9873210 wrote:BullDog wrote:Indeed. I am guilty of over simplification. Many houses that want to charge an EV or two, run a heat pump, an electric oven, electric shower, washing machine ........ Will need three phase supplies to do so. That's one heck of a problem for just about every street and housing estate in the country.
There is no technical need for three phase at these power levels. Almost all newish US or Canadian homes have 48kW or more service on split phase. More than a few have 96kW without needing three phase. Three phase is needed only if you want to run largish motors without a switching power supply, and nobody would install such a thing these days.
The advantage of increasing the current on single phase is that it can be done incrementally*, as has been done continually since Tesla and Edison, when domestic service was barely able to handle a couple of (incandescent) light bulbs.
* For example splitting distribution circuits instead of replacing all the single phase wiring.
I agree with your comments. We have a heat pump, BEV, electric oven, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and immersion heater and don't have three phase. Obviously they aren't all on at once. Our energy supplier encourages us to charge the BEV, and use the tumble dryer, washing machine and dishwasher in the middle of the night to even out the load and at 7p per kWh off peak rate we are happy to do so. I guess it is really efficient to use the cabling to the house more effectively, smoothing out the load over 24 hours.
The increase in use of BEVs is happening and like a lot of macro trends the infrastructure will gradually keep up, maybe lagging as it does so.
With deference to those who won't change or can't change to a BEV, there are now a lot of us who have totally reliable BEVs with a reasonable real range of 250+ miles and, with off road parking, incredibly low running costs. And I guess, like me, the majority are delighted with our cars.
We'll probably replace them with even better longer range BEVs next time and indications are that many others will join us, so the charging infrastructure will almost certainly improve as this market segment grows larger.
regards
Howard
PS For anyone considering a BEV it's worth doing research as the real ranges of these cars vary significantly. "Which" is a good source if you can access it with literally thousands of members feeding back real experiences of reliability etc. Anyone reading it (or similar reviews) would avoid a Jaguar iPace BEV like the plague as it has been reported as very unreliable and has a surprisingly low range in real driving conditions.