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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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ELM327

Silent Running wrote: »

I think if the charge stops, the charger shows as not available on the app until the car is unplugged.

No, it shows as available if somoene is plugged in but not charging as they are finished. This has been an annoyance for some time.

AndyBoBandy

Silent Running wrote: »

I think if the charge stops, the charger shows as not available on the app until the car is unplugged.

So they just plugged in, and either walked away without starting the charge, or for whatever reason the charge didn't start to begin with (for this reason, I always check that the charge has started before walking away).

This would explain what I saw in Bray 2 weeks ago (plugging in and not charging simply for the parking space) as parking was very much at a premium as it was a sunny day...

This is where enforcement needs to be on the ball, with perhaps increased fines for blocking what is a vital resource which is in short supply. (I can't imagine petrol stations would be too happy with you parking at one of their pumps and going to the beach for the day).

Silent Running

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Could their charge just have stopped/completed? and in that situation, will the charger status change from blue to green?

I saw this in Bray 2 weeks ago, a van and a PHEV plugged in, but the app said both sides were available...

I think if the charge stops, the charger shows as not available on the app until the car is unplugged.

AndyBoBandy

Black_Knight wrote: »

A whiley Leaf was using the cheaper than "minimum rate of charge" by just plugging in and not charging.

Could their charge just have stopped/completed? and in that situation, will the charger status change from blue to green?

I saw this in Bray 2 weeks ago, a van and a PHEV plugged in, but the app said both sides were available...

AndyBoBandy

Black_Knight wrote: »

Just to note, all of the other 5 slow charger ports were in use, so usage hasn't dropped off entirely.

I've noticed the AC in my local Tesco is quite busy the last 2 weeks, so I assume there were just a lot of folks out there that never bothered to get a charger installed at home (not so many apartments out my way, so home charging definitely an option for most out here if they chose).

I can imagine home charger installers will be quite busy the next few weeks/months as folk realise they can save almost 66% by charging at home...

innrain

digiman wrote: »

There was nobody in the car!!

That's a bummer.
For this reason I believe plugshare is a good app. And before one tells me you don't use any app when going to petrol stations I say that I used to use pumps.ie app.
So easy to let one know their charging stopped or left their window opened. My issue with plugshare is the lack of live status for the chargers. Only if more people would use it.

Black_Knight

Had to tip into town today so I said i'd get some "free" parking while sipping juice at the minimum rate of change in the Ioniq. ECars map said the charge point was in use, but only 1 port... and the other port showed green.

A whiley Leaf was using the cheaper than "minimum rate of charge" by just plugging in and not charging.

Just to note, all of the other 5 slow charger ports were in use, so usage hasn't dropped off entirely.

[Deleted User]

Dempsey wrote: »

Didnt realise the ESB High Power Chargers are free to use at the moment. Pulled in and used the 50kW charger beside it. Only cost 3 euro but still!

I can not get the 150 Kw for some free juice at Kilcullen, since they installed I've never seen both chargers free.

Funny enough, there was a ENiro at it last Friday when I was in Camile getting my Thai take-a-way, the amount of people queuing for Mac D was funny, the camile is so much nicer, anyway, the Leaf could have charged alongside the E-Niro because if I needed to charge I couldn't because there's only 1 CCS, now imagine I asked the Leaf owner to plug in to the 150 Kw and use the ChaDeMo plug, it would take me 10 mins to explain.

So potentially, you could charge 3 EV there in Kilcullen but because of ignorance, stupidity whatever you want to call it only 2 cars could charge Friday when I was there.

It just gets more frustrating as time goes on. Bloody different charging standards, we shouldn't be installing new ChaDeMo chargers and it's as simple as that.

Really, I think I'd be mad getting rid of the REx, maybe in 5 years time but I said that when I got the Leaf 2015, "in 5 years"

Dempsey

Didnt realise the ESB High Power Chargers are free to use at the moment. Pulled in and used the 50kW charger beside it. Only cost 3 euro but still!

digiman

innrain wrote: »

you could politely ask them to change charger. Maybe they didn't know the other one is free. Opening with that might have helped.

There was nobody in the car!!

innrain

digiman wrote: »

Also, frustrating that the person using the fast chademo couldn't be on the high speed chademo so I could at least use the fast CCS. It's a really poorly laid out and with the length of the charging cables you don't have much scope for where you can park either.

you could politely ask them to change charger. Maybe they didn't know the other one is free. Opening with that might have helped.

the_amazing_raisin

liamog wrote: »

Yes, I agree with this. Chargers at every petrol station are to make the transition easy for people. The UK brought in a rule that any new station or major renovation requires a rapid charger to be installed.

I think it's more of a signage and communication issue. The reason people know where petrol stations are is because they're hard to miss. If we had decent signage for charging stations then there'd be no problem finding them

I agree it makes sense to have charging hubs in motorway service stations, but for off the main routes they could be located in shopping areas or places within walking distance of a town center. The smaller service stations are generally not terribly well equipped, so something like a shopping center would be a nicer option

kanuseeme

digiman wrote: »

Just x-posting this from the model 3 thread, as it's very applicable here:

What kind of efficiency are people getting from their Model 3 when charging?

I was using the ESB high speed charger today and the charger was showing that it was sending 68kWh but the car was only receiving 60kwH, battery was at about 70% at the time but earlier when it started and was around 50% it was still losing around 10-15%.

Also, Galway city has a real lack of chargers. On the way from Dublin I stopped at Galway Plaza to try and get topped up as I could see there were no chargers in Salthill and not very many around the city either.

There is 3 parking spots there for the 2 ESB chargers (high speed has 2 spaces and fast has one space), someone was using the Chademo on the fast charger and a Kona was just after starting to use the CCS on the high speed. I had parked into the empty space beside the Kona at the high speed and we had a quick chat and she was going to be 30mins so I decided to just go to Galway as I had enough and didn't want to wait.

Let's say that I was going to wait for the Kona to finish, what's the etiquette here on how you queue up to be next in line to get the CCS? My thoughts were:

If I park in the spot not using the charger I can't really leave the car as I'm blocking someone using the Chademo on the high speed.
There were no actual spaces nearby where I could park so would have had to go to other end of car-park and another car could come in and just assume they are next in line for it.

Also, frustrating that the person using the fast chademo couldn't be on the high speed chademo so I could at least use the fast CCS. It's a really poorly laid out and with the length of the charging cables you don't have much scope for where you can park either.

Think of all the polar bears your saving,:D:D:D. Your lucky you had the range to continue on.

Black_Knight

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Did ESB confirm that the 150’s will be priced higher though?

I guess the most important thing (with the 50’s & 150’s) is the ability to retrofit them with whatever they need to be (CCS or CHAdeMO) in future.....

Didn't confirm it, but also hinted that they're free until a pricing structure can be defined. Be shameful if they went ionity direction, given they're easily knocked down to 75kW if a leaf plugs in.

Irishjg

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

I guess the most important thing (with the 50’s & 150’s) is the ability to retrofit them with whatever they need to be (CCS or CHAdeMO) in future.....

Yes I totally agree. IMO the 150’s should not have a chademo point especially if there’s a 50 rig right beside it such as the one in Co.Kildare.

AndyBoBandy

Did ESB confirm that the 150’s will be priced higher though?

I guess the most important thing (with the 50’s & 150’s) is the ability to retrofit them with whatever they need to be (CCS or CHAdeMO) in future.....

Black_Knight

cruisey1987 wrote: »

Nice!!! Great to hear it!

If you have any info about how to query the ESB backend that'd be great. I wouldn't mind playing around with some scripts myself to get a better idea of the usage

It's trivial really. Just open developer tools in your browser, network tab, persist log, click on a charge point and see the API calls. Clicking into the points themselves gives calls to return their specific charger data

Black_Knight

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

great, another 88 new Chademo connectors.....

They should at least (where they'll install a 150kW unit beside an existing 50kW unit) install the 150kW unit as a twin CCS, and remove the CCS from the 50kW unit and make it's DC port Chademo only... (or just give the Chademo side the priority).

Surely it's only a matter of time before CCS cars vastly outnumber Chademo cars??

Bit of mixed messaging that. If chademo is going to be such a rare thing, why dedicate a 50kW supply to it alone. If the 150kW units are going to have their own price point, it's another reason to hang onto the 50kW ones. Plenty of cars can't take half the power of the 150kW units, you'd be forcing them to pay up for a service they can't benefit from. Think of those poor foolish ioniq38 drivers

I agree with you about the 150kW units though. Not like anything chademo here can take more than 50.

liamog

Deleted User wrote: »

The thing is though, this is preventing mass EV adoption, worrying about chargers, having to look up maps for charger locations, having to plan your journey around charging, queues and charge times, when People can go to any garage that are in every town and village in Ireland and more than one in a lot of places, they'll be a lot more comfortable about changing to EV.

Yes, I agree with this. Chargers at every petrol station are to make the transition easy for people. The UK brought in a rule that any new station or major renovation requires a rapid charger to be installed.

KCross

digiman wrote: »

What kind of efficiency are people getting from their Model 3 when charging?

I was using the ESB high speed charger today and the charger was showing that it was sending 68kWh but the car was only receiving 60kwH, battery was at about 70% at the time but earlier when it started and was around 50% it was still losing around 10-15%.

10% losses is in the right ball park.

The model 3 could also have been using some of the charger power to drive other things (e.g. HVAC).

digiman

Just x-posting this from the model 3 thread, as it's very applicable here:

What kind of efficiency are people getting from their Model 3 when charging?

I was using the ESB high speed charger today and the charger was showing that it was sending 68kWh but the car was only receiving 60kwH, battery was at about 70% at the time but earlier when it started and was around 50% it was still losing around 10-15%.

Also, Galway city has a real lack of chargers. On the way from Dublin I stopped at Galway Plaza to try and get topped up as I could see there were no chargers in Salthill and not very many around the city either.

There is 3 parking spots there for the 2 ESB chargers (high speed has 2 spaces and fast has one space), someone was using the Chademo on the fast charger and a Kona was just after starting to use the CCS on the high speed. I had parked into the empty space beside the Kona at the high speed and we had a quick chat and she was going to be 30mins so I decided to just go to Galway as I had enough and didn't want to wait.

Let's say that I was going to wait for the Kona to finish, what's the etiquette here on how you queue up to be next in line to get the CCS? My thoughts were:

If I park in the spot not using the charger I can't really leave the car as I'm blocking someone using the Chademo on the high speed.
There were no actual spaces nearby where I could park so would have had to go to other end of car-park and another car could come in and just assume they are next in line for it.

Also, frustrating that the person using the fast chademo couldn't be on the high speed chademo so I could at least use the fast CCS. It's a really poorly laid out and with the length of the charging cables you don't have much scope for where you can park either.

[Deleted User]

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Garages I'm sure will do this themselves to try and stay relevant (Circle K are already going down this route), but who wants to sit in a garage for 20-40 minutes while charging their car?

I can think of a hell of a lot more places I'd want to charge

(obviously motorway services will be prime locations for charging hubs, but they also have the facilities to occupy someone for up to an hour in terms of shops & food etc...)

Who wants to park up in their local maxol to get a 30 minute charge?

The thing is though, this is preventing mass EV adoption, worrying about chargers, having to look up maps for charger locations, having to plan your journey around charging, queues and charge times, when People can go to any garage that are in every town and village in Ireland and more than one in a lot of places, they'll be a lot more comfortable about changing to EV.

JohnC.

It seems like an increasing number of garages are incorporating cafe style facilities, making a charging stop easier.

AndyBoBandy

Deleted User wrote: »

Every Garage in the country should have charge points.

Garages I'm sure will do this themselves to try and stay relevant (Circle K are already going down this route), but who wants to sit in a garage for 20-40 minutes while charging their car?

I can think of a hell of a lot more places I'd want to charge

(obviously motorway services will be prime locations for charging hubs, but they also have the facilities to occupy someone for up to an hour in terms of shops & food etc...)

Who wants to park up in their local maxol to get a 30 minute charge?

[Deleted User]

Just make garage owners install chargers funded by the oil companies.

Should be law that every charger has more EV points than Petrol/Diesel and I'd make diesel pumps less of a priority going forward, say 2 diesel pumps per garage on any new sites or renovated sites.

There's more than 1 charger company now and more than one access method with charger locations on different apps etc it's all becoming a mess and a turn off.

Every Garage in the country should have charge points.

liamog

We all agree they should be faster, and politically they should of installed a super hub by now. I think part of the problem was Shane Ross as Transport didn't give a fiddlers about Transport and so wasn't pushing for the photo ops!

the_amazing_raisin

liamog wrote: »

Can you share the timeline for the expansion plan? I wasn't aware they ever shared one. From memory the tenders were for a 3 year programme of work, we are currently about half way through that timeline.

Hmm, okay I guess it's possible I just made an eejit out of myself. I'd swear I read it was supposed to be completed in 2020 though.

In any case, progress is still painfully slow for fast charger installations from what I can see, there's still huge gaps in the network and not much being done to close them. I've yet to see an ESB fast charger installed anywhere around North Leinster since 2018

Obviously the pandemic will have slowed everything down and that's fair enough. But there wasn't exactly breakneck speed being applied before that

the_amazing_raisin

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

Surely it's only a matter of time before CCS cars vastly outnumber Chademo cars??

True, but until the last Nissan leaf dies then we won't be able to get rid of Chademo. To be honest, I'm not sure it creates that much overhead to include Chademo chargers.

If they'd design the charging hubs properly so that they're dividing up the max site capacity rather than each charger being fixed at 50kW or whatever, then they could include Chademo chargers without impacting the CCS plugs in any significant way, and all the cars could charge in parallel.

Basically like the setup from 17:30 in this video
https://youtu.be/EmuIolKO0qo

liamog

cruisey1987 wrote: »

It's nice to see 150kW mentioned, hopefully they'll be well placed along motorway routes. Unless there's any mention of timeline though then it's not worth much. ESB is already well behind with their expansion plans as it is

Can you share the timeline for the expansion plan? I wasn't aware they ever shared one. From memory the tenders were for a 3 year programme of work, we are currently about half way through that timeline.

the_amazing_raisin

KCross wrote: »

I see this in a government report....
Support of €10m from the Climate Action Fund to support ESB ecars in renewing the existing public charging network and rolling out 50 fast chargers (50kW) and 90 superfast chargers (150kw) across the country

I think thats the first time I've seen a reference to the number of planned 150kW chargers?

Interesting, any chance you could send on the source?

Works out at about €70k per charger, which seems a bit low for greenfield installations. My guess is those 50kW sites may be upgraded 22kW chargers

It's nice to see 150kW mentioned, hopefully they'll be well placed along motorway routes. Unless there's any mention of timeline though then it's not worth much. ESB is already well behind with their expansion plans as it is