Random EV thoughts.....

Professor Moriarty

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

I’d say you should be fine, and if in doubt, simply slowing down a bit will help your efficiency,

But you can always stop for a quick tip up somewhere anyway.... a 10 minute coffee/toilet break could put 60-100km into the battery....

May I ask on that, is it the case that a charging point would always be free? Or would there be queues?

innrain

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

May I ask on that, is it the case that a charging point would always be free? Or would there be queues?

Tesla 100%. 6-8 chargers at one site
Ionity 99% 4 chargers, some times ICEd
Ecars karma dictates 1 charger.at most sites. They started adding the second charger at some sites and in the future will have as many as 4.

the_amazing_raisin

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

May I ask on that, is it the case that a charging point would always be free? Or would there be queues?

Since they started charging money the rate of people camping at chargers has gone down dramatically, so there'll probably be at most one car in front of you in the queue.

How good the charging network is really depends on the route. Cork-Dublin is pretty well served by chargers, as are a lot of the other major routes from Dublin. Outside that it can get a bit spotty. Since you say the route is fixed, you could research it first. I'd suggest using A Better Route Planner, you can select the vehicle you're thinking about and take it from there

https://abetterrouteplanner.com

It's best to click into the detailed settings and the planner makes some odd assumptions (20C ambient temperature for example, that covers about 3 days in Ireland)

People do have a bit of a fear of using chargers but it's really not that bad. Most of the time if your EV manages 350km consistently you'll only need 20 mins of charging to get where you're going. If that's part of your commute I can see it being frustrating, but if it's a weekend road trip then at least you can afford to relax a bit.

Winter does have a penalty for range with EVs, one of the easiest ways to get around it is to preheat your car before leaving while it's plugged in, so that you don't lose a lot of range heating the car up. Bad road conditions also saps your range so you'll probably be looking at a 30% penalty in the depths of winter.

Markcheese

Invariably , if youre doing a long trip in a petrol or diesel ,you'll have to stop for fuel at some point , or for a toilet break , so it's like that ..
No one rwally complains about having to visit a petrol station if they are doing a long trip in an ice ,
( And the range in most ice vehicles drops considerably if youre hammering it up the motorway )

Markcheese

Does tesla have a preheat facility on its battery ? ( not just the cabin ) ,

AndyBoBandy

Markcheese wrote: »

Does tesla have a preheat facility on its battery ? ( not just the cabin ) ,

Yes, Tesla’s pre-condition their batteries

Black_Knight

innrain wrote: »

Tesla 100%. 6-8 chargers at one site
Ionity 99% 4 chargers, some times ICEd
Ecars karma dictates 1 charger.at most sites. They started adding the second charger at some sites and in the future will have as many as 4.

True
True
Technically true, but when you consider a 290km motorway journey when your range is nearly enough to do it without stopping, you'd have lots of ecars charge points to choose from. Even if they were all single bay sites the chances of each one being in use as you pass them are slim.

What's the route?

Professor Moriarty

Black_Knight wrote: »

True
True
Technically true, but when you consider a 290km motorway journey when your range is nearly enough to do it without stopping, you'd have lots of ecars charge points to choose from. Even if they were all single bay sites the chances of each one being in use as you pass them are slim.

What's the route?

My route is 90% on the Dublin-Cork motorway.

AndyBoBandy

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

My route is 90% on the Dublin-Cork motorway.

Your grand so........

the_amazing_raisin

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

My route is 90% on the Dublin-Cork motorway.

Yeah that's probably the easiest route for EVs, you've Ionity chargers at Kill (4 high power chargers each way) and Cashel (4 high power chargers), as well as the 150kW ESB charger in Portlaoise. And multiple 50kW chargers en route.

There's also supposedly an ESB hub being built in Monasterevin soon with multiple 150kW chargers, if you believe them :P

innrain

Black_Knight wrote: »

Technically true, but when you consider a 290km motorway journey when your range is nearly enough to do it without stopping, you'd have lots of ecars charge points to choose from. Even if they were all single bay sites the chances of each one being in use as you pass them are slim.

I didn't want to venture a probable number to find the ecars chargers empty just because of the single point of failure design. And don't get me wrong I charge only on the public network and in August alone a drove 5k km and it more than doable but if you want to do a parallel to the ICE drive multi-charger sites are your natural choice.

An example Dublin - Parknasilla (Co Kerry). Took M7 -Killarney because of the scenic drive. ABR suggests Newcastle as the only charging (40mins) required to get to destination with 30- 40% as there is no destination charger. I'm not choosing that because is a very busy spot in a small petrol station and the next charger is in Killarney which again the same description. So I chose Birdhill because it has 2 chargers although they are free and that trims the chances of being empty. Funny enough Newcastle was in use when I passed by and Killarney went offline 10 mins before passing it.
If you're driving alone in the car you can't check the status of the charger so you have to leave the motorway just to see if you can charge. It will be nice if they will have public APIs or google/apple car functions to just ask "Hey Google is any charger @ecar site near me empty at the moment?" or even better "Hey Google what are the chances of an empty charger when I approach this service station". But probably would be better just to install >4 chargers and we will have 99% chance of being free so no more questions would be needed. Food for thought ref ecars-stats

Cyrus

innrain wrote: »

I didn't want to venture a probable number to find the ecars chargers empty just because of the single point of failure design. And don't get me wrong I charge only on the public network and in August alone a drove 5k km and it more than doable but if you want to do a parallel to the ICE drive multi-charger sites are your natural choice.

An example Dublin - Parknasilla (Co Kerry). Took M7 -Killarney because of the scenic drive. ABR suggests Newcastle as the only charging (40mins) required to get to destination with 30- 40% as there is no destination charger. I'm not choosing that because is a very busy spot in a small petrol station and the next charger is in Killarney which again the same description. So I chose Birdhill because it has 2 chargers although they are free and that trims the chances of being empty. Funny enough Newcastle was in use when I passed by and Killarney went offline 10 mins before passing it.
If you're driving alone in the car you can't check the status of the charger so you have to leave the motorway just to see if you can charge. It will be nice if they will have public APIs or google/apple car functions to just ask "Hey Google is any charger @ecar site near me empty at the moment?" or even better "Hey Google what are the chances of an empty charger when I approach this service station". But probably would be better just to install >4 chargers and we will have 99% chance of being free so no more questions would be needed. Food for thought ref ecars-stats

just as an FYI when went parknasilla in the summer i was able to use a granny charger whenever i wanted, there were outdoor plugs at the woodland villas.

MJohnston

Here's my very rough summary of the charging capabilities of the major intercity routes on the island of Ireland:



I'm including any non-Tesla charger that's online on the main route, or about 1 or 2km offline. Tried not to include any that are in train stations or wherever there wouldn't be easy access. Also only including one set of chargers per direction where there's an Applegreen or Ionity set on each side of a motorway.

Also not including what's available in the cities themselves.

Score is:

((Rapids * 1.0) + (22kW * 0.25) / Distance) * 100

MJohnston

Worth noting in addition to the above that adding in the Tesla superchargers only bumps up Dublin to Belfast, Cork, and Limerick which are already fairly high quality routes.

ELM327

The coverage of the island is now pretty universal. The only issue is still SPOF. (1 charger per site).

slave1

ELM327 wrote: »

The coverage of the island is now pretty universal. The only issue is still SPOF. (1 charger per site).

Ah, NorthWest is brutal

Black_Knight

Cork access doesn't feel as bad as the table suggests. I guess when Limerick, Waterford and Killarney are all under 150km away it's not too pressing

Black_Knight

MJohnston wrote: »

Here's my very rough summary of the charging capabilities of the major intercity routes on the island of Ireland:



I'm including any non-Tesla charger that's online on the main route, or about 1 or 2km offline. Tried not to include any that are in train stations or wherever there wouldn't be easy access. Also only including one set of chargers per direction where there's an Applegreen or Ionity set on each side of a motorway.

Also not including what's available in the cities themselves.

Score is:

((Rapids * 1.0) + (22kW * 0.25) / Distance) * 100

Is that shareable on drive? Be a nice one for the new chargers sticky thread.

ELM327

slave1 wrote: »

Ah, NorthWest is brutal

Not great but hardly brutal!

innrain

[QUOTE=MJohnston;115390667

Score is:

((Rapids * 1.0) + (22kW * 0.25) / Distance) * 100

[/QUOTE]

Very nice way of ranking. Question about the 0.25 on the standards. How you come up with it? Is it any algorithm behind it?
Also in my thinking the multi-charger sites should have a higher weighting constant.
I will think of it more but my half baked idea is that if you have 1/3 chance to find the charger occupied and add another charger overnight the probability does not halves to 1/6 but drops as 1/3 x 1/3 = 1/9. So n chargers would have 1/(3^n).

innrain

Cyrus wrote: »

just as an FYI when went parknasilla in the summer i was able to use a granny charger whenever i wanted, there were outdoor plugs at the woodland villas.

Cheers. I knew about the 3pin. I saw your post on plugshare. When planning a trip I consider the 3pin "only if everything else fails". We actually overlapped there few days. social media


Going back to Professor Moriarty question Dublin-Cork-Dublin in one day is easy. But the number of EVs is increasing much faster than the chargers. Hopefully by the time we go back to our usual routines ecars will have the hubs up and running.

Kramer

innrain wrote: »

Also in my thinking the multi-charger sites should have a higher weighting constant.

This.

Take the M7 towards Limerick, south of Portlaoise. Two chargers, Roscrea & Nenagh, are several kilometres off the motorway. Detouring to Roscrea would take close to 10 minutes & if it was ICE'd, or in use, you'd waste both time & range driving to it.
The exact same in Nenagh.

So if the only service area charger (Moneygall) was occupied, you'd be off driving around like a fool.

A hub, even two units, at the Moneygall location would be better than the three on that stretch now, as they are all single units, single point of failure.

ELM327

Kramer wrote: »

This.

Take the M7 towards Limerick, south of Portlaoise. Two chargers, Roscrea & Nenagh, are several kilometres off the motorway. Detouring to Roscrea would take close to 10 minutes & if it was ICE'd, or in use, you'd waste both time & range driving to it.
The exact same in Nenagh.

So if the only service area charger (Moneygall) was occupied, you'd be off driving around like a fool.

A hub, even two units, at the Moneygall location would be better than the three on that stretch now, as they are all single units, single point of failure.

Removing moneygall you are absolutely correct.


That specific moneygall location is supply limited to about 40kW peak across the charger. EG if AC and DC are in use both get about 20.

Kramer

ELM327 wrote: »

That specific moneygall location is supply limited to about 40kW peak across the charger. EG if AC and DC are in use both get about 20.

They should upgrade the supply to it. Nenagh & Roscrea will be left as 50kW singles, leaving Moneygall as the only viable hub option between Portlaoise & Limerick. It's actually a decent location for a hub.

It's visible from the motorway, has plenty of room, truck & coach parking, good food outlets, well known (named after Paddy "Barrack" O'Bama!) & far enough from Portlaoise or Dublin for people doing weekend trips to Kerry.

There's plenty of HV distribution nearby too I would imagine.

ECars though so probably a non runner.

the_amazing_raisin

I really like that chart, one of the best ways I think to measure the charging network is how easy it makes it to get to different places. 20 fast chargers aren't much use if they're all on the same stretch of motorway

cannco253

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/23/regional-disparities-in-electric-car-charging-points-revealed

Is there anything similar here that would show the number of chargers per X amount of people?

"The RAC has reported a doubling this year in the number of instances where drivers of electric vehicles have needed assistance after running out of charge, because charge points have been out of service, their home chargers have failed to charge overnight, or drivers have run out of charge before reaching a charge point." Has AA Ireland any stats on this or any generic breakdown service providers?

I didn't realise the number of different providers in the UK (14)?

MJohnston

Black_Knight wrote: »

Is that shareable on drive? Be a nice one for the new chargers sticky thread.

I've shared it as a Google Doc here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rbe1jMIwIP8K7WrsU5DP6l9ko0h97nyQ78IFW08TmJg/edit?usp=sharing

If anyone wants to adjust something, it's open for commenting, so let me know and I can change it. Also people can create a copy and do their own version if they want.

innrain wrote: »

Very nice way of ranking. Question about the 0.25 on the standards. How you come up with it? Is it any algorithm behind it?
Also in my thinking the multi-charger sites should have a higher weighting constant.
I will think of it more but my half baked idea is that if you have 1/3 chance to find the charger occupied and add another charger overnight the probability does not halves to 1/6 but drops as 1/3 x 1/3 = 1/9. So n chargers would have 1/(3^n).

The 0.25 was a little bit arbitrary and fairly simplified — essentially it's really a weight of how "useful" a 22kW charger might be compared to a rapid. Because of the variety of EVs out there, there's no good single answer to that (and you could definitely do different variations of this chart that adjust for different cars).

But to explain: most fast chargers charge at 50kW, most cars can use 22kW chargers at about 11kW. So the 22kW chargers have approximately 0.25 the utility to an average EV compared to a fast charger.

I could probably get more intricate and weight the high power 150kW chargers at a higher than 1.0 weight or something. Might do that in future.

graememk

ELM327 wrote: »

Not great but hardly brutal!

If you take out the ones at lifford, one near omagh (mellon country inn) and the one just outside enniskillen a big hole appears... (As they are chademo only (and 22kw ac) )

DrPhilG

graememk wrote: »

If you take out the ones at lifford, one near omagh (mellon country inn) and the one just outside enniskillen a big hole appears... (As they are chademo only (and 22kw ac) )

Precisely. CCS is poor up here.



Plus the one in Letterkenny only got the CCS upgrade about 18 months ago. And Derry has been on the blink for months, maxes out at 34kw.

Black_Knight

With that font, I'll never be able to take Phil's posts seriously from now on.