ESB eCars

You're both missing the point, do we really NEED charge speeds of 150kW?

Even if I did drive a car that needs a mortgage to buy I'd still argue that 9 X 50kW chargers would be far better than 3 X 150kW units from the POV of queuing for a charge

Yes, we do

There was a survey a while back trying to figure out the amount of time people would be willing to wait for a charge

It pretty much came up with 15 mins as the max amount of time people would be waiting before it became an inconvenience

So in 15 mins you need to load as much range as possible, probably for another 250-300km. For most cars now that seems to be on the order of ~50-60kWh, assuming you're doing around 20kWh/100km

That works out to an average charging power of 200kW

Cars are working towards this by having much higher charging speeds and more predictable charging sessions

But the network needs to keep pace, which is why you see 350kW chargers getting installed even though only a few card can manage even close to that

And ESB being all proud of their 100kW chargers which can load share down to 50kW is pretty disheartening for the way things are going

But we don't get hubs with 9x 50kW chargers here, we're getting mighty hubs with between 2 and 4 plugs per location (and usually 1 fewer parking space than needed) because forward thinking be damned! So if we're only getting a few plugs per location then 150kW+ chargers are the way to go.

In an ideal world there'd be a mix of 150kW+ and 50kW chargers at each location (how about 2x 150kW + 3x 50kW) and let people choose to pay more per kWh at the faster charger (I would happily pay more to use a third of the time to charge) and let people pay less per kWh at the slower charger (if they want to take the time to eat, or don't have a car capable of high power charging or whatever).

It's not like we, the experienced users of EVs, are going to have our input listened to anyway, we should be lucky we're getting anything at all.

Yea but if you drive a leaf then you couldn't charge much faster than 50KW so feck everyone else.

While we're at it we might as well stick install CCS and Chademo in the same 1:1 ratio.

I absolutely agree, we're starting to see more and more cars going well over the 150kW mark

VW are going to 175kW which is the max they can get at 400V

Kia/Hyundai are well over 200kW with an 800V charger

Tesla are up at 250kW, although I assume they're limited to 175kW on a regular CCS charger

So showing off a 150kW charger which loads splits for two cars as top of the line is just not good enough anymore

Honestly a couple of years ago I thought 150kW was as good as it was going to get but it seems we've still got some mileage to go on charging speeds. Seems 350kW is the new top end of the spectrum

Just read there's around 77,000 EVs on the road according to the SEAI

So Leafs would be around 10% of that number and probably another 10% are CCS cars limited to around 50kW

I guess there'd be a good number around the 70-100kW region but considering the top selling EVs are all well over 100kW then there's a definite requirement for 150kW chargers

I'd say that's quite likely the case, I'm just quoting the SEAI on this one 😉

The stats still lean very heavily in favour of cars with over 100kW of charging power

This is an argument for dynamic balancing but not for low power overall. My car still chargers with 100kW @ 50% SoC. I had one occasion when I stoped charging @150kW. I don't remember now the SoC but the charging session was few minutes and it was sufficient for me. New cars coming are charging faster and faster.

Yeah but that still doesn't mean a 100kW charger is going to be adequate for the job

Dynamic balancing doesn't hamper managing grid limitations.

Especially if you also put battery storage on site to be a buffer.....

An illustration of how dynamic balancing should work vs the conventional way.....

Site has 400 kW of power available.

In the conventional way we can have 4 x 100 kW site.

Taycan arrives and charges at 100 kW max......

Leaf charges at 50 kW.....

Dynamic balancing......

4 chargers - all individually capable of pulling max site power if only one car there.....

However the power is split between chargers as required.

2 examples.....

Example 1

Taycan and Leaf on site

Taycan pulls 270 kW and the Leaf - 50 kW - a power demand of 320 kW out of 400 kW available.

Example 2

Taycan and 2 x e208s (100 kW capable) are on site.

If the 208s are pulling 100 kW simultaneously then the Taycan can be allocated 200 kW.

The beauty of Dynamic management however is that we know the charging tapers off on both e208s and Taycan.

So we can reallocate power as more power frees up.

For example when the e208s drop to 50 or when Taycan tapers back to 120....

We split a 150 kW charger to 2 x 75 kW for 2 cars not because of tech or grid limitations.

But because of the limitations of ESB eCars and their vision.

Bjorn showed this exact idea in a rural spot in Norway. 300kWh battery with a 43kW grid connection and a 2*150kW charger. So you can charge at 150kW for 2 hours before the battery is empty and you're running on the 43kW connection.