ESB eCars

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121195355#Comment_121195355

I think when it comes to ecars if you are charging at or faster than 11kW on AC and about 60kW on DC you should use Freshmile but in all other situations use the ecars card or app

loopymum

I was in Ballacolla this morning & I'm baffled as to why a Tesla is charging on the Ecars unit when all the superchargers are available. The driver stayed sitting blocking the 150kw as well. Had to ask them to move.

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121197315#Comment_121197315

Perhaps he doesn’t have payment details in his Tesla account and can’t SuperCharge…

or it’s a lease/hire car and Supercharging is not available (due to lack of payment info in Tesla account)..

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121197315#Comment_121197315

Was it a LHD did you notice... There's at least one imported Model Y spotted which previously had Florida plates (might still have them) with US spec charge port. If he got an adapter it probably won't work on Superchargers but would on ecars

wassie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121197479#Comment_121197479

Most likely this. I have a DCI REV One card for my company car which covers Ionity, ESB & Chargepoint. If I use a Tesla SuC I have to manually claim back the expense at the end of the month.

No excuse for sh!tty behavior holding up others from charging though....

loopymum

It was right hand drive. Seems mad to have a Tesla & not be able to have an account for charging at the suc

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121202526#Comment_121202526

I’ve owned my Tesla since late 2019 and I think I’ve supercharged maybe four times. A lot of my trips are to the west and north-west so the SuC network doesn’t suit and even when there was en-route SuC, eCars chargers sometimes suited me better based on their location in the trip.

Dublin - Belfast is the only trip where SuC is off real benefit.

loopymum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121207237#Comment_121207237

I get that but it was in Ballacolla!

allinthehead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121208658#Comment_121208658

Ya, I saw a grey Y there before charging on the Esb charger. Did leave me wondering why.

podge1979

Anyone have issues with the chargers in kinnegad? Only there a few weeks but consistently having issues with the first and last charger. Will charge for about 5 minutes and stop. Middle two seem to work fine. Saw an id3 there having a similar issue.

big_show

Have a Model Y a month and been mostly using Tesla SUC when in Dublin, but the missus has the model Y connected to an esb ecars 22kw charger at the moment, (other connection is in use as well) and only pulling 10kw, is that right? is the 22kw i shared between both connections?

allinthehead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121279021#Comment_121279021

Tesla can only take 11kw max Ac.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121279021#Comment_121279021

Some of them do share the connection and it's 22kW total, however the Y can only take 11kW max. Some older teslas can take 22kW and most S/X can take 17.5kW

big_show

Thanks folks, is it safe to say any charger over 50kw is DC?

wassie

Thats correct.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121278383#Comment_121278383

Been using them 3-4 times a week with no issue. However I only recall using the end chargers once, so going to avoid them if I can now!

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121279294#Comment_121279294

Yes. It'll say it in the description anyway and you'll know by the connector on the cable.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121279294#Comment_121279294

In practice it probably true to say that anything listed as between 3kW to 7kW or "22kW" or "43kW" is AC.

25kW, 40kW and 50kW and above are all DC.

innrain

I see the charger at Stillorgan hotel got replaced with a dual CCS 100kW each. There are reports on plugshare that if a second car connects then charging power halves. I'd be interested what rate are they charging in this case?

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121280067#Comment_121280067

The Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan charges €0.647/kWh on their PAYG plan and €0.586/kWh on their membership plan so that's their "Fast rate"

They also have this rate at the dual CCS in Bolton Street car park

These are in line with their advertised fast rate applying to their 22-100kW chargers

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121280067#Comment_121280067

I wonder is it a hardware amperage limitation or an incoming power limit. If it's the former, perhaps 800V cars would not see a power loss.

innrain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121285872#Comment_121285872

I actually tested it last night. I was passing on N11 and saw the charger empty and plugged in at 9%SoC with the battery preheated. It went bit slowly to 90kW. Hold and behold 30 seconds after I plugged in, another car arrives and as soon as it auth my power drops to 50kW. The other car was a Kangoo so not really fast charging. I disconnect and go to SuC where it starts charging at 172kW 12% SoC and I leave when reached 90kW (the starting speed from ecars) @56% SoC.

I'm questioning how useful this upgrade is now at the end of 2023 when I can only charge at 50kW in the same way as I was charging back in 2019 after they upgraded the old DBT unit. I was not able to charge with the old DBT because as soon as the car was requesting more than 43kW the charger would error out. All of these while paying 44% more per kWh compared to another network where I charge twice faster.

liamog

Those units on Delta's website have 100kW of DC capability with the ability to split the charging into 50kW segments or operate in a paired mode for a single 100kW connection. If it's a drop in replacement for an old 50kW triple head, which in theory needed enough of a grid connection for one 50kW DC car and one 43kW AC car then I can see the value in replacing them without needing any site electrical work. It's much easier to replace the appliance than to upgrade the electrical connection.

innrain

I don't know it is hard for me to accept the status quo. They replaced this charger twice in the span of 4 years and I as a regular user see no difference. But probably I shouldn't expect any improvement. Moreover the whole CHAdeMO population got the boot. Hard life. If the power costraint is a problem there are chargers which use battery buffer and still deliver a decent power.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121286952#Comment_121286952

A bit maddening that it's not load balancing the full 100kW, you could have at least benefited from 74kW if the Renault was pulling 26kW.

liamog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121289886#Comment_121289886

DC chargers are generally comprised of a number of DC rectifying modules. For chargers capable of dynamic allocation they can send the power from one or more modules to a car. The voltage output needs to tailored to the voltage request by the connected cars so can't be directly shared, you can't make a single circuit with two cars sharing the same voltage and current.

The model in use here consists of two 50kW modules. More advanced systems such as Kempower's solution consists of 25kW modules shared across multiple charge connectors. Which would allow a 2nd car to charge at 75kW once the first dropped below 25kW.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121289577#Comment_121289577

Hard to disagree with any of that tbh. I think that battery balancing and storage is not a good idea. Well, to be more specific, it's a great idea now, but if/when we get to the stage of everyone having an EV and there not being much downtime for the chargers similar to fuel stations on motorways, the batteries would just be a huge cost and not pay for itself in saved MIC costs. If I as a charger company could get a battery to have ROI in 3-5 years or less it probably makes sense financially but anything over that and you're into the possible ICE bans and organic increase inEV traffic which - while it would be best for the business of chargers overall - means that load shaving is less and less of a viable option financially

yermanthere

Yes I was at kinnegad a couple of weeks ago, first charger as you approach. Kept dropping out and only gave 60kw ( nearly empty, warmed battery).

innrain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121290031#Comment_121290031

We're told it is hard to get high power connections. The battery buffer helps in mitigating the problem @liamog just explained. Being a DC source the load balancing can be truly linear and not in steps which ESB doesn't have anyway. The battery buffered chargers which started to appear in NI are the same as those promoted by VW and BP with nearly 200kWh buffer and up to 50kW input.

https://www.elli.eco/en/b2b/products/fast-charging-station

In this case, the connection allows up 2 such chargers which would service up to 4 cars at one time. This means a 400kWh buffer fed by a 100kW connection. It takes time to completely extract this amount of energy. Fastned published recently its trading updates for Q3 2023. On page 19 they show that on average a charging session in NL uses 23 kWh while in DE the figure is 34 kWh. It means that between 11-17 cars can be charged by this buffer while also being replenished at 80kW. We can calculate how much time would be needed to empty the whole thing which would default to 2x50kW when empty, currently the case. I understand the best would be to have enough power but I think it will take more than 4 years until such chargers would see their limit. Some say LFP batteries can last up to 10k cycles such that I don't even consider the lifetime of the battery to be a problem. (200kWh x10k = 2TWh)

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121294722#Comment_121294722

Yes that's an example of how it could work, but are you assuming you'd never get a grid connection that is sufficient? How long must you have the batteries before the ROE on a higher vs lower MIC peak demand charge works out

podge1979

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121291831#Comment_121291831

Hard the same, likewise with the last charger