Installing EV Charging Units in Petrol Stations

Most petrol stations have a parking area separate from the petrol pumps, for people using the shop.  So it shouldn't be too hard to physically separate the chargers from the pumps by installing chargers there.


I know of one petrol station near me where its (one) charger is well away from the pumps.


In the long run, get rid of the petrol pumps entirely and replace them with chargers.  From 2030, I would expect demand for petrol and diesel to start dropping steadily.  Se petrol stations will become unprofitable if there are too many in one town.

I’m doing a one man EV survey this morning, I drove through Solihull just the sort of place where the second car could be an EV and there’s a drive to park it on, but I have not spotted an EV or a charger on anybody’s drive.


I will try playing Eye Spy again as I drive back through the other way.

There are a pair of Instavolt chargers at the local (BP) petrol station. They are adjacent to the footway and on the opposite side of the plot to the shop. They are well away from the canopy and some distance from the car wash. When they were installed, a (fairly hefty) cable was simply jointed to the mains under the grass verge.


ETA: To make it clear, the chargers have their own supply from the DNO's mains in the street.


Although I do not pass by every day, I see them in use about once a year. ?

In the last three weeks I have been to Chigwell, Harpenden and Solihull all places I would expect to se a high number of EVs as second cars and chargers on driveways.


I can declare the take up is minimal, I did not see an EV on a driveway at all in Solihull.

Also my sat nav tells me when I am passing petrol stations and public EV charging points, again there’s a minimal number of public EV charging points.

There is no reason that earth leakage should be more of a problem than anywhere else, but EMC problems may become quite significant, A lot of the assumptions about widely spaced sources and radiated energy from each car not aggregating will not really apply if you put a lot of charging points in one place.

The EV 'petrol station' is another problem entirely....

Given the totally different use situation - a 3 minute of filling with 2 mins of paying and get out as fast as possible for petrol, versus park up for at least ten times that and wander about or have a meal,  by the time service stations are serving anything but a small fraction of the current petrol car throughput as electric cars, there will not be enough room, unless perhaps the cars are stacked vertically.


The  8000 petrol stations can serve 30 million cars and about 10 million commercial vehicles  with 16 billion litres of petrol and 20 billion litres of diesel  per year, cars  filling up perhaps once or twice a week and HGVs daily.  (  PRA     Dukes )


If we need forty thousand  charge points for the current 0.5 million electric cars (of which 0.25 million are half pure electric and a similar no of hybrids with plug in capability ) then I suspect for electricity a more thinly spread network with more nodes spaced wider apart will be required.


Is that reasonable ? if we expand in the next decade or so to say 20 million electric cars, how many charge-point killowatt hours per day do we need to keep them rolling at a comparable rate.? Then there is the freight sector to add in.


I have also often wondered if it would be better to re-invent  motorail and keep cars on the move while charging them from the 25kV train overheads. (I appreciate the available power is limited, and the voltage spec of 19kv to 27kv is rather bouncier than the normal mains).

In any case  fear the railways, that have taken more than 150 years to electrify about half way round the UK, would simply not catch up in any reasonable time.


Not sure how we'd wire the vertical car park either. presumably at 11 or 33kV except for the last 100m or so.




   

I've not seen any EV charging points in private homes in this area of weymouth there's one at the yacht club in town  but that's it.Electric cars will take all the joy out of motoring its another way to stop us enjoying ourselves. Yes I'm a bit bitter