Random EV thoughts.....

The 1 thing going against the M3 Services in Mulhuddart is it's a bit of a ball ache to get back on the M3 outbound from it... other than that, it would be a great location for a hub of some sort.. Catch a lot of inbound traffic visiting Dublin, and a nice top up before hitting the M50/City..

angry young man here....

"Hired gun for the luddites of mediocrity" has to be the quote of the year so far

Nah, my car is set to charge at 3am, and it’s always finished by about 7am…. Never have to worry about clocks changing!!!!!

also, just on this, does everyone actually schedule their car to charge at bang on midnight/11pm to coincide with the night rate starting? I’d say it puts an awful strain on the grid if you have thousands and thousands of cars all suddenly pulling 7kW at that exact same moment!!!

I've always just kept it in my head that night rates are between midnight and 8am. I lose an hour on one side but luckily it doesn't make a huge difference for me ye

Ha, yeah they'll put type 3c plugs on the chargers hand out adapters with each car so only stellantis cars can use them

15,000 isn't that many when you consider the size of most European countries. France alone has 67 million people, so even 1% EV adoption and occasional public charging use would quickly overwhelm that network

Tesla’s have been coming with 100kWh batteries for years now.

in reality though who’s going to be charging from 0-100% every night?

night period is 9 hours, so you could take on 63kWh in that time. If you needed more in a single nightly charge, I’d say that’d be an outlier rather than the norm.

Beware the clock on your night rate meter can drift a bit over time, as in 10 or 15 minutes different from actual time. It's worse on older more mechanical clocks but the newer ones are supposed to get messages to correct themselves but some don't. Check the time on the meter versus your phone time. I typically set it to come on quite late for multiple reasons

1) I don't want car sitting at 100% for long periods un necessarily

2) Charging warns battery increasing range but battery cools after charging stops, so handy having warmer battery in morning.

3) I have preheat cabin set to come on, the amount of preheat depends on the weather, but typically 15 minutes, I make sure charging is finished before preheat comes on. This also warms the battery and reduces the need for cabin heating increasing the range.

4) I have charging set to continue way past normal say until 9am, in case battery is very, very low but also car equalises the cells when at 100%. Preheat can also drain battery below 100% as it takes more power than charger provides, so sometimes battery is 99% after preheat.

I typically start charging at 00:25 or 01:25 until 09:00 which gives times for battery to fill to 100% no matter how low.

What rate does your ID3 charge at? Battery size?

Just wondering what you'd have to do to charge your car fully within the night rate, say maybe in 5 yrs time when big batteries are the norm?

What sort of cost is involved to get a 3-phase install done?

I appreciate it you'll never be starting at 0% battery, but just curious about what charging speeds at home will be in the future?

Hmm. Fair points.

The info on this stuff takes quite a bit of weeding out i find.

I see no reason for a 7.2kw limit domestically. My shower is ~11kw. Granted, its on the CU side and doesn't run for hours at a time but with proper design, it really shouldn't be an issue.

Still, i think going forward, eventually, batteries will be fine with (commercial) high power DC charging and domestic charging will become a luxury rather than a necessity, used for trickle charging. It's a fascinating scene atm.

Yeah I feel like people who think mainstream EVs are going to have 200kWh batteries are dreaming.

Even if all the upcoming battery technologies pay off it'll likely translate into smaller lighter batteries for most cars rather than more capacity 

I think 50-80kWh is going to become the norm for most cars for the next decade. Most people are fine with a car that will go 300-400km between charges. Bigger batteries will be reserved for the luxury segment 

I have no problem with one or two stops on a journey, but I would have a problem with waiting an hour in a queue for a charger. The public fast charging network is the weak link in all this and EV sales are increasing way faster than the network, so things are only going to get worse.

Nothing stopping you having two EV's charging at the full 7.4kW each all night long. You just need to have the enhanced electricity supply of 16kVA and then ensure that the charge points are load sensing just in case something else like a kettle comes on for a few mins, but you can easily get your proposed 99kWh on a single phase supply overnight.

If needs be you can even go up another notch to 20kVA.

in the event of a power cut can you run a cable from an EV into your house , through an inverter to keep a few plugs going? our house had a powercut because of a road side fault a few weeks back , I wouldn't mind having an option or 2 if it happens again

I saw some articles alright about by directional tech in the offing, I just want to run a cable through an open window and keep a few gadgets going in the living room, last time my kids were on the verge of moving into the car lol

Just use load sensing charge points. Its almost standard on new charge points now.

You have 15-20A to spare when the two cars are charging and you have 9hrs to get your 99kWh. Easily achievable, even if you leave to go to work before night rate ends.... could be done in 7hrs even.

Dishwashers etc are not a big deal. They only heat water for a very short period of time during their 2hr cycle and the charge points can ramp down by 1kW to allow that to happen for the few minutes it takes them to heat the water. The rest of the wash cycle is only a few hundred watts. Not a problem.

Basically, you dont need more than 16kVA to get 99kWh's into your cars overnight.

That's insane. More usable energy than my ioniq28. And it takes CCS.