Amazon Gets Into the EV Charger Installation Business

- Coming up on this week's news, online retail giant Amazon is now selling EV charge points and it's even offering to install them. Experts predict that the soaring cost of materials will be a massive challenge for electrical contractors in 2023 and a family of four is told by a major energy company that they owe nearly a million pounds for their electricity bill. Welcome to Electrical News Weekly in association with Myenergi.

Whether you're listening in the van, on site or down at the wholesale counter, I'm Richard Osman's doppelganger Joe Robinson and I've been through the best of the electrical industry news to save you the trouble. And as always, if you think you've spotted the two words that I've been challenged to slip into this week's show, comment with them below for the chance to win a prize. Amazon has started selling EV charge points

and it's even offering to install them. The online retail giant is stocking chargers made by Spanish firm Wallbox. They're priced at £543 and customers can then add installation to their basket for a fixed price of £650. Amazon then sends what it calls a certified technician to conduct a one hour pre-installation visit. Their job is to assess the electrical setup at their home. The final installation lasts between two and four hours, says Amazon.

The job includes up to 10 meters of cabling, installing a three-way consumer unit, providing circuit protection and drilling through a wall. Customers pay the total upfront with no additional charges afterwards. It's believed that Amazon has teamed up with a tradesperson agency to manage the work. It's not the first time the company has offered installation. In recent years, it's added an installation service

for some of its LED lights. One EV charger that's unlikely to be installed by Amazon or anyone else is the so-called iconic one commissioned by the then Conservative Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. It all started really well. The charge point was supposed to be a great British symbol for the 21st century. It would be the red phone box, the London bus and the black cab rolled into one. The rest of the world would be green with envy.

After much anticipation, the charger was unveiled to an expectant world at the Climate Change Conference in Glasgow to great fanfare and before the world's slavering press, Mr. Shapps himself pulled away the cover to reveal, well, a bit of a boring black bollard, really. And the world was no longer green with envy and the slavering press and everyone else went home and pretty much forgot about it.

Now the Department for Transport has admitted that the charger may never actually be installed on Britain's roads. It says that the concept was never intended for manufacture or deployment. They also say the £200,000 project was, however, money well spent because it helped generate interest and excitement for the UK's electric vehicle program.

One organization that's definitely getting excited about EV chargers is electrical manufacturer Eaton but it thinks we've all missed a trick. The company says charge points should be bidirectional as standard, so that electric vehicles can charge the national grid when necessary. Under the plan, homeowners would be paid for energy supplied back to the grid to meet peak demand.

It says its independent research shows that using bidirectional EV chargers, together with renewables such as solar panels, could save the typical homeowner around a thousand pounds per year. That's around 90% of the average annual cost of charging a mid-sized family car. One barrier is that not many vehicles are capable of bidirectional charging at present. Eaton is now calling on the government to speed up the integration of vehicle to grid charging into the electricity network.

It can do this by rewriting the grid codes that govern the technical requirements for connecting to the electricity grid. And if you haven't already watched it,

Gordon has created a whole video about the push for vehicle to grid. It really is fascinating and I've left a link to it in the show notes, so check that out after finishing the news of course.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, there is potentially bad news for EV drivers. The government there is threatening to ban electric cars for all but essential trips if the country suffers an energy crisis this winter. It's also considering restricting shops to just two hours trading a day, banning games consoles and bizarrely, ordering the heating systems to be turned off in nightclubs. The Swiss rely on hydropower for much of their energy but poor rainfall in the summer has left this depleted.

While the energy crisis may be concentrating the minds of governments, it's the soaring cost of materials that electricians need to worry about, say experts. ElectricalDirect reckons it will be the number one challenge facing the trade in 2023. Half of contractors surveyed have already put it as their top worry going into the new year. One in five said they were concerned about getting hold of materials in the first place, and one in four are anxious about finding people to fill vacancies.

However, a quarter of UK electricians are staying positive. They expect their companies to be more successful next year than they were in 2022. Now, how's your hearing?

I said, how's your hearing? The reason I ask is that noise has been identified as a major occupational hazard for electricians. Power drills, for instance, can easily exceed 100 decibels. The experts at Hellberg Safety say that long-term overexposure could even lead to permanent hearing loss. They recommend keeping noise levels to a maximum of 75 db.

If you're unsure of what that noise level is, a useful rule of thumb is that if you need to raise your voice to be heard when you're about three feet from someone, the noise level around you is too much. If you can't avoid the noise, it recommends a pair of hearing protectors. And finally, a family of four were told by EDF

that their electricity bill for one year would be nearly £1 million and had £80,000 removed from their account by direct debit, even though they told the energy company that this was incorrect, and they hadn't used anything like that amount of electricity. The Barron family of Deal in Kent contacted their fraud team at Lloyd's Bank who refunded the money before it could do any serious damage to any of their other payments that were due.

And despite all this dad, Richard Barron, noticed that EDF were lining up to do the same thing again, preparing to take a further £80,000 from their account on Christmas Day. This prompted the beleaguered father of two to cancel his direct debit, which was technically a violation of his contract, and led to the family being put on a more expensive tariff, costing £100 more per month.

Although initially no apology to the family was issued, after being contacted by the press, the giant energy firm stated that a review would be undertaken to make sure it wouldn't happen again. And they told the Guardian that, "We've been in touch with Mr. Barron to apologize and agreed for EDF to apply a gesture of goodwill to his account and have reinstated the direct debit at his requested level".

I'm sure we'd all like to congratulate the Grinch, sorry EDF, for this incredible gesture of boundless generosity. Speaking of generosity, if you'd like to make a gesture of goodwill that actually means something,

a reminder that the eFIXX Awards are now open and entries are absolutely free until Friday the 14th of January, 2023. We're on the hunt for inspiring installers, epic educators and wholesome wholesalers. So what are you waiting for? All you need to know is on the website and I've popped the link in the show notes. That's it for this episode, but coming up on our YouTube channel this week,

we've got a full install of a BG SyncEV charger with our tame electrician Ross and you'll find a companion video over on our Green channel, eFIXX Energy, where we ask if you should have a tethered or an untethered charge point. Make sure you're subscribed over there as we ramp up content production on all things energy. We also have a Q&A on how RCDs were affected by the launch of the Second Amendment to the 18th edition. And on our last live stream of the year, it's the big one.

We're making sure all the screw heads in our sockets are vertical, all our labeling is present and that our CPCs aren't twisted together as we welcome Technical Regulations Manager for the IET, Mark Coles and Graham Kenyon, who amongst other things is the chair of JPEL/64. He wrote this book and together they helped to write this book.

This is a big deal that they're coming on the show and you won't want to miss it, so make sure you're subscribed and you have your notifications turned on to get your reminder. If you think you know the words I've smuggled into this week's show, pop your guess into the comments and we'll dig out a goodie bag prize to the first to get the right answers. Last week's words were boogiewoogie and canoodle, and the first person to kick the right answer in was Matt Beddow.

He wasn't entirely convinced he'd spelt them right but to be fair, I wasn't sure either and we decided not to hold it against him. So well done to you, Matt. Click the link in the description below to claim your prize. Thanks for listening to this episode of Electrical News Weekly in association with Myenergi. Make sure you subscribe to receive the next update, and until next time, have a great week. Stay safe out there. And remember, there's no such thing as a torque calibrated arm.