Hydro charging

At the Palé Hall hotel near Bala in Gwynedd there are six chargers, two Porsche destination chargers and four BP Pulse 7kW AC chargers. So far, so nothing out of the ordinary. But Palé Hall has its own micro generation capacity, not from solar PV but hydro. In the 1920s a DC turbine was installed, fed by a stream that runs down the mountain. The current owners rewired the hotel for AC in 2015, and installed a more efficient turbine that has the capacity to power the hotel and the chargers. If you stop in there for a snack, they'll lend you a card to start your charge for free, with the cleanest possible energy your vehicle can receive.

I don't need much of an excuse for a day out, so I fully charged the SR/S overnight in readiness for a 200+ mile loop through Wales, with lunch at Palé Hall.

From Telford the route heads out through Much Wenlock and along Wenlock Edge to Church Stretton. Then there's the run up the steep Burway onto the Long Mynd, where the SR/S was consuming 300Wh/mile at 20mph.

Dropping down off the Long Mynd on a 25% gradient with the most fantastic views, the lack of a gearbox to park on a steep slope meant I couldn't stop for a photo.

Next up was the flowing road to Church Stoke, then Montgomery and Llanfair Caereinion. I wanted to bimble around Lake Vyrnwy, so followed the brown road signs through Llanfyllin and up to the dam.

Following the south shore of the lake to Rhiwargor the single track road climbs out of the valley and enters the Snowdonia national park.

It then descends towards Bala, with more great views.

Before getting to Bala I turned right to Palé Hall, which doesn't disappoint with the approach along the driveway.

While I snacked in the Huntsman bar, the SR/S charged back up on clean, free hydro power.

After lunch it was time for a change of road type. The A494 from Bala to Dolgellau is wide, fast and sweeping with a backdrop of wooded hills. I cut through Brithdir to the Machynlleth road, skirting along the foot of Cadair Idris.

I was headed for Llyn Clywedog where there's a scenic single track road alongside the lake and through the Hafren forest.

Finally at Llanidloes I started to head for home, up the A470 to Newtown then winding my way to Church Stoke, and a short blast on the A49 to Church Stretton. From there I was retracing my steps back to Much Wenlock and Telford. All in all a pretty awesome day out, with a wide variety of roads and fantastic scenery.

Motorway Miles

This week I took the SR/S for a work trip to Berkshire, a trip of 430 miles over 3 days. I decided to take the Givi top box, rather than the Kriega drypacks, and see how the top box compared on practicality and fuel efficiency. On previous trips I've cut cross country to the M42 near Bromsgrove, then headed down the M40 until I needed a full charge in Banbury, roughly half way between home and the office. Then back onto the M40 to High Wycombe, onto the A404(M) to Maidenhead and finally back east on the M4.

The majority of these miles were at motorway speeds, so I expected fuel consumption to be around 180Wh per mile, giving me a range of 70 miles. However on this trip I was seeing well over 200Wh per mile, which meant that I needed two charging stops on the motorway. Whilst the weather was a little chillier than previously, I believe the increased fuel consumption was down to the aerodynamics of the top box. Admittedly this is based on a statistical sample of 1 journey, so I'll keep an eye on this for future trips.

To split the journey into thirds, I decided to use the GridServe Electric Highway chargers at Warwick and Cherwell services. Since their recent upgrade all of the motorway chargers appear to support 22kW AC Type 2 connectors, so I could get the maximum 12kW that the SR/S can draw.

It was interesting to see that the SR/S continues charging at 12kW all the way to 100% state of charge, and doesn't taper off at higher percentages. Also that cruising at 70mph for 60 miles, then charging at 12kW, then another stint at 70mph and another charging session at 12kW didn't raise the battery temp above the central band. It seems that if you really wanted to, you could complete long journeys at speed with very predictable charging stops.

The bonus of the trip was a visit to Sweeney & Todd in Reading, genuinely the best chicken, honey and mustard pies anywhere!

SR/S blogs

Stuff to read:

THE PACK’s first impressions riding the Zero SR/S

THE PACK Team on a 2000 km road trip with a Zero SR/S

The Perils and Pleasures Of Riding Long Distance On The Zero SR/S Electric Motorcycle

Zero SR/S review: Big electric performance but at a jolting price

ZERO SR/S Review

Zero SR/S Review

Cold realities: Testing a Zero SR/S in winter

Zero SR/S REVIEW | Have electric bikes come of age?

Zero SR/S Is First Electric Bike To Reach Northern Tip Of Europe

The Zero SR/S in a real driving test

Is Zero our hero?

Zero SR/S review: can an electric sports bike thrill?

Road trip: a stupid (electric) idea

Hard luggage

I've had a slight change of heart, after being pretty sure that soft luggage was the way forwards, I think I'd like the option to fit either a top box or some soft bags. Kicking around the back of the garage is a Givi E52 Monokey top box that has been fitted to a number of my previous bikes, so I looked what would be need to fit this to my Zero SR/S. Basically if I bolted a E251 Universal Monokey Adaptor Plate to the Zero top rack, I should be away.

First I unbolted the rearmost two of the Kriega web loops I'd recently fitted, and slid the other two web loops as far rearward as I could.

Then the Givi E251 plate could be placed on the Zero top rack.

The recesses on the back of the E251 plate accommodate the bolt heads for the web loops. Next place in the special washers that come with the E251 plate, with the slots in the washers aligned across the bike.

You can then bolt the E251 plate to the Zero top rack using M6x20mm stainless bolts, with a 20mm penny washer underneath the top rack, and a flanged nylock nut.

I attached the rearmost web loops to the E251 plate, rather than the Zero top rack, so I can still lash my soft luggage down, should I choose.

And finally Givi supply a dress plate for the E251 plate that hides all of the bolts, and stops rainwater pooling in any recesses.

All that's left is to clip in the E52 top box and see how it all looks.

Winter hibernation

 Now we're in the season of frosts and gritting the roads the SR/S isn't going to get any use. So the owner's manual (page 6.38) describes the process for putting the bike into "Long Term Storage", where long term means over a month. The main thing is to charge the battery to about 60%, and then leave the bike to do the rest. If the bike hasn't been used in 30 days it will enter Long Term Storage mode, although the manual isn't particularly clear about what this mode actually does.

I tend to charge the bike the night before a ride, so I needed to first set the charge target, and then charge up to 60%.

With that done I've thrown a dust sheet over the bike, and we'll keep an eye on the weather to see if we even reach the 30 day threshold.

The owner's manual states that if the bike is in Long Term Storage mode, you need to switch the bike on, then off again, and connect up a charger for 24 hours in order to rebalance the battery's cells.

Soft luggage

When I ordered my SR/S I had a top rack (Zero part 10-08280) fitted by EEMC. I didn't go for the Shad hard luggage as I intended to go the soft luggage route. Knowing that aerodynamics can make a difference to energy consumption, a soft tail pack should be better suited to extending touring range than a hard top box. (I haven't done the back to back testing, so it may be that the aero difference is so small that the additional security and convenience of a top box is worth the energy consumption penalty. If someone has done that testing, let me know where I can read about it.)

But I've chosen to go with soft luggage, so having a top rack is key. The Zero rack is trapezoid shaped, following the lines of the bike's tapered tailpiece. It's made from 1.5mm thick powder coated steel, lasercut with slots for lashing, with four standoffs welded to the underside and is rated for carrying just 4kg of luggage.

After a couple of months' of use my two main observations are a) the lashing slots aren't well positioned, and b) the tapered shape doesn't support rectangular soft luggage. The former is more of an issue than the latter.

As you can see from this photo, ideally the lashing slots at the corners would be aligned either transversely or longitudinally, rather than on the diagonal. And the rearmost slots are almost entirely useless at that angle. The solution here is to buy the Ducato Panigale 899/1199 web loops from Kriega, and bolt these to the Zero top rack.

With some M6x20mm bolts with flanged heads, 20mm diameter penny washers, and flanged nylock nuts, you can bolt a web loop to each corner of the Zero top rack.

That works pretty well, and the nylock nuts mean you don't have to fully tighten the bolts, which means the web loops can still rotate for optimal lashing, and you won't lose the nuts due to road vibration. And the aesthetics are far better in my opinion than my original attempt at the top. The downside is that the bolt heads stand proud of the top rack, which could damage the underside of your US-Drypacks if they're not lashed down sufficiently and move about during your ride.

Last ride of 2021

Through a combination of unseasonably warm weather and having to use up time off from work I decided to go out for lunch and a ride today. It's been at least a month since I've been on the SR/S, so it was nice to be back in the saddle. I took the back roads out to Ludlow and circled around the back of Clee Hill before heading up to the golf ball to take in the view.

Even with the greasy roads there was more than enough grip and feel to get a bit of lean on. From the top of Clee Hill I descended to Cleobury Mortimer to get lunch at the Cleobury Cafe.

While strolling through the town an older gent on a Speed Triple pulled up beside me, asking for directions to Whitchurch. Respect due for foregoing maps and navigating purely by memory, but in this case he was heading west when his destination was north, so a good thing he wasn't pressed for time.

After a good wash down and dry off it seems it is time to put the SR/S to bed for the winter.