today we're going to take a deep dive into this the start of our
workplace EV charging series it's the chargestorm connect 2 from CTEK
put this down on the bench Gary because it's a substantial well-built unit but that
also means it's quite heavy now we haven't looked at a lot of commercial EV charges on
the channel before and you don't see many on social media either so i thought it'd
be good to take a look inside and explore the key components how it works and then later on
in this video we'll show you actually how easy it is to commission and set up this charge which
is always something we worry about especially when there's an app and an internet connection required
you said substantial i'd say also beautiful for those EV charges that we've seen dotted around a
three-phase one looking this pretty is a rarity and it's got a beautiful led display as well
that's clearly visible whether it be charging or in a fault mode isn't it yeah you're right because
a lot of these yeah those look like either yeah post boxes or utility cupboards uh a little bit
agricultural as you say but this gorgeous Swedish design yeah great for what we've used it for
in our installation here obviously workplace EV charging but i can see this uh fitting in in some
other application where you may want to charge people to charge okay so we're thinking uh sort of
multi-story car parks or tourist venues or hotels and yeah this is what this is set up to do because
it will communicate with other apps as part of the open charge point protocol we're not going to go
that deep into it today we're going to explore it for uh say workplace applications um so i guess
again we should have a little look inside yeah you've stalled long enough now the key at the top
will open it up and i love this because it's not always a electrician going in sometimes it's an
unskilled person that might be going in maybe to reset a breaker that is tripped or going in there
to read the meter so of course by opening that key and folding it down when we put it back we've got
any issues with that IP ratings and we've known in the past and we have to do screws at certain
torque settings when you've gone into them and it's IP54 and the last thing we want to do is get
moisture in there yeah and so it is it is built with that in mind here you've got so essentially
two enclosures in one you've got one that's accessible by should we say the
the non-skilled electrical person yeah because of some and think about your install it might
be the electrician who does the fixed wiring and cabling then somebody else who comes along
to plug in and do the clean cart bit with the uh the commissioning and the laptop and look
technical um and that's how this charger works so what we're going to do is just drop this front
down it's got these two uh steel uh retraining straps a little bit like the uh the back shelf
the partial shelf of your car so you wouldn't normally need to do this but by just doing it
down you can see on the bench i'll bring in the hand cam so it is yeah charger two half so this is
the brains of the charger and where you make your data connections and we'll come back to that later
so let's first leap into the bit that electricians like to see the connections and the working parts
i've already removed the screws in this inner cover so obviously with that in place it can't
access any of the electrical terminals just bring this out wiggle that one out of the way
and then we see a lot of components and i think as we go through this you'll see what quality those
components are as well but it's like a two halves isn't it of the same things isn't it yeah so at
first it looks quite busy but really it is uh it is quite simple uh the two halves are mirrored
because this is a dual charger so it's got two uh 22 kilowatt ac charge connection outputs
a few additional components we'll go into that you don't normally see in a residential
style of charger but let's start at the bit most people like to see and that's the the
mains connection so we've got some quality uh Wago Topjob uh din rail terminal inputs there for
our phase connections neutral and the protective conductor so again they're screwless you just put
the operating tool in there to open the cage clamp and put in the the ferrule cables that we used
in this installation so you've got to worry about any torque settings there so that's one potential
issue removed and where would the cable be coming in for that connection um so it's generally
recommended for for a three-phase connection to bring in this entry that's at the bottom of the
unit well there is one at the back of the unit that you drill out we decided in our install to
come in through the uh through the lower entry here um you can and the good thing about this is
put these charges back to back on a post and CTEK make a special box to allow you to do that which
makes an easy connection but these connections you'll take up the 16 millimetre squared
that's exactly what we've used in our installation is there any other way i can come into the
enclosure say if i was using it in a different way maybe single phase yeah so there is some some
pre-drilled cable entries at the top one for power and another one for data there um that you may use
if you say wall mounting this uh enclosure as you say with a single phase there are
lots of different versions in this charge storm series we've got the untethered unit here because
that's what we tend to recommend for workplace charges so you're not worrying about maintaining
the lead as part of the charger and then the other components say it's a mirror image down
down through the charger apart from a little power supply to run the internal electronics
we've got our type 2 connectors here that people will be very familiar with because
they're on obviously most cars and the majority of uh chargers of course this one being three-phase
isn't it 22 kilowatts yep it certainly is um and then inside so next to the socket you've got the
locking solenoid that locks the cable in place when charging is taking place but we'll also show
you later how to permanently lock the cable in place if you wanted to sort of leave it as a sort
of tethered type unit up from there here's the charge point controller um so this obviously looks
at that communication between the car and the charger to decide how much power is going flowing
between them and the correct type of cables plugged in this also runs the RCD function now
if you look down here we can see the the current transformer that's used for the RCD function so
that's all built into this unit so you don't need an additional RCD upstream from the unit
but it's all done electronically and obviously using the the contactor function that we see here
as well so we're used to seeing these in charges so this kicks in obviously when charging starts
and then obviously isolates the charger when the cable is removed so moving on up we'll see here's
our meter so if you're going to use a charger for actually charging people in terms of to extracting
money off them to charge the car that needs to be an mid class meter that we've explored before
on the channel and there's one on either side obviously that communicates back through the
electronics at the bottom there so that you don't necessarily have to always go in and
read that meter you can do that remotely and again plug into a charging management system
and then we've got independent circuit breakers for each each side of the charger type C32 here
so again each side has its own protection and then at the top there you'll see a bus
bar connecting them but again this reeks of high quality build because there's a lot of
brand names in here people recognize we've got the Wago terminals we've got the ABB switch gear and
bus bar so that's it so it's uh yeah compact unit there's quite a bit going on in there
before we leave this let's have a look at the mounting points so if we just look in there's four
mounting positions uh you can see through the the back of the unit there so there's two at the top
and then there's another two midway through the unit just behind the uh the solenoid at each side
when we come back down to the front cover just talk me through the connections that we've got
down here okay so we'd root our data connection uh for the uh to connect to the ethernet to this uh
RJ45 port here and then we've also got a mini USB connection here that will that we'll use for some
initial commissioning so just to show how easy it is to access for commissioning the charger
so again the key in the top and then the front hinges down so the charger is powered up but i'm
not going to be able to access the electrical tabs because our internal shield i'm just going
to plug into the mini USB port at one end and then directly into a laptop at the other and then just
put in the IP address and the default password and then we're into the internal settings of the
charger you can see two green status LED's there in the left-hand corner of our outlets so we can
already see that settings you can do quite a bit in here from setting the light intensity
to specifics to do with the actual outlets now each outlet works independently as we said
and can be commissioned as to use an RFID tag to start charging or left it open so basically anyone
can just plug in and start charging and you can manage that through here but also through the app
that will come on to a little bit later possibly the the main thing that electricians probably need
to do is configure the circuit arrangements that are feeding the charger itself so we're
okay here because we've got a 63 amp uh circuit breaker upstream from this so we can use this as
maximum charge capability you can dive into lots of different things even some diagnostics to do an
electronic test of the RCD function so again just uh there's that and some other diagnostics in here
but again it's packed full of uh features so in order to complete the commissioning process
Gordon i didn't see any use of an internet cable it was just the laptop linked to the charger is
that right yeah so you can do most of the major functions through the just using a laptop and
that's great for installations where there's no internet connection there is no internet
connection actually you can also get an option to put a 3G sim card in there as well so that might
be good for remote uh car park applications um yeah and the like yeah so let's get on to it it's
almost the elephant in the room when you talk to Gaz it's the app and there is an app for it
isn't there there is an app and it's incredibly easy up after downloading the taking charge app
it's really easy to add a charger to it you just look on the back of the charger near the ethernet
port you'll find the app id and put that in but we may want to also give it a friendly name so we can
remember which charge point we're at particularly there's a lot of them in a car park next to each
other but we're going to call our one eFIXX HQ so i've done that and that is our charger added
to the app easy so let's just see how the charge and the app work together so we're just going to
see that we can reflect what's happening in the charger in the app itself so i've plugged in a
car to charge we're watching for the blue battery symbol to flash to save the charging's commenced
and we can now see that in the app so here's how to remotely lock a cable in place using the
take charge app so just open the app select the output where the cable is inserted into
and then just switch that little indicator across and that's our charge cable locked in place
also while we're in this screen you can see it's actually even possible to dim the lights on the
front of the charger itself you may want to do this in an area that's sensitive so a forest or
something like that where you don't want to create too much distraction or light so possibly the most
common application for this taking charge app is going to be putting an RFID tag in to enable
access to charging that is again really simple so give your give your user a name it's me in this
case and then you'll find there's a number on the back of the RFID tag just put that into the app
and then add and that is the process done again a little update then we've enabled RFID
charging so now uh plug the car in when i want to start the charging session
so we'll see also that the little wireless symbol there at the bottom is the illuminated green
to show that it's now enabled as an RFID charge point it is possible to have each side difference
or one open and one RFID tagged so now come along with our tag there's a quick amber light on the
RFID symbol and then our charging session has started however much i want to give you
a technical prowess for using that app it was an incredibly simple process to watch you do wasn't
it Gordon yeah it was this this whole install and set up procedures has been pretty much
seamless there was only one problem Gary okay what was the problem now it was my that was on
my side i hadn't plugged in the uh the ethernet cable at the other end into the patch box in our
networking enclosure so that's why i couldn't get the app to work initially apart from that
smooth as anything instructions are great really well laid out just step through them and yeah job
done so again if you're a little bit nervous about maybe stepping up from single phase to three phase
installations of ev charges i would suggest this CTEK one would be where i'd be going
because based on this video and the feedback we've given you we think it's an incredibly
easy simple process in order to install isn't it it is and we've also made a video where
we step you through the entire installation process we went through for this charger so
not necessarily about the charger itself about the other tricky bits the actual mounting the charger
to the car park all the way through the cable ducting back to the other end of the electrical
installation and some of the things you might need to consider there because often the barrier to
EV charger isn't the actual charging itself it's actually the existing installation how much power
is available in the building and we'll leave that playlist it'll either be in the card at
the very end it will definitely be in the link in the description but as always we want your
feedback are you currently fitting single phase and three valued EV charges and you want to leave
us some feedback is it a market you're going to get into and you think this playlist will be very
helpful for you please do all those comments below which one get back to as many as we can