Rip Van
Established Member
- Joined
- May 29, 2022
- Messages
- 301
- Reaction score
- 351
- Points
- 107
- Location
- Moray, Scotland
- Driving
- MG4 Trophy LR
Electro Motive ForceEMF? no comprende. ?
Electro Motive ForceEMF? no comprende. ?
I was in a similar situation, but I've decided to get a wallbox for a few reasons:
- We've learned that we can get on perfectly well with a combination of work and public chargers. But it causes some very slight hassle and anxiety; I'm paying to get rid of that hassle and anxiety.
- Peace of mind with regard to safety at home
- Making best use of off-peak tariffs. It's no good having Octopus Go's 4 hours of 10p/unit electricity, if I can only get 8 units in that time. With a wallbox I can get 28 units every night.
- Now I'm leasing, and I had some capital from selling my old car
- A friend pointed out that I should treat it as a luxury spend. Some people spend their money on leather seats. Some spend it on a charger.
Sorry, my bad! it’s an A.C. thing, ‘electro-magnetic field’. Induced current flow in opposition to the supply current each half cycle.EMF? no comprende. ?
I bought an old, well, 2014 kangoo ze. 2 years ago, it came with its original granny charger and I must Say, it looked well used. I was told that it has always been charged with the granny charger (25k miles) and I still use it to this day!I have to say I'm very grateful to everyone on this forum for educating me about electrical safety using these things. I am actually doing exactly what I intended to do when I first got the car, but I know what not to do and what to look out for to detect any problems before they've become critical. I realise how fortunate I am to have a robust metal-jacketed power point in my garage only 1.5 metres from the charging port in the car's normal garaged position, and that the house circuitry is very well designed with the garage lights and power points on a separate fused circuit. (The house fuses trip if a light bulb pops or you plug in a faulty appliance, which has always annoyed me, but maybe it's for the best.)
I had thought that I'd start looking at wall boxes, but right now I can't really afford that outlay, and the longer this goes on the less I want one. At least that's a solution if I do run into problems with the granny lead.
I haven't had to use an extension cable, but some people who have acquired suitably robust cables seem to be managing OK. I'm now seriously wondering what the guy up the street was doing when he had a (legally sanctioned) cable trailing across the pavement to his EV parked outside his mid-terrace house. (He's not doing it now, I suspect permission was revoked when they installed the village charge-point.) I had assumed he'd had a wall box fitted but for all I know he was using a granny cable and extension lead all the time.
I have a friend who has had a Leaf for two or three years. He told me he used the granny cable for a year when he first got it because of some delay with his wall box installation. I assumed that he'd also been using the village 50Kw charger to save leaving the car on the granny charger for a very long time. But no. The other day he started asking me about using public chargers as he's intending to drive up to Inverness and has never used one! He doesn't even have a garage and the Leaf sits in his driveway all the time. I don't know what power point he was using or if he was using an extension lead, but he didn't have any problems - he only got the wall box to speed things up.
So far I have only gone on one visit where I might have had to use the granny charger away from home. I could have got the car into my friend's garage all right, with a power point just there, but it was a plastic one and I was a little bit doubtful. However, the public type 2 chargers only 50 yards from her house worked fine, so I never needed to try it.
Anyway, as far as I can see, reports of serious consequences arising from using granny leads seem to be pretty rare, and I think their use is more widespread than people often realise. I don't accept that the majority of the public will ignore firm safety instructions if these are communicated to them clearly. The issue, as with the coiled lead in the OP photograph, is that these instructions are not communicated clearly. I have a number of appliances around the house and garage that came with pretty prominent safety instructions, including a 12v lead-acid battery jump-starting kit and a snow clearing machine with a small petrol engine. I read them, and I'd have been a raving idiot not to. But there wasn't a thing inside the case of my granny charger or the bag of my type 2 lead to alert me about any issues. Just some text buried deep in the MG4 manual, about the granny charger.
In l'esprit d'escalier, I think if I'd had the opportunity to talk to the owner of the coiled-and-taped lead, I'd have spoken to him in a friendly manner, pointed out the risk of over-heating, and suggested that he untaped the lead and made a habit of laying it out loose when in operation. We need more education, not banning things.
I'm now seriously wondering what the guy up the street was doing when he had a (legally sanctioned) cable trailing across the pavement to his EV parked outside his mid-terrace house. (He's not doing it now, I suspect permission was revoked when they installed the village charge-point.) I had assumed he'd had a wall box fitted but for all I know he was using a granny cable and extension lead all the time.
I bought an old, well, 2014 kangoo ze. 2 years ago, it came with its original granny charger and I must Say, it looked well used. I was told that it has always been charged with the granny charger (25k miles) and I still use it to this day!
I don't do many miles though.... maybe 50 to 100 a month.
Agree, however I think it only charges at around 3kw? And I've wired it to an outside metal waterproof socket from the garage and also checked that doesn't get warm at all.There's a certain mileage below which I don't think a wall box is going to be economically sensible. Also, if you're only charging for a few hours at a time the hazard must be reduced.
CorrectElectro Motive Force
Incorrect I'm afraidSorry, my bad! it’s an A.C. thing, ‘electro-magnetic field’.
Agree, however I think it only charges at around 3kw? And I've wired it to an outside metal waterproof socket from the garage and also checked that doesn't get warm at all.
P.s. we've owned an ev since 2017 so have a pod point (dumb wall charger) but have added a zappi to our collection. The zappi is brilliant I have to say. The last 500 miles has been totally free! with the weather we've been having lately.
Please don’t be afraid ? Electromagnetic field - Wikipedia.Correct
Incorrect I'm afraid![]()
Not really, the context of the Acronym was Back EMF. Even your Wiki will tell you that's a counter electro motive force. Something I was taught 49 years ago in the first year of my training as an electrical engineer!Please don’t be afraid ? Electromagnetic field - Wikipedia.
We can both be right. ??
Not really, the context of the Acronym was Back EMF. Even your Wiki will tell you that's a counter electro motive force. Something I was taught 49 years ago in the first year of my training as an electrical engineer!
How long does it take?
Oh and, does your insurance cover you for public liability?How long does it take to charge?
How long does it take?
Nope... No one's likely to complain where I live and the path that goes past the house is set back away from the road and normal pavement. Also, I pay £12 a month to rent the parking space from the council.Do you have permission to do that? I know that when someone in the village here wanted to do that he had to badger the council quite a lot before they relented and gave him permission. However, he's not doing it now and I suspect that permission was revoked when they installed the public charger within walking distance of his house.
In another thread, someone who was planning to do that discovered in the course of the conversation (thanks to the google-fu of other members) that his council didn't allow it, and he had to make other arrangements.
I was simply curious as to how long it would take to granny charge. You have satisfied that curiosity perfectly. Thankyou. ?I'm doing the same, except that the car is in the garage right beside the power point, so no leads trailing over the pavement.
How long depends on how low the battery is when you start. My most recent charge started at 42%, at 10 pm on Monday evening. It got to 100% at about 2 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, then balanced for half an hour.
If I'd wanted the car on Tuesday morning I'd simply have stopped the charge and driven off with about 80% in there - plenty. It's the last 20% that takes the time anyway. It's not really an issue of how long it takes, but whether on average you can charge enough to meet your weekly requirements while you sleep. I suspect most people can, actually. After all, if I'd started the charge when I originally got home at five o'clock on Monday, it would have been at 100% by 9 am. I just didn't bother because I needed the car again for a short journey in the evening, and I knew I didn't need it on Tuesday morning.
I'm retired now, so not driving regular distances, and some days not driving at all. But I could have lived happily with the granny charger when I was working - I did a round trip of 24 miles to work and back, and that's easily recoverable overnight. I did (and still do) 80 and 100 mile round trips to the cinema and the theatre, but even these can be caught up with when you're not out every night, and on the nights you're not out you have over 12 hours to charge.
My back-stop is the 50 Kw CCS charger at the end of my road, which can bring the car up from 20% to 85% in less than an hour. If I'm down as low as 25% then a session on that gets the whole thing back in the game.
So regardless of renting from the council or not, you will definitely need to be insured against liability. I know this as I had a house where people (to 2 other properties) needed to walk across a 1 Square metre corner at the end of my garden path and was advised strongly to insure against liability. It was perfectly level! In this day and age someone may see an opportunity. Not harassing you by the way, just being helpful. Forewarned is forearmed. ?Nope... No one's likely to complain where I live and the path that goes past the house is set back away from the road and normal pavement. Also, I pay £12 a month to rent the parking space from the council.
I was simply curious as to how long it would take to granny charge. You have satisfied that curiosity perfectly. Thankyou. ?