Electrical Vehicle Chargers - No Diversity?

smart meter switch off

Smart meters are capable for a lot more than just switching the entire installation on or off. They already have the capability of signalling current tariff rates to equipment within the installation, and for different customers on the same street to be on different tariffs at the same moment. If problems were to arise (and given that we coped with lots of people in some districts having off peak storage heating I'm not sure that's a given) it doesn't seem to be beyond the wit of man to stagger off peak tariffs across homes in the same street in some form or another.

Average car mileage is apparently 7,400 miles/year (pre-pandemic) - at around 3 miles per kWh for a typical EV - so would need around 2,500kWh/year - or about 6.75kWh/day on average - so less and an hour for a typical 7kW charger.

If you want an example of how thin looking infrastructure can actually supply a lot more power - just look at France. A quick glance at their small transformers feeding mile-long set of ABCs through a village and a 30A or 45A single phase limit per house might convince you that they must have very modest demands - yet looking at the figures they consumer about twice as much electrical energy per head as we do.  The trick they use is to spread the consumption far more evenly though the day and night, rather than bunching it up like we do (morning and evening for domestics, during the day for commercial/industrial). The driver for them was their fleet of nuclear power stations which are much more efficient when feeding a constant load, but the same techniques could work for us.

   - Andy.

smart meter switch off

Smart meters are capable for a lot more than just switching the entire installation on or off. They already have the capability of signalling current tariff rates to equipment within the installation, and for different customers on the same street to be on different tariffs at the same moment. If problems were to arise (and given that we coped with lots of people in some districts having off peak storage heating I'm not sure that's a given) it doesn't seem to be beyond the wit of man to stagger off peak tariffs across homes in the same street in some form or another.

Average car mileage is apparently 7,400 miles/year (pre-pandemic) - at around 3 miles per kWh for a typical EV - so would need around 2,500kWh/year - or about 6.75kWh/day on average - so less and an hour for a typical 7kW charger.

If you want an example of how thin looking infrastructure can actually supply a lot more power - just look at France. A quick glance at their small transformers feeding mile-long set of ABCs through a village and a 30A or 45A single phase limit per house might convince you that they must have very modest demands - yet looking at the figures they consumer about twice as much electrical energy per head as we do.  The trick they use is to spread the consumption far more evenly though the day and night, rather than bunching it up like we do (morning and evening for domestics, during the day for commercial/industrial). The driver for them was their fleet of nuclear power stations which are much more efficient when feeding a constant load, but the same techniques could work for us.

   - Andy.