today we're going to look at an absolutely fantastic solution to help speed up the
installation of EV charge points in car parks now the keen-eyed amongst you will recognize this it's the
Easee ev charger and we've done some videos on this in the past check out those if you haven't seen
them to get up to speed about what we're going to talk about today but we've paired it with this
flat cable system from Woertz now it's swiss made but it's brought into the country by Idacs who've
partnered with Easee to help develop this solution to make your life easier but gary what problem are
we trying to solve here so let's imagine there's a hundred apartments in the block and each of
those apartments have an underground parking space allocated to them and of those 100 apartments 10
of them have adopted ev therefore require an easy ev charging point within their bay what's going
to happen over time gordon okay so more and more people are going to adopt ev because yes we'll
get rid of petrol and diesel cars and stop selling them but you know as a property owner probably the
developer you're going to have to provide the facility so people can charge at home because
that's where most charging takes place and we saw in our previous video how we looped in and looped
out our easee ev charging points however, that means the initial infrastructure needs to be in so all
cabling even if you put the dummy easy ev charging point in what's the advantage of this system
okay so this system allows you to flexibly be able to deploy those ev charges because what we've got
here is this flat cable best way to think of that it's just like a bus bar you run it round the car
park and then you add these tap off points which go down to the ev chargers as and when you need
to so you know possibly delaying some of that initial investment but being quick when it comes
to somebody needing a charge point adding as they get an ev we've installed this installation behind
us let's go through the key parts that we've installed so here we are at the mimicked origin
of our installation where we pick up our supply and from here we've wired three-phase neutral
and protective conductor in 16 millimeter squared tri-rated cables throw our flexi conduit into our
junction box here the connections are made in here but the clever part of it is how we connect from
the junction box onto the buzz bar it's screwed in therefore we don't need to strip and terminate
our buzz bar in order to make our connections we've got an end cap here later on in the
presentation we'll show you how to connect that up remember the Easee EV chargers are really clever
they will never exceed the incoming supply fuse and will cleverly communicate between each other
so they share the load throughout the system let's have a look at those ev charging points next so to
connect to the ev charger it's the same process but in reverse so we've got our branching box here
again is screwed onto the bus bar cable and we've come out of that with this tough sheath cable
down to our easy charging point let's just remind ourselves what's under the cover you remove this
star wars inspired front cover and you'll find inside this charging berry and again they just
latch into place that's how easy it was for that earlier video you would have seen us connect
into this charging module so let's have a closer look at the system components that make up this
bus bar distribution system we've got an array of items to look at here on the table would you like
to start well let's start with the cable guys it looks absolutely gorgeous when it's cut properly
okay bring in hand cam and yes you're absolutely right it's lovely as well see our conductors there
now at first we were a bit concerned obviously they look incredibly close together remember
this is XLPE insulation so it tends to be slightly thinner than you would expect on PVC but the key
to the system is this end connector which you're going to come on to later showing how to fit that
so the other bit that works fine with obviously is the branching box again you're going to show
us how to fit but let's have a look at how that works so again cable has a polarity to it
but when you marry it up with this box you'll see matches the profile of the box itself yeah
so you've got to get it right way around you in order to offer it into there what's next so let's
have a closer look at the box if i open up the box you'll see there's a gasket seal there and does
that seal against the cable itself yeah so that seals against the cable and obviously these two
screws here in this in the plastic component secures the two halves together to clamp it
into place and then to connect our cable we've got these screw connectors here marked by the red tab
okay so if i start screwing one of them on this side so i'll start turning it there
yeah turn the box over you'll start to see that appear through the back
oh yeah so you've got that point coming through which punches into the conductor itself
yeah now obviously you're going to worry that that's going to carry on going and going and going
nearly there it doesn't so it'll stop in a moment okay so that's as far as i can go and I'm going
to see if I can clamp that shut you can still see there's a significant amount of clearance
between the screw and obviously the metal surface at the back okay yeah and that means with that
we don't have to strip back obviously the buzz bar in order to make the electrical connections
just screwed straight into the conductors isn't it yeah that's it and one thing we did find part yes
obviously make sure you have got the right type of screwdriver bit this is a phillips two if you
don't have the right side bit you're gonna need to put an incredible amount of torque into there yeah
and it will just slip out and damage the screw thread also got these nice cage clamp terminals
again so when we put our conductors in there we're not going to damage them with any screws or
anything and this is a branching box that'll be um two six mil cables if you want to put two in there
yeah yeah and again there's two to exit points at either end of the box okay so we have to strip the
ends of the cables to look like this should we see that footage next yeah let's have a look at that
so i can fit the end piece i'm going to need to mark in from the end of the cable 19 mil and mark
all the way around it is there a specialist tool i can get to strip this cable there is a fitting
a lot of the system there's a special tool but we didn't get that for you gary because we know you
love a knife okay so i'll mark all the way around i'm gonna stick my gloves on and take my knife i'm
gonna press really quite firmly in order to cut into the cable itself what type of material is it
made of gordon so it's quite a tough outer sheath and it's LSOH there are no problems with fumes in a
fire situation and yep you're just getting enough there Gary yeah so I'm going to cut it down here
and then when i do actually start peeling it away it's very easy in order to peel it away so it's a
couple of stripes with my knife look how easy that is to pillow once you get it going but there is
like you said a specialist tool for it as well the conductors themselves what insulation is around
them yeah so they're xlpe so again similar to what we'd expect to see in most armored cables that
we're used to installing okay and we've got our three lines neutral and protective conductor there
now we're going to fit our end piece it has got a angled section and a straight section you must
make sure you get it the right way around and you can see straight away i can't get it all the way
on gordon no so you're gonna have to just spread those conductors out slightly so they just drop
into the grooves which are there to obviously give us the required creepage and clearance distance
between the conductors yeah so just open them out and you'll see now it slides all the way on
that's just the case now of tightening these two screws either side in order to lock the end piece
into position yeah and that also gives us the ip65 rating which is on this system yeah they go
firmly on well gary even with your knife skills that's probably the most difficult part about the
entire installation of this system and it wasn't difficult in order to strip the end however we've
been bouncing ideas around what things do we think we should be considering uh so obviously you know
probably thinking well current carrying capacity things like that on this system car parks you
probably quite long cable lengths especially you know with the easy you can put 100 charges on a
system we think it's probably going to be voltage drop that limits the application but obviously
put your thoughts below and any other regulation related questions because we i think we need to
look in detail just how good a continuity we can get between those screw connectors and the bus bar
cable and possibly the insulation resistance as well absolutely can you give me any other
applications where this can be used okay so idacs are bringing this into the uk it is used
in we believe in hotel applications so possibly thinking run this down the corridor and then
branching off the rooms on either side of the corridor and that's a great application for it
we looked into it and meets a lot of standards and can even be used on ships is that right gordon
yeah it is yes it's got marine approvals and just don't think you know switzerland not a country
renowned for taking risks think of precision and yeah this is a well-engineered product i think
we've teased it for long enough shall we see the install now so i'm going to fix the flat cable
mount to the structure of the building using these clips they have no clarity to them so there's no
angled groove and straight edge it doesn't matter which way around it goes yeah i'll see steel clips
so they're suitable for any premature collapse requirements that may be tied to the installation
along with the appropriate fixing you can see we're fixing into obviously a wooden surface here
but yep so the fixings are in place ever simple to do nothing difficult about that before next
we're going to fit the branch in box yeah now you may if this was an existing cable install
you may have to remove a few clips to be able to just fit this behind the flat cable and it has a
polarity so you can see the angled edge there on the right hand side actually in the appropriate
place and two fixing screws in order to secure it to structure the building yeah so the first
stage is yeah fix the plate to the wall before we think about fitting the actual connector itself
okay so branching box screw it back to the surface and then we've got a couple of other
screws you can see it's just not fixed to the plate at the minute so we're going to need to
screw those down with your required torque setting so let's get the branching box fixed
like so and then we can concentrate on two more screws before we penetrate the actual cable so two
newton meters of torque now for these two screws here gordon yeah so these again that we're not
actually um putting the conductors into the cable yet this is just to fix the clamp around the cable
and get the appropriate ip rating so again this is ip65 so it's nicely sealed there against the cable
so now we can look at screwing down onto the actual conductors torque sensor here yeah so
again 3.7 newton meters again that's quite a beefy torque setting again we've got to get into that
uh xlpe conductor right in the middle of the cable so yeah all of these need to be screwed down so
talk them down to the required torque setting and this means now we're making the electrical
connections and that we saw that on the bench that's what's happening now so 3.7 i set it to
i'll just make these connections and then we can think about dressing our cable in
so we've got a d-line clip here again a metallic clip and screw to secure the cable what type of
cable we're going to use so again we're going to use a high tough cable as well similar to ny
wide but this has an xlp conductor to match the the flat cable we're using in this installation
okay so round we go secure those in and then we can make the end off into the branching box
and again we've got the lengths of the conductors now Gordon so we've got 220mm for two of the
conductors and 150mm for the other three yeah you probably would have in hindsight made them
a bit longer wouldn't you gary always follow the instructions especially the first time so this is
220mm so yeah I'm going to cut it at 220mm just to get that feel for actually the length yeah i probably
would have gone a fraction longer but it fits perfectly you'll see in a minute when i actually
finish the termination it's going to cut them to length using my preki stripper but this is of
course a swiss product are all down for precision but they may have been using a different cable to
the type we've selected here so obviously that's the could be account for the different lengths
yeah I think a Tri-rated cable might have been a little bit easier to swing it in but it swings
in perfectly so they're cut to length now the other three to the same length of 150 millimetres
so it's there on the actual enclosure you can see 150 ml for the other three
so once i've got those to length i can obviously make the terminations going to go in by the
stuffing gland on the left-hand side could i come in from the right-hand side gordon you could have
done so this is a branching box and yeah you can you can have two cables up to six millimeter uh
conductor area um so obviously you can feed two charge points we're only doing one in this in
this trial installation and there's lengths even for those mentioned in the lid as well there is so
yeah i'll complete all of them and now i look to make my terminations i've made all but one to go
so i've got the distance there for the insulation to be removed of 16 millimeters in order to put it
in again i set my pricky stripper to 16 mil to remove the crosslink polyethylene around
the actual conductors and then i set my torque screwdriver gordon yeah back to two newton meters
for these uh for the electrical connections to the to the outgoing cables and what's the head on this
screwdriver and that all phillips ii head on this across the hole all of the screws that you need to
make those connections and to the flat cable itself yeah i like that yeah absolutely one
screwdriver for everything which is really nice i've dressed them in so it now needs the lid to
be returned we've got this bung on the end yeah because again we're just using it's a branching
box but we're only using one one cable way out and we'll just blank that off for that all-important
o-ring to keep the required ip rating yeah and we'll see again there is a seal on the lid itself
as well for that ip rating so i'm going to bring the lid in next so just see here gordon there you
go and a good thing here captive screws on this branching box lid as well so we've got no worries
about losing the screws and the torque setting for these ones again two newton meters on these and
again labeled inside there so there's no question about uh losing the torque settings should you
need to open this for any future testing yeah or maintenance yeah like that so that's the lid on
so yeah there we go just to confirm yeah two new meters at all for that and it's a similar approach
so this is our junction box to bring in the incoming cable and we've selected a 16 millimeter
tri-rated cable here it's multi-stranded so we're just adding a ferrule just to give that a suitable
treatment before putting them into the cage clamps and we chose the largest cable size it could do
again we're just testing the process aren't we air gordon so we went for 16 millimeter squared cable
yeah we brought that in with a flexible conduit 40 millimeter flexible conduit it's an m40 a hole
into this junction box so again i don't think you'd be able to bring an armored cable in here
and suitably terminate it and you can only come in from one side on this one kind of that's right
so that's that just have a quick look at the finished uh ezv charging point i think we're
ready to go live so gary what's your thoughts about that installation i thought it was easy
i enjoyed every element from start to finish of that system yeah that's not often you hear
that from gary there's always something he likes to have a complaint about but
what's your thoughts you know are you installing the easy ev charges already are you looking
forward to marrying them together with this fantastic cabling system from Woertz share those
thoughts below obviously help other installers out there who are getting into the EV market with
possibly some things we've missed on the system and some some of the tips and tips
you might like to share with them we'll get back to as many of those comments as we can