User:Engineer JH/sandbox

Electric Car Charging in England.
Electric cars are just starting to enter the main stream in Britain and there are lots of questions about how they will work. The existing car "refueling model" is that once a week or so people travel to a petrol station and fill up. Most EV (Electric Car) owners work don't follow this method. The charging is much more like how a mobile phone is charged. Every night the car is plugged in to either a special car charging lead or a standard 13 amp socket and left to charge in the morning the batteries are full and ready for use, only on long journeys is public charge used.

Owning a electric car with off road parking
Most current EV owner have off road parking close to their house a cable connects their car to the house power to charge it. A grant is available is to new car owner paying 75% of the cost. The dealership the car can help and often have special offers to cover the other 25%. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electric-vehicle-homecharge-scheme-guidance-for-customers-version-21

Typically the cost of installing the socket is around £750. Although the owner of the car only pays around £100.

These come in 2 types either with a cable connected (like a petrol pump) that can be plugged into the car or more like a special outside socket which the cable that comes with the care can be plugged into. The advantage of the petrol pump style cable is that it is easy to use and alway ready. The disadvantage is that different cars have different connectors so it is car specific. If you have a Nissan Leaf then when you friend with a Tesla is at your house they won't be able to charge. The other option is to have Type 2 connector, like a socket on the outside of your house that is a standard socket that all car have a cable for. So if i have a Nissan Leaf I have a type 2 cable so will my Tesla owning friend. To charge our car we both take our cable out of the boot and connect it between the car and the socket.

Most EV owners charge their cars at home 90% of the time. Only using chargers on longer journeys.

Owning a electric car without off road parking
Only around 70% of cars are parked on driveways and up until now almost all EV are owner by people with drives. Unfortunately EV ownership is more difficult if without off road parking. Public chargers are getting more common and some towns now have networks of them making charging cars without a driveway possible.

Public charger come in 3 types often given different names I am going to call them Slow, Normal and Fast.

Slow (13Amp)
A Slow public charger is a normal 13 amp Socket accessible to car drivers. They allow you to plug your car in and for it to car slowly. A electric car will take many hours to charge this way. A completely flat battery of a 2018 Nissan Leaf would take 20 hours to charge with this method. This seem pretty disappointing as a petrol car would take only a few minutes at a fuel station to receive the same range. However if we take a typical car doing 15,000 miles a year at a average speed of 40 mph it is used for only 375 hours a year. So is only used just over 1 hour a day so actually could be plugged into a socket for the other 23 hours. Looking at this further 15,000 miles a year is 41 miles a day this is about 10 Kwh or 5 hours charging on a normal 13 amp plug.

As their are 100 millions of normal 13 amp sockets, in the UK alone and quite a lot are near windows, driveways and car parking place these can be very useful places for cars to charge. Almost any power outlet can be changed into a impromu car charging station. Cars can be plugged into extension leads as long as the following criteria are meat:
 * The extension lead must be over 2000w (2Kw) and / or 13 Amps.
 * The extension lead must be fully unwound.
 * The end of the extension lead must be waterproof.

Normal(3kw to 32Kw)
These are dedicated car charging points designed for moden EVs the are properly waterproof normally have a type to socket and some sort of display and payment method. Although some shopping centres e.g. Castle Point & West Quay. Have free yo use one's for their customers. To use these you typically go through the following stages:
 * Using Zapmap

In Summa

There are not many of them, they are on different systems (This is to be part of the https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2017/october/automated-and-electric-vehicles-bill/ act currently going through parilment) and they can charge a lot more than charging at home. Charging at home will take between 4 hours and 10 hours depending of the charging current (amps) and the size of the batteries (KWH)

Some local councils are aware of the need to provide on street charging and are working with companies like https://www.ubitricity.com/en/ to provide on street options for residents.

Regular Charging Patterns
All Modern EVs do around 100 miles or more before needing charging and as most journeys are much shorter than that. So most of the time EV owners will unplug the car in the morning from it's cable and drive it around all day then plug it back in at night. There is no need to find a charger, charging station or even worry about the range. However if a longer journey is to happen then a little more panning is needed to ensure that the battery does not run flat. In fact most EV users spend less time fueling their vehicles then legacy vehicles. Just taking a few seconds each day to plug their car in. The trip to the petrol station and the expense is no longer needed.

Motorway Driving
If a journey is mainly on motorways the charging options are simple all motorway services have Rapid Chargers these charge cars very fast typically in 20 - 40 mins almost all motorways services have a rapid charger provided by ecotricity https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/for-the-road/our-electric-highway. There is a simple App and clear charging pricing for these chargers. When driving a EV you can get anywhere in the country on the ecotricity network stopping for about 20 mins every hour's driving.