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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
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    We can only do as much as feasibly possible to do everything correctly and by the book - but this doesn't prevent someone who isn't electrically trained from coming along and installing something in the vicinity that then puts the original electrical install into a position which would be against the regs.

    What with the multitude of services located underground which aren't always recorded properly (or at all)... can we realistically expect every electricians (and even other trades) to find out the eastings/northings for where they need to dig and then contact every supplier to ask if they have services in the area? It's very messy indeed... If only we could rip it all up and start again! ?
Reply
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    We can only do as much as feasibly possible to do everything correctly and by the book - but this doesn't prevent someone who isn't electrically trained from coming along and installing something in the vicinity that then puts the original electrical install into a position which would be against the regs.

    What with the multitude of services located underground which aren't always recorded properly (or at all)... can we realistically expect every electricians (and even other trades) to find out the eastings/northings for where they need to dig and then contact every supplier to ask if they have services in the area? It's very messy indeed... If only we could rip it all up and start again! ?
Children
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