Random delay when charging - New 2022 charge point regs now in force

[init6]

I don't think they are 'struggling', they just want to have measures in place to allow them to avoid using more expense and carbon intensive sources of electricity, and while prices are high consumers are more willing to try this type of scheme. As I found out during the Octopus trial, my houses typical usage is low at these times so there is little financial upside.

Point taken. Struggling without using carbon intensive /expensive backup generation may have been a better way to word it. But certainly doesn't appear to be a lot of spare capacity if that is needed.

Is octopus Agile still a thing? Seems this is a bit more carroty than making the energy more expensive at peak times.

 

[Mrklaw]

optimistic me
- makes sense to avoid grid shock. However if it also applies to when you manually plug in, that seems a little odd. The physicality of driving up to your house and plugging in adds its own random element that should be manageable. Its not as brief a window as ‘ad break during corrie’ for instance. I assume this was primarily due to internet clocks and scheduled starting for eg off peak rates meaning thousands will all turn on almost simultaneously?
- for solar trickle there should be ways to bypass this or at least mitigate how it works.


pessimistic me - does this mean our 4hr octopus go windows will be shorter so we’re getting less value for money? perhaps there could be a way for them to communicate (with permission) with your charge point like intelligent octopus so the delay is built into the ‘off peak’ element to guarantee you the full block of time your tariff allows?

 

[init6]

- for solar trickle there should be ways to bypass this or at least mitigate how it works.

I had a quick look a the regs this morning and I'm sure there was mention of user generated electricity being exempt from the delay.

Edit: found it:

OPSS currently do not intend to enforce the requirement to operate with a randomised delay of up to 600 seconds, under regulation 11 (2)(a), in instances where a charge point is:

• responding to a signal to draw electricity generated behind the boundary meter point (for example, from Solar PV on the charge point owner’s premises).
• responding to a signal to draw electricity from a storage source behind the boundary meter point (for example, from a battery on the charge point owner’s premises).

14
The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 – Guidance
• responding to a signal behind the boundary meter point to decrease the rate of charge in order to keep within a premise’s connection limit.

There will also always be the option to bypass the delay:

1. 3.42 There are certain charging scenarios where this functionality is not desirable, particularly if an immediate response is needed from the charge point. Charge points must be configured such that a randomised delay will not happen when:

• the owner or end-user has cancelled the randomised delay by manually overriding it;

 

[yessuz]

Near enough ... though depends on the kettles as they vary between 1.5kW and 3 kW. The grid is already used to handling this massive instantaneous spike, at least for or a few minutes, but the EV charging is going to then be continuous for a lot longer so any short dump to the grid that has worked to date will likely be used up and the core generation will need to really get its act together. It seems a reasonable scenario to be planning for but I doubt that it's going to be a major issue long-term.

true. all rapid boil kettles are 3 kw at least

 

[yessuz]

Near enough ... though depends on the kettles as they vary between 1.5kW and 3 kW. The grid is already used to handling this massive instantaneous spike, at least for or a few minutes, but the EV charging is going to then be continuous for a lot longer so any short dump to the grid that has worked to date will likely be used up and the core generation will need to really get its act together. It seems a reasonable scenario to be planning for but I doubt that it's going to be a major issue long-term.

I had the discussion with some energy consultants, like 6 years ago (or so). we talked about the UK future Energy scenarios.

one of the idea was, which is very logical, that in the future when we all will drive EVs (as one of the scenarios). then, instead of 2 peaks we have now (one peak is in the morning and another afternoon) we will have like 3-4 peaks, one being at night, but another one being in the day.

except this was before covid and before we massively switched to work from home. this changes things, a bit.

 

[AndrewGR]

true. all rapid boil kettles are 3 kw at least

Bit of thread drift but, in the U.K. at least, a domestic kettle won’t be more than 3kw. 3kW at 230V = 13.0 amps which is all our sockets are rated at!

 

[GRiLLA]

Point taken. Struggling without using carbon intensive /expensive backup generation may have been a better way to word it. But certainly doesn't appear to be a lot of spare capacity if that is needed.

Is octopus Agile still a thing? Seems this is a bit more carroty than making the energy more expensive at peak times.

I'm not really sure why you would want to have spare capacity at the peak demand, surely that would just be always wasted capacity. We actually export more electricity than we import, in May we exported 3837GWH and imported 1119GWH. The annual total electricity consumer in the UK is now about 14% below the peak in 2004, less manufacturing and more low energy lightbulbs. There is a false narrative from the right-wing press that somehow we are short of electricity generation due to renewables, largely nonsense.

Octopus Agile is still a thing, but generally it's formula means it just sticks at 35p the highest price it's allowed to get to. I would say that this peak scheme is a carrot though, if you choose to reduce your power when they ask you get a small credit

 

[init6]

I'm not really sure why you would want to have spare capacity at the peak demand, surely that would just be always wasted capacity. We actually export more electricity than we import, in May we exported 3837GWH and imported 1119GWH. The annual total electricity consumer in the UK is now about 14% below the peak in 2004, less manufacturing and more low energy lightbulbs. There is a false narrative from the right-wing press that somehow we are short of electricity generation due to renewables, largely nonsense.

It just makes you wonder why they're doing it? Very rare for companies/governments to give money away.

 

[GRiLLA]

It just makes you wonder why they're doing it? Very rare for companies/governments to give money away.

To reduce cost and CO2, both of which are things that the national grid has responsibility to optimise.

 

[AndrewGR]

I'm not really sure why you would want to have spare capacity at the peak demand, surely that would just be always wasted capacity. We actually export more electricity than we import, in May we exported 3837GWH and imported 1119GWH. The annual total electricity consumer in the UK is now about 14% below the peak in 2004, less manufacturing and more low energy lightbulbs. There is a false narrative from the right-wing press that somehow we are short of electricity generation due to renewables, largely nonsense.

Octopus Agile is still a thing, but generally it's formula means it just sticks at 35p the highest price it's allowed to get to. I would say that this peak scheme is a carrot though, if you choose to reduce your power when they ask you get a small credit

My understanding is that we are less able to cope with peak demands than we would have been in 2004 thanks to the closure of almost all the coal fired power stations and the progressive shut downs in our ageing nuclear stations. We’ve now got a good potential amount of wind and solar but they are not much use on gloomy winter days when the wind happens not to be blowing. So anything that can be done to reduce peak demand further is a ‘good thing’. If I was planning the electricity supply for the next decade I’d be worried that the pressure to replace gas boilers with heat pumps will increase peak demands in the winter faster than we can provide new capacity.

 

[Casss]

If I was planning the electricity supply for the next decade I’d be worried that the pressure to replace gas boilers with heat pumps will increase peak demands in the winter faster than we can provide new capacity.

Hopefully govt. have various things in the works for this seeing as they've been giving developers big incentives to install them for years...

I'm no doomsayer, but I think we have some energy 'growing pains' on the horizon for sure.

The recent situation in France with their reactors highlights that we're not completely alone in these challenges, albeit they are geographically and uniquely different challenges.

Germany are racing to extract as much brown as is humanly possible before they run out of time because of carbon goals. Seems a bit backwards to me, but we're all doing it. I'm sure I could look this up but I'm not sure how much renewable energy if any we export.

 

[WannabeOwner]

If my electricity supplier offers me a Time-of-Use rate I'll be very happy to install timers / schedulers to take advantage of it. Won't that me Most/Many people too?

In terms of my EV then it seems pretty trivial to do that as I won't even have to buy some fancy-pants timer-switch (which would have to be "online" to know when the ToU cheap rates are available ...), but rather just an adaption to the existing EV API to cause it to start charging whenever the ToU rate is below whatever limit I set

Seems to me should be easy to shift the demand by using ToU - particularly with EVs - they are going to draw 7KW when charging, that's a decent chunk for the supplier to be able to manipulate, rather than a few LED light bulbs

And V2G (or even V2H) would make a massive difference too ... V2H allowing me to avoid any expensive ToU periods ... and V2G if the grid was prepared to pay me more than two or three pence a unit ...

 

[AndrewGR]

If my electricity supplier offers me a Time-of-Use rate I'll be very happy to install timers / schedulers to take advantage of it. Won't that me Most/Many people too?

In terms of my EV then it seems pretty trivial to do that as I won't even have to buy some fancy-pants timer-switch (which would have to be "online" to know when the ToU cheap rates are available ...), but rather just an adaption to the existing EV API to cause it to start charging whenever the ToU rate is below whatever limit I set

Seems to me should be easy to shift the demand by using ToU - particularly with EVs - they are going to draw 7KW when charging, that's a decent chunk for the supplier to be able to manipulate, rather than a few LED light bulbs

And V2G (or even V2H) would make a massive difference too ... V2H allowing me to avoid any expensive ToU periods ... and V2G if the grid was prepared to pay me more than two or three pence a unit ...

Not sure how soon we will see vehicle to grid, or to house transmission. It’s specifically excluded under the Tesla battery warranty - they obviously want to limit the battery cycles. Whilst a Powerwall may cycle its capacity every day, I imagine the average cycle time for a Tesla car battery is probably a couple of weeks.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Not sure how soon we will see vehicle to grid, or to house transmission.

It would be high on my list of criteria when I next change vehicle ...

I have 2x PowerWall, but the battery size of an EV would be much easier to use to span an overcast summer day. For my PowerWalls to get through the night - from the time when PV starts to produce less than the house background usage, until the equivalent tomorrow morning - I need 95+% charge ... no chance of handling a cloudy day tomorrow on my PowerWalls (but even on a bad day they will get me from sundown to the start of Off Peak) ... so its just that I think that having an EV-sized battery would give me a lot more flexibility.

Whilst a Powerwall may cycle its capacity every day, I imagine the average cycle time for a Tesla car battery is probably a couple of weeks.

I'll be interested to see how that develops. I have always assumed it was because (back then) Tesla's had free Supercharger use , and bringing that juice home and using it to run the house wasn't cricket!, so they didn't build V2H in.

But assuming new cars will have to pay for Supercharger I'm not sure that Tesla would be so bothered with V2H

Perhaps V2H could be recorded similar to "mileage" and taken into account in warranty and 2nd hand value. Car has done X miles and the battery X kWhs

 

[rotor2k]

Ohme sent through an email about the changes, and one relevant point stood out (emphasis mine):

Randomised delays – All charging schedules will be subject to randomised delays of up to 10 minutes. This means that although your charging may be scheduled to start at 00:30, for example, it may not actually start until up to 10 minutes later. This is to stop there being a surge of demand when all the off-peak schedules kick in and to prevent the creation of new peaks (when lots of electricity is being used at the same time). A randomised delay will only be applied if there is sufficient charging time for you to achieve your target range. If not, no delay will be applied.

What are the new Smart Charge Points Regulations?

Welcome to the home of innovative smart charging for electric vehicles. Our solution helps you charge at the cheapest rate. Sounds good, right? Simple.

www.ohme-ev.com

 

[spooksman]

I got this from PodPoint related to my two year old charger...

"Due to some Electric Vehicle Regulation changes, some changes have been made to encourage a 'grid-friendly' operation. One of these changes includes the delay of scheduled start and stop times. This delay will be up to 10 minutes and will be a random amount of seconds between 0-600.

You should find that the latest amount of time that it will delay is 10 minutes so shouldn't impact your charges too much."

 

[spooksman]

I got this from PodPoint related to my two year old charger...

"Due to some Electric Vehicle Regulation changes, some changes have been made to encourage a 'grid-friendly' operation. One of these changes includes the delay of scheduled start and stop times. This delay will be up to 10 minutes and will be a random amount of seconds between 0-600.

You should find that the latest amount of time that it will delay is 10 minutes so shouldn't impact your charges too much."

I have actually asked the following in response;

"Can I have a fixed 'stop time'?

I'm happy to accept the delayed start, but I don't see why I should be paying the premium electric cost for the 10 minute delay in stop time..."

 

[init6]

I have actually asked the following in response;

"Can I have a fixed 'stop time'?

I'm happy to accept the delayed start, but I don't see why I should be paying the premium electric cost for the 10 minute delay in stop time..."

Have you pointed out the regs only apply to newer chargers?

2.11 The Regulations do not apply to:

• sales of charge points before 30 June 2022;

 

[spooksman]

Have you pointed out the regs only apply to newer chargers?

No, but I will now, thanks

I'll let you know what they say...