Public charger reliability guidelines
Discussion
This has probably been known for ages by some but as of Nov 24, public EV chargers have had to enforce a number of rules including 99%+ reliability measured in minutes. Only found this out thanks to a newsletter from Confused.
The latest regs can be found here
As someone new to the EV game, this is quite reassuring. The contactless requirement is great. One thing I dreaded most was having to open account after account for different charging brands. I know I'll probably be scalped whenever I use contactless payment instead of their app based payment but at least I don't have to sit for ages opening a new account, confirming emails and all that palaver.
The latest regs can be found here
As someone new to the EV game, this is quite reassuring. The contactless requirement is great. One thing I dreaded most was having to open account after account for different charging brands. I know I'll probably be scalped whenever I use contactless payment instead of their app based payment but at least I don't have to sit for ages opening a new account, confirming emails and all that palaver.
This would be great if anyone was actually complying with it.
For example, can you pay by contactless at most open Tesla chargers today? No, you can't - other than the relatively small number of V4 chargers.
The Government is between a rock and a hard place in terms of enforcement. The whole premise of the regulations was to ensure reliable, easy access to rapid charging - but if they were to enforce against Tesla for non-compliance then the most likely outcome is they would just make all those non-compliant units Tesla only again, which flies in the face of what the regulations are trying to achieve by reducing the number of chargers. One of the means of enforcement is to prevent a non-compliant operator installing any new chargers which flies in the face of what they are trying to achieve.
For example, can you pay by contactless at most open Tesla chargers today? No, you can't - other than the relatively small number of V4 chargers.
The Government is between a rock and a hard place in terms of enforcement. The whole premise of the regulations was to ensure reliable, easy access to rapid charging - but if they were to enforce against Tesla for non-compliance then the most likely outcome is they would just make all those non-compliant units Tesla only again, which flies in the face of what the regulations are trying to achieve by reducing the number of chargers. One of the means of enforcement is to prevent a non-compliant operator installing any new chargers which flies in the face of what they are trying to achieve.
I remember working on this. What a minefield. The chargers can go offline for a while multitude of reasons out of the CPO's control, vandalism, network failure, site owner turning them off, payment terminal (if not fully integrated) failure, power supply issues. I remember the stance of company I used to work for was to mostly ignore it and blame any of the issues out of our control
TheRainMaker said:
What happens if they don't hit the target?
Charge Place Scotland could be in trouble
Fines of up to £10,000 per charger according to confused (presume on an annual basis?). No idea how this will be monitored or policed but it seems that the Gov guidelines say that their information needs to be machine readable. Presumably there will be a report somewhere of this that the government can generate revenue from.Charge Place Scotland could be in trouble
Confused link here
TheRainMaker said:
Charge Place Scotland could be in trouble
I only learnt this today, they are shutting down CPS! https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/report/switching-...Scott-R said:
TheRainMaker said:
Charge Place Scotland could be in trouble
I only learnt this today, they are shutting down CPS! https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/report/switching-...In the last 6 months I've only found 1 charger I wanted to use not working. I called Gridserve, they rebooted it and it worked. I probably use 3 or 4 a week for context.
The main pain for me at the moment is finding out what it costs to charge. The big national (Gridserve, Ionity, Tesla, Shell, BP etc etc) are fairly easy to work out but I have stayed at a couple of hotels recently where you really struggle to find the cost to charge. One was 89p per kW + £1.50 for connection for a 22KWh charger, no thank you. The other was £1 for as much charge as your car can take, yes please. They need to be more like petrol stations where it's on a big sign out the front so you can decide whether to stop/plug in or not.
It would be really useful to plug into a slow charger at 30-40p a KW at a hotel overnight and have a fully charged car in the morning but until it becomes easier to find the information I just stop at a Tesla Supercharger on my journey (if needed).
The main pain for me at the moment is finding out what it costs to charge. The big national (Gridserve, Ionity, Tesla, Shell, BP etc etc) are fairly easy to work out but I have stayed at a couple of hotels recently where you really struggle to find the cost to charge. One was 89p per kW + £1.50 for connection for a 22KWh charger, no thank you. The other was £1 for as much charge as your car can take, yes please. They need to be more like petrol stations where it's on a big sign out the front so you can decide whether to stop/plug in or not.
It would be really useful to plug into a slow charger at 30-40p a KW at a hotel overnight and have a fully charged car in the morning but until it becomes easier to find the information I just stop at a Tesla Supercharger on my journey (if needed).
It still baffles me that the public charging companies wait for a member of public to report a problem to them before they fix it. If it is as simple as a reboot, then why isn't anything flagging on their system saying it is down, then they just reboot it before anyone even reports it. If they can reboot it remotely, then they can monitor their chargers to see if it is working or not and create an alert system.
Ankh87 said:
It still baffles me that the public charging companies wait for a member of public to report a problem to them before they fix it. If it is as simple as a reboot, then why isn't anything flagging on their system saying it is down, then they just reboot it before anyone even reports it. If they can reboot it remotely, then they can monitor their chargers to see if it is working or not and create an alert system.
Could be the system reporting failures hasn't identified it yet? I don't know what the poll rate would be, or even if the system was reporting it being fine despite it not being. At least having it easily rebootable means it's back online quickly. I wonder if they're scheduled to reboot regularly to keep things going?RazerSauber said:
Could be the system reporting failures hasn't identified it yet? I don't know what the poll rate would be, or even if the system was reporting it being fine despite it not being. At least having it easily rebootable means it's back online quickly. I wonder if they're scheduled to reboot regularly to keep things going?
If they can see the charger as active, then they can see the charger as de-active. Pretty much the same way a node would fail that you can remote onto to reboot. Same way BT/Virgin/ETC can reboot your home router if they want and they can see it's down. I personally think it's because they don't want to employ someone to do the job, saves them money. If say 10% of chargers aren't working, then they are still making money from the other 90%. No need to impact their profits, seem as no one is actually complaining about this. People who use the chargers are happy to try another or phone the company up.
I feel like if a charging station was manned like a fuel station, then people would make more of a fuss about it. Seem as there isn't a face their, then it gets swept under the rug.
I used to work for a well known company which offers set top boxes for watching TV etc. There was a team who worked on the software for the boxes, who managed to reduce the error rate of people’s boxes, by simply having the boxes reboot themselves in the middle of the night when the box wasn’t set to record anything. Made quite the difference apparently! Perhaps the same trick would be useful again for EV chargers
Scott-R said:
I used to work for a well known company which offers set top boxes for watching TV etc. There was a team who worked on the software for the boxes, who managed to reduce the error rate of people’s boxes, by simply having the boxes reboot themselves in the middle of the night when the box wasn’t set to record anything. Made quite the difference apparently! Perhaps the same trick would be useful again for EV chargers
It probably would be but it costs money and will hit shareholders/investors profits. When I called about the broken one I found it only took 5 mins but it cost 5 mins of my time rather than theirs. Fuel stations are the same, our local Shell has a couple of really slow pumps that keep stopping as you fill the car, report it every time I'm unlucky enough to use it, the staff shrug and say they have reported it up the chain.
The management hardware and software in most charge points is pretty naff. Outside of the major networks who have custom hardware and software built for them they're often using a different management platforms to the manufacturer of the charge points using the OCCP protocol which is not always well implemented.
Sometimes it's down to the comms being no good - I'd bet a lot of older charge points are running on 3G connectivity which is progressively being switched off Getting reliable fixed line comms to street furniture is expensive - at least a couple of grand a year for a fibre connection - so companies often look for cheaper options like mobile.
Sometimes it's down to the comms being no good - I'd bet a lot of older charge points are running on 3G connectivity which is progressively being switched off Getting reliable fixed line comms to street furniture is expensive - at least a couple of grand a year for a fibre connection - so companies often look for cheaper options like mobile.
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