Any ideas about how much electricity is being used annually to charge electric scooters?

Hi Jon,


Very interesting topic and I would love to see the report on your findings! Good luck.

Simon Barker:

I don't suppose anybody knows.  But it won't be enough to matter.

 

I'm not quite sure whether the figure is so small that it can be ignored or if it's just starting to make an impact on national electricity consumption.


I suspect (legal or not) that electric scooters are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

As an average from a few datasheets of scooters and electric bikes of the 300watt/ 15 mph type, these typically seem to run for perhaps an hour and need 3 to  4 hours to recharge so the charger load is perhaps 75 to 100 watts max. for a few hours at a time. Most houses have saved more than this by changing to LED lights, and have then blown quite a lot of that saving again by leaving the ADSL router and associated internet of things kit running 24 hours per day. ?

I agree even if every house had a scooter, it would still not be very significant. Car (and even motorbike) charging, at orders of magnitude higher energies are far more of a concern.

Mike

Agreed. Scooters usage would be low enough to ignore. It’s hard to get the figures for how many are around in the Uk now, but another report shows that only 2% of the owners use them regularly. With the battery size being small, the impact would be pretty insignificant. Things like lock down and people going back to work after lockdown would be significantly greater in adjustment required. And as you say, vehicles like cars trucks and busses are significant, but as the national grid studies themselves show, this doesn’t require an upgrade as such, but a change in the way we use electric.

vehicles like cars trucks and busses (sic) are significant, but as the national grid studies themselves show, this doesn’t require an upgrade as such, but a change in the way we use electric.


I must admit I am much less sure about that -  we should remember that "National Grid" despite the name  is not a network operator in the sense of the distribution networks in the UK, and them being ready just means they think the generation is in place for them to buy from generators and sell power to the Distribution Network Operators at the pylon level..

Now I'm not hearing the same reassuring noises from SSE, YEDL, Norweb etc some of whom have some pretty creaky kit still in service, and I suspect the 11kV and 400/ 230V  end of the chain is not really man enough in many places. There are plenty of housing estates served by half megawatt transformers, each serving 50 to 70 houses per phase. Not much slack there at 2 to 3kW average per house, and a few hundred thousand such transformers in use.

Mike.

The impact on the electrical network? Well the national grid may claim everything is rosy but ask about the local loop and the subloop. The DNOs are going to struggle, both with local capacity and with resource to supply. 


Reason?


The slow chargers run at 30 amps (not the trickle chargers but the 7.2kw chargers). The average cut out in a premise is 60 amps. 100 amps in new builds but most housing stock is old. So you will be putting 50% of your supply capability into a constant load to charge your car - that's one car. If I have 2 cars? My entire household supply needs to be dedicated to my cars. That's the entire load. No kettle, shower or immersion heater. 3 cars - forget it.


Now this leads me to point 2 and this is first hand experience. Even with the gradual uptick in people taking fully electric cars now, SSE cannot cope with the demand for load checks and premise cut out upgrades to make the jump from 60 to 80 amps. They cannot even give a lead time. A simple job that should be as simple as a fuse change (3 minutes) is currently taking many many months. I am 2 months in to my load check, my neighbour, 5 months - still no lead time.

You can down-rate most car chargers to 16A 3.6kW if the supply isn't up to a 32A 7.2kW fast charger.  That should still be fast enough for most people.

Most modern chargers have a load management facility that can cope with this and keep the peak demand below 60A. This will likely become more of a necessity. I don’t know where you’re based as well, but we put 100s of EV chargers in, and the DNO check is normally completed for us within 2 weeks. Most of our customers who turn up a looped supply have their supply unlooped within 8 weeks and never more than 12 weeks. Obviously there are big differences across the country but there’s no reason this infrastructure can’t keep up with demand, with suitable investment.