Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

The UK is small, it's smaller than California alone, and most people will be able to charge their cars at home.

Far more important than a charging station network is investment in on-street charging for people who don't have access to a garage.

Charging at home is far more important than charging on the road.

In any case, a grid upgrade will not be required. The "grid overload" story is fossil fuel industry propaganda. You can find the details here: https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-...

...but the salient point is that if 80% of all passenger cars become electric, this would lead to a total increase of 10-15% in electricity consumption. (Far, far from the "order of magnitude" claim.)

And even this ignores the vehicle-to-grid features of modern EVs, which can actually put power back into the grid during periods of high demand.

View on HN

Charging at home isn't an option for many people in the UK. In most cities there are a large number of homes that only have on street parking (mostly housing built prior to WWII which still makes up a sizeable amount of housing in the UK). One solution that has been proposed is for charging points to be built into street light poles.

I've used street light charging for a few years now in zone 2 in London. Works great.

I've never seen street light charging anywhere in Manchester - in fact the lack of on-street charging points is why I bought a hybrid rather than a EV.

Admittedly that was almost 3 years ago, but I still wouldn't have anywhere to charge it at home...

Provision differs by local authority, but there are some areas of London where they appear to have put a plug on almost every streetlight.

https://ibb.co/GPH8wym https://www.zap-map.com/live/

Are they typical 15 or 20 amp circuits? (whatever the typical circuit is in the UK)

15 amps at 230v won't charge very quickly.

It's 20amp & says it's 5kW (but might be 4.8?). More than enough to charge a car overnight.

I’m assuming that there are still far more cars than there are streetlights. It might work, but god does it sound stressful never knowing if you’ll get lucky and find a streetlight parking spot.

They cluster them in at least 3's. If the three by my house are completely blocked (the cable is almost as long as the car), in use, or broken (one was kicked in recently, now fixed) and I desperately need a charge (which has only happened once) there are at 10-15 more within 5 or so minutes walk.

Ubitricity has shown a concept where they have smaller extender posts off the lamp posts, which I guess they'll be able to install if an area gets really busy.

>Provision differs by local authority

Absolutely. I think there are more on-street charging stations in that neighbourhood than there are in my entire city...

Not everywhere in the UK is London.

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed"

If the future looks like London. I don't want to go there.

The quote is from William Gibson and was about technological development being different based on wealth and location.

You seem to have hijacked my point with something that's bothering you though :(

There is this attitude from those in cities that us outside of it eat mud and bang sticks together like primates. I frequently am seen as uneducated because I have a west country accent.

All new street lights (as of a couple of years ago) have to have charging points built-in, (or perhaps it's every alternate one or whatever) which I think is good, and also a good way of ensuring a gradual increase rather than trying to set arbitrary targets each year and do random disconnected things to meet them.

> All new street lights (as of a couple of years ago) have to have charging points built-in […]

If anyone wants to see an example of light pole charging, the Fully Charged YT channel had an episode of one example:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls

See also pop-up chargers for streets without poles:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frkw6aurVUY

Do you have a reference for this because it seems unlikely to be true. The difference in wiring guage between a 100w light and a 3kw is very significant.

Edit: this article talks about one street in London being the first to have car chargers built in an is from March this year.

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/analysis/...

I was under the impression that you're not guaranteed 3Kw from everywhere, probaby just a trickle charge overnight...

3kw is a trickle charge. Even the previous generation leaf had a 24kwh battery. From flat to fully charged would be overnight. 60kwh is more like what you need for similar range to a petrol car.

It is true. Have an example load of pictures: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=street+light+electric+car+charging.... My city (not London!) has had them for >3 years that I remember.

The main difference is that (a) each street light is actually ~ 10W, and (b) the wiring is massively over-specified. Quoting from a local authority source for street lights, [1], the minimum conductor area allowed (for the 220-270 VAC supply) is 6 mm^2, for a total thermal current limit of around ~55A. If you have, say, 100 lamps on a single "ring main", you still only have a power draw of ~1 kW, where the cable is rated to 55 V x 220 A ≈12.1 kW minimum.

[1] https://www.durham.gov.uk/media/3075/Street-Lighting-Specifi...

Tesla's new fast chargers support 250kw peak per car. So even 12kw is nothing to write home about. How many poles is that shared between? If it's more than 4 then it's not really enough. I suspect the reason the conductor is over specified though is to avoid voltage dropping outside of the 10% range it's allowed.

What's the carbon footprint of all the extra copper needed for the heavy gauge wiring?

>most people will be able to charge their cars at home

How many people in the UK live in a detached or a semi-detached house?

Most of them https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Ah, feel bad for those 10 million poor souls who don't fall into the "most" category

They can Uber. Remember, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.

Ah, you're right, how could I forget! I trust every business and government to meet or exceed SLAs all day, every day, for everyone :)

"This is just a minor detail and I'm sure the government will sort it out, they have 10 years to do it after all!"

is probably their deceptive response.

Far more important than a charging station network is investment in on-street charging for people who don't have access to a garage.

Same situation anywhere else. Can't they build more streetside charge points?

I lived in London for 20 years until I escaped five years ago, 15 years in a terrace street where parking occupancy was 85% or higher most of the time (except when Google last scanned it) and almost 100% in the evenings.

It was sometimes hard to get parked here never mind near your house or by a lamp post. Take a look at the street on Google street maps (Link below). These are old houses built over a century ago and many are now multiple occupancy with 1-3 cars per house. Counting lamp posts and cars (when full) there's probably one lamp post to every 15-20 cars. So lamp post charging is not going to work practically here and this is typical of many such streets.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5646881,-0.0087098,3a,75y,68...

I'm less worried about grid collapse and more worried about localized hot spots leading to localized failures. What happens when everyone in my neighborhood comes home and plugs in two Teslas? Looking at the markings on the transformers, I don't believe we'd operate through that. Luckily that doesn't seem catastrophically difficult to fix in a place with a good utility company. But we're on PG&E, so it'll probably rust out and catch fire before it gets an upgrade. Maybe UK providers are better.

Tesla generally doesn’t start to charge until like midnight (you can adjust it). If you can handle peak noon AC load, you can definitely handle middle of the night BEV charge load. It does hurt some generation strategies such as solar, but it plays nice with Vaseline generation.

Presumably this would be solved with time-based energy pricing to incentivise people to use electricity at times with lower load (which is often at night: perfect for EVs)

Yeah, but oftentimes loads (e.g., A/C or cooking) are not shiftable. And since there's no "EPA drive cycle" for TOU pricing or marketing standards, everybody quotes the lowest-possible rates that aren't representative of your marginal cost to consume. It's really anti-consumer.

Imagine if everything adopted this model. Gas at the pump changes price mid fill-up. You'd fret that you'd be gouged for a million dollar gallon in the moment that you glance away. Or if there were TOU in addition to data caps on your internet connection - streaming a movie might be more expensive than you bargained.

So yes, in principle I agree that pricing everything to the most-granular and timely degree is economically correct, but it's also absolutely exhausting as a consumer. There's only so much cognitive burden to be tolerated. At some point apathy takes over.

> and most people will be able to charge their cars at home.

No, most people in the UK live in terraced housing with no assigned parking spot - it's hit and miss whether they get to park outside their house or not when they come home from work. You also can't trail cables across the sidewalk (or pavement, as they say over there) - that would upset the disability people, for one thing.

In Germany, its about 25% of the cars which don't have a regular parking spot only, I would be surprised if the numbers in the UK would be vastly different.

However, everywhere where in-street parking is regular over night, there should be power outlets at the street side. They are quite common in the scandinavik countries, as even ICE cars used to be plugged in over night for heating the motor.

It’s not just the building of distribution points, which can be at home. It’s the sheer overall volume of electricity consumption going up per household, sometimes even an order of magnitude.

Most electrical grids will need to be upgraded to accommodate this. This is doable, but costs money and takes time.

The "grid overload" story is fossil fuel industry propaganda, I'm afraid. You can find the details here: https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-...

And even this ignores the vehicle-to-grid features of modern EVs, which can actually put power back into the grid during periods of high demand.

> And even this ignores the vehicle-to-grid features of modern EVs, which can actually put power back into the grid during periods of high demand.

I expect this is the part which will require more investment than anything else, as it will mean electrifying office car parks — the UK is further north than every American state except Alaska, so winter sunsets happen before the work day ends.

It certainly shouldn’t be impossible, but the current UK government is prone to acting as if they can make things happen just by saying so rather than spending money or doing any planning.

It isn't in the UK. There is very little surplus capacity in our grid. We started moving away from coal and subsidising green power years ago, and there has been chronic underinvestment in some areas as a result. A few years ago, it was a massive issue, things have improved (particularly now with falling demand) but it is a legitimate concern in some cases. Also, remember that the UK will need wind, solar doesn't work, and it isn't windy all the time (despite parts of our country being relatively windy).

You seem to be confusing generation capacity with grid capacity. Generation capacity might be a problem, but it's solvable with relatively simple solutions. (Build more power plants, buy in power from Europe.)

The grid capacity is fine, however.

No, I am not. The underinvestment extends to the grid (the UK has trouble replacing power lines/maintenance, let alone moving towards adding new capacity...the UK has very few detached houses so this is going to be complex).

And "build more power plants"...so simple...part of the problem is that actually building more power plants is more complex than just typing a post out or observing it should be true. This is linked to the issues that I mentioned in the previous post (when the govt moved towards green power a decade or so ago, investment went through the floor...more recently, they have introduced price caps...the reason why the UK hasn't built power plants is because the govt asked companies to build them, and they said no...which is why the govt has had to hand out big subsidies to nuclear).

Btw, if you aren't familiar with something, ask more questions (I know this because I used to work as an analyst, and part of my coverage was these companies) rather than assume that someone has made a basic mistake. The power market is local, not global. What is happening in the US isn't happening everywhere else (the UK is far further down this road than anyone else).

Ok well all I know is that over here, in The Netherlands, it’s the companies that maintain the actual grids that are saying this. Our grids are already fairly heavily loaded, and it needs upgrades to accommodate the increase in demand. Both from EVs as with other projects to migrate away from fossil fuels.

See for example a study from our government about this exact subject (in Dutch): https://www.kimnet.nl/binaries/kimnet/documenten/rapporten/2...

The summary is that if there were 4 million vehicles charging overnight, it would cause a total of 20GW of electricity. Our current total consumption (including industry) is 33GW, so this would cause a significant increase in electricity consumption.

We can also work back from first principles here. According to [0] we can see in 2019 the UK consumed 20.8bn litres of diesel and 16.2bn litres of petrol for non-commercial use. Taking the energy consumption of 10 KWh and 8.9 KWh of a litre of diesel and petrol respectively gives us an annual total of 3.4x10^11 KWh.

Dividing this number by 8760 (the number of hours in 2019) gives us 40,203,196 KW, or 40 GW total energy consumption. Assuming that electric vehicles are 5x more efficient than ICE, gives us about 8GW of electricity needed to replace all petrol and diesel consumption in the UK.

According to [1] the UK's peak consumption is currently 61.9 GW with a theoretical maximum of 75.3 GW. So to replace all non-commercial fuel used would be 13% of the peak usage.

According to [2] the UK's total electricity generation in 2019 was 323.7 TWh which is 3.237x10^11 KWh which is roughly equivalent to the total energy value for non-commercial diesel and petrol calculated above. Assuming again the 5x efficiency gain that would mean a ~20% increase in the amount of energy that would need to be generated.

[0] https://www.ukpra.co.uk/en/about/facts-and-figures

[1] https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/76160/13537-elec...

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

I don't know the precise UK numbers, but a complete switch to electric cars would mean 20% more electricity consumed from the grid. This is not a huge increase, in most places the grid should be completely fine to sustain the extra load. Especially, as car charging is wonderful for grid balancing, you mostly wouldn't do it in the moments of highest grid demand. Yes, residential electricity consumption would about double, but that isn't a huge challenge for the grids either. The biggest change would be adding some more transformers which provide the 230V to households. But as the changeover to electric cars will take like 20 years, this is absolutely doable - and in Germany the electric providers started already the planning.

> Most electrical grids will need to be upgraded to accommodate this.

I'm not so sure. Using the province of Ontario, since I have the link handy:

* http://www.ieso.ca/power-data

The demand the last few days peaked at 18:00 (local/ET) at 16.5-17K (MW), while its lowest point is at 02:00 at about 11.5K.

Would overnight car charging really exceed the ~5500 MW of power that needs to be handled already?

That myth buster is bollocks. It only flies numbers and has no substantiation on the figures presented. It's only a feels good story.

Their numbers don't add up. My apartment consumes around 400kWh a month. Assuming I charge a Tesla with 82kWh battery and I use it all in a month, the additional energy consumption is: 82/400 = 20%. And that is only on the fat chance that I will be driving less than I do today.

So prove me wrong.

It's physics. All the energy that the cars consume has to come from somewhere. And people will drive more especially because the car is now somehow 'green'

Private electricity consumption is only a small part of the total electricity consumption. While private consumption might be doubled when switching to electric cars, 20% total increase is a reasonable expectation (in Germany it would be somewhat less than that).

Increase in total capacity is irrelevant when people want to charge their cars _at home_. The circuits for residential areas need to take into account the increase in capacity.

And when private electricity consumption is very small, wtf was with the move to LED lighting for and the ban of incandescent bulbs?

Increased demand for homes can be handled by adding more transformers. The lines are fine, but the number of homes per segment behind a transformer needs to be reduced. This is already ongoing in Germany for example.

And the switch from incandescent to CFL/LED did save a lot of energy in total, both for residential and business applications. I once read the number that the net load was reduced by 1 GW due to the change. That is a reasonably sized nuclear power plant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com