Details of BS7671:2018 Amendment 1 are here.

lyledunn:

I wonder how common loss of neutral is in U.K. systems.

On average about 1 per day is actually reported. No-one knows how many go unreported. The real number therefore exceeds this, but it's impossible to know by how much. The load unbalance downstream of the broken neutral determines the potential touch voltage - this changes over time, so the Neutral is shifting around all over the place. The effectiveness of fortuitous earthing from extraneous-conductive-parts of installations also impacts this, but worth noting  that this is reducing in effectiveness over time as metal pipes are (necessarily) being replaced with plastic.

It's also unknown how many people get shocks but don't report them.

Thumping in compensatory electrodes ain’t going to do much to reduce risk of collision with underground cables, gas pipes and the like.

And the achievable resistances often means the requirements of 722.411.4.1 for additional earthing can't be met.

The solution has got to be as close to simple plug and play as possible in order to facilitate safe roll out of the EV infrastructure.

Perhaps the changes in 722.411.4.1 make this more achievable -  although as others have pointed out in this thread, in some cases it will depend on what DNOs consider acceptable - particularly for on-street installations. In reality, as has also been pointed out, some of it is in the standards for the vehicles and chargers, which are outside the scope of BS 7671. Other countries don't have the same concerns about PME - but they implement their versions of PME in different ways, with different network configurations than the UK.  There are other countries where there appear to be more issues with PME in general, regardless of EV charging - one example is Australia.

Accepting the TN-C-S risk requires a solution, an even bigger risk is likely to come from fire due to the higher amperage sustained loads, especially in dwellings where inspections may never be made.

 

"The man behind this revolution, Takeshi Uchiyamada, 73, chairman for the past seven years and the man known as the father of the Prius, said in 2014 that it had taken 15 years for it to go mainstream. His expectation, he said, was that the Mirai hydrogen car would be on a similar trajectory.

The inference was that hydrogen fuel cells would be mainstream by the late 2020s. “We are so focused on hydrogen because at its most simplistic oxygen and hydrogen makes water and power,” he said. “The fuel cell vehicle is a social and economic game changer. Gasoline has been the primary fuel of the first 100 years [of automotive history]. Hydrogen will be the primary fuel game of the next hundred years.”

For years the rest of the car industry scrambled to play zero-emission catch-up, investing billions in plug-ins to avoid CO² reduction penalties, to the point that 2020 is being called the year of the electric car. For most of that time Toyota has been silent on battery electric vehicles, leading competitors and consumers to the conclusion that it was sticking to the notion that its hybrids, with just a few miles of electric charge, would remain its “technology bridge” until lithium-ion batteries were the past and hydrogen was the dominant zero-emission technology."

lyledunn:

I wonder how common loss of neutral is in U.K. systems. 

 

In addition to posts above: https://professional-electrician.com/technical/ev-charging-equipment-the-new-rules-explained/

whjohnson:

All of this may become irrelevant quite quickly. Electric cars only made up 2 % of total new vehicle sales last year.

Toyota, who have been relatively quiet on the electric car development front, are going down the hydrogen cell route instead and it is looking more and more achievable.

My guess is that since we do not have, most likely will continue to not have the required electrical infrastructure to run millions of all-electric cars, then hydrogen will be the future.


To quote a recent item -

"The man behind this revolution, Takeshi Uchiyamada, 73, chairman for the past seven years and the man known as the father of the Prius, said in 2014 that it had taken 15 years for it to go mainstream. His expectation, he said, was that the Mirai hydrogen car would be on a similar trajectory.

The inference was that hydrogen fuel cells would be mainstream by the late 2020s. “We are so focused on hydrogen because at its most simplistic oxygen and hydrogen makes water and power,” he said. “The fuel cell vehicle is a social and economic game changer. Gasoline has been the primary fuel of the first 100 years [of automotive history]. Hydrogen will be the primary fuel game of the next hundred years.”

 

For years the rest of the car industry scrambled to play zero-emission catch-up, investing billions in plug-ins to avoid CO² reduction penalties, to the point that 2020 is being called the year of the electric car. For most of that time Toyota has been silent on battery electric vehicles, leading competitors and consumers to the conclusion that it was sticking to the notion that its hybrids, with just a few miles of electric charge, would remain its “technology bridge” until lithium-ion batteries were the past and hydrogen was the dominant zero-emission technology."

 

whjohnson:

All of this may become irrelevant quite quickly. Electric cars only made up 2 % of total new vehicle sales last year.