could realistically have EVs with ~800km range, charging speeds adding 100km in 5 minutes, and someone will figure out local storage for charging capacity at the stations.

So for me the question is, will the technology arrive before charging demand requires a wasteful amount of charging stations?

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