Electric hook-up
I'm interested to know or hear opinions on how best to use electric hook-up such as how many electric appliances can you use at the same time within the 16 amps that are allowed?
This information is going to become more and more important with the advent of electric vehicles. I don't understand enough about electricity to be able to covert watts or volts into amps which is perhaps what's needed to calculate whether usage is within the 16 amps permitted because anything beyond this would trip the system.
If, for example, you have an electric car on charge at 3kw through an ordinary domestic 3 pin socket fitted in the caravan, could you run an electric slow cooker of 100 watts at the same time?
Our caravan cooker has one electric ring. Can this be used at the same time as charging an electric car, without tripping?
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If the electric car is charging at 3 kw that is 13 amps used up already. Just because it has a 3 pin plug and 13 amp fuse does not mean it necessarily is using 3kw. Does your documentation say that?
If it is, you have very little left to use, particularly if your fridge is on electric and your battery charger is on. You might get away with a slow cooker, but very little else.
Our electric ring in our Bailey, probably the same as fitted to yours, is 800 watts. So I would not try and use that.
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Maximum watts on a 16a hookup is 3680 say 3.6kw
If the car uses 3000 of them there isn't much left. Don't forget the background uses like fridge, caravan battery charger etc. Then there's heating and hot water which use a lot
I think a bit of care will be needed with appliances.
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The thing to do M is to make sure your van is good and warm (in winter) and you have a tank of hot water. Then turn the Alde completly off, otherwise the hot water might cut in. Even on the lowest setting that will put you over. Don't even think about using a low wattage kettle, break out your gas one. If it's like ours it is gathering dust under the front seats.😂
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Is the CC&C going to allow car charging from the ehu bollards, if so I would have thought they will have to start charging for lecky.
excuse the pun above.
Moderator Edit:
Are you getting confused - you mention CC&C - this is the Caravan and Motorhome Club.
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Just get an App on your phone "Ohm's Law" and simply type in what ever information is on the appliance label and the app will tell you what the current draw will be. Total up what you wish to use and you will have your answer
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What's the CC&C, M is on a Caravan and Motorhome club site. They have already stated that charging an electric car using your pitch supply is permissible.
They already charge for electric, it's in the price.
Apart from that Malcolm started this thread for advice. He gets enough moans when he goes off topic on a thread. Now he has started his own, it seems he can't win.
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Malcolm I cannot throughly check this as my van is in storage but I am sure the Outside socket outlet on my van is controlled by a 10 aamp RCD in the consumer unit.So I am not sure where you are picking you supply up from.
This was one of my concerns earlier when this thread started.
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We use the fast charger for our EV, haven't tried it at a site yet where the slow charger would be needed. Sorry can't help you but others are using them as previously mentioned on other EV threads. A fast charge off site would take up a lot less time.
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That was certainly the case on our swift. However, M has a Bailey U3. I am also unable to check but I am fairly certain in our U2 we only have two breakers, one for the charger and one for everything else. We have certainly had our Alde cranked up to 3 kw on occasion.
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Sorry for the typo CC&C Steve, but in answer to your snap retort,I did not know if this was possible from the limited bollard supply.
when you see the cable size of the motorway charge points, one would assume they use quite a bit of electric.
I don't know Malcom at all,and most certainly have no intention of having a pop at him or anyone else.
But I do believe if we all start using electric cars and charging on site, somebody will have to pay for it.
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Most of these apps allow you to put in 4 types of value and do the sums for you.
Yes I was thought about VIR & PIV but why bother when you only need to know 2 values to type in to the app on your phone
But I take your point and was just trying to give Malcolm a pointer as to what kind of app to download
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the way I work it out is divide the total watts being used by 240 ( being the average voltage in the UK ) and that will give the amps being pulled, so say total is 2850 watts that equates to 11.87 amps. SteveL, 3kw would only pull 12.5 amp so well below the 16 on most sites but well over on the 10amp sites. I have just fitted a meter to my van so I can see what power is being used at the exact time I want to use an appliance.
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I realise that lornalou. The response was in relation Fozzie's post. He thinks the outside socket on his van is protected by a 10 amp breaker and would therefore trip if you tried to pull 3kw. M and myself have Bailey's. I am fairly sure we only have the one breaker for the main circuits, plugs + heating and that is 16 amps. Therefore the outside socket would be capable of charging his EV at 3kw, as it would not trip the caravan breaker. Neither of us are able to check though, to be 100% certain.
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So from what I have gathered on here, it seems I could continue to run the fridge/freezer on electric and perhaps the slow cooker as well along with the electric car on the slow 3 kw charge. If that's too much, there is the option of running the fridge/freezer on gas. Our electric kettle is 2 kw so can't use that whilst the car is charging so, like you say, the gas kettle would be the only option. The other option is to temporarily unplug the electric car charger, then put the electric kettle on which doesn't take long to boil. Once that switches off then re-plug the car charger once again. I believe it only requires 6 hours to fully charge the car at 3 kw slow charge. This could be done overnight when other appliances are not needed because of being asleep!
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I think this means that it would be possible to run our airconditioner overnight whilst the car is charging because the aircon uses about 3.5 amps. So 12.5 amps plus 3.5 amps comes to 16 amps. So if we switched the fridge over to gas, would that be possible? But then there's the battery charger. Perhaps that can be switched off somehow although I don't know how to do it?
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But I do believe if we all start using electric cars and charging on site, somebody will have to pay for it.
We are only a few short years away from that and they will pass very quickly.....
I'm sure someone at the Club is already planning infrastructure upgrades across all the Club sites, and considering how best to recoup the costs of those upgrades & the units of energy used....
(OK I'm not at all sure anyone is, but they need to be....
)I regularly drive a pure EV in work and you don't even think about it, I just take it for granted now, it surprises me now if people comment on it and ask about it....
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