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.
To be fair, ecars don't own the app code so if it's the apps fault that's not on ecars. But my suspicions are it's around the data they feed into the app. A few months back they changed a whole load of fast chargers to semi fast in the backend. I suspect they changed other things too, and messed up their data in the process. Either not aware of it, aware but not sure how to fix it, or aware but don't care.
Side note. I thought rochestown was online already!?
They announced on October 28th that Rochestown was down for 'upgrade works' from November 2nd onwards.....
27 days later the App saying it's 'under repair'
No but that one has "only' 4 weeks of downtime unlike Blanch which is starting its 8th. I presume these offline periods don't count towards the 99% uptime.
My guess is the input factors to calculating the 99% uptime, are the number nine, and a percentage symbol.
In all seriousness, 99% uptime should include maintenance. Nothing should ever aim to be 100% available. Doing so means you cannot make any changes to the system for fear you incur downtime. Maintenance should be included in the Service Level Agreements (if they have any) and their Service Level Indicators (the 99% they talk about).
Looking at it SLA level of 99 % uptime/availability results in the following periods of allowed downtime/unavailability:
Of course, that depends on when they declare it as 'downtime'. If it's only declared as down after a customer drives to the charger, it's not working, then bothers to call the support (instead of just trying to drive on to the next one, because 'ESB eCars') and then support send a technician out and he can't repair it. Then there's a heck of a lot of 'downtime' that is not being accurately recorded or reported.
Or, I could be completely wrong and they could actually have health probes that actively monitor and update the system of the status of chargers.
Any Uptime stat should reflect Preventative Maintenance allowance else flawed
Exactly - if it's not up, then it's down.
It doesn't matter if it's down for planned or preventative maintenance - it's not available for use should mean that it's marked as down.
One could argue that 99% uptime would be easy to achieve if they had installed 2 chargers per site. That's how most hardware is setup for high availibility. Then they'd still have site availibility even if a single charger is down 😁
DC offline, but the 22kW AC is still available. "Site operational"
ESB get a roasting
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/esb-criticised-for-lack-of-ambition-in-scaling-up-ev-charging-infrastructure-1.4743221
November Update
CCS/CHAdeMO split
My stats say, over the last 2 weeks:
CHAdeMO has been occupied 29.1% of the time. (13.78 weeks of use) (up 5.5%)
CCS the other 61.9% of the time (33.60 weeks of use) (FYI, the October % in the post above was wrong, it should have been 76.4%)
Unit counts
0 Ultra fast chargers (ESB downgraded them to FAST)
92 Fast charge units installed (ESB for some reason reclassified loads of Fast units to SCP - they've slowly moved a few back)
565 Slow charge AC units installed (ESB moved loads of FCP to SCP for some unknown reason - they've slowly moved a few back)
118 CCS plug units
127 CHAdeMO plug units
524 Untethered plug units
283 of the newer 22kW AC units are now in place.
100 of the old units yet to be replaced, and 11 of those single socket AC units to be replaced too.
AC updates to the new Evolve Smart T unit
Monaghan Street, Newry, Down
Ulster-American Folk Park, Castletown, Omagh, Tyrone
The Quays shopping center, newry, Down
DRD Car Park, Bath Road, Portrush, Antrim
Texaco Londis Service Station, Sligo Road, Grange, Sligo
Quayside Public Parking, Stella Maris Street, Strangford, Down
Trolan's Supervalu, Ballymena Road, Ballymoney, Antrim
Wellington Street, Enniskillen, Fermanagh
Car Park, Havelock Place, Carnlough, Antrim
Spar Car park, Havelock Place, Carnlough, Antrim
Roe Valley Country Park Hotel, Limavady, Derry
AC units upgraded to DC - 42 of the 50 delivered Bit of a vague number, this is 42 of those units installed, but they're being installed at the "hubs" too.
N/A
New FCP
Mayfield got its new 200kW HPC
Sprucefield Shopping centre, Hillsborough, Down
Expecting Blanchardstown "hub" and Rochestown "hub" to come online soon. ESB said 3 weeks downtime, but that was over 3 weeks ago.
Most AC units have been via the upgrade of NI units listed here: https://esb.ie/ecars/news/2021/2021/10/21/esb-to-replace-second-batch-of-15-chargers-across-northern-ireland
"A total of 30,000 charging points were due to be installed in coming years including workplace and home rechargers. "
Including home and workplace? Given the rate of sales i'd expect far more than 30,000 charge points to be installed in this country over the next few years. The numbers sound nice, until you realise that that's ESB doing nothing.
30k is nothing if this is supposed to be AC. That's a minimum to be sustaining the EV numbers that are coming.
More DC needed on major routes, multiple DC units at each place. And if possible using a correct layout (petrol pump layout).
In the meantime in reality, Galway City the 3rd largest city in the country has 2, yes TWO, DC units, out of which one in Oranmore/Carnmore near M6 went offline on 23 November for "upgrades". So the whole city has 1, yes ONE, DC unit. Eastern European cities have several times more at this stage, it's embarrassing. I hope EasyGo will destroy the ESB, because they are idiots.
I reported and enquired ESB to tell me when they kindly plan to complete the upgrade - first told me "several weeks", when I asked them to give me some sort of an ETA they told me "we do not have a date at this stage". Absolutely shocking...
Either the government must commit and invest en masse to ECars considering it essential infrastructure (which it is) in a similar way to water systems, sewage or roads. This does not seem to be the course of the governments which plan 1M EVs in 8 years but nothing to support it. If that's the case, then the government should give up, sell ECars, open and liberalise the charging market i.e. create clear regs for charging biz, cut the red tape to make it easy for new operators to come in etc.
I don't see any other way given the historical track record of government involvement in this - all big talk, but on the ground this country still has only 120 DC units installed by Ecars which is several times less than similarly sized countries in the EU, that now includes even Eastern European countries.
So If I'm reading that correctly (and I'm probably not),
eCars answer to their slow rollout of charging infrastructure is that there's about 30,000 chargers due to be installed over the next number of years, mainly in homes and business properties, so the vast vast majority, certainly well north of 99% will be private installs, and nothing to do with eCars other than they'll all be fed from the same grid.
Also, spending €80m since 2010. Doesn't exactly look like they've received bang for their buck does it?
1 site where more than 3 cars can fast charge simultaneously and about 13 sites where more than 1 car can fast charge simultaneously (on the island of Ireland that is, because of course they have plenty of decent hub sites in Great Britain).
The 80M appears inflated. We have a 10M on the upgrade project which started in 2019. Some of it would be the "free" electricity provided for 8 years in the Republic and still provided in the North. To put into a context ESB paid its shareholders 80M dividents last year only. But it is gov and policymakers acceptting answers like the one provided. The fact they 've invested 1B in decarbonisation of the generation network does not changes the fact that the charging newtork is in shambles.
Galway has/had 3 x 50kW units - Retail park Headford road, Glynn's at Carnmore and you forgot the Circle K at Newcastle.
Whatever way you look at it it's a shocking state of affairs.
Galway needs new chargers on the west side of the city or even further out the road towards Clifden. Put a 150kW charger at Maam Cross and it would cover the coast and lake roads and make a huge difference. Plenty of space at the Emo station there for everyone to park and charge. A half an hour to Clifden and an hour to Westport makes a lot of sense.
No work of any kind going on at Carnmore from what I've seen and been told.
As I've said in the past eCars/Galway CoCo/local TD's are all useless at providing any kind of plan for the rollout of chargers for the city or county. I did hear of 4 new chargers to be installed in Eyre square but no timetable for it (and to be honest I can't see where they would put them).
Are eCars counting home installs towards their own nationwide rollout? Surely I must have misread that. I mean, if every EV sold this year also added up to a new home charger installation (I know not everyone did/will), but that would be a third of the way to the 30k figure without breaking a sweat, or without eCars lifting a finger -- well, other than the usual one they lift regards rolling out public charging infrastructure.
The rep from ESB claimed 1,300 public chargers in the country. It was a Sinn Féin TD who asked about about EV infrastructure and mentioned there are around 30,000 total charging points between public and private. The ESB person just confirmed the numbers sounded correct
I had a look at carnmore a few days ago.
A new ESB pole has been installed at the very back of the site.
Where the mini digger is working in the picture.
No idea what else is planned beyond a new pole.
They did claim that the current network expansion will support 400,000 EVs, I think that's probably accurate if those 400,000 all have home charging, but I think it will fall apart when you include ldv's and taxi's. They will need a significantly higher level of public DC charging.
30,000!
If they are carrying on like this they should count all our 3 pin plugs near a downstairs window!
Do you think there aren't around 30,000 charge points in the country between public and private charge points? Private charge points would include homes and businesses, so the number doesn't seem outrageous to me.
Well we'd need to know at the very least the number of EVs on the road to gauge home charge points, the number of grants provided etc.
If I remember correctly the first set of free charge points from eCars ended up taking a lot longer to give out as uptake so slow
I'm not entirely sure why that would be up to eCars, I'm sure if a rep from SEAI was providing evidence to the committee they would have been able to confirm the details.
This is just getting ridiculous now. Would love to see the likes of Fastned or Mer to list domestic chargers as part of their network. I mean come on.
Rochestown Hub is online!!!
📣 We have new chargers available for EV drivers in Cork. You can find them at:
📌 Circle K /Centra Service Station, Rochestown Road, Cork
⚡ There is one high power charger (150kW) and one fast charger (50kW) available at this location.
⚡ Please note that due to low demand for AC 43kW connection, we have decided to only deploy 22kW AC sockets at Fast chargers from now on. Vehicles which only use AC charging will still be facilitated at Fast charger locations un-tethered AC 22kW sockets.
⚡ Parking space line markings will be carried out at this site next week.
⚡ Our next upgrade work starts next Monday 6th of December at Circle K Frankfield Service Station, Frankfield Road, Douglas, Cork. From the 6th of December, the charger at this site will be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience and we will update you on Facebook when this site goes live.
Those are two very busy sites.
I like the move away from fastAC, hopefully they follow a similar attitude for Chademo on HPC in the near future
Oh the Zoe owners will be delighted at the demise of 43kW AC...
To be clear, eCars are not claiming domestic chargers as part of their network. This would be like asking the CEO of Fastned if their were 30,000 private chargers in the Netherlands and him saying, yeah, that sounds accurate. The reporting and reaction to this is worthy of the Daily Mail.
I'll give some daily updates as I pass it every day. :)
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