Asda Switches Off EV Chargers
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The Telegraph appears to have got the wrong end of the stick here. It is not Asda pulling the plug, but BP.
It is BP who operate the chargers, and they have to Asda to rent each bay. I have seen figures of £2K a month mentioned. Given the chargers are slow, it seems unlikely that BP could make any profit all, not least because of the maintenance problems frequently encountered.
It is hard to see otherwise why Asda would turn its nose up at £2K a month.
I can’t verify it, but apparently BP Pulse announced the decision last October:
Unfortunately, after a brilliant 10 years working with Asda to provide EV charging for customers at their stores, our contract will come to an end in October as bp pulse continues to focus on on-the-go charging and rolling out ultra-fast EV charging hubs.
This means that we are no longer maintaining, replacing or starting charging for any Asda units not just in Hereford, but throughout the country.
We understand that this may be inconvenient and we apologise for the frustration.
https://www.speakev.com/threads/asda-and-bp-pulse.180598/
Given that supermarket chargers are usually slow, the income stream for BP must have been tiny. An hour’s charge, for instance, might recoup five quid.
BP’s strategy is now to focus on fast chargers at busy locations, such as service stations.
Not much use for the chap driving home from work, who does not have offstreet parking!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This is good news. There will be more room for people with ICE cars to park and less concern about parking next to an EV which could go off with a bang.
Petrol and Diesel cars are around 100 times more likely to cause fires – according to fire department evidence comparing numbers of real incidents and per 100,000 of each type of vehicle.
It’s FAR more dangerous this to park next to an internal combustion engine. The clue is in the name COMBUSTION.
Those stats are totally fake.
But the real danger with EV fires is how they quickly turn into conflagrations, which propewr cars don’t
“Petrol and Diesel cars are around 100 times more likely to cause fires” Really? And where did you get these figures from?
An answer would be appreciated.
Most local grid substations have a limited capacity rating and by the time a supermarket energy use in taken into account , there is not a lot of spare capacity for charging points as well .
Extra high rating substation transformers are available , but they usually cost £millions each , so supermarkets are not going to pay that out just to get a few extra customers .
The only way for more fast charging stations is like the EV charging companies do it , by having loads of diesel generator trucks . But you wont see that in much of the media .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/09/electric-cars-generators-national-grid-ev-charging/
I would need convincing that having battery car charging points makes any difference to people’s shopping habits. It is more likely that the chargers would be used by people passing through and just stopping for a coffee and sandwich especially if you read any of the tales of people trying to make journeys longer than 30 miles and needed to charge en route.
Mean while in the world of the insane
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/climate/biden-phase-out-gas-cars.html
Biden Administration Announces Rule Aimed at Expanding Electric Vehicles
The regulation would require automakers to sell more electric vehicles and hybrids by gradually tightening limits on tailpipe pollution.
Trump may be a corrupt business man with connections to the mob. But at least he does not believe in climate change so there is some hope. Unless the net zero money makes him change his mind and become a true believer.
Trump is a resident of NY, NY and a business man in said city state, of course he has connections with the mob (their bagman). As for corruption, he learned the hardassed tricks of the trade (not corruption when it’s paying off government) to survive in NY real estate. I am not an apologist but rather a realist.
chriskshaw, Trump is squeaky clean, if he wasn’t he’d have been jailed before the 2016 election. Democrats and Clintons have scoured every corner of the nation for dirt on him and they’ve had to invent it every time.
That, My friend is a stinking libel.
The real President Trump is the only one capable of saving OUR world and if you have any evidence of any corruption on his part please enlighten us. Obviously you are not aware of the corruption of the senile squatter in the White House and his drug addled son.
lol, thanks for giving me a good laff, perhaps not for the reason you want though!
Agree entirely. Those who do not realise the parlous state of government in the US and UK will no doubt scoff, although they will not be able to name their knight on a white charger, because apart from The Donald, there isn’t one. That’s not to say he’s perfect, but who is, and how ‘perfect’ do you have to be to qualify? The heavier DJT is vilified, the less the critic is aware of what is happening.
Trump is not corrupt, it is the US justice system that is corrupt in trying to invent charges to find him guilty of before the election knowing that a) he is even more popular then when he got the most genuine votes in 2020 b) the DemoTwats / Davos Fascists are going to have to commit far more election fraud this time, and c) given all the exposure of their fraudulent methods from 2020 and 2022, there will be far greater scrutiny.
How on earth can Trump be found guilty in New York of a victimless crime when the bank that lent to him testified that they had not problem with inflated property values and that it was a common occurrence which caused no financial loss to them.
The Grinch brothers have switched off more than a hundred electric car charging points
They probably drove to each one and cut them off with their own hands.
a blow to customers who want to plug in their vehicles while they shop
Whah! Whah!
No normal person would do this. Charge it up before you leave home, charge it back when you get home.
I suspect they are being taken out due to extremely low uptake. You go to the store to look for rye bread, not a charger.
There is a huge difference between the US and UK local electricity distribution which is very often overlooked/ refused to be admitted to. This from Dr Steve Broderick an acknowledged expert in this field:-
“Reiterating the US / UK difference in Distribution capability:
◦ US: 8 – 14 kW per home, able to sustain peak loads for long periods vs.
◦ UK: 1 – 2 kW per home on average, able to support occasional higher loads due to averaging over many customers
Most published papers originate from the US so silently assume the US model. However the respective Distribution networks have quite different characteristics.”
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/82722/html/
You Americans enjoy a much more powerful supply and can readily charge at home. The above evidence to Parliament actually discusses restricting UK home charging to just one in seven in order not to potentially collapse our system.
The UK (and most of Europe’s) domestic mains supplies are actually pretty crap but nobody likes to admit to it….yet.
Interesting, BUT “UK: 1 – 2 kW per home on average” … so having a shower with the other 1/2 cooking and telly watching….. yet then again it is surprising how little is used per day without heating … but point made. and we have that problem too as many more in rural communities : at the end of the Line …
I say without reservation that anyone who drives to the supermarket and looks for a charging station is an idiot.
I add that anyone who doesn’t have a dedicated charger to use is an idiot.
Ray, it looks like EVs for UK is a colossal blunder; you don’t have the power infrastructure to support them. And it’s getting worse.
It appears that only idiots buy EVs in England. You are sofa king dead.
saighdear, I can get really boring on this subject (sorry) but it is not only basic power rating/delivery that is a problem. In the US final transformers only serve a few homes – often single figures and over very short routes. Here it can be up to 200 in urban areas over fairly long lengths. This causes other problems relating to Reactive Power being pushed back into the system from Heat Pumps and EV chargers and “blocking” power flows.
If you read Steve Broderick’s (very simplified) evidence to Parliament you wonder how many MPs would understand a word it?
There are numerous real world problems that need to be overcome that nobody seems to want to talk about.
On the bright side the sun has moved above the equator and all those long (very long where you are) sunny nights are ahead of us. Make hay!
I should add that while the electricity supply is not built for high power consumption in the UK, the natural gas network is terrifically good and has no problem delivering at up to every 50kW to every home simultaneously.
So the government wants to ban gas…..as GC says “we are sofa king dead”
Ray,
I think your last sentence is over critical. Our local area network was designed for a completely different world than that now envisaged by government.
Diversity will change significantly with evs and heat pumps and it’s probably fortunate that uptake of both are much below government’s expectations, or local power cuts would be more frequent?
To Iain Reid, my apologies for using the wrong context in my description. You are, of course, correct and the electricity distribution does achieve its original intents and purposes.
I shall rephrase my remark by saying the UK electricity distribution network, in its current form, is not capable of meeting the demands being inadvisedly placed upon it.
Plus, Ray, we get all 60 of the hertzes.
Another important difference between USA and UK, the UK population is much more urbanised, with old housing stock, with most houses without garages and on-street parking. Most cannot have a home charger.
Hey here is a thing that most Brits (and apparently many Americans) don’t realise is that American homes have 240V to the premises. The power is “split over 2 hot legs” (sexy sparky speak) with lights and plugs sockets on one leg at 120V but heavy consumption units (cookers etc) hard wired over both legs giving 240V.
On a 30amp circuit the 7.2kW is perfectly okay to charge an EV and is not be a problem for the local supply network. A much better system than the UK and most of Europe though more complex and much more expensive originally.
“You are unusually well informed, Mr Bond.”
Here’s something you may not know, Ray.
The electrical industry in the US is not regulated by government. It is regulated by an industry association, and promulgated as the National Electric Code (NEC).
It is crystal clear evidence that government regulation of industry is not needed, and government should stay out of it. Agencies like the Federal Drug Administration are not just unconstitutional, they are unneeded. And destructive.
This sounds like a long way round for a short cut.
World’s first commercial e-fuel plant opens, producing diesel from green hydrogen — backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/innovation/worlds-first-commercial-e-fuel-plant-opens-producing-diesel-from-green-hydrogen-backed-by-bill-gates-and-jeff-bezos/2-1-1616700
Haru Oni, Punta Arenas, Chile, beat them by a couple of years.
Infinium has revealed little about the project in terms of its size or annual output, or the cost of the e-diesel, and is yet to respond to questions from Hydrogen Insight.
Oh, my! It’s as if they are completely full of $#|+.
did they run a pilot? Make a business plan? Or just rush along with the happy surge of green consensus
with the happy surge of the green$ provided for by the Biden IRA
That is interesting because it just dawned on me that shortly after Tesco Sunbury installed their charging points their car park lighting failed, and has been maintained by lights on diesel Genne sticks ever since. I wonder whether they overloaded their car park electricity system? JUst off up there….. wine o’clock.
Huh from my own experience alongside Tesco & their FM people, they have NO IDEA about the real world of “How things work / are made”. WE have had siilar problems with their Drainage systems – Water flows downhill and has to be pumped UP to get away from Carparks ( why do they build in such places ) so when there’s a Storm and power failure ….. Yep….
I was being humourous when I said that we had a cable failure in my road shortly after my neighbour got a charging point installed for his hybrid SUV. Perhaps it was truer that I thought.
My wife used a car park for a little shopping precinct recently. It was difficult to find a parking space. There were fifteen parking bays lost to chargers. One of the fifteen chargers was in use.
My guess is that it’s the City Council that owns the car park. I wonder how the shopkeepers feel?
Meanwhile Octopus thinks that V2G is going to save £100m p.a. in balancing costs of there are 10 million EV owners they can con by 2030.
Trial using EVs in the BM hints at annual savings of almost £100m (current-news.co.uk)
It is of course peanuts in a bill running well into the billions. I’ll look forward to Octopus sharing its findings, which should include the range of round trip efficiencies experienced, and which balancing services they have been able to offer. Home chargers aren’t going to include the kind of sophisticated electronics required to handle second to second balancing, so they will be competing in a much reduced range of ancillary services – perhaps needing a tailor made offering which will open scope to others to fill in the gaps.
And there are going to be lots of others, as Timera point out: There is now more than 20GW of BESS capacity scheduled to come online by Oct 2027.
The prospect of more than 15GW of new BESS capacity coming online across a three year period is now a major concern for BESS investors.
The penalties for failing to deliver on capacity market agreements are not trivial (up to 35 £/kW of the project capacity obligation). But penalties are small relative to the total cost of BESS project construction. If developers cannot raise capital to proceed with projects they will need to face the music.
A key question now facing GB BESS investors is how much of this capacity market contracted pipeline will actually get developed across the next 3 years. And whether those projects that don’t will be cancelled or delayed.
It is likely we will see quite an intense period of aggregation & consolidation across GB BESS projects & platforms over the next 2 to 3 years.
Basically, they are expecting revenues to collapse because of excess competition in the narrow segment of short duration batteries. You probably have to include V2G in that, since it will not really be able to cope with much more duration: discharging say 20kWh over 3 hours is going to be about the limit, and it will need 25kWh+ to be recharged overnight. None of it copes with the real problem of Dunkelflaute. Will government provide a safe haven from carbon attack for gas?
https://timera-energy.com/blog/record-capacity-auction-impact-on-bess-peaker-investment/
IDAU , I recall you mentioned recently that the “big battery” in South Australia was no longer performing as well as originally. Is it just coincidental that four large synchronous condensers have recently been installed there and taken away a large part of the needs for the BESS?
The recent announcement of fast acting gas turbines (almost certainly single cycle) for “back up” is likely for their generators to be in synchcon mode most of the time providing balancing and firing up the turbine as and when required.
During lockdown low power demand (when renewables provided an increased supply percentage) many power plants operated in this manner. Some current OCGTs regularly operate like this i.e.
“The station predominantly provides a ‘synchronous compensation’ service utilising its Generator, which is uncoupled from the Gas Turbine using a Synchro Self Shifting (SSS) clutch. No fuel is consumed in delivering this service, which enables National Grid to efficiently control the UK transmission system voltage and frequency. “
I would personally be very wary of investing in any BESS companies. I suggest V2G is pure fantasyland given the capacity limitations of DNO low voltage systems. Additionally surely someone will eventually wake up to the lack of short circuit level control that is developing in the system – or will they blame lightning strikes causing blackouts on climate change?
It’s no longer the biggest boy in town.
https://opennem.org.au/facility/au/NEM/TIB/?range=1y&interval=1M
The 250MW Torrens Island BESS has the advantage of being in town rather than out in the countryside, which favours lapping up negative price rooftop solar. Not 100% convinced about the apparent reported output/input efficiency- you’d expect better of a new facility, especially as they seem to be constraining it to 100MW discharge.
Completely separate point but am I reading this correctly or is it a typo?
“… in fact, we’re on track to run the grid on zero carbon electricity by 2025. “
Is NG ESO claiming zero carbon by next year?
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/our-progress-towards-net-zero/net-zero-explained
They are hoping to be able to operate without inertia from CCGT, on as little as 90GVAs. Just 2 seconds at 45GW!
There is now a little more information on the 22 December frequency event. Inertia at the time was 156GVAs, and they are admitting to the loss of Cottam (almost 400MW) on top of the 1GW IFA trip. Not enough to justify the drop in frequency to 49.275Hz, and not reflecting the reports from industry
https://www.current-news.co.uk/ifa-interconnector-fault-causes-49-2hz-frequency-event/
The 5 minute generation data reveal that the main turnup was in pumped storage. Insufficient time resolution to see the losses described in the article.
I’d be a little cautious about going to 90GVAs given the failure to arrest the fall for so long. I think that would have triggered LFDD, just like in August 2019.
Ray S; I’m guessing they don’t mean 100% of the time. They are close today – as I type only about 6% of demand is coming from gas, the rest is nuclear and renewables, plus close to 10% from the interconnectors (which is probably classed as zero carbon too).
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) is often mentioned on EV forums, usually in the context of backup during periods of “dunkelflaute” and sometimes as an opportunity to make money by arbitraging power prices. It’s one of those deceptively simple concepts which hides much devilry in the details.
Afaics there are only 2 cars on the UK market which are equipped for V2G – and one of those uses an obsolete connector design. Further, none of the domestic chargers (apart from special trial units) are bidirectional; nor do any have the special protection circuitry, etc which is mandatory for putting power into the grid.
So, to realise this idea, all EVs sold in future would have to be equipped for V2G. In addition, every single existing charger would have to be replaced and all future ones would have to be suitable for V2G and compliant with regulations. Apparently the kit which does a similar job for solar panels costs at least £1000 a pop.
Clearly it is going to be years before any of this happens at scale, if it ever does. Therefore the proportion of those 10 million EVs which will be available to support the grid in any form will be pretty small.
Then there’s the challenge of getting people to support the scheme. Imo, many folk will not be comfortable with the grid drawing the juice out of their batteries, probably in the early evening when demand is highest. They would have to be pretty confident that they will be able to recharge their cars later on, ready for the morning – or have the use of an ICE car as back-up. The first time they find themselves short of range the next day will be the last time they allow V2G.
Quite a lot of EVs are already equipped for Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) with one or more 240V sockets. While these are useful, especially for trades folk, they raise the possibility of someone trying to run a house via an extension lead during a power outage which has major H&S problems.
A dive into who really benefits from wind farm constraint payments.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13229397/Wind-farms-backed-Amazon-Tesco-help-add-1-5bn-bill.html
I think they should have placed more emphasis on the fact that consumers will pay for grid expansion, and the main beneficiary of that will be National Grid.
More Supermarkets messing up people’s lives.
Wind farms backed by Amazon and Tesco help add £1.5bn to YOUR bill
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13229397/Wind-farms-backed-Amazon-Tesco-help-add-1-5bn-bill.html
This never used to happen to my 1973 Escort 1100 …
Shocking moment £47,000 hybrid Jaguar goes ‘rogue’ and reverses into a Porsche before shooting forw… https://mol.im/a/13234863 via https://dailym.ai/android