New Electric Cables.

JohnC6

JohnC6

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Two of my near neighbours have a Tesla each and my wife and I wonder at the amount of time each one has it plugged into the charging device on the wall by their front door. It's accurate to say that their cars are plugged in for more time than they are not.

This afternoon, two men from the Midlands Electricity Network,our region's suppliers, were outside our house spray-painting the pavement with yellow and blue lines and arrows. Being nosey...lol..my wife went to them and asked what they were about. They are having to replace the underground cables because of the massive draw on power caused by people charging their electric cars. The cables are melting.
 
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JohnC6 said:
Two of my near neighbours have a Tesla each and my wife and I wonder at the amount of time each one has it plugged into the charging device on the wall by their front door. It's accurate to say that they their cars are plugged in for more time than they are not.

This afternoo, two men from the Midlands Electricity Network,out region's suppliers, were outside our house spray-painting the pavement with yellow and blue lines and arrows. Being nosey...lol..my wife went to them and asked what they were about. They are having to replace the underground cables because of the massive draw on power caused by people charging their electric cars. The cables are melting.
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Not 100% sure but IIRC residential properties have 60Amp supply but I think I read or heard that folk who buy an electric car either need or can get 100Amp supply installed.....though possibly only if quicker charging is required?
 
Box Brownie said:
Not 100% sure but IIRC residential properties have 60Amp supply but I think I read or heard that folk who buy an electric car either need or can get 100Amp supply installed.....though possibly only if quicker charging is required?
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I have no idea,Laurence. Not a field I have any expertise in.
 
JohnC6 said:
Two of my near neighbours have a Tesla each and my wife and I wonder at the amount of time each one has it plugged into the charging device on the wall by their front door. It's accurate to say that their cars are plugged in for more time than they are not.

This afternoon, two men from the Midlands Electricity Network,our region's suppliers, were outside our house spray-painting the pavement with yellow and blue lines and arrows. Being nosey...lol..my wife went to them and asked what they were about. They are having to replace the underground cables because of the massive draw on power caused by people charging their electric cars. The cables are melting.
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This was the obvious flaw with electric vehicles when the politicians and green lobby, both groups having zero tectnical knowledge, started pushing them. Yet again the so called 'Green' option turns out to be anything but when the overall energy expended, especially in having to refine metals requiring large amounts of energy to refine them, is taken into account.
 
Our wall box is on a 40A fuse. Draws (at maximum) 7kW. Makes sense to keep an EV topped up and means that it can be at optimum temperature for occupants (and its own battery) when needed (takes 10 minutes or so when plugged in and doesn't reduce the range.) Residential properties have at least 100A supplies, often much more.
 
Older homes will have 60amp main fuses, newer will be 80 or 100. My own house which is 100 years old has a 100amp fitted when the house was renovated a couple of decades ago.
My EV charger runs at 3.5kw by choice and does the job fine at that. To address your point about being plugged in, like all smart devices they stop drawing power when they are charged so being plugged in doesn't mean drawing power.

If underground cables are melting it's because they are really old and underrated for today's needs. The local supplier should have upgraded them long ago instead of feeding shareholder profits.
 
Teslas are generally left plugged in and they charge when they need to.

The local cables should be rated to take the max fuse amount day in and day out. If they're not they've not been sized properly. Some DNOs do stuff on the cheap and just put in lower capacity cables.

Normal household electricity use has been in noticeable decline due to all the use of lower power appliances and LED lightbulbs etc so mostly EVs will just re-use what hasn't been used before.

Battery storage exists now so it's easy to take grid load away at peak times too.

If you think EVs take a lot of mining then look at how much goes into the extraction and refining of fossil fuels. Then carting that around the world. It's about 40% of global shipping capacity from what I remember.
 
Earley Man said:
This was the obvious flaw with electric vehicles when the politicians and green lobby, both groups having zero tectnical knowledge, started pushing them. Yet again the so called 'Green' option turns out to be anything but when the overall energy expended, especially in having to refine metals requiring large amounts of energy to refine them, is taken into account.
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This is so far off the mark, if the infrastructure isn't up to the job it's the fault of the supplier, Britain's infrastructure in all aspects has been left to rot instead of being invested in. Shareholder profits over servicing every time.
 
I spoke again to the workemen and they said they've had instances where power cuts have happened. Who is going to pay for all this,I asked. Turns out it will be the National Grid on whose behalf they are renewing the cables.

Btw. We got a letter today from the National Grid telling us that, soon, work will be carried out...etc.etc.. :rolleyes:

About two yeards agoi I heaqrd someone on the radio with knowledge about all this who said that not only is the charging infrastructure not there but the national grisd isn't ready for EVs. I didn't understand the technicalities of nwhjat hje was saying at the time. Seem,s it meant what's happening to the cables.

I found this information from National Grid:. It states that consumption has dropped by 16% due to more efficient appliances which is what srichards said above.

www.nationalgrid.com

Busting the myths and misconceptions about electric vehicles | National Grid Group

Can the electricity grid cope with more EVs? And what really happens to old EV batteries? Find out the answer to these and many more questions about electric vehicles in our comprehensive EV myth-buster.
www.nationalgrid.com www.nationalgrid.com

From the article. Not my bold.

2. Do the electricity grid's wires have enough capacity for charging EVs?​

The simple answer is yes. The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.

Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.

Nevertheless, at National Grid we’re working with the distribution networks, government, the regulator and industry to provide the green energy infrastructure around Britain – the wires, the connections to charge points – to support the needs of a decarbonised transport network into the future.

In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.1
 
JohnC6 said:
Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002
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In 2002 we were still burning coal.

The infrastructure may be able to handle it but it’s all bloody pointless if we can’t generate it.
 
Could I gently point out that I didn't say that. It was in the National Grid information publication I've posted. To avoid such 'quotes' I write......"From the article" and put the article in italics.
 
Our supply is 100A despite being 120 years old, so must have been updated at some point thankfully as we have two electric showers that have 50A and 45A fuses. Whilst they will most likely not draw as much as that (intermittent load?), I've not tested what will happen if the wife goes postal on the 40A induction range cooker as well. It's a brand new consumer board which is crazy sensitive compared to the previous Type B I think it was (that didn't trip from a live screw head :oops: :$)
 
gman said:
Our supply is 100A despite being 120 years old, so must have been updated at some point thankfully as we have two electric showers that have 50A and 45A fuses. Whilst they will most likely not draw as much as that (intermittent load?), I've not tested what will happen if the wife goes postal on the 40A induction range cooker as well. It's a brand new consumer board which is crazy sensitive compared to the previous Type B I think it was (that didn't trip from a live screw head :oops: :$)
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We had problems with our electricity continuously tripping. We tried elimination and ended up renewing a microwave , an iron, a kettle ,a toaster,the pond pump and had a kitchen double socket . We also had three electricians in and one suggested re-wiring the house at a cost of £4000. We had a new kitchen put in and it carried on so the induction hob became suspect as our understanding was that it drew a massive amount of electricity. The two fitters were excellent and came very quickly to sort it out. They put the hob onto full power and nothing happened. Then,one of them(neither are electricians, suggested to the electrician they had brought in to do the electrics and who they brought along on this occasion that maybe the trip switch itself was at fault. As I say, I know zilch about home electricity problems but my understanding is that it was 'too sensitive' or at a rating too low so any slight surge would trip it. We were advised not to use the dishwasher and the washing machine at the same time.. The electrician checked what the kitchen fitter had suggested and found he was right,. It cost us £14 for an upgraded RCD switch.We haven't had any triop problems since then. It was so bad we had to have a nearby friend call in quite often when we went away on holiday and a good job we did because it tripped several times and had to be reset in the fuse box.,
 
They will always be issues with road wires as we move to the EV revolution the UK has just not taken enough steps to update as per usual,
However most of the people I know with EV's (seven) charge overnight on EV tariffs like octopus so the wires i suspect will be much quieter then.

EV is so the future......
 
JohnC6 said:
We had problems with our electricity continuously tripping. We tried elimination and ended up renewing a microwave , an iron, a kettle ,a toaster,the pond pump and had a kitchen double socket . We also had three electricians in and one suggested re-wiring the house at a cost of £4000. We had a new kitchen put in and it carried on so the induction hob became suspect as our understanding was that it drew a massive amount of electricity. The two fitters were excellent and came very quickly to sort it out. They put the hob onto full power and nothing happened. Then,one of them(neither are electricians, suggested to the electrician they had brought in to do the electrics and who they brought along on this occasion that maybe the trip switch itself was at fault. As I say, I know zilch about home electricity problems but my understanding is that it was 'too sensitive' or at a rating too low so any slight surge would trip it. We were advised not to use the dishwasher and the washing machine at the same time.. The electrician checked what the kitchen fitter had suggested and found he was right,. It cost us £14 for an upgraded RCD switch.We haven't had any triop problems since then. It was so bad we had to have a nearby friend call in quite often when we went away on holiday and a good job we did because it tripped several times and had to be reset in the fuse box.,
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Crickey! I'm kinda the same when it comes to electricity, very basic stuff is fine but that's as far as I go. Apart from frying myself, I'm conscience of not wanting to invalid my home insurance.

Our issue was after we got a kitchen and bathroom/shower refit done downstairs, whenever we turned on the tumble dryer using the remote switch it would trip. Turned out the joiner had put a screw through the wire running down from the remote switch to the plug behind the unit. The old consumer unit wasn't sensitive enough to detect it and whilst we also upgraded the consumer unit at the same time as the refit, it was summer so we weren't using the tumble dryer so initially didn't relate it to this. When the joiner came and started troubleshooting the various parts of the wiring with the tumble dryer he eventually discovered it.

Re. the induction range cooker, it even had the electricians scratching their heads for a while because it had a label showing 18,000W lol So the size of fuse required for that would be crazy. But after checking with the manufacturer I think it was only a 32A because they said it wouldn't run all the hobs and ovens at full power at the same time and the 18000W was theoretical or something. The hobs have a power boost function which ramps them up to 140% power, but I have noticed that you can only do one at this state as it will cause another power boost one to drop to level 9.
 
JohnC6 said:
We had problems with our electricity continuously tripping. We tried elimination and ended up renewing a microwave , an iron, a kettle ,a toaster,the pond pump and had a kitchen double socket . We also had three electricians in and one suggested re-wiring the house at a cost of £4000. We had a new kitchen put in and it carried on so the induction hob became suspect as our understanding was that it drew a massive amount of electricity. The two fitters were excellent and came very quickly to sort it out. They put the hob onto full power and nothing happened. Then,one of them(neither are electricians, suggested to the electrician they had brought in to do the electrics and who they brought along on this occasion that maybe the trip switch itself was at fault. As I say, I know zilch about home electricity problems but my understanding is that it was 'too sensitive' or at a rating too low so any slight surge would trip it. We were advised not to use the dishwasher and the washing machine at the same time.. The electrician checked what the kitchen fitter had suggested and found he was right,. It cost us £14 for an upgraded RCD switch.We haven't had any triop problems since then. It was so bad we had to have a nearby friend call in quite often when we went away on holiday and a good job we did because it tripped several times and had to be reset in the fuse box.,
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Oddly, a good part of the job I do is resetting RCDs and replacing them when faulty, it's surprised me just how often an RCD can go bad.
 
ecoleman said:
I did realise that you quoting a 3rd party.
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You did but others may not realise that if they hadn't joined the dots. I just think more care should be taken when quoting in that context.
 
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JohnC6 said:
Two of my near neighbours have a Tesla each and my wife and I wonder at the amount of time each one has it plugged into the charging device on the wall by their front door. It's accurate to say that their cars are plugged in for more time than they are not.

This afternoon, two men from the Midlands Electricity Network,our region's suppliers, were outside our house spray-painting the pavement with yellow and blue lines and arrows. Being nosey...lol..my wife went to them and asked what they were about. They are having to replace the underground cables because of the massive draw on power caused by people charging their electric cars. The cables are melting.
Click to expand...

What hasn't been pointed out yet is that some domestic supplies are chained from one house to the next, meaning that (for example) while four houses in a terrace might all have 60A fuses on the incoming supply, they are all on the same cable so a theoretical maximum of 240A could be drawn without any fuse tripping, which is way over what the incomer to the first house was ever desgined for. In the past high loads were usually of short duration, e.g. kettles, showers etc. so if the current was high it was only for a short period Nowadays with heat pumps and electric cars and the like, periods of sustained high loads are potentially more common and DNOs are having to go back and give each property its own supply back to the street.

So while the national demand for electric is falling and EVs won't bring it back to the historic peak, at very local level it could be higher so cables might need replacing.
 
That's another example of the UK doing it on the cheap, along with the ring main. If the government after wwii had had a bit more foresight they'd have gone with the European system and we'd all have 3 phase electricity and plenty of spare capacity.
 
Ok, this is rumour control: this is all "somewhat alarmist" and in general not true. (There are special cases of antique wiring, looped supply etc).

A Tesla will charge just fine on domestic supply. 7kw charging point can be installed on the vast majority of systems and it will charge as fast as domestic supply allows. I.e. 7kw.

Many chargers monitor the house supply and limit their charging to prevent overloading the main fuse. I used to have a 60w which meant the house as a whole could only draw around 10kw. Turn on the kettle and the Tesla charges slightly slower while it boils.

I had my fuse upgraded to 100w because we have frequent periods where power is free so my supplier wants me to draw as much as possible.

Upgrading the fuse is often simple but sometimes involves digging up the pavement to lay thicker cable. I'd recommend anybody with an EV to request it because at the moment this is FREE. This could possibly change in the future so if you want to future proof your supply this is a good time to do it. Mind was slightly complicated (new cut out which involved working live which needs 2 teams) but took 3 weeks from application, 2 visits and cost me nothing. They can also unloop your supply if you request it.

But no, Teslas are not routinely causing power cuts. We have plenty of power. Sometimes there are bottle necks and UK power are working too fix this.
 
ecoleman said:
In 2002 we were still burning coal.

The infrastructure may be able to handle it but it’s all bloody pointless if we can’t generate it.
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I don't know about where you live, but here in the sunny breezy south east, we generate so much power that for an average of about 4 hours a week, the cheapest thing to do is for octopus to give it away free. That's 80+ miles of motoring, house batteries charged and washing done for the week.
 
The pavement has had a trench dug along the middle of it and there are substantial protection barriers along it also going over the 2m grass verge. The pavement edge was fine this morning but I just happen to look out of the bedroom window a short while ago and I see about a metre of it has collapsed next to the grass verge. They'll have to wait until the cabling is finished and the trench has been back-filled.
 
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