Guests charging electric car with our house electricity.!!

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CSE
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Post by CSE »

We do no have a different tariff for night. Our guest wanted to plug in right away. But at least he understand the situation.
This is a good illustration of just how difficult it is to get a decent electric supply here in Spain.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/spain-75 ... er-897485/
We do not use an electric kettle and we cook and heat with gas.
We have 3.something power supply and still we get dimming of the lights, slowing of the kitchen machine (which is a problem to get the mix just right) etc etc.

When this subject was hot last year we tried to add something that we could not accept regarding on our Booking.com listing. We where not allowed because accommodation cannot add what hey do not have! These are via Booking so it will be interesting to see if they make a comment about that we could not recharge their car.
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kg1
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Post by kg1 »

Martha wrote:I've been mulling this over as I'm sure it will soon be a big plus for a house to have a charging station for a car.

I'm a bit surprised by some of the hostility here. Of course everyone's situation is different but if it's an ongoing issue it needs to be addressed and the more helpful we can be the better, with clarity in costs. My quick survey of friends was that none would expect to charge a car for free unless it was very high-end accommodation.
Most people charge their cars overnight on the off-peak electricity, it might perhaps be possible to accommodate electric car charging in this way, on a timed socket? I'm sure people can understand that electrical supplies may well not be up to charging a car at peak times.
If owners want to provide it as an extra or a service, then that's fine I think the hostility was towards the guest who did it without asking and assumed it was ok, not to the idea of car charging itself
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Post by Cassis »

I guess these people aren't Spanish, then, and don't appreciate your peculiar position with electricity in Spain or that they can't recharge due to poor electrics. I know I didn't! I wonder how they have managed to get around in Spain? :shock: Bit crazy to take an electric car to a country where you can't recharge it.
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Post by zebedee »

Martha said
Most people charge their cars overnight on the off-peak electricity, it might perhaps be possible to accommodate electric car charging in this way, on a timed socket? I'm sure people can understand that electrical supplies may well not be up to charging a car at peak times.
I am pretty sure you have to be on specific tariffs before electricity is any cheaper overnight
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Post by COYS »

We also suffer with variable reliability in peak demand times. But all eco friendly & supply issues aside, if your guest was driving a 'normal' car would you pay for their petrol/diesel?
So why would they expect to charge (fuel) their car for free at your expense - regardless of the cost?
If there was reasonable demand & you were able to supply a reliable charging point, I see no reason why the user would object to paying for such a service, after all it is no different to pulling into a service station when you require standard fuel.
Well intentioned eco-car drivers must have to base their whole holiday around charging/range issues if travelling over reasonable distances.
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Post by Pendragon »

In the past couple of months Charging stations have been installed in some car parks that I know of in Brittany. There is one across the street to me and it has sockets for ordinary two pin plugs or the multipin caravan plugs. There is no tariff available but you have to have a card to make it work I think it could be done with a smart phone too. You have a choice of 3kw or 3-22kw. I saw a number of them in Nice as well, along with electric cars for hire.

It seems like this is the wave of the future, just as WiFi once was.
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Post by G.H »

We have an electric car and I'd have charged it in the summer when we're going self catering in the UK without thinking of asking. Surely if it's around a quid a day you don't need to clear that first? Ours is an apartment but had it been a house we'd be welcoming electric cars and including it in the rent. As it is our website says where the nearest chargers are.
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Post by greenbarn »

Just to add a bit of alternative fuel to the discussion, I had some interesting information from a friend involved in small and medium scale renewable energy electricity generating plants in the UK.

Very briefly, the existing plans for building new major power stations to replace and supplement existing production are unlikely to see them online in time to prevent a significant shortfall in supply to the Grid - particularly as they’re not being built... That’s notwithstanding a recent slight overall reduction in electricity consumption.

There are around 27 million cars in the UK. If we stick a wet finger in the air and estimate that in say 5 years’ time there could be 5 million electric vehicles, the power requirement for charging those vehicles will require another Hinkley Point, and that certainly wouldn’t happen in the timescale. A sobering thought.

So it may be that in the future we’ll need to find an alternative fuel to electricity for powering our cars; it will need a widespread distribution network to make it readily available on a journey, and in a form that can be carried on board the vehicle to give a range of say 300 miles. Some form of liquid perhaps...

Of course, that’s based on current technology which is more advanced than last year’s technology and so on; the mobile phone caused huge advances in battery technology way beyond what at one time was deemed the limit of possibility, and the electric vehicle is further driving development, so the EV of five years’ hence will no doubt be a very different vehicle from those available today. EVs are being heavily subsidised to encourage people to buy them despite the (lessening) inconvenience and the significant cost of depreciation; without that subsidy there’d be insufficient funding for development.

EVs have a way to go before they can really be seen as a widespread viable alternative, perhaps they never will be widespread and instead find a place where they’re really needed, in major towns and cities and areas of very high population density - and commercial vehicles. Maybe they only have a future if solar technology advances further to the point where an EV can charge its own batteries, aided by regenerative braking and all the other clever stuff that comes out of F1 racing.

I don’t know quite what that adds to the discussion on supplying free fuel to guests involved in the guinea pig process, but I’d question the sanity of someone setting out on a tour of the wilds of the Scottish Highlands in an electric-only vehicle...
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Post by PW in Polemi »

greenbarn wrote:...So it may be that in the future we’ll need to find an alternative fuel to electricity for powering our cars; it will need a widespread distribution network to make it readily available on a journey, and in a form that can be carried on board the vehicle to give a range of say 300 miles. Some form of liquid perhaps...
It's already easily available - bee pee (BP) ...
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Post by COYS »

Well made point Greenbarn.
Technology is always on the move but I think we're a long, long way from EV's becoming mainstream - far too much tax to be gathered on petrol/diesel for starters!!
As an aside, in another life in the seemingly distant past we were offered all manner of incentives to convert our diesel vans/vehicles to dual fuel LPG. With the newer ones, we did so - buoyed by the perceived saving on running costs, maintenance, tax breaks & so on. At the time there were perhaps 4 fuel stations within 10 miles of our premises, but this was the future right?
Wrong. Our working radius covered around 250 square miles & as more & more of the gas stations became one stop supermarkets or coffee shops that also happened to sell a bit of petrol/diesel the LPG outlets all but disappeared or were always sold out which left our expensively converted vehicles running on their supposedly back up diesel fuel for 99% of the time.
So I'd guess you need to get the public infrastructure assured if EV's are really going to make their mark.
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Post by Martha »

Yes but, again, the power draw for charging is mainly at night. And there are other factors. Not everyone agrees that this will become an insuperable problem.
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/03/gr ... dies-find/

I appreciate that not everyone has off-peak usage in terms of billing- sorry, I didn't phrase that at all clearly! But I was thinking that it if it's impossible to charge it at times of peak demand, it might be possible to do so at night when demand is less, causing fewer problems. Just a thought.

Thinking over it further, even though we're too far for an EV to drive from the UK, we have had guests in hybrid vehicles before. I agree that electric-only isn't ideal for a holiday without a lot of prior research, certainly outside the big cities.

But it would be a huge plus for us to have a car charging port. I'm going to look into it. The local pollution can be absolutely dreadful here, due to the steep sided valley. It's a colossal ongoing problem. Anything we could do to help mitigate it would be a plus.
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Post by CSE »

Coys post about LPG. this is going off topic but to illustrate just how far behind Spain is in certain areas. LPG powered vehicles are or were up until a year or two ago reserved for the taxi fleets. Even now LPG refill stations are very few and far between.

Maybe we will see the return of overheard cabling and trolley buses back soon???
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Post by CSE »

The local pollution can be absolutely dreadful here, due to the steep sided valley. It's a colossal ongoing problem. Anything we could do to help mitigate it would be a plus.
In France do they not have the greatest number of Nuclear powered generating plants in Europe? Whilst the air maybe clear the ground, somewhere in the country, certainty will not be.
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Post by greenbarn »

Martha wrote:Yes but, again, the power draw for charging is mainly at night. And there are other factors. Not everyone agrees that this will become an insuperable problem.
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/03/gr ... dies-find/
Interesting figures - the study is from the US from 3 years ago and the figures haven’t changed very much in that time. I don’t know how the growth in power generation compares with the growth in demand in the US, but certainly in the UK it’s lagging and people are looking at the very real potential for a future shortage - with no quick fix. The distribution network in the UK is probably better overall than the US.
But yes, the power draw for charging can be - and will have to be - mainly overnight; not as soon as everyone gets home from work. There is less demand for electricity overnight, but the generating capacity remains broadly the same (in the case of wind power it probably increases, solar - not so much...) so the EV will potentially provide a means of using and storing the surplus. Providing, of course, that there’s sufficient generating capacity to meet the demand, which takes us full circle.

Interesting times. Was it five years ago that LED bulbs were outrageously expensive and had the power of an undernourished glow worm? Ten years ago that the amount of electricity now generated by the solar panels on the roof of a house would have needed enough panels to cover a football pitch?
Last edited by greenbarn on Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Martha »

Yes, things are changing fast...let's hope! We don't have a hybrid or an EV at the moment, but I think it won't be too long. I'm optimistic about their future.

A bit off topic here too but I would add: yes - France is indeed almost entirely nuclear. But I am proud to say that our valley is one of the very few places in France that has a hydroelectric plant! So we would not be adding too much to the burden of nuclear electricity generation. Also, it may not always be the case that France depends on nuclear, it's a country that could benefit hugely from solar. Efficient solar installations are beginning to drop in price, and improve in quality - they are beginning to appear here in Chamonix and heaven knows we are far from the sunniest spot.

There are high hopes for Elon Musk's solar roof tiles and house 'batteries'. We are not there yet of course, but clean electricity is a possibility - not even that distant a possibility - whereas I suspect that petrol will always have limits in terms of how clean it can be.

Nothing wrong with overhead cabling for trolley buses! Geneva has lots of them, clean and quiet! :) But I think electrical charging points for cars should become widespread a lot more easily than LPG. They are much easier to install and deal with.
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