ESB eCars

So haven't really used these chargers too much. Pulled into Ballysimon Road, Limerick on Sunday to charger (C6REJ) which is meant to be a 150kw charger. Battery was at 18% and I had entered in the navigation I was going to Dublin so it was pre-heating for about 10 mins before I arrived. I plugged in and it was pulling 25kw. There were no other cars plugged in while I was there. It was definitely the newer charger, are these just unpredictable or has anyone else that used this charge experienced something similar ?

Here are list of people who buy/ sell directly to the market.

Same guess here. I would also guess that ecars is a trading name of that Innovation LTD as opposed to a separate company.

Is pre-heating a battery a requirement above 12 to 15C...? I thought it was only a thing on colder days?

It depends which brand. Tesla is heating up to around 50C so defo still needed. Having said that, these temps are required for speeds of 150kW + so 25kW is defo* some fault from the supply side.

PlugShare reports are quite positive, maybe some spurious thing. There was an interesting article on electrive about a reliability index which shows that both chargers/cars manufacturers have some work to do in informing customers of issues during the charging session

depends on the car, I've found the EV6 max charging power moves in jumps. I don't have an OBD dongle to verify the exact battery temperature (but can make an educated guess based on from Telsa Bjorn videos) that it can take 220kW+ when the battery is 25 Degrees, 170kW when the battery is 20 degrees, 120kW when the battery is 15 degrees. Even in 15 degree ambient weather the preconditioning is needed to get up to the mid 20s in the battery pack (and the peak charging power)

I had 80% charge when I plugged in on the free day last week, plugged in after about 5-10 minutes of precon and got 64kW on a V2 charger so 25kW is unacceptably slow and is clearly a fault with ecars, I've also got a M3 RWD

They are all very different. Tesla's tend to push for very high temps on their batteries (40°C+). VW's need 20°C+ for Max rate.

The EV6 is impressive at 15°C but its also probably because the Kia is an 800V system so they can use half the amps and yet still achieve the high kW rates so they are not stressing the battery.

Thats on a Tesla charger where higher amps are allowed. If you used Ionity or Ecars (or any other 150-350kW unit you would have got less than 64. Tesla OS differentiates between charging at a supercharger and other DC charging. Different parameters apply for both

The battery will never let itself get fully depleted so should never take the full 12.8 kWh. As you're car on has a 3.6kW charger onboard, that's its max and it will charge at the same rate on standard public chargers and your home Zappi, so if you were only connected to the public for 2hr40min and you know it takes 3hrs30min to charge, it wouldn't be a full charge.

Multiple cars should be able to charge on the same charger, it's normally only limited by the poor parking layouts as you saw and has been discussed here a lot. The car that went on the DC charger was getting a fast charge which it likely needed to complete it's journey and couldn't wait a few hours on you to move. They really shouldn't have 'fast' and 'slow' chargers on the same spot but that's another discussion.

The difference in figures is caused by power transmission loss. The figures you've provided show a transmission loss of around 20%, a bit on the high side but not unheard off. Might sound high until you remember that a petrol engine can loose up to 80% of it's fuels thermal efficiency as waste heat, friction etc.

I think the bigger problem is based on those figures you're paying €0.82 /kWh when even ecars own rip off rate on PAYG standard is €0.563 /kWh? Have you done the sums? I'd imagine even at current petrol prices €10 worth of petrol would get you much farther.

Personally none of my PHEVs have ever touched a paid public charger as it was never cheaper than running on petrol, even before energy prices went nuts.

The parking seems awkward but might be done that way to protect the chargers from loons reversing into them?

I came across the opposite, the charger delivered more than I paid for, it also under reported speed, 10 kwh where as it should be delivering around 15kwh,

You paid too much, use the ecars app its only 56 cents per kwh or there are other providers which depend on use maybe be cheaper again, seeing that you have an EV also it might be worth checking out some of the plans available,

Charging loss seems very high, put 2000w (2kw) into a kettle it will boil in a few minutes, you have that spread over 2,5 hours, I would think the charger needs to be recalibrated.

Your wife might need to decide to where to charge, or possibly just suffer the excess, she probably has limited options, maybe consult a A better route planner, it helps making those decisions I believe.

Some ecars units differ from others, they could be fine, 2 cars charge at one time, some only 1 and some might allow 2 cars but limit the power to both.

You probably would have got more help if you said nothing about the hybrid, any way I would continue as your are doing, enjoy and well wear, I don't know of any phev that cheaper to run on petrol plus the fact of using less petrol means you don't have the hassle or waste so much time filling up with petrol, much easier to charge a car I believe, especially when your there for 2.5 hours and do please tell me why you are at that particular service station, you don't have to give anything away, for example "work".

Is that a major problem? If it is then it's massively under-reported. I'd actually see this layout as being more difficult to park in so more likely to cause such incidents

It's herringbone parking all the way along the side of this site. Unfortunately nothing to do with the charger location or protecting them. Just maximising parking spaces and not charging bays