Plans for an electric car charging point in every new home in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Plans for an electric car charging point in every new home in Europe

theguardian.com

38 pointsGravityloss41 comments

Hmmm. It's not like installing the charging points later is terribly difficult or expensive compared to the cost of the cars themselves, so long as there's a suitable garage or parking space. Are they outlawing new homes and home refurbishments without garages or similar suitable for electric cars? That'd be quite some subsidy for the car industry.

In towns and cities most people have to park on the street. (At least in the UK).

Any jurisdiction that requires off street parking to be associated with buildings (which is nearly universal in the US) could be said to be similarly subsidizing the auto industry.

To me, the reason to consider requiring a car charging station is not really related to cars but to the history of after the fact electrical installations which to be safe must be done right and doing it right takes time (to hire qualified installers) and money (to hire said installers and purchase electrical gear) and that human nature is to avoid those things and install systems that trade those costs for safety (fire and shock).

I look at it as parallel to requiring circuit breakers rather than fuses in new residential construction and renovation. Fuses are really safe, safer than circuit breakers in theory. In practice people substitute non-fusable objects for fuses for convenience and cost savings. The work until they don't.

>To me, the reason to consider requiring a car charging station is not really related to cars but to the history of after the fact electrical installations which to be safe must be done right and doing it right takes time (to hire qualified installers) and money (to hire said installers and purchase electrical gear) and that human nature is to avoid those things and install systems that trade those costs for safety (fire and shock).

>I look at it as parallel to requiring circuit breakers rather than fuses in new residential construction and renovation. Fuses are really safe, safer than circuit breakers in theory. In practice people substitute non-fusable objects for fuses for convenience and cost savings. The work until they don't.

I agree here. That said, in the US most homeowner electrical installations are done 90% to code and the stuff people skip is stuff like supporting wires individually and circuit planning often sucks.

In applications where you really care about not starting electrical fires there's usually a combination breaker and fuse where the breaker setting is conservative and the fuse is sized to burn up just before the wire does.

90% to code is not to code. The parts that comply with code don't make noncompliant parts safe. The parts that comply with code make other compliant parts safe.

> I look at it as parallel to requiring circuit breakers rather than fuses in new residential construction and renovation.

Since it's a charging point, wouldn't it be more similar to "each bedroom should have at least N power sockets per square meter"? I believe a rule like that already exists, requiring something like "at least N electric vehicle charging sockets per square meter of garage" sounds like a natural extension of it.

That said, I'd like to read that draft directive, and see what it actually says.

To me, there's really no philosophical difference between receptacles in the bedroom and the prohibition on fuseboxes. Receptacles in bedrooms are to reduce life safety hazards from the use of extension cords when receptacles are lacking as the requirement for circuit breakers reduces the life safety hazard from using coins when replacement fuses are lacking.

Incidentally, the US centric NEC also requires bedroom circuits to be protected from arc faults in new/upgraded installations. This is typically achieved with breakers in the breaker box.

It's difficult if you don't own the house.

Perhaps future regulations will require a dishwasher and a laundry machine in all new or renovated homes?

Does anyone have link to original sources?

Most houses in EU already have "charging point", it is called electric plug. 25A/380V plugs are pretty common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_and_multiphase_powe...

But electric grids in western countries (Germany, UK) are absolutely not ready for such thing. German power grid would collapse if Czechia and Poland started enforcing their safety regulations.

This regulation would also make it impossible to build off-grid house powered by solar.

> 25A/380V plugs are pretty common

Not in homes.

My experience is from post communist countryside. Everyone has some machinery to cut wood, mix concrete, welding...

Countryside - but cities, probably main market for electric cars does not have this.

Main market is countryside with a commute to local city. Cities often do not even have a parking spot and public transport is faster.

You must be talking about specifically your area. I live in Europe and most central and western Europe (maybe north not so much) is filled with cars and cities are big enough to provide enough parking spaces. Only UK and Ireland are the countries in the west that are not like this. Cant think of any other.

At least in Germany every single house or apartment has an electric connection with a power output of at least 120A/380V (you're always connected to all 3 phases). Hooking up an 25A/380V plug shouldn't be a big deal.

But that's the point -- we know they have the capacity going into the houses, they just don't currently have the actual connection.

> Hooking up an 25A/380V plug shouldn't be a big deal.

For a forum that's obsessed with A/B testing the colour of eg the signup button it's odd to see people saying this. Of course it's not hard, but it is friction, and people avoid friction. If we want people to take up electric vehicles (and in the UK, particularly London, we really do to undo some of the catastrophic decisions around promoting diesel) we want to make electric vehicles easy to own.

What makes you think the German grid would not be up to charging electrical cars? In most places it is in an excellent state and as electrical consumption overall is sinking (getting rid of incandescent bulbs and wasteful electric devices helped there). On average, an electrical car would need about 10kWh/day to recharge, based on the average mileage. This does not put high loads on the electrical networks, especially as most cars would recharge over night, where the networks are mostly idle.

My informations from Germany are 6 years, but it probably still applies:

- electricity is produced by wind farms in north, and transfered to industrial south. German grid does not have enough capacity and has to transfer through Czech grid. That is often pushing it to edge of safety limit. Safety breakers are not possible for political reasons (Poland installed something like that).

- Building new high-voltage power line is almost impossible

- Atomic plants are being decommissioned. There might be a problem to satisfy existing demand.

- Germany is planning to use Russian gas to make power in future (baltic pipe...). But Russia stated they might not have enough gas in 30 years to supply their own internal demand, and will stop exporting.

- More recently there is a huge political instability associated with Russian gas.

- Poland (or Estonia?) buys liquid gas from Katar and transports it on tankers. But that is very expensive

- Building new power plants in Germany is very problematic.

I am from Germany. Yes, to move forward with renewables we need more north-south connections, which are being built. But that concerns the further switch of the grid to renewables (currently 30%). This does not affect the charging of electrical cars - which would rather help to stabilize the grid.

Not ready? Most electric clothes dryers, heaters, and air conditioners already use 4500 watts each. I'm sure the grid may notice an increase, the utilities will charge for the extra consumption, and upgrade accordingly. The common 200 ampere service in homes should handle another 30 amps...

A 4500W clothes dryer or heater seems like a stretch, and besides, most people don't run those with a 100% duty cycle for hours. Saying that "utilities will upgrade accordingly" hides a lot of complexity under a simple statement.

Yes but realistically European charging stations would be a separate 415v - as this allows for much faster charging.

This seems shortsighted. We're on the verge of changing the car ownership model with driverless cars & legislators are stuck creating laws that will create an unnecessary burden in 5-8 years (yet they'll likely stay on the books for decades). Ultimately it is central planning at its worst. A great example of why decisions should be driven by the market, not "I know what's best for everyone" politicians.

Driverless cars to become standard in 5-8 years? I'd bet against that, never mind the car ownership model.

Thoughts: 1. Where will the energy come from? 2. While electric cars will make the air in cities better, they won't reduce the needed space (for driving AND parking), and they won't make life more secure for pedestrians and cyclists. 3. In our courtyard, I usually don't find a place to lock my bicycle because they removed some of the bicycle stands in favor of creating some private terraces - this should be forbidden 4. Please concentrate on electric cars for car sharing

While this is a hell of a lot better than the current system of non-electric, I feel that people owning their own car won't be a thing after cars are self driving.

After they are, I think people will just call for a car and it would drive to you and pick you up. Obviously this won't work for rural and off road areas, though.

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