EV charging

The granny charger SWMO uses (she is a granny) only has about 30cm 0f cable betweeen its control box and the 13A plug!

As I said above, there's no way the charger is going to detect that a plug 30cm away is getting hot.

It has a moulded on plug. It could have a Temperature sensor within.

To a thermistor, it's not a normal plug top, no screws to open it up, a very chunky moulded plug. My granny lead certainly had 3 L/N/E cores and 3 other thinner cores going to it.

They're not all that short, mine is about 5' on the input side.

For the record that is a bog standard Hager Sollysta socket which costs £1.60+VAT:

If you need to make an extension, I would be tempted to run a spur with some 2.5mm2 T&E to such a socket. If you need a flying lead, make one up with some 2.5mm2 flex, a grommet/cable clamp, back box and EV rated socket on the end. You can get back boxes with cable clamps:

In which case it’s definitely a false economy!

Tim

And the 32A lead has arrived, quite a chunky beast compared to the 10A one that came with the car (300x100x75mm) it has two input cables, one for 13A plug and the other 32A commando, both to a proprietary connector, which in addition to L/N/E pins has 6 more pins, which presumably signal to the "lump" how many amps/phases to expect?

Now I need to 3D print a wall mount for it

Would the answer not be to build your own to the correct specifications? It is difficult to argue that a plug or socket cannot carry 10 amps when they were designed for 13 amps in the days of 3 bar fires.

But they were never left on for 6+ hours at a time. A 60kWh battery charging from a 2kW supply could theoretically take up to 30 hours to charge (assuming it was empty).

In practice of course it’s never going to be empty but you get my point, if a 2kW granny lead is the fastest charger you’ve got and you need to do a big charge then it will be running at 2kW much longer than any three bar fire would have been turned on.

Tim

but probably not for 10 hours continuous

Nor unattended. Though I suppose these days automatic washing machines and the like do often get left unattended while handling high currents for fairly long durations.

For some reason when my parents first had an immersion heater fitted it was run through a 13A plug in the airing cupboard. That did get very hot, but fortunately didn't start a fire.

nib

I think it’s more likely that they draw up to 3kW just long enough to raise the water to your chosen wash temperature and after that it’s just motor and solenoids.

Tim

The washing cycle would be for a comparatively short period of heating, and possibly not continuous.

Tumble dryers have often been left unattended for hours with continuous high current, and likely waste heat near to the socket/plug/cable.

Thanks. That's really useful info. I'll get one next time I'm passing that way.

So far, the non-EV socket is staying nice and cool. I expect the weather helps.

How do you make that out? When 'square pin' plugs were introduced at the end of WW2, there were plenty of houses without central heating relying on 2kW or 3 kW electric radiators as their only heat source.

Move it to a different socket every six hours if you think this is an issue?

And I bet everyone from that era was very familiar with burnt plugs and sockets! Also, I bet they all had open fireplaces too.

You do know that most EV charging is done overnight? Are you seriously suggesting that people using granny leads are doing this?

Tim

I was more suggesting that a properly designed and installed ring main using good quality components with a 32 amp circuit breaker should have no difficulty coping with a 10 amp load.

Plus the drying phase.

nib