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I was talking with my car dealer as I wanted to buy an electric car. He was using the car for his own usage to get a good idea. The main thing that came out is

by kuon 4y ago

I was talking with my car dealer as I wanted to buy an electric car. He was using the car for his own usage to get a good idea. The main thing that came out is that most available charging stations are 22kW max and very often they are shared using "smart charge", which basically means a lower duty cycle (/N). In practice it means it requires about 7 hours to charge the 50kW/h battery. After this discussion, I asked my utility company, and it would cost around $20k to install a 22kW charging station in my home. And what the person told me over the phone was basically "the grid is not ready, we would need to upgrade hundred of meters of cable". This is in Europe (Switzerland), but it shows how impractical super fast charging is with the current state of the grid and infrastructure (we can't start a turbine when you plug your car). I don't know if trying to make it work is possible. The current grid was built over decades. To me it seems way easier to use other form of energy transfer (hydrogen refill or battery swap). Edit: I'm at the limit of the current I can draw from the utility line (40A for my house) as I have a geothermal pump that can use up to 25A when running. Even if I put a smaller charging station, the utility will have to change my introduction box, and in all cases it is quite expensive. I asked for 22kW because we live in a remote location, and while not strictly necessary, it might become so in the future, for example if we have visitors with 3 cars, they might need recharge.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
You don't need a fast charger at home though. 2kW on off-peak hours is fine. That's >100kWh per week. Save the fast charger for the road trip or for the people with the 1hr commute to use on the way home when they top up once a fortnight. Or better yet start building infrastructure for a less insane and stupid transport method and transition away from cars altogether.
alkonaut 4y ago
I have 3x25A fuses at 230V (which is normal here, you either have 3x20 or 3x25 typically) so I could probably run a 22kW charger. But I couldn't run it and run much other stuff at the same time! I guess the solution is to have something store the capacity, i.e. a second battery. If one really needs to charge at home very quickly (e.g. you are a taxi driver or have some other specific reason) and you can't overload the grid, then the solution must be to slowly charge a battery at home when the car is used, just like most EV owners slowly charge the car over night. Then the home battery can be quickly emptied into the car for a fast charge. In the end, it's just like having 2EVs where one is charging while the other isn't. And of course, buying a 100kWh wall battery is going to also set you back a large part of the cost of a second car too, just like your $20k for a better electricity connection. BUT - the dual battery solution doesn't have the tragedy of the commons issue where not everyone can do it. I doubt more than a single digit % would ever consider needing fast charge at home though.
CuriousSkeptic 4y ago
When would you need fast charging at home?
- gregoriol 4y ago
  While not strictly useful at home, the problem of connecting to the grid would be the same for many places you could go and need fast charging.
- kuon 4y ago
  Well, I looked at our current use of the cars. I live in a remote area and car is my only option. Also the area is mountainous and after doing some testing and having the car for a week, I have about 100km autonomy with 50kW/h battery when driving around, after that at around 10%, the car turns on low power mode and is very slow (I'd say dangerous) to drive. On a typical day, my wife does about 40km, so everything is fine, but twice a week I have to go to the music school with my kids and it's 60km away (120km round trip), so I have to be sure to be on a full charge before leaving as I cannot charge the car there, and the time I have to charge the car before leaving is about 2h. And this is for one car, I also have a car for my business. I didn't plan to switch to electric yet, but I know I'll have too, thus the 22kW charging station to have some margin to be able to charge them both. Also, the utility have to upgrade the cables even for 11kW, and the price isn't very different. The car I tested is a Toyota Proace.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    EVs should overperform in comparison with ICE at high altitudes and in hilly regions, due to less efficient burning and the ability to regen. Remote areas with unpredictable usage is probably their weak spot, but a hybrid should still be a solid option for the same reasons EVs work well in the mountains.
    - kuon 4y ago
      Yes, I am looking at plug in hybrid now.
    - 4y ago
fragmede 4y ago
I... what are you doing that you need a 22kW charging station? 7 hrs to charge a 50 kW/h battery seems fine. Are you a taxi driver?
clouddrover 4y ago
You can also have a large battery buffer supporting standard chargers. Or battery integrated chargers are also interesting because they're fast to deploy and cheap to install (though the individual units are more expensive due to the battery): https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/volkswagen-group-and-bp-launch-strategic-partnership-to-rapidly-roll-out-ev-fast-charging-in-europe.html https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/pre... https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger-200/ https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger-200/
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Ok, so there's a key point here, and that's that fast charging is not meant for the home! You can fully charge an EV overnight on a 7KW charger. You don't need a fast charger at home. The other thing is that home chargers are AC and the car converts the current. This means that there's a cap to how much power you can give it. For example, my car can only accept 11KW and that's pretty typical. So 22KW chargers are a waste at home today. Maybe you'd need a fast charger at home if you never sleep. But the majority of people spend at least 7 hours at home. You'll always wake up to a fully charged car. Why do you need anything else?
- janlaureys 4y ago
  Hell I park my car in an underground parking garage, and it's been a whole discussion about who wants to and how they want to install 7kW/11/kW chargers. In the meantime I just charge it on the wall plug now and then. Yeah sometimes my battery is not fully charged, but I hardly ever drive 450km in one go anyway.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    A few years ago one of my neighbours asked for a socket in the underground car park. I assume they paid the full cost themselves, although it probably wasn't that much -- the electrical supply to the building including the meters for each apartment are just behind his parking space. They installed a normal 16A 400V 3P+E plug (the big red one), which is an easy 11kW. There isn't any sort of 'car charger' on the wall, just this socket.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  > You don't need a fast charger at home. This is such an arrogant statement. I may not "need" 3 petabytes of storage for my home media server, but I have it. I may not "need" a 64-core Threadripper 3990X workstation with 256 GB of RAM, but I have it. I may not "need" enterprise-grade networking and WiFi gear, but I have it. I may not "need" a 60 kW Kohler diesel generator, but I have it. > Why do you need anything else? Because he wants it. The same reason I have everything I listed.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
No one needs a 22KW charger in their home. The speed you quote for a shared 22KW with multiple cars charging is the same as a standard home 7KW charger (e.g. 60Kwh car charging to full from 0 while you sleep for 8 hours, or 2 of those cars charging from 20-80%). But no one drives that many miles per day consistently. Most normal people can survive with a standard plug, even the 7KW is a luxury to let you think less about it and to help the grid by charging faster when the grid is off peak, enabling faster rollout of cheap renewables.
- kuon 4y ago
  As I said in another comment, I don't absolutely need 22kW now. But I am at the limit of the capacity of my current line, so in all scenarios, I would need to invest quite a bit.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Buying a lot of something because it would cost the same for a small amount and 'needing' the larger amount are different things. 22Kw is still overkill for a home, even if it makes sense financially if the costs are mostly fixed based on things other than charging rate.
    - nomel 4y ago
      > 22Kw is still overkill for a home I know many homes with three adults (one driving parent, two kids) who have cars. 22kW isn't enough to charge three cars + home. It's not that crazy, considering the average home has 1.9 cars.
squishy47 4y ago
$20k to install a 22kW charger!!!! i was quoted £1300 (uk) to have one fitted and i thought that was expensive! to reply to another comment about why a 22kW is needed. if you're on a flexi tariff where energy price is super cheap from like 12-4am then having it fully charge in that time is needed to maximise the best price
- Bayart 4y ago
  $20k problably includes the cost of digging tranches and lay new cables. Here in France it's tops a few thousand euros if you want 36kVA, but that doesn't include civil engineering.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  22kwh is 90 amps at 230 volts. Surprised is 20k to install a single one of these. In the us most newer homes have 200+ amps of service providing 48kw of peak electric capacity.
  - WatchDog 4y ago
    Aren't US homes running at 120 volts? 22kw at 230 volts would be ~95 amps. 22kw at 120 volts would be ~183 amps. 48kw at 120 volts would be 400 amps.
    - proto_lambda 4y ago
      No, US homes are typically 240V split-phase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power
    - goodcanadian 4y ago
      Aren't US homes running at 120 volts? Yes . . . and no. In North America, homes are actually supplied with 240V. A split-phase system with a centre-tap transformer is then used to create two 120V "phases." So, your typical outlets will be on one of two 120V phases. However, there are usually a couple of 240V outlets as well for things like electric stoves, and clothes dryers. So, in short, single phase 240V is available in essentially every U.S. household. The cars, themselves, usually require 3-phase 240V to do 22kW. You are highly unlikely to have access to that in a U.S. home.
megablast 4y ago
Electric cars are clearly not the solution.
jnsaff2 4y ago
I happen to have 22kW at home (3x32A) but my TM3LR is only capable of 11kW (3x16A) but this means that no matter what my car can always be charged during the time I sleep. Most of the time in practice however I only charge during the hours electricity is really cheap as it's not too often I come in with a completely empty battery and need to drive full battery capacity next day (two days of ~500km each in a row). I find fast charging is only needed for road trips and quite possibly for fleet operations (taxis, delivery vans etc). For a private car 11kW is plenty and less could be doable as well. As for grid .. our grid here in Estonia has the opposite problems, most people want to start selling to the grid with solar panels. And grid people being really inflexible (in a charitable interpretation) or greedy (by wanting to people pay for all the work needed to modernize the aging grid) also want to charge ridiculous fees for any increases in capacity. With lots of EV's I kinda understand that the grid may have more problems but with local generation the load on the grid goes down (as electricity needs to be transported much shorter distances, think: your neighbors). So my trust that 3x32A installation cost of $20k is justified is very low (unless this is a rural farm or something that really is far from nearest transformer). Just last week someone was quoted 4 million euros to upgrade an existing connection to support a 15kW PV installation (rural, but most of the cost came apparently from needing to upgrade a 330kV transformer station).
maeln 4y ago
I have a Renault Zoe and I charge mostly outside on 22kW charger. The Zoe 2021 has a 42kW/h battery and it take ~2h to fully charge. I don't understand how you get to the 7h figure ?
- kuon 4y ago
  The car dealer told me he lives in a building with a common parking where the 22kW charger doesn't have 100% duty cycle.
valdiorn 4y ago
I used to work for Reykjavik Energy as a junior analyst about 12 years ago. One of my tasks was using their geo database to pull out cable and transformer data for every neighbourhood and use it to generate load models (using Siemens PSS mostly). We knew the high voltage system (100kv+) was fine as there are quite a few big power hungry users on the network. We focused our research on the "neighbourhood transformers" - These are the transformers that take you from 11kv to 400v (3 phase, of which one leg is connected to a consumer fuseboard). They're generally sized so that each transformer can service a small neighborhood, but power can be routed through less efficient ways in case they break. We combined all the electrical data with traffic data to estimate when people finish work and would likely be plugging their cars in at home. The conclusion we came to was that if only 15 percent of homes wanted fast charge ability (which at the time was a lot less than what testa offers today) the majority of the city's transformers would be over their current limit. Iceland has a pretty decent and modern power infrastructure so this was a bit of a shock to everyone. I think my research was even presented to parliament :)
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Happy to see that someone actually did make some accurate calculations and found out with actual data that - even in a country where the main distribution lines are just fine and the "local" transformers and lines are modern/recent - the "last km" is/will be an issue. Now imagine what would be the results of similar analysis in European cities (relatively densely inhabited, with an aged/aging infrastructure, a number of limitations for new lines and what not). I mean, if you live in a solo or bifamily (or even very small condo's) house somewhere outside the city, or in a village, there will probably be less issues with upgrading the lines and transformers (at a cost), but for medium or large condo's in or near the city centre it will be impossible to provide enough power even for 7kW chargers when there will be many of them. AFAIK here (Italy) a typical "local" transformer 20,000 to 380 V or 10,000 to 380V, it depends on the specific areas, is usually within the 300/400 kW range and serves 50-100 houses/apartments, each one having 3-4.5-6 kW contracts, and it is already near 100% use. When/if each house (or anyway a recharge column for 1 car each) will want (or need) some 7 kW available, even if only at night, the amount of 380V electricity will be at the very least twice the current one. Very likely the current infrastructure can bear an increase of 5-10%, maybe 15%, and as said this with only "slow" chargers.
Faaak 4y ago
There are plenty of super fast charging stations (DC) in switzerland (Gofast for example). You don't need 22kW at home. 7kW is plenty enough for a night charge.
yunohn 4y ago
> the grid is not ready, we would need to upgrade hundred of meters of cable I would compare this to the last-mile issues facing internet connections, eg gigabit fiber. It’s a chicken-egg problem with not enough electric car demand leading to energy companies deciding that it’s not worth providing the right supply.
piokoch 4y ago
That's only one of many, many issues electric cars "revolution" is going to face. Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal, according to those stats [1] we would need: "meeting UK electric car targets for 2050 would require production of just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production." And this is only UK. In order to switch to EV we need revolution in battery production, we need revolution in electricity production and grid construction and I don't see any of this happening for now. I am tracking all news about "new, better battery" and typically it at the end of the news it turns out, that this new great battery weight is 2 tonnes or it can work in temperature range up to -200 degrees, etc. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html
- lm28469 4y ago
  > Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. We're ignoring all the drawbacks and telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future. We're basically green washing the entire auto industry: "shhh don't worry it's electric, now buy our $50k car and tell your friends you're saving the planet" When the average driver does like 30km per day all you need is some kind of hybrid car with a small but efficient gas engine. 90% of your travel will be fully electric, the occasional road trip would use gas (which would be expensive but something the average user doesn't need more than a few times a year) But I guess it's more marketable to sell AWD, 600+ HP, three tonnes lithium monsters than glorified priuses. This industry is fucked up and doesn't care one bit about sustainability.
  - aeha3hq 4y ago
    >We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. Are we? Despite all the spin that the green crowd like the put on things it's not like we actually had any idea back in the day about things like the impact CO2 emissions would have longterm. We had hints, people working on wildly different problems had data that contained the patterns that they needed to realize, but no one actually realized the scope of things with ICE cars for a long long time and while we've woken up to the problems with ICE vehicles now... fuel is hardly one of those problems and saying otherwise is just histrionics.
elihu 4y ago
Very few people are likely to have that sort of charger installed in their house. High speed charging makes sense though where it'll be heavily utilized, like at charging stations along major highways. (I'm hoping eventually the highways will become the charging stations, probably with some kind of device that makes a physical connection to rails embedded in the road that supply power to moving vehicles, kind of like a big slot car. For that application, fast-charging batteries are great because it means you only have to electrify short sections of road at regular intervals, not the whole thing.)
marklubi 4y ago
The problem that I have with the all electric movement is that all of the expectations don't match up with the numbers. For instance, a new Ford Lightning can power a house for days. Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. This doesn't make sense.
- imtringued 4y ago
  What? It just means it has a massive energy capacity.
- Gare 4y ago
  What doesn't make sense? That traveling by car is extremely energy intensive?
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Yeah, also it is quite a surprise for most people, how ridiculous inefficient ICE engines are. Most of the chemic energy just goes into the air as heat. That only worked, because oil was (and still is relativly) so cheap.
  - marklubi 4y ago
    Are you intentionally being obtuse? My point was very clear.
- XorNot 4y ago
  > Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. > This doesn't make sense. Sure it does: you do not actually use a lot of electricity in your house on average. By far the biggest user after you get a Lightning would be charging the lightning. Your home electrical connection's total capacity is already over-sized relative to your average usage.
- greenthrow 4y ago
  > Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. Powering your ICE car takes far, far more energy. But you don't think about it because it is in the form lf a toxic liquid sloshing around. EVs are far, far more efficient than any ICE car.
DrScientist 4y ago
If charging is 5 mins, then not everyone needs to charge at home. That's the importance of fast charging - not the convenience. For example, everybody seems to manage without a petrol pump at home. If you have dedicated charging stations - then the problem becomes simpler than providing high power to every home. Still a challenge - but not quite so insurmountable.
greenthrow 4y ago
This is nonsense. I have owned an EV for 8 years. It cost $300 to buy and install my EVSE ("charge station") because I already had a 240v plug in my garage. If a 240v line had to be run from my breaker box to my garage it would have been about $2k. But it also wouldn't have been necessary, as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Also that $300 got reimbursed via tax credit. Stop pushing FUD. This is total nonsense. EV ownership is awesome and has been for years. The only issue is that people living in apartments or condos without a garage usually can't charge at home. These places need to start adding charging infrastructure to parking spaces.
- nomel 4y ago
  > as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Where I am in California, "super off peak" window is only 6 hours. Energy cost is double outside of that, in the regular "off peak", then quadruple outside of that. This would barely cover the average commute. With housing prices skyrocketing, especially those close to the cities, I think we'll see commutes increasing.
pkphilip 4y ago
This is why a solution like using Hydrogen makes a lot more sense than using pure EVs - even if the efficiencies are lower than in battery driven vehicles.
watt 4y ago
You don't need 22kW charger if your car has 50kWh battery. Those cars usually have 11 kW on-board AC charger anyway. In fact, for daily driving, 3 kW overnight charging at your home should be plenty - you would be able to charge up 30 kWh in 10 hours. 22 kW chargers are for cars with ludicrously large battery, like Tesla Model X which has 100 kWh battery.
pmuk 4y ago
If you have the space, you could install close to 20kW of solar PV for $20,000. On a sunny day this would help power a 22kW charging station, and even on a cloudy day you'd probably get around 2kW for trickle charging.
- nomel 4y ago
  For me, and I think most that use their cars often, the vehicle is driving/away from the house during the day.
pornel 4y ago
It's important to remember that EVs can be left charging unattended. This makes time requirements very different than filling up with gas. If you park your car at home, leave it charging overnight. It doesn't matter if it will take 4, 8 or 12 hours — you have the whole night. Also it's unlikely that you will run it down to 0% every day, so you just need to top it up. If you have a parking with chargers at work, you can plug it there. That's 8 hours when the car is sitting idle and could be charging. Or at a supermarket — plug it in when you're shopping. Even with a relatively slow charger you'll likely return home with more battery than you've left with. This is called destination charging, and these chargers are designed to top up your car while you're parked there for longer periods anyway. Really fast charging is needed on road trips, but there you will want at least 100kW. For daily home use charging speed literally doesn't matter.

by kuon 4y ago

Schroedingersat 4y ago

You don't need a fast charger at home though. 2kW on off-peak hours is fine. That's >100kWh per week. Save the fast charger for the road trip or for the people with the 1hr commute to use on the way home when they top up once a fortnight. Or better yet start building infrastructure for a less insane and stupid transport method and transition away from cars altogether.

alkonaut 4y ago

I have 3x25A fuses at 230V (which is normal here, you either have 3x20 or 3x25 typically) so I could probably run a 22kW charger. But I couldn't run it and run much other stuff at the same time! I guess the solution is to have something store the capacity, i.e. a second battery. If one really needs to charge at home very quickly (e.g. you are a taxi driver or have some other specific reason) and you can't overload the grid, then the solution must be to slowly charge a battery at home when the car is used, just like most EV owners slowly charge the car over night. Then the home battery can be quickly emptied into the car for a fast charge. In the end, it's just like having 2EVs where one is charging while the other isn't. And of course, buying a 100kWh wall battery is going to also set you back a large part of the cost of a second car too, just like your $20k for a better electricity connection. BUT - the dual battery solution doesn't have the tragedy of the commons issue where not everyone can do it. I doubt more than a single digit % would ever consider needing fast charge at home though.

CuriousSkeptic 4y ago

When would you need fast charging at home?

gregoriol 4y ago
While not strictly useful at home, the problem of connecting to the grid would be the same for many places you could go and need fast charging.
kuon 4y ago
Well, I looked at our current use of the cars. I live in a remote area and car is my only option. Also the area is mountainous and after doing some testing and having the car for a week, I have about 100km autonomy with 50kW/h battery when driving around, after that at around 10%, the car turns on low power mode and is very slow (I'd say dangerous) to drive. On a typical day, my wife does about 40km, so everything is fine, but twice a week I have to go to the music school with my kids and it's 60km away (120km round trip), so I have to be sure to be on a full charge before leaving as I cannot charge the car there, and the time I have to charge the car before leaving is about 2h. And this is for one car, I also have a car for my business. I didn't plan to switch to electric yet, but I know I'll have too, thus the 22kW charging station to have some margin to be able to charge them both. Also, the utility have to upgrade the cables even for 11kW, and the price isn't very different. The car I tested is a Toyota Proace.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  EVs should overperform in comparison with ICE at high altitudes and in hilly regions, due to less efficient burning and the ability to regen. Remote areas with unpredictable usage is probably their weak spot, but a hybrid should still be a solid option for the same reasons EVs work well in the mountains.
  - kuon 4y ago
    Yes, I am looking at plug in hybrid now.
  - 4y ago

fragmede 4y ago

I... what are you doing that you need a 22kW charging station? 7 hrs to charge a 50 kW/h battery seems fine. Are you a taxi driver?

clouddrover 4y ago

You can also have a large battery buffer supporting standard chargers. Or battery integrated chargers are also interesting because they're fast to deploy and cheap to install (though the individual units are more expensive due to the battery): https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/volkswagen-group-and-bp-launch-strategic-partnership-to-rapidly-roll-out-ev-fast-charging-in-europe.html https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/pre... https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger-200/ https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger-200/

Philip-J-Fry 4y ago

Ok, so there's a key point here, and that's that fast charging is not meant for the home! You can fully charge an EV overnight on a 7KW charger. You don't need a fast charger at home. The other thing is that home chargers are AC and the car converts the current. This means that there's a cap to how much power you can give it. For example, my car can only accept 11KW and that's pretty typical. So 22KW chargers are a waste at home today. Maybe you'd need a fast charger at home if you never sleep. But the majority of people spend at least 7 hours at home. You'll always wake up to a fully charged car. Why do you need anything else?

janlaureys 4y ago
Hell I park my car in an underground parking garage, and it's been a whole discussion about who wants to and how they want to install 7kW/11/kW chargers. In the meantime I just charge it on the wall plug now and then. Yeah sometimes my battery is not fully charged, but I hardly ever drive 450km in one go anyway.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  A few years ago one of my neighbours asked for a socket in the underground car park. I assume they paid the full cost themselves, although it probably wasn't that much -- the electrical supply to the building including the meters for each apartment are just behind his parking space. They installed a normal 16A 400V 3P+E plug (the big red one), which is an easy 11kW. There isn't any sort of 'car charger' on the wall, just this socket.
cbozeman 4y ago
> You don't need a fast charger at home. This is such an arrogant statement. I may not "need" 3 petabytes of storage for my home media server, but I have it. I may not "need" a 64-core Threadripper 3990X workstation with 256 GB of RAM, but I have it. I may not "need" enterprise-grade networking and WiFi gear, but I have it. I may not "need" a 60 kW Kohler diesel generator, but I have it. > Why do you need anything else? Because he wants it. The same reason I have everything I listed.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

No one needs a 22KW charger in their home. The speed you quote for a shared 22KW with multiple cars charging is the same as a standard home 7KW charger (e.g. 60Kwh car charging to full from 0 while you sleep for 8 hours, or 2 of those cars charging from 20-80%). But no one drives that many miles per day consistently. Most normal people can survive with a standard plug, even the 7KW is a luxury to let you think less about it and to help the grid by charging faster when the grid is off peak, enabling faster rollout of cheap renewables.

kuon 4y ago
As I said in another comment, I don't absolutely need 22kW now. But I am at the limit of the capacity of my current line, so in all scenarios, I would need to invest quite a bit.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Buying a lot of something because it would cost the same for a small amount and 'needing' the larger amount are different things. 22Kw is still overkill for a home, even if it makes sense financially if the costs are mostly fixed based on things other than charging rate.
  - nomel 4y ago
    > 22Kw is still overkill for a home I know many homes with three adults (one driving parent, two kids) who have cars. 22kW isn't enough to charge three cars + home. It's not that crazy, considering the average home has 1.9 cars.

squishy47 4y ago

$20k to install a 22kW charger!!!! i was quoted £1300 (uk) to have one fitted and i thought that was expensive! to reply to another comment about why a 22kW is needed. if you're on a flexi tariff where energy price is super cheap from like 12-4am then having it fully charge in that time is needed to maximise the best price

Bayart 4y ago
$20k problably includes the cost of digging tranches and lay new cables. Here in France it's tops a few thousand euros if you want 36kVA, but that doesn't include civil engineering.
bushbaba 4y ago
22kwh is 90 amps at 230 volts. Surprised is 20k to install a single one of these. In the us most newer homes have 200+ amps of service providing 48kw of peak electric capacity.
- WatchDog 4y ago
  Aren't US homes running at 120 volts? 22kw at 230 volts would be ~95 amps. 22kw at 120 volts would be ~183 amps. 48kw at 120 volts would be 400 amps.
  - proto_lambda 4y ago
    No, US homes are typically 240V split-phase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power
  - goodcanadian 4y ago
    Aren't US homes running at 120 volts? Yes . . . and no. In North America, homes are actually supplied with 240V. A split-phase system with a centre-tap transformer is then used to create two 120V "phases." So, your typical outlets will be on one of two 120V phases. However, there are usually a couple of 240V outlets as well for things like electric stoves, and clothes dryers. So, in short, single phase 240V is available in essentially every U.S. household. The cars, themselves, usually require 3-phase 240V to do 22kW. You are highly unlikely to have access to that in a U.S. home.

megablast 4y ago

Electric cars are clearly not the solution.

jnsaff2 4y ago

I happen to have 22kW at home (3x32A) but my TM3LR is only capable of 11kW (3x16A) but this means that no matter what my car can always be charged during the time I sleep. Most of the time in practice however I only charge during the hours electricity is really cheap as it's not too often I come in with a completely empty battery and need to drive full battery capacity next day (two days of ~500km each in a row). I find fast charging is only needed for road trips and quite possibly for fleet operations (taxis, delivery vans etc). For a private car 11kW is plenty and less could be doable as well. As for grid .. our grid here in Estonia has the opposite problems, most people want to start selling to the grid with solar panels. And grid people being really inflexible (in a charitable interpretation) or greedy (by wanting to people pay for all the work needed to modernize the aging grid) also want to charge ridiculous fees for any increases in capacity. With lots of EV's I kinda understand that the grid may have more problems but with local generation the load on the grid goes down (as electricity needs to be transported much shorter distances, think: your neighbors). So my trust that 3x32A installation cost of $20k is justified is very low (unless this is a rural farm or something that really is far from nearest transformer). Just last week someone was quoted 4 million euros to upgrade an existing connection to support a 15kW PV installation (rural, but most of the cost came apparently from needing to upgrade a 330kV transformer station).

maeln 4y ago

I have a Renault Zoe and I charge mostly outside on 22kW charger. The Zoe 2021 has a 42kW/h battery and it take ~2h to fully charge. I don't understand how you get to the 7h figure ?

kuon 4y ago
The car dealer told me he lives in a building with a common parking where the 22kW charger doesn't have 100% duty cycle.

valdiorn 4y ago

I used to work for Reykjavik Energy as a junior analyst about 12 years ago. One of my tasks was using their geo database to pull out cable and transformer data for every neighbourhood and use it to generate load models (using Siemens PSS mostly). We knew the high voltage system (100kv+) was fine as there are quite a few big power hungry users on the network. We focused our research on the "neighbourhood transformers" - These are the transformers that take you from 11kv to 400v (3 phase, of which one leg is connected to a consumer fuseboard). They're generally sized so that each transformer can service a small neighborhood, but power can be routed through less efficient ways in case they break. We combined all the electrical data with traffic data to estimate when people finish work and would likely be plugging their cars in at home. The conclusion we came to was that if only 15 percent of homes wanted fast charge ability (which at the time was a lot less than what testa offers today) the majority of the city's transformers would be over their current limit. Iceland has a pretty decent and modern power infrastructure so this was a bit of a shock to everyone. I think my research was even presented to parliament :)

jaclaz 4y ago
Happy to see that someone actually did make some accurate calculations and found out with actual data that - even in a country where the main distribution lines are just fine and the "local" transformers and lines are modern/recent - the "last km" is/will be an issue. Now imagine what would be the results of similar analysis in European cities (relatively densely inhabited, with an aged/aging infrastructure, a number of limitations for new lines and what not). I mean, if you live in a solo or bifamily (or even very small condo's) house somewhere outside the city, or in a village, there will probably be less issues with upgrading the lines and transformers (at a cost), but for medium or large condo's in or near the city centre it will be impossible to provide enough power even for 7kW chargers when there will be many of them. AFAIK here (Italy) a typical "local" transformer 20,000 to 380 V or 10,000 to 380V, it depends on the specific areas, is usually within the 300/400 kW range and serves 50-100 houses/apartments, each one having 3-4.5-6 kW contracts, and it is already near 100% use. When/if each house (or anyway a recharge column for 1 car each) will want (or need) some 7 kW available, even if only at night, the amount of 380V electricity will be at the very least twice the current one. Very likely the current infrastructure can bear an increase of 5-10%, maybe 15%, and as said this with only "slow" chargers.

Faaak 4y ago

There are plenty of super fast charging stations (DC) in switzerland (Gofast for example). You don't need 22kW at home. 7kW is plenty enough for a night charge.

yunohn 4y ago

> the grid is not ready, we would need to upgrade hundred of meters of cable I would compare this to the last-mile issues facing internet connections, eg gigabit fiber. It’s a chicken-egg problem with not enough electric car demand leading to energy companies deciding that it’s not worth providing the right supply.

piokoch 4y ago

That's only one of many, many issues electric cars "revolution" is going to face. Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal, according to those stats [1] we would need: "meeting UK electric car targets for 2050 would require production of just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production." And this is only UK. In order to switch to EV we need revolution in battery production, we need revolution in electricity production and grid construction and I don't see any of this happening for now. I am tracking all news about "new, better battery" and typically it at the end of the news it turns out, that this new great battery weight is 2 tonnes or it can work in temperature range up to -200 degrees, etc. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html

lm28469 4y ago
> Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. We're ignoring all the drawbacks and telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future. We're basically green washing the entire auto industry: "shhh don't worry it's electric, now buy our $50k car and tell your friends you're saving the planet" When the average driver does like 30km per day all you need is some kind of hybrid car with a small but efficient gas engine. 90% of your travel will be fully electric, the occasional road trip would use gas (which would be expensive but something the average user doesn't need more than a few times a year) But I guess it's more marketable to sell AWD, 600+ HP, three tonnes lithium monsters than glorified priuses. This industry is fucked up and doesn't care one bit about sustainability.
- aeha3hq 4y ago
  >We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. Are we? Despite all the spin that the green crowd like the put on things it's not like we actually had any idea back in the day about things like the impact CO2 emissions would have longterm. We had hints, people working on wildly different problems had data that contained the patterns that they needed to realize, but no one actually realized the scope of things with ICE cars for a long long time and while we've woken up to the problems with ICE vehicles now... fuel is hardly one of those problems and saying otherwise is just histrionics.

elihu 4y ago

Very few people are likely to have that sort of charger installed in their house. High speed charging makes sense though where it'll be heavily utilized, like at charging stations along major highways. (I'm hoping eventually the highways will become the charging stations, probably with some kind of device that makes a physical connection to rails embedded in the road that supply power to moving vehicles, kind of like a big slot car. For that application, fast-charging batteries are great because it means you only have to electrify short sections of road at regular intervals, not the whole thing.)

marklubi 4y ago

The problem that I have with the all electric movement is that all of the expectations don't match up with the numbers. For instance, a new Ford Lightning can power a house for days. Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. This doesn't make sense.

imtringued 4y ago
What? It just means it has a massive energy capacity.
Gare 4y ago
What doesn't make sense? That traveling by car is extremely energy intensive?
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Yeah, also it is quite a surprise for most people, how ridiculous inefficient ICE engines are. Most of the chemic energy just goes into the air as heat. That only worked, because oil was (and still is relativly) so cheap.
- marklubi 4y ago
  Are you intentionally being obtuse? My point was very clear.
XorNot 4y ago
> Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. > This doesn't make sense. Sure it does: you do not actually use a lot of electricity in your house on average. By far the biggest user after you get a Lightning would be charging the lightning. Your home electrical connection's total capacity is already over-sized relative to your average usage.
greenthrow 4y ago
> Lets turn this around a bit... To charge your vehicle, it requires multiple days of typical household energy usage. Powering your ICE car takes far, far more energy. But you don't think about it because it is in the form lf a toxic liquid sloshing around. EVs are far, far more efficient than any ICE car.

DrScientist 4y ago

If charging is 5 mins, then not everyone needs to charge at home. That's the importance of fast charging - not the convenience. For example, everybody seems to manage without a petrol pump at home. If you have dedicated charging stations - then the problem becomes simpler than providing high power to every home. Still a challenge - but not quite so insurmountable.

greenthrow 4y ago

This is nonsense. I have owned an EV for 8 years. It cost $300 to buy and install my EVSE ("charge station") because I already had a 240v plug in my garage. If a 240v line had to be run from my breaker box to my garage it would have been about $2k. But it also wouldn't have been necessary, as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Also that $300 got reimbursed via tax credit. Stop pushing FUD. This is total nonsense. EV ownership is awesome and has been for years. The only issue is that people living in apartments or condos without a garage usually can't charge at home. These places need to start adding charging infrastructure to parking spaces.

nomel 4y ago
> as 110v charge speed would have been fine. Where I am in California, "super off peak" window is only 6 hours. Energy cost is double outside of that, in the regular "off peak", then quadruple outside of that. This would barely cover the average commute. With housing prices skyrocketing, especially those close to the cities, I think we'll see commutes increasing.

pkphilip 4y ago

This is why a solution like using Hydrogen makes a lot more sense than using pure EVs - even if the efficiencies are lower than in battery driven vehicles.

watt 4y ago

You don't need 22kW charger if your car has 50kWh battery. Those cars usually have 11 kW on-board AC charger anyway. In fact, for daily driving, 3 kW overnight charging at your home should be plenty - you would be able to charge up 30 kWh in 10 hours. 22 kW chargers are for cars with ludicrously large battery, like Tesla Model X which has 100 kWh battery.

pmuk 4y ago

If you have the space, you could install close to 20kW of solar PV for $20,000. On a sunny day this would help power a 22kW charging station, and even on a cloudy day you'd probably get around 2kW for trickle charging.

nomel 4y ago
For me, and I think most that use their cars often, the vehicle is driving/away from the house during the day.

pornel 4y ago

It's important to remember that EVs can be left charging unattended. This makes time requirements very different than filling up with gas. If you park your car at home, leave it charging overnight. It doesn't matter if it will take 4, 8 or 12 hours — you have the whole night. Also it's unlikely that you will run it down to 0% every day, so you just need to top it up. If you have a parking with chargers at work, you can plug it there. That's 8 hours when the car is sitting idle and could be charging. Or at a supermarket — plug it in when you're shopping. Even with a relatively slow charger you'll likely return home with more battery than you've left with. This is called destination charging, and these chargers are designed to top up your car while you're parked there for longer periods anyway. Really fast charging is needed on road trips, but there you will want at least 100kW. For daily home use charging speed literally doesn't matter.