Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

Of course there is. Supply companies, National Grid, and generators are spending millions on planning for this, and have been doing for years.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/group/case-studies/electric-dreams-future-evs

http://nationalgridconnecting.com/fes-2017-day-insights/

https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars

https://www.edfenergy.com/large-business/energy-solutions

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-the-road

https://www.ovoenergy.com/ev-everywhere

https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to-grid-charger

That's just you though Tim and the numbers may appear to stack up, although you haven't mentioned or drawn attention to the power of the charger you would use. Let's say you have a 100 amp trip on your home supply and 80 amp rated RCD (safety leakage trip) as we have on our recent consumer unit installation. That's 19kW total, but If you have a power shower that would probably take 10kW, add in electric cooker, kettle, microwave, toaster, vacuum cleaner, heating pump, lighting, TV etc and you would already be close to that 19kW. Ok it's very unlikely to have that combined power draw but mentioned by way of illustration, although it assumes no direct electric heating.

Now consider your home EV charger, taking a Nissan Leaf as an example. They offer/suggest 3 or 7kW home chargers. You will get away with a 3kW charger providing a full charge in 14 hours, but the 7kW one will likely cause issues at some point or other during the up to 6 hours its on. Lets be super fair and suggest the battery is usually only one third depleted when its put on charge. Sadly this will make no difference to the power draw from charger. It will draw power at its max limit for most of the time its on due to the efficiency of the batteries. Some sort of off peak circuitry may help but would require substantial changes to consumer unit and wiring. Oh and this is just considering one small EV BTW.

Early adopters of EV's have gone into this with their eyes open, aware of re-charge points, usage limitations etc. and seem to have developed disciplines to cope comfortably, mainly adopting remote charging points I would suspect though. But what of Joe public when he/she is forced to adopt an EV and has a typical 8-10,000 miles travelling per year possibly on each of two vehicles. Never mind my average mileage as a retiree which has recently been in the order of 16,000 miles/year spread over three vehicles.

Improvements in EV's themselves with regard to battery performance and range over the next decade or two can only worsen the home charging scenario and as suggested there are no plans for homes to receive industrial three phase supplies.

Sorry chaps - we are forgetting something.

Provisioning has always been based on a combination of statistical analysis and common sense. There will never be the capacity to cater for a worst case scenario. The electricity network is based on provisioning rules that worked very well until now. The planning that Tim references will change the provisioning rules but will still make reasonable assumptions. For example, most car charging will take place when people are asleep and most cooking occurs when people are awake. Some limited intelligence in domestic installations will cater for usage anomalies. The planning already foresees cars being used as a reservoir that will feed back to the grid at peek usage times (evening meals etc) and defer charging until later on.

Sorry I still can't see this being enough to allow practical home charging Paul, with present home supplies at least. Who will be happy to have their car batteries drained early evening when other home demands are at their greatest. What about modern homes that already use off peak electric heating. Doubt there are enough hours in the day even if it could be averaged out.

It's already been suggested that EV's used in rural areas will have the greatest home charging demands. Unfortunately, and I speak from experience, many such areas already suffer occasionally from peak demand trips.

Precisely. National Grid and the supply companies have got many decades of experience at modelling demand, projecting it into the future, and planning the necessary network and generation capacity to support it.

Whilst I was consulting with EDF over the last 12 years or so I had the privilege to meet and work with teams of analysts and innovators who were all astonishingly knowledgeable about all aspects of the work and in whom I had complete confidence. They all shared the same level of cautious optimism about the industry's ability to cope with the projected rise in EV usage. People are already able to take advantage of cheaper electricity supply deals if they tailor their consumption patterns to suit patterns of demand.

It's certainly true that if everyone in the UK went out tomorrow, bought an EV and expected to use it to the same levels of high-mileage patterns we saw in the 20th century then the network would be unable to cope. But that's not what's going to happen. EV takeup is accelerating, but so are other reductions in electricity consumption (the move to LEDs has made a massive difference, just to name one example). The other big thing is the huge growth we are seeing in remote and teleworking, which is also having a big impact in terms of private mileage.

And don't forget (let's face it, I'm always banging on about it so how could you?) the refining of petroleum uses absolutely massive amounts of electricity which won't be needed as we cut our fossil fuel usage.

ICE cars will be around for years to come, and will always be available for those rich enough to be able to afford to run them. But it's not only cost that will turn most people away from ICE vehicles, the social pressures are already growing. In 15 years time petrolheads will be viewed like smokers or drug users are today.

I must confess that the the UK power and supply systems are now a bit beyond me.

But is EDF a DNO?. When I had to change my mains supply from overhead to underground (400 metres of trenching!!!) I was chatting to the (extraordinarily impressive) mains engineer who had recently been recruited from SSE in the UK. She reckoned that providing a charging network in Jersey was going to be challenging, but nothing like the problems and issues that the UK distribution network is facing.

Interesting Tim.

My friends in Kent with whom I celebrated the new year have just taken delivery of an Audi e-Tron 55 quattro, with which they are delighted. It replaced a Range Rover Sport, and they prefer pretty much everything about the new car.

EDF did them a cracking deal on their electricity contract (a deal which is only available to owners of EVs) which also included installing the charging box. My pal was extremely impressed that EDF have set up a special service for this, and that everyone he dealt with was very knowledgeable and professional.

No, they divested themselves of the DNO part of the business around 10 years ago to UK Power Networks, who are owned by the Chinese.

The DNOs in the UK are at the moment struggling more with managing a large increase in microgeneration than they are coping with rising demand for EVs. In the old days it was easy: all the demand in a distribution network came from domestic and commercial businesses, whilst all the supply came from the National Grid via the high voltage Transmission Network. It was relatively easy to balance the two at Grid Supply Point (GSP level) - effectively metering it at the substations that convert the high voltage Grid to the 240V distribution network.

Now what's happening is that there are loads of people creating small volumes of electricity directly on the network at 240V, so much so that the DNOs are having to cap the amount that can be exported back onto the 240V network across your MPAN/supply point - currently it's 3.8Kw, any more than that has to be spilled somehow as the network can't cope because once the high-voltage power has come off the grid into the distribution networks, it can't be put back up onto the Transmission Network. This also applies to the smaller solar farms that export at 240V, this is why there's so much demand for 2nd-life EV batteries to provide buffering and storage to extend the useful generation period of the solar and reduce the excess generation on the distribution network.

As more people switch to EVs this limit will be able to be raised as there will be more demand on the 240V network, but currently people are using battery, water heating, and electric thermal blocks to store their excess microgen capacity. So the DNOs are always happy when people install both solar PV arrays and EV batteries, it makes their life very easy - and of course like Rob and Shooter have reported, gives the owner effectively free motoring.

When I worked for VWG - there was a % of EV (as a percent of vehicles on the road) - that VWG had worked out the National Grid could cope with....I cannot remember the figure but I do know we were all shocked by how low the figure was.

So say 33% of the public buy a new EV in 2020.....could the NG cope....?

Shouldn't think so, but I've not seen any projections for that level of increase. 2019 saw 3% of new car sales being pure EV (4.600 cars). I'd expect it to more than double, possibly get up towards 10% even, but 33%? No chance.