Exactly! Weird logic. Forgot to say the manager also told me once there are more request of charging facilities installation, they may add more capacity. Totally doesn't make sense.
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Exactly! Weird logic. Forgot to say the manager also told me once there are more request of charging facilities installation, they may add more capacity. Totally doesn't make sense.
GasDoc
Member
Is there any possibility of setting up four chargers as a community charging area and having the owners rotate through there? Or is parking at such a premium that this would not be possible?
I don't wanna propose it to the management office now coz they will probably ask me to pay for the equipment and installation.
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Haven't talked to Tesla about it yet, who should I contact ? Linda or sales in HK?
Charger solution on private car parking space:
Next question!
Seriously, where I live it's on hold until middle of May, due to a large event taking place. After that, I hope something is going to happen.
At least the intention so far seems good, they really want charging stations, but done in a proper way. Also, they don't want just a few, but a string of maybe 10 - now that they are at it anyway. And they will sponsor it entirely, I don't need to chip in!
So the best I can do, if anything, is to help them get the information they need, and support them in any way I can. If that fails ... I will have to rely on Tesla Motors installing superchargers around Hong Kong (and not just in TST and Central, please, also outside and around HK).
If you have a shopping mall, you've already got a lot of parking spaces. Depending on the conditions TM propose, it should be pretty much a no-brainer to let Tesla install superchargers. I wonder what the standard setup is: Shopping mall provides the parking spaces, Tesla provides the installation, shopping mall provides the electricity? And who are going to remove the ICE cars that inevitably will block these spots, at least in the beginning?
Next question!
Seriously, where I live it's on hold until middle of May, due to a large event taking place. After that, I hope something is going to happen.
At least the intention so far seems good, they really want charging stations, but done in a proper way. Also, they don't want just a few, but a string of maybe 10 - now that they are at it anyway. And they will sponsor it entirely, I don't need to chip in!
So the best I can do, if anything, is to help them get the information they need, and support them in any way I can. If that fails ... I will have to rely on Tesla Motors installing superchargers around Hong Kong (and not just in TST and Central, please, also outside and around HK).
If you have a shopping mall, you've already got a lot of parking spaces. Depending on the conditions TM propose, it should be pretty much a no-brainer to let Tesla install superchargers. I wonder what the standard setup is: Shopping mall provides the parking spaces, Tesla provides the installation, shopping mall provides the electricity? And who are going to remove the ICE cars that inevitably will block these spots, at least in the beginning?
Hi sonywong:
1) Regarding the capacity issue, all estates/buildings would face that issue. The sensible way is to set a limit for number of installation available and open for residents to apply. For anyone who ordered EV can apply, first come first served. For late comers they have to think of alternatives. This is fair and my owner's association accepted such arrangement. (They'll put up a notice and see if anyone else want to install at the same time with me.)
2) The "charging facility" is not really an instrument, it is only a 32A plug! I think the power draw is similar to a couple of Aircons (please ask engineers) and i'm sure EV power of EMSD can provide more info.
You probably need to do some lobbying with the Chairman, Committee Members etc to get them on the Environment Protection side which they must support, and also why would this initiative benefit them and the estate.
Remember you are pushing this because you are willing to pioneer something that would benefit everyone, not because you have an EV and asking people to give you convenience...
My 2 cents
I really think there is no way battery swaps will happen, they are still in doubt for the US at this stage. It is really for long return road trips. We will be lucky to get more than 2 or 3 supercharging locations, in my opinion.
The problem that people have in getting a charge point at their apartments will only be really solved by legislation that makes it illegal to deny someone charging if they are willing to pay for installation. Given that the tycoons probably control the petrol stations in HK....good luck.
The problem that people have in getting a charge point at their apartments will only be really solved by legislation that makes it illegal to deny someone charging if they are willing to pay for installation. Given that the tycoons probably control the petrol stations in HK....good luck.
Thank you ekwng, I talked to the manager again over the weekend and:
1) he said the estate will not approve application one by one, instead , they will set a limit every year (now capacity is 4) and invite residents/owners for application. I told him to start the process for this year ASAP as there are already 2 applications for installation (me and I heard the other guy haven't ordered his EV yet). If there are less than 4 applicants, everyone is happy; otherwise, first come first serve or lucky draw to pick the 4 applicants.
2) I told him if he doesn't think EV Power's comment is reliable, I can contact EMSD and HKE to see if they can check our estate's power supply whether installation of chargers will affect the stability of power supply. I called EMSD, the gentleman doesn't think this issue require their site visit. He can talk to the manager over the phone about the impact to stability of power supply.
I think I made some wrong decisions including: 1) I didn't join the owner's committee meeting last Wednesday, I should join the next meeting to meet the chair lady and other members; 2) I didn't write any proposal myself , the only thing they have is EV Power's "proposal" which has only a few lines about our estate.
You mean set a quota and invite residents/owners for application? He didn't say that the first time he told me my application is rejected. and they didn't say whether they will invite application soon (I asked them within next 2 months). Anyway, our estate is medium size (around 180 units) , i think this year should be less than 10 applications (if they only allow potential EV owners who willing to pay installation costs to apply).
One approach might be to talk about what the very long term solution is, and present what is to be done now as a stepping-stone to that distant future.
If electric cars ultimately become a substantial proportion of the fleet, then the expectation must be that every parking space needs a charging point. However, this doesn't mean that each building needs an enormous supply of power: most of those parking spaces will either be empty or the cars in them already fully charged. The average car in the UK does only 23 miles per day (I suspect the figure for Hong Kong would be lower), so if they were all Model S (300Wh/mile), each car would need 23 * 0.3 = 6.9kWh per day on average to keep it charged - just an average of one hour per day on the charger. So the building with enough spare power to supply 4 charging points at 32A (approx 7kW) each would actually have enough power to supply the average needs of 24 * 4 = nearly 100 cars. This is slightly optimistic as there will obviously be surges of demand on particular days - but the more cars you have, the more chance you have to smooth out these statistical variations, and 100 is quite a large number. The numbers probably don't work so well in the early stages, as the EV early adopters are likely to do higher-than-average mileage.
Obviously it would be hugely inconvenient to manually shuffle those 100 cars through 4 charging spots, but this problem is easily solved: fit a 'smart' EVSE to every parking bay, with software that shares out the available power between the cars that are requesting charging. The existing communication between EVSE and car allows the EVSE to limit the current or shut it off altogether, so there's no change needed in any of the cars - just smarter software in the EVSE (and in particular, communications links between them). Once you have these comms links, it gets even better: rather than just limiting the total power to the amount that the building can spare over and above existing loads, the car charging can be linked to the building's overall power consumption and for example when power taken by aircon reduces at night time, increased power can be diverted to car charging. So the example above of 180 units with enough spare power for 4 simultaneous 30A EVSE could possibly in fact support every one of those 180 spaces having an EV, without needing any increase in the supply to the site!
Here's a video about an experiment in the UK where they explored what would happen if every house in a suburban street had an EV - solving the problem in just this way with smart EVSEs at each house which could be switched so as to balance the total load on the substation feeding the area. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaWruGLgLlE This is actually a harder problem than a large building with a carpark - they had to use radio to link the EVSE in the various houses together, wheras in a carpark they could just be wired.
So the sensible progression would be something like:
If electric cars ultimately become a substantial proportion of the fleet, then the expectation must be that every parking space needs a charging point. However, this doesn't mean that each building needs an enormous supply of power: most of those parking spaces will either be empty or the cars in them already fully charged. The average car in the UK does only 23 miles per day (I suspect the figure for Hong Kong would be lower), so if they were all Model S (300Wh/mile), each car would need 23 * 0.3 = 6.9kWh per day on average to keep it charged - just an average of one hour per day on the charger. So the building with enough spare power to supply 4 charging points at 32A (approx 7kW) each would actually have enough power to supply the average needs of 24 * 4 = nearly 100 cars. This is slightly optimistic as there will obviously be surges of demand on particular days - but the more cars you have, the more chance you have to smooth out these statistical variations, and 100 is quite a large number. The numbers probably don't work so well in the early stages, as the EV early adopters are likely to do higher-than-average mileage.
Obviously it would be hugely inconvenient to manually shuffle those 100 cars through 4 charging spots, but this problem is easily solved: fit a 'smart' EVSE to every parking bay, with software that shares out the available power between the cars that are requesting charging. The existing communication between EVSE and car allows the EVSE to limit the current or shut it off altogether, so there's no change needed in any of the cars - just smarter software in the EVSE (and in particular, communications links between them). Once you have these comms links, it gets even better: rather than just limiting the total power to the amount that the building can spare over and above existing loads, the car charging can be linked to the building's overall power consumption and for example when power taken by aircon reduces at night time, increased power can be diverted to car charging. So the example above of 180 units with enough spare power for 4 simultaneous 30A EVSE could possibly in fact support every one of those 180 spaces having an EV, without needing any increase in the supply to the site!
Here's a video about an experiment in the UK where they explored what would happen if every house in a suburban street had an EV - solving the problem in just this way with smart EVSEs at each house which could be switched so as to balance the total load on the substation feeding the area. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaWruGLgLlE This is actually a harder problem than a large building with a carpark - they had to use radio to link the EVSE in the various houses together, wheras in a carpark they could just be wired.
So the sensible progression would be something like:
- Install basic EVSE as required by the first few users, up to the limit of available spare power (4 in the example above). Preferably, reassign parking spaces to keep the EV owners together to ease future expansion.
- As demand grows, upgrade to smart EVSE that can share the same amount of power over say 10 or 12 spaces.
- As demand grows further, install more banks of 10/12 spaces but with overall demand management so that full load can only be drawn for charging when loads elsewhere in the building are reduced (typically at night).
Yes, the EVSE company also mentioned some solutions similar to the 'smart' EVSE you mentioned. They said their EVSE can detect whether the main power have enough capacity, it will wait until there is spare capacity for charging (after the earlier EV finish charging). So although my estate have spare capacity for 4 EVSE at the same time, we can install more than 4 EVSEs.
But I think it is harder for me to convince my neighbors and management company as: 1) this setup may only support EVSE made by this company (or at least comply to some standards), don't think we have that many EV owners in the near term or owners here have such forwarding looking vision and 2) each EVSE isn't connected to a dedicated circuit breaker (they already have concerns on power supply stability issues.)
Of course, if they insist on rejecting my installation, I would propose this idea to them.
Good for you Vmax. So you will install separate meter and CLP will bill you directly? Are these charging stations using your buildings' power? or new power from CLP? I checked with HKE (I live in HK Island), they are not very helpful on EVSE related questions.
I see, I thought separate meter required a new and dedicated power line from CLP, didn't know we can install seperate meter with building's power. Lucky you, my estate only have spare capacity for 4 x 32A single phase EVSE.
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