Charging electric cars on Club sites.

The free charging is s free as Merc's free tea/coffee & Wi-Fi  .... they charge you else where for it 😉

Rowena.......

While charging an EV will undoubtedly limit what else you can be running at the same time, I would expect that most owners would opt to charge overnight when their power consumption would otherwise be very low.

So they will not be using electricity for the EV INSTEAD  of for something else, but AS WELL AS for normal caravanning activities.  This is bound to lead to increased electricity consumption on Club sites.

The additional cost may be small at present, but will increase as more people buy EVs.  How is this additional  cost  to be met?

My concern would be that pitch fees will just be increased to cover this, which of course would not be fair to those who do not use an EV.

Does the Club have a plan in mind?

Many years ago......when I worked for the local electricity board, I was involved in designing the low voltage cable network for housing estates.

Each house has a 60A or 80Amp main fuse.

But every house on the estate cannot draw 60 or 80 amps at the same time, the installed infrastructure would in no way be capable of supplying that much. In fact we worked on a "Diversity Factor" assuming an average draw of 1kw per house ( thats about 4 amps) in non electric heating areas (the majority). If electric storage heating was going to be installed then we had to radically alter standard designs......

The Clubs low voltage supply network around its sites will, I am guessing, have been designed in a similar way. I very much doubt that the club anticipated that every, or even many, units would be drawing the 16A capacity of the EHU bollard.

Therefore as EV vehicles get more common I expect that the club will have to both increase the capacity of it's own LV cable network around each site and quite possibly pay for an upgrade to the incoming electricity board (the old name for power companies) supply.

These costs can only be either borne by charging EV users in some way ( dedicated charging points for a fee or metered supplies at the bollard)  or by increasing everyones pitch fee.

At the moment we are probably 10 years away from the widescale use of electric vehicles so it is barely an issue for the club, but over the next say 10 years, there will be a lot of costs to somebody......

Malcolm, I thought Smart cars had a decent mpg. If it is 50 mpg £225 works out at 24,000 miles a year. Do you really do that sort of mileage, or is the Smart not as economical as I thought?

Erm......you mean like buses? Electric of course. 

I have no real issues with progress towards electric cars, so long as the electric to make them and power them comes from renewable sources.

But I bet I can guess which section of the population is going to be the last to benefit, exactly the same section that doesn't live in London or other major conurbations, where a regular bus service is a thing of the past, where any kind of infrastructure investment relies upon someone making a vast profit (broadband anyone?) before it is put into place, where a taxi costs an arm or a leg, and where  a 4x4 is used properly to get around in snow, and up and down steep inclines, all day, every day.

However, on the plus side, at least some of us have room to park a car, or two, or three, or even four! Living cheek by jowl on a brand new estate, in thrall to restrictions based on what can or cannot be parked outside, waiting for dodgy taxi drivers to pick me up is a hell I will postpone for as long as I can!

At the moment we are probably 10 years away from the widescale use of electric vehicles so it is barely an issue for the club, but over the next say 10 years, there will be a lot of costs to somebody......

I agree Tintent apart from the last paragraph which I quote above. Think it will be much shorter than 10 years. In the caravanning world Hybrids will drive the change and quite quickly. If you were in the market for a new tow vehilcle, would you buy a diesel right now?

peedee

I bet someone's new car will go "wum, wum" rather than "brum, brum"!

I think the southwest has the highest vehicle ownership and the south east the highest car ownership (presumably in the SW we're all driving tractors....) But central Londoners own less cars and rely on public transport.

Is that per head of population or by area, Brue?

Have you been watching E-Pix TTDL?

peedee