On May 22, 9:56*pm, "Recliner" wrote:

"Roland Perry" wrote:

In message
,
at 06:49:14 on Fri, 22 May 2009, Mizter T
remarked:
And of course the electricity to power said vehicles needs to be
generated somewhere and somehow - which is in itself a rather
wider debate, and indeed one which is currently going on.

And in London the problem is distributing the electricity from the
grid to the end users. Even if there was a plentiful source of
electricity, you'd have to do quite a lot of work to get it to where
it's needed.

Don't you need 3-phase for fast battery charging? *Otherwise, it takes
many hours.

Rather pathetically I'm on the edge of my knowledge when it comes to
this field, but yes my understanding is that you do need a 3-phase
supply for fast battery charging. The article I cited in the post that
started this thread said that the Mayor's plan is for three types of
charge points:

(1) 13A, 240V slow charge points
(2) 32A, 240V three-phase fast charge points
(3) 200A, 500V three-phase rapid charge points

N.B. Of the last category, the article says "the potential of these
posts is still being 'investigated' ".

It's also worth noting that the article says there'll only be 50 of
the fast charge points (the second category) by 2012, with a further
150 by 2015. Presumably this is only counting the charging points that
will be provided (or at least funded) by the Mayor/GLA/TfL - the bit I
quoted earlier has the Mayor hoping that the boroughs and other
partners will provide lots of others.