Electric hook-up
Comments
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The other question is: Can you use the Brighton CMC charging bollard whilst staying on Gatwick CMC? The problem being, that after my shift is over, I may need to charge up before the 30 mile commute back to Gatwick. I can't use the dealership at Portslade because they close at 6 p.m. and my shifts usually finish at 10 or 11 p.m. Having said that I would need 15 miles worth of power left in the car just to get to Brighton!
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I heard about these charging points on the Brighton site quite a long time back, I think they have been there for around 4 years. I doubt they will available to non site users, but there are plenty of public charging points being installed all over the place,so you should not have a problem charging up locally Malcolm.
Have you put the Zap Map on your phone or iPad?
www.zap-map.com
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Calculating the power consumption using a smartphone application or one's own arithmetic using Ohm's Law on the back of an envelope is doomed to failure. The problem is that the site supply to the caravans is alternating current, not direct, which is where Ohm's Law works.
There are a couple of big differences in using A/C that need to be put into the calculation. First, as well as resistance (the "R" bit), A/C involves other forms of load known as Inductance and Capacitance. Then there is the effect on an A/C supply as the total load of all three approaches the maximum for the transformer supplying the circuit and the voltage starts to drop.
There is a simple answer. A power meter can be fitted in the caravan which shows the instantaneous Voltage (which I have seen as high as 252 and as low as 198) and Current passing through the meter. At about £12 it is well worth it for not having to go out to reset the bollard! Why caravan builders do not fit as standard surprises me.
Watching it in use as things switch on and off is very enlightening as the Inductance and Capacitance effects can make the power consumption of an appliance vary quite a lot from what one is led to expect. So Malcolm may well have more to play with than he thinks.
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Yes.
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Couldn't quite figure out where best to insert my reply but, for what it's worth, here it is
For a while, I towed with a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and simply plugged the dealer supplied mains cable into my external 13 amp socket on the van. Usually did so at night so no impact really on other usage - is there a reason why you would want to charge a car during the daytime?
I should add that, having moved house to a town where I can walk to everything, the economics of the PHEV no longer work for me so I have returned to the world of oil burners (although I've gone for the cleanest I can get (I hope
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Whilst this is technically correct it rather complicates things unnecessarily. The major loads in a caravan are heating, kettle, hob. All these are resistive so an ohms law calculation is absolutely valid. Yes, of course the voltage varies which causes the load to take more or less current but that applies for ac or dc. It’s quite OK to say 1kW = 4amps as an approximation.
On a 16 amp bollard it will take forever to trip if you are taking 17amps and nearly forever if you take 18 amps. All depends on trip settings etc. so everything is approximate!
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Well just had the caravan serviced and the engineer measures and writes down the current drain on the all the electric items fitted to the van, as pointed out Ohms law is what you need to know ie check the wattage on the rating plate divide by the voltage this should give you the amperage BUT remember voltages can vary
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Quite right. I wouldn’t worry about power factor, most domestic appliances that contain a motor are inductive and contain a capacitor to correct the power factor to at least 0.95. Very few domestic appliances that draw heavy current (above 2 or 3 amps) are capacitive so you can ignore power factor in these type of calculations.
Also when considering when an MCB will trip, such as the 10a MCB that protects the external 13a socket in most caravans, it may be worth checking if it’s a type 1, 2 or 3 MCB. A 10amp type 3 MCB will not trip until a load of around 18 amps has been drawn for several seconds by which time hopefully the HRC fuse in the plug top should have operated.
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Hi everyone,
I can confirm The Club do allow site users to connect out from their caravan, as guests do for their awnings and connect/charge their car. However, this will reduce the available ampage required for other usage within your outfit, which is personal choice.
If it becomes an issue and the 16 amp supply is exceeded, resulting in the bollard tripping out, the Site Staff would then suggest that guests reduce their appliances plugged in.
Should anyone require further information, our Technical Team are available to help, Monday to Friday, between 9am and 5.30pm.
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I think that would be a sensible solution Navigateur. A power meter inside the caravan so that you can see at glance if you are getting close to the limit of 16 amps. Then you can switch off an appliance, if necessary, to avoid tripping the bollard.
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May be only £12 to buy, but then it would cost you to have it fitted.
I would suggest (again) that you would be better to spend the money on having the Alde Load Monitor fitted, this works automatically and will switch off and on the Alde when necessary.
Other things you need to find out are the rating of the MCB on the circuit you will be charging from, (it will be marked on it), and how much power the car draws while charging, which the dealership should be able to tell you about.
You will be mainly charging the EV overnight, how many other things would you want to be using overnight? Maybe aircon, you know now how much that uses, and once you have done your research you will know what the car draws to charge, so using the easy formula you can work out whether you can run the aircon at the same time.
After all, you will be asleep when the car is charging, so will not be looking at a meter or able to turn something off.
During the day, if you do need to charge the car, you can use the app you downloaded to work out what else you can run, the load monitor will take care of the Alde. When not charging the car the load monitor will turn off the Alde if you want to use the power on other things. Plugging and unplugging not required.
NB.....the load monitor does not turn off other things if you also use too many of them at once! You do need to still be sensible and not use your big kettle and several other power hungry electric items at the same time.
A good rule of thumb is only one heating appliance (or EV) at a time.
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I think, that as takeup of electric cars increases, we’ll see a slow but steady growth in high speed charging points, both in mainstream and C&MC locations. Right now it’s a marginal requirement which could easily be met by low speed charging points located near the reception area. The greater challenges lie in non EHU sites and CLs, and it’s the demise of these which I am most concerned for. That said, many CLs have upgraded to providing EHU and as their owners too will be affected by migration to electric cars, provision won’t be too much of a culture shock. In the interim, we can hope to see a rise in aftermarket load monitors using monitors as pioneered by Alde, but displaying overall consumption in a way which allows users to make informed consumption decisions.
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Just plug into an empty bollard simple.👍At night....😜
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Thanks xtrailman, I’ve had a look at Owl, following your post and I’m left with a few questions.
i can see that it’s based around a clamp ameter (we fitted similar to facilitate Alde load management) but I’m not sure about the detail of the Owl.
How is it powered?
How does it connect to a smart device App? (Win 10 doesn’t help)
How does it connect to its display?
Does the display contain all of the data, so that a smart phone isn’t required?
Thanks again for bringing the technology to our attention.
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Do they allow that, hooker128? Wasn't it said that you're only allowed to charge from a 3 pin socket in the caravan but not directly from the bollard?
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You must buy the 160 as some others do not show current. I've had mine 7 years now.
powered by batteries at both ends with a good life. And is wireless.
I think you can do a lot with it on windows but never have, and I don't know of phone app, but never looked.
I just look at the display which can be wall mounted or stand as required.
Draw backs are the display updates around evert 12 seconds, so allow for it, and the clamp must go round a single supply wire, not the cable, its designed to clamp round a single meter cable in a domestic set up.
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Thanks. I’ll investigate further.
I’m not sure how much it will help us, but I’ll never know until we’ve investigated further. Certainly we only use low wattage equipment in our van: kettle, toaster, hairdryer etc, But heating is something that I don’t want to stint on, so we fitted an Alderman load monitor. Other loads become far from academic if staying on a CL or other site with a less generous amperage than the C&MCs 16 A.
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I received a phone call from the Smart sales to say that an Electric Smart has been allocated to me for delivery in September. It will have the necessary 3 pin socket slow charge to plug into our caravan socket as well as the the 22 kw fast charge. The colour scheme will be the same as our existing Smart of orange and black as the green and black is not available.
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Safer colour. You don't want to be camouflaged driving up and down those country lanes.
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