C&G Indicates lack of qualifications for Electricians and EV charger installs

EVSE installation companies giving their installers “in-house” training certificates rather than a C&G reduces their employees ability to get a job with another company or to set up on a  self employed basis, in addition to the initial cost savings.

the cynic (qui -moi?) could re-title it as 'City  & Guilds gets knickers in a knot as it realises installation companies do not wish to pay exorbitant price for training to fit box to outside wall that needs little more than L/N/E connections and dedicated radial. Some in house training is patchy..' Of course folk could probably read the maker's instructions...

For comparison what fraction of non EV wiring complies fully with BS7671?  Given the heated discussions over EICRs and so on, clearly some way shy of all of it.

M.

Mike nails it.

This confuses me - why could 'Tom' not access the charger's 'features just because he was not a registered installer? The box is the box and doesn't need a call to the manufacturer to access all of it's set-up procedure.

Strong smell of fish emanating from here.'

If you look at advertisements for domestic  EVSE installation by “specialists” you will see “standard installation” being quoted.

If you weigh up the minimum required materials for their “standard installation” they will supply a MCB, six metres of cable, some clips and maybe a gland or two.

£25 the lot? Certainly not any more in many instances.

That's pretty ironic, C&G moaning about qualifications, when their own Providers take short cuts during the Course, and everyone on the Course gets a pass, whether they have learnt the principals or not. 

I reported last year on my C&G 2919,  no-one did the practical "as we are all electricians, and you know how to do it".

The Design exercises were done as a group, not individually, as expected by C&G, so no-one could fail the design section. Lots of relevant questions were just skipped over by the Tutor, as "we've not got time to get into that". No,all he wanted was to make sure he was out of the door at 4pm, after a late start at 9.30am. Oh, it was meant to be a 2 day course, but, as were were all competent, we can do it in one day.

I dont think I learnt anything on that day, the supposed book, advertised beforehand, to show us how to do the paperwork involved, turned out to be a .pdf file we could download, even that was rubbish, as all it was, was links to other websites for the OZEV/Government grants.

I supposed I am going to have to fess up.

A few weeks ago, Lyle Dunn and Alan Blaby commented in a discussion on this forum about the changes to the C&G EVSE course and a NVQ being a prerequisite for the new course.

Being a man of a certain age, I don't have any NVQs so although my C&G are into double figures after the end of August I will not be able to do the C&G EVSE course and gain the qualification.

So, after some debate with myself I decided to do it whilst I still have the opportunity and have made an initial outlay of a couple of thousand quid to get myself into the position I am in at the moment, trained and equipped, but not actually having done an install.

I did the C&G EVSE course at NAPIT Training in Portishead by Bristol, my experience was the exact opposite to the one that Alan had. We went through it doing the course exactly as we were supposed to, the job sheet cards were selected at random and we each did different ones, everyone used my pocketknife to make the SWA off because the cable insulation stripper had gone missing, I tried my shiny new charge point testing adapter out for the first time doing the testing assessment and so on and so forth.

Naively I thought everyone would pass and was actually surprised when I realised that some people had failed, I don't know how many failed as it wasn't appropriate to stop and listen to the conversations about retaking the exam and assessments.

I am now working my way through manufacturers training which is not particularly what it should be in some instances. I have just completed an online training module about interconnecting EVSE for load sharing with CAN Bus and the "quiz" asked the maximum length of the communication cable A- 50 metres, B- 500 metres or C- 5000 metres. I thought that information was not in the online training video I had just watched, so I watched it again and it wasn't, so then I Googled the answer, and the installation manual says 250 metres, I already had 500 metres in mind so clicked that, passed and now have an Accredited Training Certificate gained whilst sitting on my settee on a Sunday morning. 

The Express is predicting disasters.

www.express.co.uk/.../electric-car-charging-point-station-installation-fears-electricians-significant-risks

David Phillips managing director of City and Guilds said "Electricians will need to rapidly upskill to safely manage the workload – but currently the training just isn’t available nationally and there isn’t an impetus to undertake it. 

“We need industry to recognise this safety issue and ensure these EV charging points are installed in a way that is standardised and safe, to avoid a potential disaster in the near future.”

No mention of C&G dramatically reducing the number of electrician being able to train with possibly more than half the work force no longer having the entry requirements for the C&G EVSE training course. 

Are C&G making the situation worse rather than improving it?

The OLEV/OZEV grant scheme made the situation worse dissuading electricians from training and installing due to the amount of paperwork and very late payments.

Well, it seems to me that we need to re- define both 'dangerous installation' and 'suitably qualified' in a looser way so that more folk currently practicing as electricians can be recognized as competent. The alternative is a lot of 'granny leads' put out of bedroom windows, which does not involve electrically skilled personnel at all, but is, I firmly predict, likely to be a lot more dangerous in the long run.

I cannot believe that the majority of charger installations cannot be made at least as easy as installing a shower or a submain supply to an outbuilding. Perhaps the 'how to do it well' information needs to be more in the public domain, so customers  know better what to expect and to ask for (some car folk do understand electricity quite well after all), and the more  also-ran installers can, ahem, "double check", exactly what is it that they are supposed to be doing.

Some more detail on the 'really dangerous' practices discovered would probably also help steer that process of education too.

'Does not meet regs' and ' does not have a C and G cert from the 2000s' is not the same as 'is dangerous', in both directions.

Mike.