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At work we've got space for a couple of electric car charging points.
Just thinking out loud - if they were installed as chargeable Tesla type public ones would there be any return?
Location is roadside near to town centre.
I have no idea if this feasible, or costs involved, just an idea that came to me this morning! 🙂
Some firms do. I imagine a commercial install for public use would be $$$$ though
Yes, but not quickly...they cost a fair amount of money to install (and maintain), so they would eventually pay back but they would need to be used very frequently I think to go anyway to repay the install costs and then the maintenance costs.
Just my thoughts, not based on reality or facts - but I think one of the EV threads someone had posted up an installation cost and I think it was about £20k...
Companies are making profit from them so yes. However managing it yourself would be tricky (who would know about them/how to take payment and track usage) so I suspect it would be a case of renting out the space to one of those companies.
I'd had thoughts about buying some land and building a cafe and carpark then seeing if you could rent out the parking spaces to a company for charging points. probably no way this would work but it would be nice to have a cafe and people come past, park up and charge their car while buying a coffe and sandwich.
maybe attached a bit for bike mechanicing as well....
Even if does take a long time to make a profit, it's worth doing if it helps tackle the climate emergency!
If you are going to put them in anyway for staff use the extra cost to make them public might not be that much?
Cheers - It's just an idea I may put to my MD as he's looking at what we can do with a bit of unused ground.
They are a vandalism target for sure.
You'll need to be quick at recouping profit...
Once the masses are forced into public charging you can bet there is going to be a HUGE tax put on it that makes it non profitable ...
There is a system that lets you 'rent' out your home charger to public people, like the 'share my drive' parking type things. Not sure how it would work for work though.
Podpoint would be the people to talk to as high kw DC rapid charging is serious money and pretty much the preserve of the big charging networks. Podpoint can rollout 7kw and 22kw charging on your premise, maintain it, and share the profits with you.
https://pod-point.com/solutions/business/commercial-charging
I’d had thoughts about buying some land and building a cafe and carpark then seeing if you could rent out the parking spaces to a company for charging points
I think this is probably the business model, similar to petrol station. The electric/ petrol gets you to stop the profit is is The drink, cakes, food you sell
The comps who installed my domestic 7kW EV charger offer a scheme where you can make your charger available to others, at whatever cost you choose. I’d not taken it up because I didn’t see much demand for a PAYG EV charger in the Surrey suburbs.
Screw fix will sell you a rfid chargers for around 8k.
How you distribute the rfid tags i have no idea
Both my FiL and BiL have a public charger, FiLs cost him about 800 quid after the grants (not in the UK!) BiLs was about 13-1400 as it's more powerful and a dual charger.
You set the rate yourself. Not sure how the back end works. i.e. where the money goes. But seeing as the only person using the two chargers so far are my ex and her brother/SiL, i don't think it matters.
Was actually cheaper to make it a public charger Vs a private one as there are more grants available both from the Government and the Electricity company.
I'll probably opt for a dual one if i get a PHEV co. car next time. Got half a dozen neighbours with PHEVs or BEVs and only one with a charger.
Do what Osprey are doing - get local authorities to fund the cost of purchase and installation, then sell the electricity to drivers at £1/kWh.
Gridserve seem to have a business model that is doing just this. I don't know whether the money is in providing power for car or, like a petrol forecourt, in selling cups of coffee.
Might be the future of service stations though and they have put their money on it. 36 cars charging at once is a fair bit of power!
https://www.gridserve.com/electric-vehicle-charging/electric-forecourt/
Might be the future of service stations though and they have put their money on it. 36 cars charging at once is a fair bit of power!
Yes, and a lot of service stations like say Membury or Abington, which I use fairly frequently, are right out in the countryside so might not be able to get ten megawatts of supply.
Podpoint can rollout 7kw and 22kw charging on your premise
7kW isn't very useful to travellers unless it's at a destination. 22kW maybe, but I don't think many cars can use the 22kW AC supply.
It makes me think of how mobile phone masts were rolled out. Organisations set up to find suitable sites, do a deal with the land owner owner and get through design, planning and build which was then paid for by Vodafone, O2 etc
Maybe there's something like that already in place working on behalf of the operators?
It's complex, depends on incoming power and crucially your location. Doing it on a one off basis i would think would be a nightmare and probably not be commercially viable.
At the moment most charging is top up in some form, most charging is done at home as people who can afford the lease costs generally have a drive. So that's fast chargers which are megabucks or smaller AC units, but they only work if there is something to do whilst the car charges.
Things will change when the second hand market for EVs really kicks in along with a reduction of cheap ICE vehicles. It will force people who can't charge at home into EV charging and they will need cheap long duration charging. Fast DC chargers are never going to be cheap to use. I predict we're still 5 years off mass EV ownership.
Best bet is to partner up with someone else, it's how the parking industry generally works, it's your car park, you set the rules, they enforce them and provide the investment and maintenance needed for the kit. If they think it's worth investing on youhr site it may work, if they don't it won't be. Location is vital.
It really is a minefield, do you want maintenance hassles, the chargers will break or will be broken, the public are involved. What do you do when someone can't unlock their charge cable and the car is locked to the charger on a Sunday morning. How are you going to manage payment, do you have a suitable MID, will you partner up with a back end system like Greenflux. How are you going to police it, if people block bays that stops you earning, as a land owner you have next to no legal remedies to sort this (hence the private parking companies that have put systems in place to charger people who abuse carparks). Do you have insurance for a public car park etc.
If was easy, cheap and lucrative everyone would be doing it.
I also suspect a lot of the chargers going in are green washing at the moment rather than genuine environmental awareness. The supermarkets are probably paying for the bit DC chargers, when that increases to 10 or 40 points in the car park I bet they will be less keen stump up the investment.
Patagonia gifts company to charity to help save the planet
STW forum member looks to coin in capitalism style 😆
Forumite asks a sensible question and gets sensible answers.
STW forum member decides to derail thread to virtue signal and political point score 😣.
Yes, and a lot of service stations like say Membury or Abington, which I use fairly frequently, are right out in the countryside so might not be able to get ten megawatts of supply
Re the supply available I wonder if anyone has developed a charger that plays a average draw game?
I.e. if they have 10 22kw chargers but only able to get a supply to 75% by using some local storage to fill the peaks. Either large capacitor banks or local battery or large flywheels etc. Would be interesting to see if the economics worked out.
My immediate thought was that it might affect your business rates - I've done some shit jobs over the years 🤦♂️
Re the supply available I wonder if anyone has developed a charger that plays a average draw game?
Yes, there's a lot of development along those lines including using liquid flow batteries where space isn't an issue.
It’s quite a complex balance of location and charging power I’d suggest.
7kw home type charger really only useful for stays of 4 plus hours
22kw worth plugging in for a town car park or other destinations >2.5 hrs
50kw (DC) for 30 min plus so starting to be useful for journey stops but still a bit slow for a decent amount of electrons
100kw meaningful charge gained after 20 min so a coffee or sandwich stop
350kw in a fast charging car and with the right battery temp you actually don’t have time to wee and get a coffee.
As mentioned anything bigger than 11kw and I think you’re into three phase. The big dc chargers require a hell of a supply infrastructure.
Not sure what above poster was on about cars not charging at over 22kw. Mine will go to 225! Edit just seen you’ve said 22kw but AC
STW forum member decides to derail thread to virtue signal and political point score
Naw, just a bit of good humoured piss taking. But glad to see you're still on the ball playing the forumite sheriff 😉
Simply put yes, I own a company that installs commercial chargers (400 last year)from 85kw DC down. Lots of places finance them based on what they can charge. But most places have a reason for people to be there so if you have that you will get people using them. Bearing in mind the DC units start at £25k plus install plus DNO plus Groundworks it gets expensive. I’d say go for a dual 22kw from an existing supply if possible as that could be done for under £10k.
The cost of electric is having an affect too with some places charging £1/kw, that’s 30p a mile in electric. With a 22kw charge you may get away with 60-70p and if popular you’d be surprised how quick it would pay for itself or cover the finance plus some profit.
It seems to me that the railways - or whichever bit of them owns the electric track infrastructure - have a great opportunity here.
They have a good power distribution network for the railway.
They have people who park for long periods (commuters) in their existing carparks so they only need cheaper and slower chargers.
They have (relatively) cheap land along the route of the railways where they can stick newer fast charge carparks on top of the existing town centre ones.
Naw, just a bit of good humoured piss taking.
Sorry, completely missed the fact it was supposed to be humorous, as apparently so did you in my failed attempt to be humourous in return by paraphrasing your post back to you, I suppose if you've nothing constructive to add a bit of sarcasm will do.
Not sure what above poster was on about cars not charging at over 22kw
No, me neither, as I understand it most cars can cope with up to 22kW AC as they have an on-board transformer, above that they need DC which is why the charge points get expensive, they have to transform the AC to DC, 22kW is 3 phase, 7.5kW is single phase.
No, me neither, as I understand it most cars can cope with up to 22kW AC as they have an on-board transformer,
Very few cars in the UK can charge at 22kW AC. Most max out at 11kW.
As these power levels are all in the realm of slow destination charging anyway, it makes little difference.
Loads of new EV take the 22kw charge so it’s a worthwhile fast charger to have at work. We’re installing loads at public destinations too. If the EV is an older one or cheaper one that doesn’t have the onboard 22kw it’ll revert to a 7kw charge anyway. All the 22kw we install can drip to 11 or 7 depending what the car can take. 50Kw+ DC are great if you need a real quick charge but most destination chargers are 22kw, a decent commercial 22kw unit can be installed for £5k ish whereas a DC unit starts at £50k.