I don’t know what’s so funny but over here it is explicit that installations that were legal when made are still legal even if the regulations have changed
The devil is in the detail, and the detail is ever so often missing especially when it would demolish the attempted point 
These are legal here too. DIY work in your house is legal also (so long as you don’t have tenants, etc). I was rewiring houses when I was 12 (legally at the time), including the consumer unit which was, naturally, done live. Actually I was doing this when I was 9, connecting up the lights to the disconnected supply in the bunkers under the apartment block in Pribram (LKPM), but nobody knew I was down there. What is dodgy is for an electrician to perform work on something which is illegal and can be proven BRD to have been illegal at the time he did the work. Every civilised country must have a similar rule, otherwise professional qualifications, and safety regulations (where incidentally Sweden and neighbouring countries are world leaders), would be meaningless because the said “professional” could work on any old bodge job and, when it blows up a week later, just pretend it was all fine when he did the work. Give me a bit of credit for intelligence even though I don’t have a PhD!
Of course Sweden is an amazing country; the best in the world. The extra dimension in any international forum is that every country is the best 
More so in the last few years (so many changes in Europe) which is a bit sad.
The electrical trade in the UK pushes hard for it to be made completely illegal to do any electrical work yourself, and publishes much FUD suggesting it is already the case.
They do this everywhere. It is 100% human nature. Professional rep bodies lobby for this everywhere. I get a load of trade mags at work and they are full of this crap. Much of it is FUD. One for the boffins: one FUD from years ago was that spread spectrum modulation of processor clocks (which usefully reduces the high points in EM emissions) was to be made illegal. 20 years later, still FUD, and will always be FUD because there are obvious workarounds.
Fortunately for electricians, this is easy to pull off because most people can’t do electrical DIY, and those who can won’t get the govt grant. I am looking at getting 3 phase wired in (£3k-5k for running a cable ~3m) and will try to sidestep the issues by getting the power company to just wire in the meter in an outdoor housing. They aren’t interested in whether my house has any power so that bit will be done when they are off site. I have a 3.5kW generator but will have to work fast
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t know what’s so funny but over here it is explicit that installations that were legal when made are still legal even if the regulations have changed.
Not that different in the UK; only the actual new installation has to be compliant; for example new consumer boxes (the place where all the circuit breakers are) need to be made from metal, because, reasons, but it is perfectly fine to install a new 32A circuit for an EV charger.
Those electricians specialising in installing EV chargers and who make money from installing a great number of them and pocketing a large part of the subsidy through overpricing very happily install them that way. If you get a random electrician, you might get one who talks up the job to maximise revenue. Not much different from a plumber who wants to install a new boiler when a simple repair would do….
It was metal, then plastic, now back to metal (I think; just had this runaround on the annual electrical inspection at work). The “electricians” said there is now a max # of circuit breakers coming off one busbar (6 or so?) so they had to remove one which was unused. It would have also been doable by connecting one of the circuits into an existing CB, which is uttery stupid but you get the bit of paper
Peter wrote:
I am looking at getting 3 phase wired in (£3k-5k for running a cable ~3m) and will try to sidestep the issues by getting the power company to just wire in the meter in an outdoor housing.
Unless you have other reasons than an EV, this is a bit of a waste of money unless you drive a lot every day.
Single phase EV chargers are wired at 32A. That is 7.4 KW at 230V. A rather high daily charge requirement of 70 kW (say, 15 to 85% on a 100kWh battery) takes 10 hours on a single phase; so unless you arrive regularly after 7pm and set out again at 7am, having anyting more than 32A single phase is unnecessary.
“Normal” domestic three-phase EV chargers are wired at 3×16A which gives you 11 KW [typical “continental” household which has 32A 3-phase instead of the UK 80A or 100A single phase for a house]; or at 3×32A which in theory gives you 22 KW. But the real limiting factor is the AC charger in the car. For example the Tesla Model 3 can only do up to 11 kW 3-phase, and the Model S 16.6 kW. Mercedes EQS – same deal; Porsche Taycan – 11 KW max, 22kw an option at extra cost. Further downmarket, the Nissan leaf can only do 6.6 kW in any case, it can’t even use 7kW!
When I got my charger installed I was fretting about 3-phase and whatnot, turns out, all irrelevant.
Genuine fast charging on the road is DC with 50-300 kW and serves a different purpose – more like “pit stops” to get you to your destination.
dublinpilot wrote:
I think it was Toyota that was pushing H2.
Yes. It is out and available. Called the Mirai. Lovely car. I am severely tempted as there is a demonstrator available with less than 2k miles. They got it last year and had no takers at all. What the farmer does not know he will not eat. Problem is, even with a 10% discount I could not afford it by about the other 80%. It costs abuot 62k CHF, platinum edition.
Figures are superb. 650 km range on one charge, the charge takes 5 minutes flat. There are a mounting number of hydrogen gas stations around, as hydrogen is huge in the truck sector, so finding stations right now means a bit of organisation, not unlike the first Teslas did. As hydrogen is used for public transport e.t.c. I guess that will change.
This car works with a fuel cell, burns hydrogen to make power which runs the electric engines. And it emits pure water.
Yet, with this kind of price it will stay a dream like also most electric cars. And I am still quite happy with my now 25 year old Camry. It has passed 300k km recently but purrs like new. With what it has cost me to operate the last several decades I can honestly say I trust it sufficiently to assume it will last another 10 if not 15 years unless the green mafia bans fuel. If it does that, it may well be my last car. That would mean I had 3 cars all my life. Now how much CO2 I’ve saved by not buying new ones and giving away my old cars to the wrecker I don’t know but it must be a bit. Hey, maybe that argument also works for GA with most planes over 50 years old.
Can someone who understands better than me give an indication of what sort of electrical supply arrangements you might need in order to install a bank of ~20 EV chargers (slow, not fast) in a car park?
I’m assuming something quite serious.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
700 km range on one charge, the charge takes 2 minutes flat.
200km to the next fuel station, a 3 hour drive, otherwise A-Ok.
Love or hate Elon Musk, but he did two things that transformed EVs – he realised that he needed to start with rich people, and build a charging network, otherwise it would not work.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There are a mounting number of hydrogen gas stations around, as hydrogen is huge in the truck sector, so finding stations right now means a bit of organisation, not unlike the first Teslas did. As hydrogen is used for public transport e.t.c. I guess that will change.
That may well be the one thing that makes a difference – long haul freight does not really work that well with batteries.
The only thing that is as dead as a doornail are H2 powered combusion engines. Truly the worst of two worlds – combine the inefficiency of a combustion engine with the poor energy density of H2… BMW Hydrogen 7. Utter idiots.
Unless you have other reasons than an EV,
I do
I’m assuming something quite serious.
I’d talk to the power company first, because there can be a big variation.
Graham wrote:
Can someone who understands better than me give an indication of what sort of electrical supply arrangements you might need in order to install a bank of ~20 EV chargers (slow, not fast) in a car park?I’m assuming something quite serious.
100A three phase would give you nine 7 kW charge points which can be used simultaneusly. That is the maximum you can get (70 kVA) as a commercial line withou much ado, at maybe 10k installation cost
But the reality is that it is pretty much bespoke. First of all you need to have sufficient capacity at the local substation, and if that is available it then depends on the distance and the amount of earthworkds required.
Useful page: UK Power Networks
The individual charge points also are not cheap – you need metering and, unless you want to have all of them running at 7kW flat at the same time, some load balancer.
There is also the question of what tarriff will be available, probably not a domestic one; you probably need a specific commercial one for the typical usage pattern. Note that electricity is VERY expensive in the early evening.
This subsidy scheme might help.
Depending on the location and installation, it may be best to provide mounting points and cable runs centrally, so everyone can get their own cable and charger hooked up to their domestic meter, subject to them having a sufficiently large fuse to start with.
Peter wrote:
What is dodgy is for an electrician to perform work on something which is illegal and can be proven BRD to have been illegal at the time he did the work. Every civilised country must have a similar rule, otherwise professional qualifications, and safety regulations (where incidentally Sweden and neighbouring countries are world leaders), would be meaningless because the said “professional” could work on any old bodge job and, when it blows up a week later, just pretend it was all fine when he did the work.
There were an interesting case here a few years ago. An electrician was fixing an obviously dodgy part of the electrical installation in a house. Shortly afterwards the house burned down due to an electric fault. The fault was in a part of the installation that the electrician had never seen (on another floor, even). The insurance company sued the electrician’s company, reasoning that it was against regulations to turn on power to a faulty installation. The company retorted that the part they had worked on was (now) perfectly fine and that they had no obligation to make a complete check of the parts they had not worked on. The case attracted a lot of attention in the business as the consequences would have been enormous if the insurance company won the case. Eventually it was settled out of court with no disclosure of the settlement.
