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Which Preserved Lines have Electric Car Charging Points??

Discussion in 'Heritage Railways & Centres in the UK' started by johnofwessex, Nov 25, 2017.

  1. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    By the time when so many passengers will be arriving in electric cars, there will have to be charging points all over the place, possibly provided by the energy companies as suggested in post #27. Right now and in the near future, with only small numbers of electric cars on the road, small numbers of bays with charging points would be considerably better than none, and not hard to provide if only delivering a few kW each.
     
  2. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    yes but is it a good investment of scarce resources?
     
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  3. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    Does anyone know the cost of providing an 'outdoor' 13A Plug?

    I suspect that so long as you are on the outside of a building with a suitable power supply not much.
     
  4. paul1609

    paul1609 New Member

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    Thats not really true, 13A sockets won't charge an electric car during a typical visit to a preserved railway. There are special regulations for car charging points which require separate earthing.
    I manage the utilities for the Kent & East Sussex Railway. At Tenterden there are 2 7KW charging points in the public car park in Station Road 300 yards from the railway. Ive yet to see a vehicle plugged in at them in the 2 years since they were commissioned. Whilst I'd like to think I'm on the ball, I can't currently justify the cost of cabling from the nearest electric supply to the car park 200 metres for a facility thats likely to be seldom used.
     
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  5. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    Uprating the supply to cope with the demand will cost I imagine as will paying for the electricity. To provide fast charging points will require a fair bit of dosh I suspect.
     
  6. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    I hope that the charging points in the public car park get a mention in next years publicity and on your website.

    The comment about special regulations for car charging points is one I, and I am sure many contributors are not aware of, so thank you for that.

    From a purely personal perspective though, given that most visitors to preserved railways come from about a 50 mile radius though, for many users, rather than a full recharge I would have thought most would simply want a 'top up' so a smaller charger would be suitable for the majority of users.
     
  7. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric-vehicle_battery#Full-electric shows battery capacities over the very wide range of 6 kWh to 100 kWh, but most around 30 kWh to 50 kWh. So a 3 kW supply used for, say, 3 hours would provide a useful top-up. The cost of providing such a charging point would depend mainly on the distance from an existing supply and whether that existing supply needs to be upgraded.
     
  8. paul1609

    paul1609 New Member

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    Johnofwessex Ive had a experiment with 30 KW Nissan Leafs rented from Hertz at Heathrow Airport driving to my home in Wittersham, Kent which is around 85 miles via junction 8 of the M20. This is about 5 miles further than the railway at Tenterden Town Station. The range of the cars is claimed to be around 130 miles I believe , but this must be in ideal conditions. The furthest Ive ever dared to go without a charge in typical winter M25 conditions is Clackett lane services on the Surrey/Kent border. The next obvious charging point without coming off route is Maidstone West Services at junction 8 of the M20 and I concede if I was very brave that might be just achievable. However Tenterden is definitely out of range of Heathrow Airport in real world conditions. I think the practicality of current pure electric vehicles is probably less than is advertised and this explains the limited use of charging points out in the country. Do you drive one?
     
  9. paul1609

    paul1609 New Member

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    In theory probably but I don't think that any of the electric car chargers that utilise a 13A plug charge at anywhere near 3KWh because of the danger of overloading the house ring main and the 13amp plug. Its not permitted under the electricity regulations to have a 3KW immersion heater supplied via a 13a plug and ring main for the same reason. I think you'll find that they will mostly achieve a partial charge overnight see my comments above for real world range.
     
  10. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    Not sure who you're asking. If me, no I don't. Some years ago I was planning to get a hybrid but waiting for a better range of those to become available. Nothing to my liking did become available in time so I got a diesel (just before the official advice about diesels did a U-turn). But if I ever do get a hybrid or all-electric car, I already have a 13 A outlet outside my front door, which should be good enough for overnight charging (subject possibly to the addition of supplementary earthing as mentioned above).
     
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  11. MellishR

    MellishR Resident of Nat Pres Friend

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    That doesn't make sense to me. Our ordinary BS1363A plugs have a 13 A rating, meaning that they are designed to pass up to that much current. Most domestic appliances use far less (which is why I have dozens of unused 13 A fuses from plugs in which I have fitted more appropriate ones), but anyone can plug in a 3 kW fan heater. You can't have several such appliances running off the same ring main at the same time, but one or two should be OK.
     
  12. paul1609

    paul1609 New Member

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    I believe that the Nissan Leaf limits charge on a 13Amp lead to 10 Amps (2.3KW) and the vauxhall electric car system to 8 Amps.
    On the Nissan this equates to a theoretical range of 9 miles per hour on charge on a 13 Amp lead.
     
  13. michaelh

    michaelh Part of the furniture

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    When I was at work my employers - a public authority - installed 2 charging points in a 450 space car park. They were used twice in 3 years.
     
  14. Peter Wilde

    Peter Wilde New Member

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    Fair point, but - that was then. We are led to believe that ownership of electric cars will soon go mainstream; and maybe once that happens, owners will start to expect to find - and use en masse - charging points at their destination.
     
  15. paulhitch

    paulhitch Guest

    According to a great friend of mine who is a proper electrical engineer, battery electric car ranges are a bit a bit of a con. Regardless of how "sophisticated" the battery is, its performance is dramatically reduced in cold weather for reasons of pure physics. This is before such things as radios, heaters and lights are added in.

    PH
     
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  16. threelinkdave

    threelinkdave Well-Known Member

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    It is a bit like liquid hydrogen delivery points and LPG points. We were promised a country wide network as usage increased but without the infrastructure the market was slow to grow.I did have a LPG powered Discovery and was thankful on many occasions there was petrol backup. There have been a number of announcements that "our battery will be better" but when tested in the real world range was still lacking

    What worries me with in the environment is the chemicals used to build and make batterys and solar cells, and there are some pretty nasty chemicals used. It is little use just swapping one polutant for another
     
  17. baldbof

    baldbof Well-Known Member Friend

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    Never mind charging points for cars; after an encounter today with the rider of a mobility scooter, they too will be wanting charging points dotted around towns, cities and the countryside for their machines.

    The particular individual I encountered recognised me from an event when our canal society had an open day and he was the duty whinger - nothing was suitable for someone on a mobility scooter and anything else he could think to moan about. Today, he asked me why our depot didn't have a charging point for mobility scooters such as his. I replied that the very nice, customised Transit van in which he, and his scooter, arrived at our open day, meant that if he had left home with his scooter fully charged, he wouldn't need to charge it at our depot.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2017
  18. Reading General

    Reading General Part of the furniture

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    ...and at your expense too no doubt...
     
  19. johnofwessex

    johnofwessex Resident of Nat Pres

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    Thanks, I don't drive one at the moment but I believe even Diesel Kia Rio's don't go on forever so would be interested in and when that sad date ever happens

    Given the range figures that have been discussed for the Nissan Leaf, the WSR & Swanage are slightly out of range so certainly for the WSR a 13A charger would be more than enough for a top up to get home. As its usually a shorter visit a larger charger would be needed for as trip to the Swanage Railway
     
  20. 35B

    35B Nat Pres stalwart

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    In other words, a repeat of the diesel cock up, just with different chemicals.
     
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