Electric car climate control

[Refugee]

My theory is that they applied for planning permission for the solar panels and that the length of time it took was long enough that the output power of the panels in stock was enough to take out the drop cable by the time they got the green light.

[boater sam]

I remember a LV joint rupturing the pavement in Islington one early morning. A black smoking hole.
Repair crew dug it out, pot joined the burnt ends together by twisting 6mm cable round the ends, bridging the metal sheath outside the pot with a bit more 6mm twisted around the rusty spiral wrap. And buried it, no wonder they have frequent blow outs.

So tell me how the infrastructure will support thousands of cars charging overnight connected to the shoddy old underground supplies?
The suggestion of a charging point on every lamp post is farcical , street furniture is wired with 1mm 2&E cable, no fuses or cutout between the sub station cut out and the lamp.

[Nick]

I've seen an 11KV under-pavement blow-out in the West End of London, which was "exciting"... The old infrastructure is slowly being replaced - charging electric cars is the least of their worries. As has been mentioned, It's likely that future generations of vehicles will have different energy technologies, e.g. the pre-charged electrolyte mentioned previously, so don't get too hung up about current technologies - it's VERY early days for usable electric vehicles.

As an aside, when I've seen underground splicing, it's always been with sand & resin-filled splices - very neatly done (often done while live too!).

I bet when we had gas lighting, everyone grumbled mightily about the problems that'd cause. I'd relax a bit , enjoy the ride and let science & industry take its course...

[ppppenguin]

We had an 11kV blowout near me in Finchley. I wouldn't have liked to have been standing there at the time.

[Terry]

There was an electrical explosion in Threadneedle Street outside the old Stock Exchange buildings. One eye witness said that one of the footway chamber lids had been thrown 10 feet into the air! Fortunately, no one was hurt.

If it had happened half an hour earlier it would have been a different story - the pavements would have been packed with streams of people, from Bank station in one direction and Liverpool Street in the other, on the way to their respective offices.

[ppppenguin]

I think that LV network blowouts can be nastier than 11kV or higher simply because higher voltage networks usually have well designed protection. By contrast the LV (400/230V) netwrok is often rather ad-hoc. In central London the mesh structure of LV means very high prospective fault currents which may need to blow multiple fuses before a fault is disconnected.

[Refugee]

I read in a newspaper once that they had a cable blow in a sub station that blew the doors off into the street.
It caused a terrorist alert before the power company got called.

[ppppenguin]

Sounds like a quote from "The Italian Job": "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

With the huge amount of installed electrical infrastructure the number of unpleasant incidents actually seems remarkably small.

In the past I think I've mentioned the cast iron joint box at the top of a pole outside my aunt's house. It went bang rather nicely, scattering red hot metal and pitch over the street.

[Refugee]

Yes the story was that it went Italian job style.
The worst we have had in our street was flickering lights and a stream of smoke from a connector in the over head lines.
That got fixed before it melted thru to cause a short.

[boater sam]

Watched a pole transformer self destruct in Puerto Princessa Palawan one evening, very impressive. 5Kv overhead I believe.
Seen a few joints in the HV overhead glowing merrily in the dark.
Beats me how it ever works, everything on one pole, HV, LV and date/phones. Add the tropical rain and typhoons, it explains the frequent "brown outs" which we would call black outs.

No likely hood of the infrastructure here supporting car charging.
Besides petrol is only 44p a litre, derv 72p.