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.
It seems to vary by cable length, and how much the installer wants to spend
As the cable gets longer it has more resistance so you need it to be thicker to handle the extra current and also dissipate heat
Problem is the cable gets heavier pretty quickly that way. So you either sacrifice weight or make the cable thinner and sacrifice charging speed
Water cooling the cable is one way around that, means you can have a longer cable without the weight penalty
Don't quote me on the number, the limit seems to vary by cable manufacturer.
Yes, if you have an 800v car with an aggressive charging curve you could get 350kW. Sorry if my prior post was unclear or misleading on that. There is a 200A limit from V1 of CCS which maxes out at 80kW and 160kW at 400/800v respectively. The non cooled cables I only found out from Bjorn and Out of Spec youtube channels fairly recently, until then I didnt know there was a limit at 200kW.
I think most ecars installs are limited to 150-200kW, with Mayfield being the only exception. I only charged there a couple of times and didnt notice if the cables were cooled or not.
I don’t have an EV but I find the infrastructure interesting- do ecars have any cooled charger cables (or is the max they do 200kw?) or is that just ionity, Tesla sc etc?
hence why it's called a 350kW unit, if a car is capable it will receive up to 350kW. It sounded like you were saying the Ionity 350kW units weren't capable of 350kW at all. Your post clarifies it
Then we get into the fun situation with chargers that use non cooled cables and are limited to 200kW. But that's one for us real charger geeks.
Yes but the max is 500A.
Exactly, but the curves dont match up. If you look at the spec for the chargers they use, it can deliver 1000V and 500A . However it cannot deliver 500A and 1000V at the same time. You'll see cars pegged to 499-500 amps if the car can take more. But if you pull up in a semi truck with a notional 1000V pack, the amps will reduce on the charge as its not rated to supply 500kW, max is 350kW.
If they were delivering 500A at 1000V wouldn't that be 500kW?
Great info thanks.
so in the scenario you mention it’s a 320KW unit?
P=V.I so P= (800)(400)= 320000watts so 320KW.
Absolutely. And even the Ionity labeled 350kW chargers cannot deliver 350kW. They have a max of 500A and 1000V but not at the same time.
As mentioned CCS has a limit of 400amps so the car needs to be 800 volt compatible to get peak power and so most cars are incapable of peak numbers. No teslas only porche and some Ioniq. Even then the supply may not be capable or the preference may be given to load share and stop a high power user blocking the second side. Often these chargers cannot dynamically load share just 50/50 share and there may not be charger to charger load sharing or entire site load sharing so they may be limited to a sensible lower safe limit to ensure all chargers on site and motorway services will not trip the entire site. I believe there have been issues with new motorway sites tripping the entire supply but I am not sure that's the chargers fault or more all the french fry cookers going at once.
From a financial point if view it does not make sense to pay for an install of rediculous peak capacity that may never be reached.
That's pretty much the answer I got when I asked them. 350kW was setting an expectation for users, so ecars now advertise them as much lower speeds. Alternatively they could have educated their users, but no... just lie.
And that's your anecdotal evidence. Versus some actual statistics which show CHAdeMO cars are vastly outnumbered by CCS on Irish roads, so logically you'd think "they need more units to charge off of". Ah ha, I hear the argument of "But CHAdeMO cars traditionally have less, range and thus need to public charge more" stirring. It's a fair point, to which I have my own opinions about (those who by low range cars likely don't do much long range driving and thus don't need public charging), and some actual statistics... in a beautiful graph format too!
If I were in the business of installing chargers, I know what ones I be favouring. Nothing about installing CHAdeMO plugs makes business sense.
The mayfield units can do full speed with a taycan of 250-270. Or at least, someone posted in the IEVOA group when the site was launched that they could. The problem was it took all the load and put the other side of that 350kW unit offline completely. They may have software limited to 400v or something.
That's the main thing to remember, a 150kW charger (or 170,180 etc) are almost exactly the same as a 350kW charger. The only difference is the 350kW charger can do 400a (500A max) at 800V too.
My understanding was they are still 350kW capable they just advertise them under the 400V limit. Would need someone with a Ioniq5/EB6 or a Taycan to confirm
I think they've installed a few 200kW units, Tuam and Frankfield are the only ones I can think of
They're load split, so if another car plugs in then you get 100kW, but in theory they should do 200kW max
I don’t think even wCars can answer that question…
J14/Mayfield was/is their flagship site and a few weeks after opening it they downgraded the power in all of the units from 350kw to 150kW….
what is the highest powered charger available from ecars with a ccs delivery at the moment?
For example:
if a unit is 300KW and there is one car plugged in could that unit theoretically deliver 300KW to that single car (obviously depending on SoC and if the car can take that!),
or does it mean that if the charger has two leads (head units?) each lead is limited to 150KW, if 4 leads each lead is 300/4=75KW?
The Kinnegad layout is a bit annoying if you have the charging connector towards the back of the car.
I read in boards.ie the new Athlone busses are 2 X CCS and the chargers they use seem to be 2 X CCS type.
Back on topic I think kinnegad was a supermacs driven easygo install rather than plaza group, and easygo said supermacs were paying for the free early usage. I wonder if ESB were even offered the site, while the layout seems an afterthought 2 X 50kW next to each other was advanced at the time and the location near the exit means it's rarely ICED. It's also quite close to the building once parked and you can keep an eye on your car for the emergency stop brigade.
I presume esb will apply for any future government tenders and there is talk in NI they need to reapply for existing sites to get future grants and the possibility existing NI sites may be given over to someone else winning the tender. That might be why they are not rolling out in NI late 2023 as promised, they may be waiting for future grant money, similar in ROI with lots of talk of future grants why would someone roll out now instead of delaying and lobbying for favourible grant terms that suit their plans. I am not saying that's the right move, but announcing new grants for public charging but not actually making them possible to apply for just causes confusion and delays.
Exactly. And I am a former leaf owner, and have a chademo adapter in my shed from my X. I very nearly bought a second hand leaf last year too. I'm not anti leaf. Far from it. I loved mine and did 5k km a month in it!
It's just if you have a HPC capable of 150kW each side, it['s a waste of resources having one side in use for a 50kW chademo plug. I dont get the constant arguing with me asking if I have a bmw!
This is progress. We don't have public fax machines, public phones (interestingly now being replaced with 50kW chargers!), Betamax video tapes for sale at large retailers, leaded petrol at every garage, prices displayed in irish pounds pre euro price, or even pre decimal to post decimal irish pound.
Time moves on. We've consolidated to one charging standard. This is great and should be supported.
New month, same argument, and notably almost always gets started by a non-chademo driver
That tiny minority of EV drivers are the most common ones that I've seen about in my regular drive, second most common is the Renault Zoe
Because it's obvious he's delighted that finally HPC's are being installed and configured in such a way that will ultimately benefit the vast vast majority of EV drivers, and are no longer installed with 50% of said HPC being reserved for a tiny minority of EV drivers.
I'm going to throw sand into the wind here and guess that ELM couldn't give a rats ar$e about Nissan Leaf drivers... or the misery they may or may not face.
Looks like we couldn't make it through one day of February without starting up the old CCS Vs Chademo argument again 🙄
Careful, next somebody is going to say you could link several carriages together with a single driver and then we'll have reinvented the train again 😁
The HPC at loughrea would probably load share also, just it would be with a CCS car, not just a leaf or am I mistaken? And there are plenty of CCS cars on the road that can only take 50kW
What does that have to do with the delight of someone who once drove a BMW?
Delighted about another EV drivers difficulty?
Leaf's have gotta be what now? less than 10%-15% of total EV's on Irish roads?
They have more than enough existing CHAdeMO connectors for them to use until CHAdeMO eventually disappears. Putting any more CHAdeMO in in 2023 is just a complete waste of resources, and detrimental to the other 85%-90% of EV's that are CCS
No, I'm delighted that one side of a 180kW charger isnt wasted providing a 50-70kW plug for chademo which is a dead standard. By all means on a 50kW have a CCS and a chademo, only one can be used anyway. But on a charger configured to load share between both plugs like the HPC are, it doesnt make sense to have a chademo plug.
Ecars have already confirmed no new chademo installs from 2024 and it looks like they are doing that already.
And no, I havent owned or driven a bimmer for years since my second e60.
I could be incorrect but aren't the new electric buses we are getting dual CCS enabled?
Delighted about another EV drivers difficulty? Do you drive a BMW yourself by any chance?
Yes I think it would have to be a single connector. My software based theory was linked to what Rivian does, it's a 400V pack nominal and all the drive motors etc are 400v but the battery can via software series connect to 800V to charge at 800V.
