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posted by janrinok on Wednesday October 13 2021, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-shift-workers dept.

UK Proposes Law To Switch Off EV Home Chargers During Peak Hours:

The United Kingdom plans to pass legislation that will see EV home and workplace chargers being switched off at peak times to avoid blackouts.

Announced by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, the proposed law stipulates that electric car chargers installed at home or at the workplace may not function for up to nine hours a day to avoid overloading the national electricity grid.

As of May 30, 2022, new home and workplace chargers being installed must be "smart" chargers connected to the internet and able to employ pre-sets limiting their ability to function from 8 am to 11 am and 4 pm to 10 pm. However, users of home chargers will be able to override the pre-sets should they need to, although it's not clear how often they will be able to do that.

[...] In addition to the nine hours a day of downtime, authorities will be able to impose a "randomized delay" of 30 minutes on individual chargers in certain areas to prevent grid spikes at other times.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:30PM (5 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @04:30PM (#1186691)

    it's not hard to imagine circumstances where this comes back to bite you in an emergency.

    As of May 30, 2022, new home and workplace chargers being installed must be "smart" chargers connected to the internet

    Oh good; let's get the IoT involved, too. What could possibly go wrong!

    Here's hoping that if they actually roll this out, some plucky hacker cracks it the first day and just shuts off the entire network for 24 hours. We'll see if they think it's a good idea then.

    EV home and workplace chargers being switched off at peak times

    electric car chargers installed at home or at the workplace may not function for up to nine hours

    I'm smelling a lot of "maybe" coming off of this article.

    However, users of home chargers will be able to override the pre-sets should they need to, although it's not clear how often they will be able to do that.

    So either everybody will ignore it, or the override hurdle will be high enough that it might as well not be there in the first place.

    In addition to the nine hours a day of downtime, authorities will be able to impose a "randomized delay" of 30 minutes on individual chargers in certain areas

    Let's just roll dice to see whether we get to charge on a given day! That should be fun!

    --

    Reminds me of one of those articles awhile back where consumers are basically being infantilized and trained to think of their computer as a "magic black box"--just plug in your car and cross your fingers! Maybe it'll be charged when you come back; maybe it won't! Just trust the opaque system you don't control! :D

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 13 2021, @06:35PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @06:35PM (#1186726) Homepage Journal

    You have good points, except: the randomized delay is pretty essential. Imagine what would happen to the grid, if you turned on hundred of thousands of fast-chargers simultaneously. Power plants need a bit of time to ramp up to increased demand: doing this gradually over 30 minutes makes that possible.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 13 2021, @06:49PM (3 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @06:49PM (#1186730) Journal

    So either everybody will ignore it, or the override hurdle will be high enough that it might as well not be there in the first place.

    Or, the vast majority of people will leave the pre-sets alone and probably not even notice since the damn thing is plugged in all night anyway.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:13PM (2 children)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:13PM (#1186739)

      At least just throttle the charging rate instead of completely disallowing it. As-is this is begging for lawsuits when somebody has a dead battery and can't drive their child who's having a medical crisis to the hospital because they couldn't charge their car for the entire day ("day" as in sunset-to-sundown).

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:18PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 13 2021, @07:18PM (#1186741)

        *sunrise-to-sundown, blarg

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by ewk on Thursday October 14 2021, @11:54AM

        by ewk (5923) on Thursday October 14 2021, @11:54AM (#1186943)

        That must be some mind disabling crisis then, if you cannot remember how to call a cab (or an ambulance...)

        Although I am not sure how viable these options are anyway in Ol' Albion given their current lack of (truck)drivers and the alleged state of the NHS...

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