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How long will it take to recharge these hundreds of vehicles, and who will be around to take them out of their charging stations and move in a new vehicle? Ele
by ping_pong 6y ago
How long will it take to recharge these hundreds of vehicles, and who will be around to take them out of their charging stations and move in a new vehicle?
Electric vehicles are great but at scale, the issues around charging them daily are very real. It works for a single homeowner, but if a post office has 100(?) trucks, and it takes 2 hours to charge, someone needs to be there to keep track of them, unless you expect 100 charging stations.
- Robotbeat 6y agoYou don’t need a “charging station,” you just need an outlet. And you don’t need someone to “charge” them except the person who parked it. It charges at night after use. An exterior outlet costs almost nothing compared to the fully burdened cost of a parking space. Of all the “very real” problems with electric vehicles, you picked two or three things that aren’t.
- nradov 6y agoAt most post offices the trucks are parked outside without electrical outlets nearby. Sure those can be built but it will take a while. In many cases the circuit supplying the facility will have to be upgraded.
- Robotbeat 6y agoAny parking lot with lamp posts has electricity. Takes way less time to install an exterior outlet than it does to build a vehicle.
- innocenat 6y agoAre you implying that circuit driving the lamp posts can handle multiple 15A load?
- SECProto 6y agoYou'd be surprised how much load runs through a chain of streetlights. 3phase/400V and they pull heavy duty conductors through the conduit. Could definitely handle multiple 120v/15A equivalents (but it'd be way cheaper and more effective to pull dedicated conduit + conductor)
- clort 6y agoalso: In my city (in UK) the lamp posts date from a long time ago. Only a few years ago all the sodium lamps were replaced by lower power LEDs, which presumably means that much of the cabling is now massively redundant.
- mavhc 6y agoCorrect, which is why they're installing lamp post EV chargers
- makomk 6y agoDon't underestimate the efficiency of old-fashioned sodium lamps, they're pretty close to that of LEDs from what I understand. I think part of the reason places are so keen to install LED streetlights is that on paper they have a much longer lifespan than the bulbs in the sodium lamps they're replacing. Also, they're more modern and everyone knows how efficient they are.
- Sanzig 6y agoLow pressure sodium vapor lamps are also very yellow [1], whereas a modern LED is much more broad-spectrum and thus looks nicer. Unfortunately, it does mean that LED lamps are a greater hazard for light pollution. [1] Low-pressure sodium vapor lamp spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp#/media/File:Low-pressure_sodium_lamp_spectrum.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp#/media/File:...
- clort 6y ago
- pionar 6y agoThose lamp posts aren't close to every space. Are you going to run extension cords for the 150+ feet to each outlying vehicle? No? Then you have to tear up asphalt to lay down new lines. That's not cheap, especially with a USPS that's so strapped for money right now (for political reasons).
- ksec 6y ago1. Do they park at the same place every night? 2. Do they have to install electrical charging to all possible parking space? 3. Are these installation paid by government or the USPS? 4. Are those installation done on government property? Or on private property? Do the owner agree to do so? 5. Miles and Maintenance / TCO flavour Electric in these usage? 6. Insurance?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xyzzyz 6y agoIf you have more than one vehicle that you need to charge, you need more than one outlet. Worse, you cannot just get connect all of them to one outlet through daisy chained extension cords: you need separate 120V circuit for each vehicle. Even if you are lucky enough to have multiple outlets around where you park your fleet, these will likely all be on the same circuit. This problem is of course solvable, you need to build a charging station. The point is that you need more than "just an outlet".
- Robotbeat 6y agoNope. You only need a 15A branch per vehicle. You can install a 30A branch, too, if you like, and two poles of those are enough for 4 vehicles. For slow charging purposes, 120V exterior outlets are more than good enough and have commonly been used for government electric vehicles for decades.
- TylerE 6y agoSlow charging may not be fast enough. Around here, I'll sometimes see them making (mostly) parcel deliverys as late as 9PM, and then they're out in the morning at 4 or 5AM.
- Tostino 6y agoThose areas should splurge for fast charging then. Plenty of areas could get by with slow charging though.
- richardw 6y agoI think if a parking area has many vehicles in one place it might be easier to move the charging infrastructure around them. I’d assume that can be done easier than moving refuelling infrastructure. So maybe 100 vehicles could have 10 charging widgets on wheels with cords to their base point, 2 people to hook up and move to the next one that is done.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _ph_ 6y agoJust put a power outlet - only minimally more beefy than a normal wall socket - at each parking lot. Over night, they are easily charged no need to move them around.