Charging an EV on holiday

[Discombobulate]

You will get around 6-7 miles per hour but, as pointed out above, get a quality French plug and lead. Do NOT use a normal adapter as things can get hot if poor quality.

[benny.c]

ncjones said:

I haven't been with Eurocamp for years, but their caravans always used to have UK sockets. The campsite electric posts outside will either be two pin or will be the standard electric hook up sockets as per a UK campsite.

As my post above the electricity on a campsite is unlikely to be up to it though.

Yeah, I’ve never been on a site with more than 10A limit per pitch. By the time you deduct lights, fridge etc it’s not going to leave much headroom for charging a car.

[TheDeuce]

benny.c said:

ncjones said:

I haven't been with Eurocamp for years, but their caravans always used to have UK sockets. The campsite electric posts outside will either be two pin or will be the standard electric hook up sockets as per a UK campsite.

As my post above the electricity on a campsite is unlikely to be up to it though.

Yeah, I’ve never been on a site with more than 10A limit per pitch. By the time you deduct lights, fridge etc it’s not going to leave much headroom for charging a car.

Whatever the limit.... The French socket is rated at 16a isn't it? I doubt there will be less than a 16a breaker on the circuit let alone a 13a - not unless the management want to spend all night resetting breakers. I appreciate the site may average out at a lower capacity than that and might subsequently advertise a lower capacity per pitch. I really doubt that 13a would exceed the circuit design though.

I reckon odds are that if you ignored the supposed load limit, 13a would not trip the breaker. Only one way to settle the argument though - we have to wait for the OP to try

Edited by TheDeuce on Tuesday 14th December 22:50

[Heres Johnny]

TheDeuce said:

Whatever the limit.... The French socket is rated at 16a isn't it? I doubt there will be less than a 16a breaker on the circuit let alone a 13a - not unless the management want to spend all night resetting breakers. I appreciate the site may average out at a lower capacity than that and might subsequently advertise a lower capacity per pitch. I really doubt that 13a would exceed the circuit design though.

I reckon odds are that if you ignored the supposed load limit, 13a would not trip the breaker. Only one way to settle the argument though - we have to wait for the OP to try

Edited by TheDeuce on Tuesday 14th December 22:50

How to say you’ve never been on a camp site without saying you’ve never been on a camp site

[TheDeuce]

Heres Johnny said:

TheDeuce said:

Whatever the limit.... The French socket is rated at 16a isn't it? I doubt there will be less than a 16a breaker on the circuit let alone a 13a - not unless the management want to spend all night resetting breakers. I appreciate the site may average out at a lower capacity than that and might subsequently advertise a lower capacity per pitch. I really doubt that 13a would exceed the circuit design though.

I reckon odds are that if you ignored the supposed load limit, 13a would not trip the breaker. Only one way to settle the argument though - we have to wait for the OP to try

Edited by TheDeuce on Tuesday 14th December 22:50

How to say you’ve never been on a camp site without saying you’ve never been on a camp site

Fair play - clearly many others on here have been lucky enough to frequent a camp site..

Sadly, even those that have only appear able to offer theories regards amp limits. No one yet has confirmed what the maximum load they have managed is. All we have is numerous people suggesting the load limits are fairly low. I'm speculating that that's probably because the load is advertised as low per outlet, because across all outlets it probably is low. That's not to say that one in four outlets couldn't charge an EV without issue though.

Whatever the site limits, I also doubt the owners would fit an MCB considerably below the socket specified maximum load.

[skilly1]

I plugged into campsite to charge in UK and was told to stop as it can trip out the site. So although you can you maybe told you can’t !

[benny.c]

The vast majority of sites have individual 10A RCDs for each pitch so there’s no averaging out across a site or even a number of pitches. It’s easy enough to trip them. The better equipped sites give you 16A.

Edited by benny.c on Wednesday 15th December 00:03

[TheDeuce]

benny.c said:

The vast majority of sites have individual 10A RCDs for each pitch so there’s no averaging out across a site or even a number of pitches. It’s easy enough to trip them.

Edited by benny.c on Tuesday 14th December 23:59

Interesting. Is there a source for this majority 10a trend?

[Mars]

TheDeuce said:

we're normally a little higher voltage in reality, I find just over 240v.

Splitting hairs admittedly!

I think you're right. Whereas the standards changed in the early 2000s to align with Europe, I believe the tolerance written into the standards of 230V +10% -6% meant the generators didn't need to actually change anything in the UK because 240V falls well within the range 253V down to 216V.

At the time of the standards change, Europe was at 220V. I wonder if they had to make any changes.

My UPS logs say we've been fluctuating between 239V and 245V for most of today.

Interesting snippet (to me) - the creation of nuclear power plants presented a problem to the grid because they cannot be easily/quickly turned up or down to compensate for varying loads. I think that was the reason why we have those water powered generators in Wales and Scotland.

[benny.c]

TheDeuce said:

Interesting. Is there a source for this majority 10a trend?

It’s just what you find on a lot of sites. Some are as low as 5A although more are moving to 16A - I guess because people are carrying more electrical gear when camping nowadays. I’ve been on one site so far with a dedicated car charger.

[TheDeuce]

benny.c said:

TheDeuce said:

Interesting. Is there a source for this majority 10a trend?

It’s just what you find on a lot of sites. Some are as low as 5A although more are moving to 16A - I guess because people are carrying more electrical gear when camping nowadays. I’ve been on one site so far with a dedicated car charger.

But how do you know the limit? Other than what they stick on the label for the user to read?

If the average I could afford over 90 plots was 10a, I'd stick 10a labels on... But if the socket was rated at 16a I still expect the sparks putting in the sockets would protect each circuit based on 16a.

[benny.c]

The RCDs aren’t like the ones at home with little labels to write what each circuit is for - they usually have the limit printed on them.

https://www.wentvaleelectricalltd.co.uk/mk-sentry-...

I suppose you could put stickers on them but it’s not my experience and what’s the point for the site owner? It’s no bother for them if it trips because it doesn’t throw the site out, just the individual pitch, and you have to reset them yourself. Sometimes there is one master for say four individual RCDs and overloading one pitch will throw the other three making you very popular with your fellow campers

Ultimately the OP will need to speak with the site and ask as there’s no standard. Irrespective of the supply to each pitch, most caravans will have their internal power circuit on a 10A or 16A RCD so even if the total supply to the van is 16A or more, you may only be able to draw 10A total from all the sockets. I guess overnight in the summer this could be OK because the only other power the van would be using would be the fridge and that may be on a separate circuit anyway.

Edited by benny.c on Wednesday 15th December 09:52

[superpp]

Buy one of these, then try it when you get there.
Suggest only over night when no-one will turn on the kettle or hair dryer.

https://toughleads.co.uk/collections/adaptors/prod...
https://toughleads.co.uk/collections/adaptors/prod...

[TheRainMaker]

TheDeuce said:

If the average I could afford over 90 plots was 10a, I'd stick 10a labels on... But if the socket was rated at 16a I still expect the sparks putting in the sockets would protect each circuit based on 16a.

That's not really how it works though, you will be able to pull 16amp from the socket no problem, but it's the ring that limits how much everyone can take.

Same as in your home, every socket will supply 13 amps, but not all at the same time.

[TheDeuce]

TheRainMaker said:

TheDeuce said:

If the average I could afford over 90 plots was 10a, I'd stick 10a labels on... But if the socket was rated at 16a I still expect the sparks putting in the sockets would protect each circuit based on 16a.

That's not really how it works though, you will be able to pull 16amp from the socket no problem, but it's the ring that limits how much everyone can take.

Same as in your home, every socket will supply 13 amps, but not all at the same time.

Nope, in this instance each hook-up point (socket) has it's own protection which, according to a few, is often 10a which would directly limit charging.

Anyway, my point that you quote above is essentially the same as you're saying now. If it were not for the protection per socket, it would indeed be the case that a 16a socket could deliver the full 16a (or 13a as it's a UK charger) with no issues at all, even if the total number of sockets on the RFC could not deliver 16a each simultaneously - because of people aren't all going to charge their cars at the same time. I was wondering if the site owners were stating the 10a limit not because each socket can't supply more, but simply because that's how it averages out and they want people to be mindful of that limit.

[dgswk]

TheRainMaker said:

Depends on the car I guess, but the Polestar you can limit the power it takes, thing is even on a 13amp socket you would be looking at 40 hours to charge from flat.

Would be best to find a real charger and sit in the car and wait, good way to spend a holiday

Yup, UK admittedly, turned it down to 8A and it was fine. Only turned it down as my mates tent was powering a music system, fridge, lights etc. from memory, got about 25-30% in 12-14 hours which was enough boost to get home.

[TheDeuce]

dgswk said:

Yup, UK admittedly, turned it down to 8A and it was fine. Only turned it down as my mates tent was powering a music system, fridge, lights etc. from memory, got about 25-30% in 12-14 hours which was enough boost to get home.

That's the thing about granny charging on holiday... It might be super slow but it's still more than enough for anyone that isn't driving several hundred miles a day during their holiday.

Back to camp site charging... if it's true that most pitch hookups are pegged back to 10a currently.. I would expect that soon enough the site owners will swap out the rcbo's on a few pitches so that there is capacity to charge and then increase the price for those pitches. Seems like a win-win rather than be awkward about it.

[TheRainMaker]

More likely they will install chargers and charge, that’s what I would do.

40p Kw would be a nice little side line to a camp site.

Then limit the pitches to 5amps, which would be more than enough for camping but not enough to charge your car.

[TheDeuce]

TheRainMaker said:

More likely they will install chargers and charge, that’s what I would do.

40p Kw would be a nice little side line to a camp site.

Then limit the pitches to 5amps, which would be more than enough for camping but not enough to charge your car.

Either/or really.

Although personally I think I'd prefer to charge at 13a and have the car when I'm pitched up as opposed to having it a walk away. Obviously that depends on the length of stay and amount of daily driving etc.

I'd say there's a future argument for having both high speed centralised and low speed on pitch charging. Both make sense in their own way.

Edited by TheDeuce on Wednesday 15th December 19:58

[curley]

Surely the starting position is to ask the camp site manager if you can charge the car and what the charge (£) is for doing so ?