Electric car charging points to be installed at ALL new properties

[Deleted User]

Evidently ALL new properties built from next year will have an electric vehicle charging point built installed https://mol.im/a/9976019

What concerns me is - is the national grid and local spurs up to the extra load ?

What about properties without garages or parking spaces ?

This won't work...

Car_54

National Grid have stated there is no overall capacity problem. As for local spurs, the glacial speed of house-building should allow time for any necessaryupgrades.

Presumably (if this ever becomes law) only houses with garages and/or dedicated spaces will be affecte.

Herzlos

It's a brilliant idea. New properties are already going to need services supplied so they may as well make a 7kw car charger one of them.

Given that electric car sales are doing great and we'll stop selling non-ICE cars soon it just makes sense to do the installation at the same time as everything else instead of paying 4x as much to dig it all up and re-do it later.

Soon, electric charging will be as important a house selling feature as broadband or phone coverage.

user1977

Deleted_User said:

What about properties without garages or parking spaces ?

If they don't have parking spaces that's presumably because they're deemed to be for occupation by non-car-owners, so why would they need charging points?

tacpot12

Radio 4 did a piece recently on alternatives to charging points for people that couldn't have them at home; services such as Co Charger  and Charge Fairy. 

daveyjp

Thats been a policy of our local Councils for at least ten years!   The sky hasn't fallen in.

Ectophile

With the exception of some town/city centre areas, dedicated parking spages are pretty much a requirement for new homes.  Without them, the development won't get planning permission.  So requiring EV chargers isn't a problem there.

As has already been said, the National Grid have no problems.  With the reduction in heavy industry and people using energy efficient appliances, they have capacity to spare.

As for the local grid, when a new estate is being built is the right time to be thinking about supply capacity.  Traditionally, it was assumed that houses that didn't use electric heating would average only 2kW of load across a day.  Once we switch to EVs, that's going to look very optimistic.  It'll be even worse if we have to switch to heat pumps for heating.  Roads will be ripped up to install bigger supply cables, and substations will have to be replaced.

coffeehound

One slight wrinkle with this is that the majority of new builds will be affordable housing -- for the demographic least likely to own an electric car in the foreseeable future.  Perhaps at this stage they could instead include basic provisioning for the future without the actual charger being installed?

Keep_pedalling

coffeehound said:

One slight wrinkle with this is that the majority of new builds will be affordable housing 

Really? I don’t see too many affordable homes among the many being constructed around here.

RichardD1970

Keep_pedalling said:

coffeehound said:

One slight wrinkle with this is that the majority of new builds will be affordable housing 

Really? I don’t see too many affordable homes among the many being constructed around here.

Even when they include "affordable" homes on new build estates, they are not what the many locals call affordable.

I live in an area of massive urban regeneration, in what is an officially deprived area and the new affordable housing was starting at £190,000. This compared to the average ex council 3 bed house, which is much bigger with larger gardens, for around £140,000. They did have off street parking.

[Deleted User]

user1977 said:

Deleted_User said:

What about properties without garages or parking spaces ?

If they don't have parking spaces that's presumably because they're deemed to be for occupation by non-car-owners, so why would they need charging points?

There are plenty of properties (some built in the last 50 years) without any parking space close to the property - my father lives in one - he cannot park his car anywhere near his house - probably 100 yards away

Prepare for blackouts when the national grid cannot cope !

I remember a few years ago - that the grid was almost overwhelmed by demand and it became close to a case for rolling blackouts - we cannot rely on wind or solar and oil/coal fired stations are all but gone - so how do we produce the extra power that electric vehicles will need ?

Last October - the reserves dropped to 500MW which may sound a lot - but its a tiny safety margin for the WHOLE country.

Then there's government plans to ban gas and oil fired heating in new builds - how much more demand will this cause to an already struggling grid, when more people are forced to use electricity for heating their homes ?