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.
What's the problem with each unit having its own meter? Surely that would be needed to accurately know what the users in question are drawing anyway, would it not?
Yeah but as we've discussed previously that's not exactly doable on public land given the current ESBN rule that each charger must have its own meter
I don't think that's the correct interpretation of the rules, or that it makes sense, but I'm not in a position to control how chargers are installed
I actually agree with you that we need banks of lower power AC chargers than the 22kW ones
It may not be the best business case, but it encourages overnight charging which is much better for the grid and generally much less carbon intensive than DC charging
This is why I think the government, county councils and ESBN should be working to unblock on street charging and going for mass installation
Very good way of putting it. People need to be told these figures before making the decision, the amount of people I've met who don't even know how much they're paying per unit is scary, and they're considering buying an EV 🫣
Yes but I suspect that AC units are much much cheaper to install, a 50kW DC unit would use roughly the same as the 2X22kW units we see almost everywhere
By your logic they should all be converted to 50kW DC units as a cost measure. And it's not something I'd be against to be fair and maybe having a bank of 6 or 7 7kW AC units would make more sense than the dual 22kW units as most cars only pull 7kW on AC
Diesel would be the cheaper combustion fuel, the average diesel does 5-6L/100km. Let's say 5.5 for arguments sake, while the average EV does 17kWh/100km... This would suggest that as long as 17kWh of electricity costs the same as 5.5L of diesel you have cost parity. So dividing one by the other is a factor of 3.1. Meaning the ESB rate of 51c/kWh to translates to €1.53per liter of diesel... To go the other end of the scale 68.2c/kWh translates to €2.11/L and applegreens 75c/kWh translates to €2.32/L. Conversely I have a night rate of 26c so works out to be just shy of 81c/L so having the ability to charge at home is clearly much cheaper and easier
Rather than telling people not to go EV if they don't have a driveway (which I agree with to an extent) show them these figures and let them make their own mind up perhaps?
I suspect the difficulty of AC chargers is around the number of kWh sold between AC and DC
A DC charger could sell 50kWh in an hour, whereas an AC can at most sell 22kWh and more likely will sell 7-11kWh
So unless you get all Zoes or Ariyas on your AC chargers and a bunch of rapid gating Leafs on a DC charger, the DC will probably sell more kWh
Petrol is not going down that's a lie, simple as that, all fuels are steadily rising day after day. Local Maxol went from 169.9 to 173.9 over the weekend a nearby Campus is charging 179.9🫣As I said earlier, there's no point (from an economic pov) in buying an EV if you can't charge at home. Paying public charging rates makes absolutely zero sense. People need to do their research before buying an EV, the savings over petrol or diesel can be significant but only by home charging at a decent unit rate or dedicated EV smart meter plan.
I'd question the truth behind this, if public AC chargers are not viable then why are they cheaper to use than public DC chargers. Easygo being one of our nation's more expensive operators would make me question their intentions and motives
I'd hazard a guess that this is right as it's all down to a partially faulty business model and a still immature product in some ways.
If you're trying to sell AC chargers to a location which has high turnaround and your target audience only wants to spend 1 to 2 hours at the location (such as shops and restaurants) and you're limited to business-hours operations only, then that's a fail for the most part. Ubitricity have worked that out and now offer overnight sessions and this probably works out well for them where the are residences with no driveways. We'll probably see that model take off in many locations where there are unused overnight chargers.
25kW DC might be a better offering for some of those locations - at least then you're offering a reasonable top-up rate, but you also have higher overheads and you need to keep the customer rotating out of the fewer charging spots to maximise the ROI, hence you need a carrot or a stick to keep the customers 'working to the model'.
AC chargers though work out really well for customers at hotels, naturally enough, but the problem there is scaling the systems up to ensure that even the shortest overnight customer will have a charged EV in the morning. That's where I feel the technology is lacking as these charging systems don't scale-out like we need them too or don't allow for the assumption that some customers are going to be lazy-a**holes. That's where we should push it onto the charging provider to innovate and bring products to the market which suit the needs of the industry as well as the consumer.
Yes, a euro per minute after 45 minutes would be a good solution, that way as well somebody who stayed for 46 minutes (which can happen by accident to be fair) gets stung less than the 90 minute hogger... Of course, another solution is to roll out multiple chargers instead of having just 1
Easygo have said public AC chargers are not financially viable
Interesting observation, on page 123 there's the section related to on street EV charging
So it's easy to see that the typical installation would be a single charging point per meter, but it doesn't exactly exclude multiple chargers either. The charger and meter don't need to be colocated in the same cabinet and there isn't a limit of the number of chargers per meter connection (except for the maximum of 16kVA per phase, so 48kVA total)
Hopefully the regulation gets updated to explicitly allow multiple chargers per the same grid connection
There’s an exemption for lower power devices like street lighting.
edit: section 6, page 52
https://www.esbnetworks.ie/docs/default-source/publications/national-code-of-practice76cf7c6b-4890-4c39-87fc-a2d6692ef2d3.pdf
See I question it's truth because traffic lights and lamp posts would both have power cables going underground from a single ESB connection, and they aren't installed by ESBN
So there's obviously some classification of equipment that allows multiple stations to be connected by underground power cables across public land to a single grid connection. If EV chargers were added to that list then it would probably make public AC much more viable
i don’t believe each pillar needs its own meter. If they wanted to install several in a row on private land , then one meter wilL do
even on public land I’m sure there’s work arounds like cable trays along walls in car parks. or using modules units which consist of say 10 AC chargers
Well I hope that our new office of electric vehicles, whatever it's called, identifies the requirements regarding ESB metering as a serious gap in EV adoption
I agree that if every charging column requires it's own meter then it's going to be very difficult for them to make financial sense
Funnily enough, DCCs analysis of the public charging network a few years ago found the same thing. But instead of making a recommendation that the rules be updated, they just played along
If you could have multiple columns tied to a single meter then you could have 7 chargers in a single 50kW grid connection. More if you did some clever load sharing
They'd probably make some easy financial sense then
Easygo have said public AC chargers are not financially viable and each pillar needs it's own esb meter and associated standing charge. Cables between AC public chargers cannot be installed except by esb networks, they have a monopoly on public places, so this prevents rows of AC chargers on public streets. Dublin councils seem against rolling out any new AC public chargers. This is probably simply due to cost. They seem to hope public DC charging hubs they have not paid for will be the solution. This won't help adoption as I estimate there is only 1/4 the number of DC chargers to meet present peak demand and far less AC chargers. We probably need to quadruple DC charging this year and plan for 10 times for the coming years. Commercial providers only want a few busy chargers not a glut.
Overstay fee on DC chargers needs to be increased massively to prevent this nonsense.
So I'd recommend that people watch maybe the last 15 mins or so on the video I posted in the Random EV thoughts thread yesterday
While the subject matter is focused on the US, I think it's fair to say that some of the statements are true here as well
One thing I think is true is that charging networks aren't really competing with one another at the moment
At least until recently, with more players joining the game that's finally changing
All the providers have congregated around a fairly similar price point, most of them offer similar numbers of chargers onsite (four) and similar max power supply (150-200kW)
Until recently card payments were nonexistent and if you want the privilege of some shelter from rain while plugging in then you need to drive to Belfast currently
To be fair, some of that makes sense.
Up to 4 chargers are exempt from planning so it's an easy installation.
Most cars at the moment max out below 200kW so not much incentive to install anything bigger
And maybe the reason DC charging is so expensive at the moment is because that's how much it costs when the cost of the chargers, installation, grid connection and some modest profit is taken into account
One might be tempted to say that if that's the case then we should be mass deploying AC chargers to make low cost charging accessible 😉
Anyway, I'm hoping that in the near future as chargers become more ubiquitous that providers are forced to compete more.
Maybe not on price but perhaps they can provide an improved experience, like charger layouts that aren't sh!t, or a shelter from the rain. Or maybe even someone onsite who can start the charger when the app isn't working, and maybe even take an actual cash money payment for the electricity
Because that's what I was responding to
I'd like to see evidence that widespread issues with network getting clogged is due to people with no home charging using the network.
I doubt that particular issue is a widespread one but when public charge points are 100% full it doesn't look good. However, if we had a situation in a small town where the 2 X 22kW units (there are many small town examples of this) were replaced by 6 X 7.1kW (or even 12 X 3.6kW) units and they had an 80-90% occupancy overnight by nearby apartment dwellers it would look pretty good for EV adoption, especially if more chargepoints came on stream as the number of EVs increased! You'd still have the cost issue but it would be a step in the right direction
It sounds like it's a dual-AC 22kW charger
Thats from tesla, the hint was "according to tesla".
I closed the tesla site down, not going to bother looking but from memory I think around 14kwh per 100km.
The rate is comparable to ecars sub plan. ( its cheaper by a few cents)
To make things easier for you,
If no home charging on night rate. (hope your following) You use ecars,
You only save 200 euro, compared to a petrol car ( consumption figures are given.)
I personally do not think its worth arsing around at chargers for 200 euro,( thats my assumption.)
I got petrol today and its the reverse of what your saying. ( that is it went down).
Lots of assumptions there, pretty useless post tbh. What consumption rate are you assuming for the Tesla, or is that a state secret? Electricity can be bought for a tenth of that price on smart EV plans, Flogas 9 hour night rate is less than a third of that rate @14.75c, petrol is rising by the hour here it's well over the 1.70 per litre now with no sign of it slowing. I ordered 500 litres of heating oil on Friday for 539, it was delivered earlier it's 560 now according to the driver.
If he's connected into the AC side of that charger then he's entitled to be there all day, unfortunately! If it's DC then he has no excuse.
Theres a charger on the main street n my town. Nearest one for a good few kms. There are two slots on it. If someone needed a few kwh they can get on it. Except that one neighbor who doesnt have a driveway has his car parked at it every day from 5pm until midnight and sometimes ive even seen it there in the mornings. So now between the hours of 5pm until after midnight the town has one public charge slot.
People without home charging are using the network for 100% of the time they are charging. People with home charging are occupying the network for only a few percent of the time they are charging. Grand if there are enough chargers around the place. Not so good when there arent. and there arent.
So when you explode this to the whole country you get a situation where the to keep the numbers on the chargers down the providers are perfectly justified in raising the price at them. Noone will argue with them. Price goes up, less chargers needed for the same amount of profit. Eventually new EV drivers pay more than for petrol. There is no downward pressure on prices and not likely to be. Its just bad for everyone. Pretty sure we will be over a euro per kwh by the end of the year for public charging.
i wouldn’t drive an EV without a home charger.
the joys to waking up to a charger , pre conditioned car is one of the main benefits.
He's giving an illustration of how public charging at ESB eCars is expensive
Well why are you making comparisons between using fossil fuel and only public charging?
Poster I was replying to was suggesting that people using 100 percent public charging is bad for EV adoption.
(There will obviously be issues with *some* people - with a driveway or with no driveway hogging a charger for excessively long sessions)
Personally I believe that when one thing costs less than the other it's 100% correct to say it's cheaper. It's just maths.
The statistics published by the CSO do show that their is a higher percentage of apartments and terraced house in our cities. In Dublin it's 62%, Cork 50%, Limerick 46%, whereas 80% of housing in Waterford County is Semi Detached or Detached homes which are more likely to have driveways. Roscommon being the lowest with 95% of homes being detached or semi's. When you look at absolute numbers it becomes immediately clear whilst public charging provision is focused on areas where it is.
eCars recent focus on DC at Supermarkets is a good way to serve locations with low amounts of off street parking, but I think it's going to be long time before theirs enough people using it in the like of Dungarven to justify that style of charging.
Still struggling with Down by the Gardens logic
"Hey you Mr EV driver - you shouldn't use the charger"
Why not - its sitting there unused right now.
"Mary from Dingle might need it if she's coming to Dublin"
Is Mary actually coming to Dublin today..
"That's not the point - you don't have a home charger but Mary does.
Mary hasn't the time to wait 4 hours for you to finish charging"
4 hours????? FFS - I will be here 30 mins and that's enough for 5 days driving for me.
Meanwhile we don't even know if Mary is in Dublin or even if she was in Dublin - would she even use *this* specific charger.
"But you shouldn't hog the charger"
Using the charger for 30 mins isn't hogging it.
There's a road in Dublin and it has 4 or 5 ubitricity chargers built into existing lampposts. If we got that on every lamppost on every street in the country then owning an EV without a driveway would be much more attractive. That's what we mean when we say the infrastructure isn't there
On the contrary - the perception and/or reality that EV technology is only for those who have a driveway is a huge barrier to EV adoption.
It's better all round for EV adoption if people can use any public charger as often as they need it.
Rather then objecting to someone with no home charging using their local *PUBLIC* rapid charger.
Obviously ALL drivers should use the network in a courteous way - ie avoid excessively hogging of chargers.
But to me hogging is when someone puts a car on a rapid for two hours and takes off into town.
Someone doing two x 30 min charges a week on a charger is not hogging it.
