lol-lol

I gather aluminium is being used in several areas as a replacement for copper as it being much cheaper and lighter and as long as one compensates for the lower ability to transport current for the same diameter it can be a good replacement. It also can be that when scrapped it is less hassle to split metals as chassis etc maybe aluminium.

One can use aluminium as an alternative to copper of course and if one does use lots of strands one xan reduce eddies which crank up losses. Heat is the enemy and the extension is was using to charge the EVs warns current should be a measely 5A ie 1200 watts which shows how the poor heat dispersion when the reel is wound. Another reminder of our new world was when I was having the second wallbox fitted abd the National Grid guys came and said they were reducing by main fuse size from 100A to 80A due to average house and ring main temperatures being higher it was a safety measure to lower the fuse size as more electricity was being used in summer rather than the winter as was !

Yes a nominal 220v according to the manual. Have a multi meter which can read up to 750 volts but a bit scared to try and measure. Suspect the 220 can fall to 210 or lower under high load and then further losses in the extension lead. There is the temperature effect took ie when starting up when warm ie it is 30 -35 C and then it warms up another 5 or 10 C in operation which will further reduce the delivery voltage and therefore power in watts.

It's a 10m 13a rated lead but tests have shown on can lose 2% or a bit more. It is not just the loss but the lower than ideal voltage means a slice less power being delivered to the car. The reel lead probably use 1.25 mm wire whereas the Arctic lead uses 1.5 mm sq wiring and is rated to 16 A. I could go further and get the 2.5 mm sq Arctic cable which would be 32A I gather. Quite a bit more expensive. I can crank the Granny charger box up to 10A which my battery should be over capacity as it is only rated at 2200 w continuous but I reckon it would be ok for a good while. Looking to get a 3 to 4 kw output battery but not aeen any great deal on them but wi be interested to see what Octopus-CATL offer.

Car says something like cannot charge and this is nearly always the car is not happy with the earthing and this is invariably doe to lead not having a connection with the car and either a wiggle of the lead ie just apply slight downland or upwards pressure and that oft works or unplug and replug in. Does not oft happen and seems to happen more in wet weather. Biggest problem I come across on those rare occasions I do public charge is the different chargers have different sequences of doing things and a bit of a faff. Gridserve expensive but works quickly, BP and Shell awful and I avoid. As I said the Type 1 and 2 chargers at home seem very robust but the voltage display on the Granny charge box wax showing an incredibly low 200 volts when charging the car from my home batteries but it still charged. J think a combination of the home battery unit being more like 220v, the losses in the extension lead and maybe the unit under reporting. Have build another Arctic spec extension lead but yet to test. At only 8A set current the Granny charger was showing about 1500w, battery close to 1600w output and xmcar showing about watts 1400. Also car showing over 24vhours to hit the target charge level. Free solar energy or like today electricity negatively priced so not too worried abd an interesting project to work on. Will be interesting to see what the Octopus-CATL home batteries are sold at.

Zero issues with Error codes relating to out of range voltage. Very occasional issue with car being not happy with the Earthing not being good enough but this is normally solved by reinserted, checking the charge lead metal terminals are dry and clean. Leads have boots to go over the end when not in use but some don't always fit them back after each charge. The voltage tolerance is massive from what I can see. The wallboxes and granny chargers setup the voltage from 200 to 250 volts up to 400 volts which the car needs to charge. Interesting to see how all electrical devices cope in the UK as the National Grid rachet done the UK voltage down from 240v nominal towards 220v nominal to align with European normal voltages.

Does sound like heat island conditions. Having spent much of my time at Heathrow I have experienced concrete heat island mucho.

99% of scientist believe in the link between CO2 and global warming. Just see what happened to Venus !

Indeed af big cities can add 10F or more than 5C. Going to get much worse for Heat Island cities as more and more of us get aircon belting out masses of hot air in to the atmosphere. Gosport not much of a town if memory serves from my times at Portsmouth and Warsash seeing it in the distance from land and sea. We will see if the result gets tweaked.

Outrageous price, that unit should be about £299 at most.

Yes was on Amazon, was about £239 i recall but had 10% or so off and ended up about £204 but had a window kit but not the best and i will probably get a better one, longer exhaust pipe and better fit to side opening windows. Yodel delivery which worried me but was OK and it was delivered ahead of time. Probably get similar one for upstairs and as a back, if it failed I would have to get in the car and go for a long, in time, drive. Temp here showing 33C currently.

Presumed Gosport was an automated Stevenson box and the Gosport one wi be reported recalibrate after reporting its record 36.1C so the reading maybe be tweaked and confirmed by the Exeter based Central Met Office which will be interesting. Just wish they would report temp in Kelvin which I prefer.

Temperatures were / are well over 30C so unless one is fresh out of tropical zone then it is uncomfortable and especially, like now, when the humidity is so high. I am emptying the water drain every couple of hours as the air-conditioning unit is taking so much water out of the cooled air. Think I will get another one of these units for the upstairs, exhaust the hit air in to the loft ad i have before. Prices gone nuts as well as choice. Got my 7000 BTU one for £200 with a window kit but now they seem to have spiked up in price. One supplier wanted £999 for a 12000 BTU aircon unit. Con forvorice rather than con for conditioning. Lots of evaporation units trying to pass off as proper air con units. They work a bit but not enough for neaf blood temperatures.

I know, weird, still has to be verified but that seemed strange. We are nestled here with the Welsh mountains to the West. I remember the physical geography saying about the sea moderating temperatures. Much more severe in places like central Asia and of course Canada and the US where the Rockies abd the Apalacha mountains create a corridor for low winter temps and high summer temps. Midlands has the second lowest regional temps after northern Scotland. Wr got down to nearly minus 20 in 2010 whilst we get 35c plus so a 55c temperature rangecis probably the biggest margin in the UK.

I wish I was living close to the sea like I use to but Worcestershire had over 33C yesterday and 34 predicted for today. Bought one of those £200 mobile air con units, 7000 BTU, and that is working well but the window kits are not great with windows that open on the side rather than from the bottom which would work better. Trips abroad down to South Wales are nice in the Scenic and I thought energy consumption wax brilliant. Clearly heat pump / air con works better in heat than cold. Did the usual 68 miles to South Wales and still had well over 200 miles range showing in a car with WLTP of 267 miles. Same sized battery pack in the new Megane up to 67 KWh I see as the pace of battery improvement goes at pace.

Most deaths are old and young who don't regulate their core temp. Seen a few cars , who should gace air con driving along with 4 windows open so presumably their air-conditioning gas level etc not working. Maybe a few car sales as people ditch cars with no or poor ac for cars with good ac and I expect you remember most cars did not have AC. Horrendous time for those stuck in the M25 road closure and ten needed rescuing. Recall similar happening to me and I was in the middle of the Thames crossing bridge, 40c showing on the car thermometer. Scarry, like a scene from Falling Down. On other news I see oil price for August delivery is below the pre ME war price so perhaps the EV honeymoon will pause, at least until EV incentives are further enhanced to further progress the transition to low carbon transport to slow climate change ?

100k extra deaths across Europe i reckon. There were 70k extra deaths in the 2003 of which 2k were UK butvibthink that will be much higher tgan then as the Heat Dome is larger this time. BEVs are improving their range ie not so much dip as battery cehistry improves and its looking like sodium cells will help here. Maybe all sodium or maybe a mixture of lithium and sodium. Even my two smaller battery choices with the R5 and Scenic the range had not really effected my journeys times much at all and the big fall in charging costs mean if I have to add 5 or 10 minutes to the journey I am comforted by the super liwcrunning cost to what I use to pay and that was when i had a company fuel card and the EVs are still way cheaper, home charging benefit accepted is a fortunate situation eben more so that my wallboxes were subsided for one and a freebie with the car with the other. Still dont know the full real range of either car but i will explore that in the coming months.

The whole battery pack and the BMS as well as efficiently using any Regen system as well. My lad justvwantvto drive the car. More important setting up the phone and the Apps. That's fair enough. I charged the Scenic to 100 % couple days ago and it did the cell balancing and it seemed to give ne as much ad 10 miles extra range. Even with a Heat Pump the 5 and Scenic love these warm temperatures but lose a big chunk in the depths of winter. ICE vehicles, due to their relatively low efficiency have masses of waste heat to keep occupants warm without suffering much lower MPG, once the cooling water is up to temp of course. With all the heat waves due we can probably expect another even bigger push for EVs. I would notvbe surprised to see 100k extra deaths attributed to climate change, much more than the 2003 death toll sadly.

Is not the Explorer a VW MEB platformed car ? Dont know if it modular like many EVs that can just have one or so the offending packs replaced. Renault UK has about a dozen specialist places that can do this and then there are independents like Cleverly.

Yes its quite an ask for firemen to utilise the input port to the battery pack. Renault did this on their own, presumably with Nissan and Alpine. It of course needs several organisations to get this better, the EU, fire fighting organisation and manufacturers. I can see that eventually there will be an onboard fire surpression system on BEVs and PHEVs.

Do you know what cells those batteries are using? Originally Lead acid but they were incredibly heavy so changed them to lithium iron phosphate which reduced the weight by about 10 kgs.

Which is why my Scenic has a input port for fireman to fill each battery pack, all 186 of, with foam I presume which will slow the fire. I have seen the large fire blankets work very well but think it needs to work with appropriate foam injection to slow and even stop the chemical fire. Technology always improves and as EVs and home batteries become even more prevalent tge fire fighting techniques will improve in leaps and bounds.

My e scooter has three 7 Ah 12v batteries so 21 Ah so by my maths that is 76 KJoules. But I could charge them outside if I had any concern. CAA say 100 Wh, or 2 grams of lithium, or to say 360 KJoules which sounds quite a lot. Even then the battery should be in safe packaging and have the terminals taped over. We do need to think about external storage and fire suppression measures. I see a small BESS burnt down in Exeter which is being investigated. No hint of any problems with my batteries or EVs.

I have been trialilng charging my EVs from the home batteries and as Greg said anybody can have " Balcony Solar" and small home batteries. I t ink there is a lot of junk talked about lot being allowed to have small home batteries. Yes Powerwall type set ups fair enough but people have recharge torches, radios and al sorts of devices and probably most homes already have numerous lithium batteries in them and small home batteries are the safer Lithium Iron Phosphate type. I am looking at trickle charge the EVs, lowest charge I have goes down to 8A 220/240 V and i wanted to start with a 6A really but did not see that when I got a variable amperage granny charger. If linked to balcony solar and a smallish home battery I think one could put in a meaningful amount of electricity in to ones EV, or house, or both. If Octopus and CATL are on the case then it will happen and as Greg said it is looking like a financial recovered time of 24 to 36 month !

Well we have entered strange times with charging EVs particularly with those of use who use Agile, Tracker small slot differing charging cost pricing. Been bad enough today, lowest slot price 16p per KWH but highest price, 1830 to 1900, 61p per kwh. Octopus offered out 24 p per kwh for those of use who use less than normal so I will see if I get much back for that bust I tend not to use much electricity then as I a mostly on batteries and solar then. No really good slots to charge the car. Tomorrow Octopus Agile slot prices about 15 p per KWh mid day but at 2100 to 2130 80.5 p per KWh, ouch. Must be a real shortage from 1700 to 2300 for such high prices. Again will not be using car charging in the evening but might do as bit in the middle of the day. I think many who do not use Time of Use Tariffs may be surprised just how expensive electricity is at peak times and when the UK Grid, and European Grid, is under strain. It is clear that Europe will need to quickly adapt to having air conditioning which will it big time pressure on our Grid, probably far more than EVs which can be very selective as to when and how much they charge. We might be in a place, albeit briefly, that public charging is cheaper than charging at home for those of us on Agile and Tracker tariffs. Interesting Octopus and Greg Jackson had a massive 4,000 person summit in London and announced a big roll out of small,, large and EV using battery kit for homes. With role oou of big battery facilities seeming to take ages it looks like it is down to the individual to help solve the problems of all this wind power coming on line and available for free or less than free rather than leaving it to businesses, councils, government which are slow to act unlike main over countries in the world from Australia, China and numerous others.