ESB eCars

That's a misconception, Mad_Lad. Most people who stop for petrol / diesel are on their way after the 3-4 minutes and don't buy much / anything in the shop. Despite the high pump prices, there is actually very little margin on fuel. Whereas most people who stop for electricity spend a lot more time there and they will also likely spend money on extremely high margin items like coffee. This is very lucrative for the garages.

This is also a misconception. Most garages have 4-8+ pumps, selling fuel at about 3cpl margin (so the head of Maxol said on newstalk when talking about the recent increases, their margin remained at that level). Even if no one buys anything in the shops the throughput is much more on the fossil pumps so you might easily sell 4,000+ liters an hour. That 4,000 liters gives you a margin of €120 per hour. Probably could have more in a larger services and less in a small local station but you get the idea. If you more rationally theorize that there are some in store purchases, these are often 80%+ margin (think coffee!) and that's what drives the real profits. 4,000 liters per hour over 8 pumps means you need 8-12 cars per pump per hour, and then you have 32-48 purchasers per hour that you only need to get a few to make instore purchases to bump up the margin. These purchasers are spread across multiple pumps with 3-4 mins dwell time - meaning there's no funnel to the demand as there's no queue.

How many EV "pumps" (at €50k-€150k+ each) do you need to reach 32-48 purchasers per hour? Additionally unless you install the "pumps" yourself and retail the electricity, you also lose the 3cpl margin off that too.

EV owners (and we're on our 4th) have the misconception that they would be preferred customers by garages when in reality the dwell time is too long. Even if you buy coffee etc.

I know nothing about HVDC connections but I’m going to hazard a guess that the problem isn’t purely money, it’s resourcing. ESBN probably have a very small, highly trained and highly paid cohort of staff who work on these kinds of projects.

The projects are probably highly dependent on hardware elsewhere in the network, it’s not just a case of drawing power from the nearest HV line and plugging it all together. Extra switchgear may need to be fitted to a nearby substation, power lines to that substation may need to be upgraded, etc.

That said, the number of chargers that we need to install isn’t going to get any smaller so someone needs to figure out how to overcome these problems.

Funny you should say that. We were in Clare earlier last week and the charging situation there is pretty dire. We actually managed to use the DC in Wednesday night at Lahinch. We stayed in Ballyvaughan and Lahinch is the only public charging point anywhere "near", albeit 30 km each way from where we stayed. A hybrid was plugged into the AC there when we arrived and a second hybrid arrived while we were charging and they looked like they'd love to plugin too. As the DC is 50 kW that were all of the public charging points at the Clare WAW section in question in use for 80 minutes. Thu-Sun must have been pretty tough if you needed to charge.

On the way back home we stopped at Birdhill SuC where there were A) plenty of free chargers and B) didn't need to spend 80 minutes charging due to higher speeds. That felt great in comparison. If ESBN got their finger out and got the Athenry SuC connected it would have been a ESB free weekend for us. And in the future for all the CCS equipped cars when the SuC opens for non-Teslas.

Presumably they still need planning permission for upgrading the grid connection. I imagine at the very least new transformers would be needed and possibly new cables would need to be brought from the high voltage line

The government can’t just pick some private companies and ‘support’ them, that could be a breach of EU State Aid regulations. What it can do (and should have done a long time ago) is issue a tender for private companies to install and/or operate a pre-determined network of EV charge points. The government can then award one or more companies the right to take part in that contract and pay some/all of the cost. This is how the government subsidises the internal flights between Donegal to Dublin and a bunch of other things.

I don't think were going to need 100 bay sites, but rather more and more sites spread out along the motorway networks with multiple chargers at each site, to give people genuine choice in where they stop, and give everyone 2-3 decent options when their battery gets low.. then as EV numbers grow, the sites should be expanded to meet demand. I see this as being entirely handled by the private sector.

Ireland isn't big enough to warrant super hubs, and by the time we get to a point where EV's outnumber ICE's, the charging speeds will have increased enough that 15-20 minute charges will be sufficient (there already are in a lot of cars (Tesla's/Porche etc..) where you can even do this already).

Every motorway services should have banks of chargers, able to DC charge at least 10 cars (for now), so if you're heading up/down the country, you have multiple options as to where you get your little top up.. and if a site is busy, the next one is only 15-20km up/down the road.

But lets get realistic about our current situation. It's 2022 and eCars have 2 sites where more than 3 cars can DC charge simultaneously (Ionity have 5, Tesla have 5, soon to be 8), so it's going to happen, but just not by the hand of eCars.

I just can't wait for the serious players to move into Ireland when it starts looking like a viable business proposition to them, so eCars can get back to doing what they do best....

Every Little Helps.

I think I said it before but if Aldi or Lidl or someone installed 4 of those 200kW Delta units with 2 plugs each plus batteries and solar at all or most of their stores, they'd immediately get the most extensive charging network in Ireland, a great lure for customers, cheaper energy, immunity from power cuts and new revenue streams from charging or from selling power to the grid

Seems like a no brainet tbh

It's not related to their business model though. They want people in store and to spend some time there, especially in the middle aisles. 25-50kW DC makes sense, especially as we move forward and these are not considered en route chargers. Spending an hour on a 25-50kW DC charger whilst doing your shopping could be the norm.

Integrating a high throughput station may actually harm their business.

If I were in charge of lidl or aldi (or any other shopping chain) I'd put in banks of 25kW DC chargers. 80c per kWh, refunded in full on your till receipt.

So have one or two 50kW chargers too. I say banks of 2*25kW DC as they require no supply upgrade from 2*22kW AC, and even the hardware there's a big price difference between 25kW and 50kW DC units. You get the general gist of it though.

Multiples of low-medium powered DC chargers, free if you shop in the store, expensive if you dont. Main thing is though, have enough that you don't have to rush back to the car.

I do think in "the future" we'll go like some colder parts of the US and Canada, where there are very low power outlets at all parking spaces. They use them for block heaters. Even 2-4kW. But the ubiquitous nature means having to look for somewhere to charge is a thing of the past. As is having to move the car etc, that's fine for early adapters but you dont and cant expect good behavior to come from everyone.