I've no idea - but I wouldn't try it.

We don't have overstay fees for destination chargers in Aberdeenshire. I sometimes leave my car on all night, as there are more chargers than people needing them. Both the app and the website are showing the time elapsed, not the time charging.

Earlier this month I drew 20kwh for over 7 hours elapsed. There is no way I was charging that long. A few days later I got 19kwh in 3 hours 1 minute on the same post.

The back ends may vary by council. I had a complaint about being overcharged on the off-peak rate recently, and CPS insisted that everything other than sending the bill was dealt with by Aberdeenshire Council, which differed from what I had understood. Both them and the council were very cagy about detail, and after my charges were corrected I gave up pursuing it.

I recently downloaded an excel spreadsheet from the CPS website which gave details of every charging session in Scotland for a whole month. One charging post - Fyvie if I remember correctly had several 'time elapsed' sessions approaching 24 hours. I saw that and thought that overstay fees had some value. If you were interested enough you could get a months data and look at all the timings, including your Orkney ones, to see what data is held.

I recently had a message, via the CPS app, in Aberdeen City, to say I had reached 80% charge on a rapid. I've never had that 'move along now' nudge in the Shire, which leads me to belief there is more variability than I expected.

I've also been fortunate recently in being able to plug into a chademo while somebody else was attached to CCS. There are some benefits in having the less popular charging standard!

 

Am I correct that there is a cheeky way round the CPS overstay fees for anyone wanting a leisurely meal in a restaurant?

Just not an appropriate way to act by hogging a scarce resource someone else might want to use. Personally I'd double or quadruple the overstay charge for that - and maybe a PCN if ANPR could identify the overstay. And, of course, the frustrated EV driver trying to charge might react...

It should be possible to detect that the EV is connected whether or not it's charging. Whether CPS use that or not is another matter. If not, hope they upgrade the detection.

CPS overstay charges have not, however, been appropriate on low-power chargers 'overnight'.

Have you read Vauxhall's EV Etiquette Guide?

 

I don't agree with you @Edinburgh 2000 regarding "leisurely meal" approach. Just let me give you the other side of the story... Just imagine if you had to use CCS charger and this MG stayed for another 5/6 hours without charging?
A lot of people are complaining about not be able to charge because of drivers like the one with the MG. No one is staying in the pump for another 4/5 hours in a petrol station is it? So what makes an EV driver special so they can stay 6/7/8 hours after the charge is done?
If we want the change to EV transportation we need to abandon me, me, me approach.

 

I don't agree with you @Edinburgh 2000 regarding "leisurely meal" approach.

Sorry, Padrino. My original post obviously was not clear enough. I agree with you.

I wrote the post because I was fuming that the MG driver had abandoned the car for well over an hour, when that is the time limit set for overstay fees. My post is to question whether drivers like this have found a loophole that means they could be abusing the rules for calculating the overstay fees. I would like to be sure that the fee applies to the time connected, not the time charging. But I fear that is not the case. Once the charger registers that that charge has finished, the back office systems close that session and there is then no record of when the car was disconnected. I think it is only if the charger does not end the session when you get to 100%, and requires you to present your card again to log the session as finished, that it will correctly record the time connected. All my CPS sessions in my account show the time charging, not the time connected.

But, to be clear, I was not advocating this behaviour. I was seeking (a) clarity about whether my assumption is correct; and (b) alerting others to the potential abuse of this loophole. I've edited my first post to make that clearer.

 

Sorry, Padrino. My original post obviously was not clear enough. I agree with you.

I wrote the post because I was fuming that the MG driver had abandoned the car for well over an hour, when that is the time limit set for overstay fees. My post is to question whether drivers like this have found a loophole that means they could be abusing the rules for calculating the overstay fees. I would like to be sure that the fee applies to the time connected, not the time charging. But I fear that is not the case. Once the charger registers that that charge has finished, the back office systems close that session and there is then no record of when the car was disconnected. I think it is only if the charger does not end the session when you get to 100%, and requires you to present your card again to log the session as finished, that it will correctly record the time connected. All my CPS sessions in my account show the time charging, not the time connected.

But, to be clear, I was not advocating this behaviour. I was seeking (a) clarity about whether my assumption is correct; and (b) alerting others to the potential abuse of this loophole. I've edited my first post to make that clearer.

I always present my card again, which is maybe why all my sessions record attached time.

Different chargers mat be different. On an AC charger would it unlock my cable without presenting my card?

 

On an AC charger would it unlock my cable without presenting my card?

My understanding is that, if the charge has finished and the chargepoint's light has gone from blue to green (or the equivalent on older units), the cable would be unlocked at the chargepoint. So someone else could unplug your cable and insert their own, so there would be no real problem on untethered AC units. The problem arises with rapids with tethered cables where, when the charging session has finished, the cable remains locked into the car until the owner disconnects it.

Maybe there are indeed some chargepoints that do not end the session until you present your card again. I shall contradict my own argument here now, as that would not be good for me as I was able to exploit the fact that I used Chademo while the CCS user was locked onto the CCS. If the charger remained 'in service' until the CCS user tapped his card again, I would not have been able to use the Chademo! So maybe I should be careful what I wish for!

 

My understanding is that, if the charge has finished and the chargepoint's light has gone from blue to green (or the equivalent on older units), the cable would be unlocked at the chargepoint. So someone else could unplug your cable and insert their own, so there would be no real problem on untethered AC units. The problem arises with rapids with tethered cables where, when the charging session has finished, the cable remains locked into the car until the owner disconnects it.

Chademo unlocks on charge completion, thus session completion as far as charger is concerned. At least that was the case with original Nissan supplied Ecotricity chargers.

As someone who benefited from that mechanism, I think tethered cable unlocking should be charger controlled and all rapid chargers should have 2 parking bays.
This allows people to be (hopefully unintentionally) stuck somewhere (eg. meal, toilet, coffee queue) and the rapid charger to be used by other people.

Combined with no V2H/G for CCS even now, I really think Chademo was ahead of its time and a real shame to be not widely adopted.

 

We are going up to Edinburgh on Saturday and to avoid and balls up and hogging a charger and incurring a fine, our charge is going to be somewhere up the A1 possibly Dunbar Asda and drive the rest of the way in and park in a regular space. That'll give enough to get home after the visit
Mrs is in a panic already thinking we'll be stranded.
I guess the more destination charging is done, the more confidence there is in the system.

 

Yeah there are a couple of Osprey units across from Dunbar ASDA in the hotel carpark. The CPS units are on the coast next to the pool. Local to me so rarely use them but certainly very popular. East Linton a good bet too.

 

Think it depends on the car, my MG5 did disconnect from a CCS session when it hit 95% SOC, I suspect on A/C it wouldn't have.

 

I was waiting at a gridserve MSA charger, there was a VW plugged into the CCS, so I tried the type 2, but despite the charger claiming it was capable of dual charging I was unable to start a charge. I phoned the helpdesk, they couldn't do it either. Then there was a clunk, and the charger said the car did something unexpected - I hope it was set to stop at 80%, and it wasn't something I'd done, but the cable detached and I could start a CSS charge.