This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

EVs, Street furniture, PME and TT configurations

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Good afternoon all,


I'm part of one of the teams installing the EV charging points around London and we keep running into the same situations and problems when going through the site selection process - proximity of other electrified street furniture to the units we are installing (as well as potentially plugged in cars which is measured to the edge of the parking bay.)

Regs say that any EV installation cannot be connected to a PME system and must be converted to a TT in case of a damaged/faulty PEN conductor. Naturally if you're converting something to a TT system and not using the DNO TN-C-S earthing arrangement, there must be a reasonable distance between the TT and any other TN-C or TN-C-S systems (2m or so is reasonable).

If there were other services in the vicinity but can be proven that these have also been converted to TT and are 100% confirmed to not be using the DNO earth, would it be reasonable to say that the requirement for the 2m distance can be reduced or ignored completely? Another thought I've had is to bond the cabinets together - being on the same type of system, it makes logical sense that this would in turn reduce the Ze and improve disconnection times, both units have their methods of ADS and incorporate an RCD/RCBO of a 61008 or 61009 standard respectively.


Any other thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated as I try and figure a workaround for this issue. I understand this could work for smaller cabinets and for individual supplies, and not necessarily for street lighting which might not be adequately equipped for being converted to TT (bit of a bigger job to start installing RCDs and then giving a minor works cert etc.).
Parents
  • I have just checked the latest version of the UKPN doc

    EDS 06-0017 CUSTOMER LV INSTALLATION EARTHING DESIGN;and indeed it has changed (as of 10/09/2018). Actually it is now much clearer than it was about such things, and very sensibly now includes labels at the cut-out for 'this is TNCS'  ;'this is TNS' 'this is TT' etc.

    This is good as over the next 50 years or so as kit gets updated the confusion about what earthing is any given site is supposed to be will slowly get cleared up.  I assume but have not checked that the other DNOs have similar updated advice, or soon will.


    However, I suspect that there won't be many 2m long insulating joints available for upgrading gas and water mains to current standards to permit TT and PME to co-exist, and  I think that the idea that the earthing systems can always be separated in this way remains very optimistic.
Reply
  • I have just checked the latest version of the UKPN doc

    EDS 06-0017 CUSTOMER LV INSTALLATION EARTHING DESIGN;and indeed it has changed (as of 10/09/2018). Actually it is now much clearer than it was about such things, and very sensibly now includes labels at the cut-out for 'this is TNCS'  ;'this is TNS' 'this is TT' etc.

    This is good as over the next 50 years or so as kit gets updated the confusion about what earthing is any given site is supposed to be will slowly get cleared up.  I assume but have not checked that the other DNOs have similar updated advice, or soon will.


    However, I suspect that there won't be many 2m long insulating joints available for upgrading gas and water mains to current standards to permit TT and PME to co-exist, and  I think that the idea that the earthing systems can always be separated in this way remains very optimistic.
Children
No Data