32 public car charging points now operational in the county says Kildare Senator

n97 mini

Is this true?

Senator in question was parachuted into the Seanad after he lost his seat in the last general election.

He claims 4 FCPs in the county, which if the two behind the toll on the M4 are counted is correct. That leaves 28 to go. The ecars map shows around 11 SCPs and there are a few in Kildare Village. Am I missing something? I've lived all over the country and Kildare Co Council is the least progressive council I've encountered. Housing estates is all they know about.

https://www.kildarenow.com/news/32-public-car-charging-points-now-operational-county-says-kildare-senator/271820

ELM327

He's probably counting the 11 as 22, and adding 6 for kildare village.

Stealthirl

ELM327 wrote: »

He's probably counting the 11 as 22, and adding 6 for kildare village.

Exactly as each can be used by 2 cars [If there not broken]
Naas has 1 rapid and 2 SCP.

If you discount charge point at train stations there's even fewer

All the shopping centers should have a few SCP
Been in Maynooth a few times and it would have been handy if i could have charged in manor mill's as the 1 at Tesco was in use and I'm iffy about the collage one as i was told a few users were ran out for using it. Same goes double for larger centers like Blanch,Liffey Valley and Clear water

daheff

Stealthirl wrote: »

Exactly as each can be used by 2 cars [If there not broken]
Naas has 1 rapid and 2 SCP.

If you discount charge point at train stations there's even fewer

All the shopping centers should have a few SCP
Been in Maynooth a few times and it would have been handy if i could have charged in manor mill's as the 1 at Tesco was in use and I'm iffy about the collage one as i was told a few users were ran out for using it. Same goes double for larger centers like Blanch,Liffey Valley and Clear water

Blanch has 3 iirc charging points.... none in LV unfortunately.

Mupchease

daheff wrote: »

Blanch has 3 iirc charging points.... none in LV unfortunately.

The Tesco at liffey valley has 4 slow charge connections

The small number of slow charging points at random location is pointless. The correct way would be to build a dozen of them but in locations where you're going to spend at least a couple of hours like cinemas and shopping centres with restaurants. Having two sockets at Tesco Maynooth is really random and what are the chances that you can plug in when your 2011 L24 is running at very low battery stage? Most likely it's some local person using it as their personal charger.

There should be strict time limit for using those to ensure somebody doesn't abandon their car there and take the bus to town (for example). And then use your tesco loyalty card or similar to activate them and the till receipt to deactivate.

Mickeroo

I went to the cinema on Saturday night and there happens to be an ecar destination charger at it. Would have been so handy to come out of the film to a full battery, didn't work of course

Mickeroo

Mickeroo wrote: »

I went to the cinema on Saturday night and there happens to be an ecar destination charger at it. Would have been so handy to come out of the film to a full battery, didn't work of course

That's the point, you can't rely on the current network at all so having some random number of street chargers doesn't make any sense. Especially if they don't work.

Stealthirl

daheff wrote: »

Blanch has 3 iirc charging points.... none in LV unfortunately.

It has 1 SCP [22kWx2] and a triple headed FCP with room for 3 cars there should be a few more SCP dotted around the car parks [Particularly the multi story]

Mupchease wrote: »

The Tesco at liffey valley has 4 slow charge connections

But not very practical if you are going to the cinema and lunch in liffey valley on a Sat night and it's 1Km walk from the entrance to liffey valley it's self. There good alright but there should be points in the liffey valley carpark.

We need something like this with these occupancy ratios:

daheff

samih wrote: »

The small number of slow charging points at random location is pointless. The correct way would be to build a dozen of them but in locations where you're going to spend at least a couple of hours like cinemas and shopping centres with restaurants. Having two sockets at Tesco Maynooth is really random and what are the chances that you can plug in when your 2011 L24 is running at very low battery stage?

you kind of contradict yourself here.

I would think the points at Tesco Maynooth are EXACTLY what is needed. People plug in, go shop for an hour or so and go home. You charge a bit when you are doing nothing and dont hog the charger because you leave after a reasonably short timeframe (circa 1 hour).


Personally I think that charge point is great. I use it when I shop in Maynooth.

daheff

samih wrote: »

We need something like this with these occupancy ratios:

No we dont. thats just overkill. Theres a cost to adding that much unused capacity.

What we need more capacity than we have, but less than that. IMHO you should be able to easily go to a charge point and plug in straight away or have somebody just about finished.

Charging points are cheap in and the more there are the merrier. Having 2-4 sockets available in places like Dundrum or Blanchardstown shopping centres is beyond silly in 2019. The shopping centre multistorey should have one row fully kitted with charging points. Dundrum has also one ecars dual socket charger at the Main street and one of the two sockets was broken for a long time. If you need to rely on this level of infrastructure to get home you might be waiting for a long time there.

In Maynooth Tesco there are two sockets and pretty much every time I have called there recently two cars have been charging. What you need is 12 bays and parking restrictions so that somebody doesn't dump their car at the charger for Fri-Mon as has happened before. To have guaranteed availble sockets there means that you can arrive to Tesco safely with very low battery warning at the end of the day without needing to wait until Monday morning to get home.

That being said supermarket may not be the correct location for the chargers anyway. Personally I wouldn't spend more than 30 minutes at a supermarket and getting 20-25 km worth of electricity is not really worth pluggin in unless you actually are arriving with a totally flat battery. Then when you see the two sockets you start to think that maybe it's best to just walk to the local supermarket instead of driving 16 km return to Tesco Maynooth. If the shop wants to provide service to the customers it should have enough capacity. I mean they have a full width of shop of tills. Why can't they have the same number of chargers? Once you start fitting the cables and arranging power supply might as well go for a full hog and plan ahead like what they did in Finland and Sweden in the pictures above.

unkel

daheff wrote: »

I would think the points at Tesco Maynooth are EXACTLY what is needed. People plug in, go shop for an hour or so and go home.

A grocery shop takes 30-45 minutes. Completely pointless to plug in imho and I never do.

I'm with samih here, you need slow chargers where people are actually going to stay for several hours. Like Dundrum shopping centre and the Bray and other beech fronts and Kildare village - they are about the only places where I actually do plug in to slow charge. We need them at Liffey valley, and generally at shopping malls, cinemas and we need many more in Dublin city centre

Not at a Tesco or a Lidl. Pointless. I'm not going to bother plugging in at 7.2kW times 30 minutes = a 3.6kWh topup, worth €0.25, lol

unkel

unkel wrote: »

Not at a Tesco or a Lidl. Pointless. I'm not going to bother plugging in at 7.2kW times 30 minutes = a 3.6kWh topup, worth €0.25, lol

Exactly, which doesn't make a big dent if you have enough battery availalbe in general. But with the likes of L24 having a low powered chargers anywhere was a godsend but the problem is that when you need one there is alway was some PHEV plugged in there instead for a full day. And then the socket #2 was out of order.

How to make the demand and availablity to meet each other? Charging for charging and parking charges for the time too.

n97 mini

I kinda agree/disagree. Lidl has probably a couple of thousand SKUs. Like maybe 2 or 3 thousand. You quickly discover what you can and can't get there. For example they don't stock bread yeast. So it's kinda like shopping in a cheap Spar. You're gonna be done in 30 minutes max.

Tesco is full service. Probably close to 100k SKUs. Personally when I go there I'm in deep. Bread yeast, and all the other stuff I can't get at Lidl. Could take an hour and a half once a month compared to Lidl once a week for 30 minutes.

unkel

Yeah I get your point. And I shop like that too. But I don't think I have ever been inside a Tesco for an hour and a half. Not even in the biggest Tesco in Ireland, the one in Maynooth doing a massive Christmas shop

It's also different for a PHEV owner, like yourself, where the whole point of the car is to plug in often to avoid driving on petrol. So your savings can be vastly higher than the €0.25 per half an hour charging that a BEV owner gets.

The Christmas shop would be the only time we ever spend any time at the supermarket. By chance I had to go to Tesco this morning and one of the charging ports were free. I spent just over 30 quid but got a tasty 1.56 kWh of power costing 12c at the night rates: