What are the chances that both of you with Type 1 vehicles in the UK would post in the same thread! Small world.
Posts by Cptn_penguin
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This is a bit disingenuous. The reason the Type 2 connector is preferred over the Type 1 in the EU is because of the prevalence of 3 phase supplies there compared to other parts of the world. The Type 1 connector doesn't have the pins for that, so the Type 2 exists.
It wasn't just to be different for the sake of it.
Is the Type 2 overkill for most single-phase supplies in the UK, or even for home charging on three phase? Yes. Does it offer a tangible benefit over the Type 1? Arguably yes, especially for use in destination chargers if your EV has an on-board three phase charger.
It might be related to accessibility concerns. Not everything is as simple as "this is the only common sense solution because I'm only considering the longevity of the plug versus a socket".
It might also have been in response to a survey of potential users; tethered cables are significantly more convenient, despite the downside of the potential higher maintenance.
They could have been supplied at a steep discount and thus allowing more chargers to be installed for the same budget.
They might be the property of the company that supplies and services them on contract from the council and so the local authority has no actual say in what model the EVSE is.
There's many reasons beyond just "socket is obviously better than plug".
Because mixing phases is not trivial if the Type 2 is wired for three phase.
You could just take L1 and N and pass those to a Type 1 plug, but then you're only drawing off one phase and could be limited to a much lower charge rate unless each of the three phases is able to offer 7 kW by itself.
This is a bit of a bodge, but it's basically what the current adapters do. If the Type 2 socket is single phase, this works and can pass all of the capacity to the Type 1 plug, which is also single phase.
This is not necessarily true. There are plenty of three phase type 2 chargers in the UK that can deliver more than 7.4 kW 1ph if the car has a 3ph charger on board.
You cannot just join up the three phases from a 3ph power system together - if you short them out across the phases you're going to have a bad time. Anyone who's ever accidentally (or otherwise!) shorted from L1 to L2 or L3 will be able to tell you what happened.
All the AC power is turned into DC for battery by the inverter but this happens long after the socket.
It's simply not trivial to join three phases together into "single phase" while taking all the power too. You either split the phases, like most of the UK domestic network, where groups of houses are fed by either L1, L2 or L3 and a common N, or you use a proper 3ph distribution board if all three phases are fed to the property (commercial units and some houses with larger loads).
Three phase is common in the UK, it just tends to be found in commercial settings, making the Type 2 connector ideal for us, Brexit or not.
There's no trivial way to take all three phases from a Type 2 3ph socket and "join them" into one conductor in a Type 1 plug, regardless of the current rating of the plugs and cables. The phases simply aren't compatible with each other. The only solution is to just connect to one of the three phases (usually L1 since it's always wired in a Type 2 plug). If the 3ph supply happens to be 3.6 per phase then unfortunately you'll only get 3.6 kW charging in this case.
This is not talking about shorting out the phases, it is talking about what happens if the three phases are unequally loaded.
A three phase system has three separate and utterly electrically incompatible Live conductors - L1, L2 L3 that share a common neutral. These three phases can then be used independently as "single phase" supplies.
This is what happens in the UK. The grid supplies 3ph to the substations and then three different streets are fed the three phases. All the houses on one street get L1, all the ones on the second get L2 etc and they all use the common neutral.
The phases are "in balance" if the current demand on all three phases is the same - this is the ideal situation and it means no current will flow on the neutral conductor.
This is not possible to achieve in practice, however, since there will always be a little imbalance - eg, there might be 10 houses on street 1 but only 6 houses on street 2, so the L1 is probably going to see more load on it. This is corrected for by current flowing on neutral.
Three phase systems are designed as much as possible to be close to balanced since this is the optimal setup.
It has nothing to do with connecting the three live conductors together - this would be a short and will trip the breaker (or worse).
You need three separate AC inverters fed from each phase.
DC power can be combined by just joining the outputs of these AC inverters.
The three phase inputs cannot be joined under any circumstances.
Some EVs can do clever things by combining more than one inverter on single phase power, but this only works when both are fed from the same individual phase.
It's like Mentoes and Diet Coke - both are logically in the same place in my stomach if I consume them. It doesn't mean I can keep them both in the same receptacle before I eat them unless I want to clean up a huge mess.
This, again, is just not true. It seems you're just trolling at this point, but the multiple AC chargers in a Type-2 equipped car are run together when the car is fed a single phase load. If they are all fed L1 they can run together in parallel easily. If they are fed 3ph then they just run the outputs on DC together since the phases are not compatible. Cars that only have single phase sockets wired up just have a pair of these chargers that are always wired together. This lowers costs significantly since you only need one part (repeated) to make a number of different charging combinations. It also means you have more flexibility with the packaging of the electronics since the multiple single phase units can be split up and moved apart. For example, one under each seat, or side by side on top of the motor in the engine bay.
As to why we adopted CCS instead of Chademo? One, the Chademo port is a dead end - it has a maximum current rating that limits charging to 100 kW on DC rapid, which is already and it also means you need a whole separate connector for DC charging instead of a hybrid single connector that can accept an AC-only Type 2 plug or the combo CCS plug.
This lowers costs and parts and the space required to fit the ports.
If we're talking about "carrying things that are never used" I'll take the Chademo port on 95% of Leafs for £200 please Alex.
DC charging is not the same as AC charging.
External high power DC chargers are expensive, heavy, large, internally very hazardous even more so than exposed 240 V live terminals, less efficient and loud. Just what you want on the side of your house.
Offloading the AC charger, which is not the same device, from the car into the EVSE would make them more expensive, then you would still need to feed DC to the pack, plus you'd need the AC charger duplicated at every single EVSE. You'd also have to be careful about which cars were allowed to charge on it since the pack might be incompatible with the charger.
AC EVSEs are effectively a monitored and managed connection to an AC supply. They are simple, relatively robust devices which makes them cost effective to build and supply with power.
A DC off board charger is nothing like that.
Still, if you want to make your three phase to single phase adapter by combining L1, L2 and L3 into one wire then don't let me stop you.
If it's the same engine bay layout as the e208, which seems likely, then there will be physical room under there but I wouldn't want to leave the cable there when driving. If you can get 11 kW then you definitely have the 3ph cable. I always thought it was a bit odd that Peugeot made the 3ph on board optional while it was standard on the Corsa. You think they'd have kept those the same.
The inverter and charger assembly is under the plastic cover mounted on top of the motor assembly near the DC
C converter.
You have to keep your trolling consistent. If you want your position to be that we should all have DC chargers on our walls at home then you need to ignore discussions about complex DC chargers that don't work properly.
Are we ranting about the EU's stance on AC charging or DC charging here?
It's hard to keep track of the nonsense.
You're being highly disingenuous, or at the very least, dismissing people who actually know what they're talking about when it comes to electrical equipment and electrical theory in favour of some conspiracy that the EU made decisions based on some nefarious need to be "other" rather than adapting to the reality of the European electrical grid.
You're also floating ideas that have been readily disproven as impractical and expensive in this continued anti-EU rant and you're not even internally logically consistent.
There's a reason the EU went with the Type 2 connector. There's a reason you can't just short out L1, L2 and L3 conductors to make trivial single phase converters. There's a reason we use on-board inverters in BEVs and have the supply equipment provide AC line voltage in either 1ph or 3ph flavours. There's a reason that CCS (in both Type 1 and Type 2 guises) is preferred over Chademo.
All of these things have been explained in detail, including the practical and economic reasons, but you still think it's some grand machiavellian scheme by Germany to personally piss off people who bought cars with Type 1 and/or Chademo connectors and that a council fitting tethered Type 2 chargers in a country where Type 2 sockets have been standard in all but a couple of early-adopter cases is some part of the master plan.
Should DC rapid charging be more robust? Absolutely. But the problem of having the charger off-board and needing to appropriately connect, negotiate and charge any DC traction pack is not trivial, especially at high rates of charge.
Would it be nice if all possible AC connectors were supported everywhere? Of course, but we standardised around a connector that had tangible benefits for the EU.
Is it unfortunate that Chademo was not adopted by everyone? No, definitely not. There are benefits to CCS that Chademo could not easily match.
The "solutions" that you propose (everyone has their own HT DC charger at every charge location!) are simply not at all feasible if the goal is better interoperability, lower costs and more robust charging networks. It's also absurdly reinventing the wheel for no good reason when every property in the UK is supplied with AC power.
Maybe we should mandate that all electrical devices are supplied as DC-only and then have all the HT rectification done in-wall so you can plug your TV, computer, fridge etc into it. It would make TVs cheaper! (note: this would be absurdly impractical and expensive, but hey, cheaper TVs!)
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