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The government’s plans to move to net zero emissions can’t succeed without involving the one in five Australians who live in or own in strata schemes,
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“…most older buildings in Australia and NZ have not been built with the level of electrical infrastructure sufficient to support the additional load that EV charging creates…”
This is often asserted but it is unlikely to get generally true. A strata building is like the electricity grid in microcosm. Both are built with just sufficient capacity to handle the peak load. So long as EV charging is managed to avoid the few hours of a day that have the peak load, there is generally ample capacity all the rest of the time.
The first few EVs in a building are unlikely to cause any load problem.
Once there are appreciable numbers, a load management system will probably be needed. This could be done is a crude but adequate way with timers and relays. The more sophisticated way has a control box that monitors the total current into the building and calculates how much spare capacity there is. The control box tells each charging outlet (‘EVSE’) how much charge can be taken by each plugged in car. During the evening, that might be no current. As people stop cooking, each car could be told to take just 6 Amps. As the evening wears on and people turn off heaters and lights and go to bed, each car is told it can now take 8A , then 10A and so on. When the building demand hits its minimum in the early hours of the morning, and cars that had not driven far are charged already, the remaining cars can be told they can take (say) 32A. Under such a scheme, all cars would be guaranteed to get a substantial charge and mostly likely be charged to full.
Similarly, during the day, building load is likely to be low as many people are out and the cars that are home can probably get a quite fast charge and would at least trickle charge.
Putting aside the whole discussion of sustainability of EVs and how “green” they really are, the firefighters in Queensland (and I would imagine throughout Australia) have issues with fires that are caused by ignited batteries – apparently they are not that easy to put out, and emit harmful smoke. Additionally, electrical scooters are sometimes charged inside the units, and are known to catch fire – a concern that we have heard from unit owners many times now. The safety and insurance claims arising from such fires must be also addressed.
Considered, maybe. I am not hearing any alarm bells from insurance companies…
Insurers have statistics. Fires per 100 thousand sales:
hybrid: 3275
petrol: 1530
electric: 25
http://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/
I wonder if those USA statistics are transferable/relevant for Australia
I wonder if those USA statistics are transferable/relevant for Australia
Why wouldn’t they be? I can’t see any reason why a car with a particular energy source in the US would be substantially more or less likely to catch fire than in Australia.
I wonder if those USA statistics are transferable/relevant for Australia
Why wouldn’t they be? I can’t see any reason why a car with a particular energy source would be substantially more or less likely to catch fire in the US than in Australia.