On Tue, Jun 10, 2025 at 7:46 PM EV List Lackey via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > These will work perfectly well as your primary means of charging the > > vehicle at 2.3kW, but it tends to be discouraged. > > Well that's interesting. Can you please tell me who or what discourages > low > power charging, and why? I've missed it. > > Of course it's slooooooow ... but for folks renting their homes, it makes > some sense. > Absolutely! The main objection is safety. There is something to support such concerns - at least in the UK, the BS1363 domestic plug and socket quality and condition are a bit variable, and with a continuous load of 10A (not even the full 13A) they can melt or cause a fire in the worst case. I've even experienced this (the socket melting) a few times myself in a couple of decades of charging this way :) The granny cable itself has a thermistor built in to the plug which can reduce or stop the current flow if it gets too hot. However, that does not help if you have it plugged into an extension, and its plug melts! The Euro round pin plug is not so bad for this, but apparently the risk is still there. The next safety concern is earthing. Depending on the country, the car might be plugged into a PME earthing system (i.e., no proper earth at the house, it's just bonded to the neutral of the two wire supply). If that neutral wire ever breaks, every metal appliance will reach a high voltage. Not so much a problem inside the home, but if you have a car plugged in to the domestic supply, that could be a deadly problem. Very unlikely of course, but the regs say the earthing for an EVSE has to be done in a certain way (local earth rod or special gadget to break the supply completely if neutral loss is detected). Who is giving this discouragement - it's mostly the electrical industry, and electricians in general. But car dealers and even car manuals will tell you the granny charger is only for "occasional use". EV user groups have picked this up, possibly through over caution, and / or because the prospect of taking more than 12h to charge is a bad look. The next objection is efficiency. A car charging at 2.3kW is noticeably less efficient than one charging at 7.2kW. The final, main objection is control. Governments wish you to charge via dedicated "smart chargers" even at home. Arguably this is for a good reason, that smart chargers can help maximise use of renewable energy, by modulating the charging of a huge number of vehicles, offsetting their charge to a later time at night, and so on. Even bi-directional power flow coming soon. But you can't help wonder if they will at some point mandate that cars can only be charged via encrypted EVSEs, for taxation purposes. I didn't know you had moved to France, bon chance! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20250616/71a8b189/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to [email protected] No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
