13A sockets useless for charging electric cars?

[Scott]

To run the outoor air conditioning!

[Robin]

I wonder what they get if the lack of CH is due to a lack electricity. The same plus matches to light the oil?

[Tim Streater]

Your bathroom's in space?

[Scott]

No, but why is the Starship Enterprise like a toilet roll? Both travel round Uranus looking for clingons.

[nothanks]

Unfortunately those are impossible questions to answer quantitatively, except to say that my car (a C350e, which is not optimised for economy) has had its petrol engine off for just over 4000 of the last 9200 miles of local and motorway driving, since I last reset the display. A long downhill stretch, with regenerative cruise control holding a sensible speed, will typically increase the electric range by 1 mile. After 2 years and about 20k I haven't noticed a difference in battery performance. The one thing that hammers the range is cold weather.

[Tim Streater]

I first heard that one 40 years ago.

[Steve Walker]

Years ago, my parents had a sun/heat lamp, switchable between UV and infra-red. You can tell it was a while back, as it had a mercury tilt-switch.

Unfortunately they discovered the fault with the design. If it was closed and on its back, the switch made - as my mother found when she plugged the electric blanket a while before going to bed and had picked up the wrong plug!

The lamp turned on, closed and lying on its back, under the bed. My father came home from a business trip to London, to find my mother outside, myself and my sister in neighbours' houses, three fire engines outside - along with the remains of the bed.

Their bed, wardrobes carpet and one floorboard were burnt, omne window cracked, the downstairs ceiling water damaged and the entire upstairs and everything in it had turned grey with smoke damage.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Ours is 84 years old and obviously deemed capable of 100A, even though it was presumably only expected to ever have a 60A main fuse when it was installed.

I presume that we only have a single phase, although it is possible that they actually brought 3-phase into each house and only connected one.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Yes. Some diesels acheive 40% - although 30% is more typical.

SteveW

[Bill Wright]

I have heard tell that some people with welders solder a length of thick copper wire across the fuse clips in the plug top.

Bill

[Adam Funk]

I know I would, because we have E7.

Would it do the electric cars any harm if all the ones on a street were plugged in all night but some kind of "smart" distribution system switched various charging points on & off at different times?

[Martin Brown]

The fuse can be dissipating a few watts on its own at 13A. The plug always gets warm to the touch - a good quality socket should not.

Increasingly portable equipment is power limited to 2.4kW because of this. Even the good sockets eventually go bad if the internal contacts become corroded. I have seen some horrors inside damp penetrated walls with crystals of copper sulphate growing on them.

I reckon a dedicated 32A circuit is the way to go.

[Andy Bennet]

Diversity. Not everyone will be charging every night! We have a Renault Zoe, does about 8000 miles per year as a runabout. We charge it overnight once per week.

[dennis]

They probably will if the suffer from range anxiety.

But does everyone else?

If I bought one of the new corsa-e cars I would probably charge it every

50 miles so that could be daily ATM.

I wouldn't want to leave it much longer as its got a 50kWHr battery so would take a fair time to charge from a domestic charger even if it only takes 30min from a high speed one.

[AnthonyL]

What, bets on the winter death rate rise?

[Andy Burns]

Bets on how many decades it gets kicked down the road ...

[Andy Bennet]

In which case they will only be charging for a short period of time. If you have a 7kW (32A) charger it will recharge at a rate of approx. 25 -

30 miles per hour of charge.

Who knows? But I bet on average yes.

That's your issue, no-one elses!

Should pretty much get a full charge overnight in 7 hours with a 7kW charger.

[dennis]

I bet it isn't the same as you bet above.

So more likely for everyone to want to charge it while economy 7 is on.

[Andy Bennet]

NO! More likely for everyone to charge while economy 7 is on once per week!

[whisky-dave]

But why only do it once per week ? E7 is every night of the week. I put my ipad and phone and even ipod on charge anytime when E7 is active if anyhting is less than 70% charged otherwise I don't really bother.