The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Is 2% a scary figure, it certainly sounds a little scary, till you realise that 2% of England is covered in golf courses!

Mart.

But surely putting in PV would make it much harder to play golf, can't imagine you could get much backspin landing on a PV laid over a golf course and if instead you put them on a canopy over the courses it would need to be pretty high to give clearance for an iron shot?

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

But surely putting in PV would make it much harder to play golf, can't imagine you could get much backspin landing on a PV laid over a golf course and if instead you put them on a canopy over the courses it would need to be pretty high to give clearance for an iron shot?

:rotfl:

Perhaps, on second thoughts, PV and golf may not be the best common use of land!

Probably best that farmers stick to putting PV on chicken/pig buildings, and on low value sheep grazing land.

There's also the issue of encouraging farmers to set aside a little land for wild meadows. I can't remember the details of the study, but 20 years of 'wild' use can help to rejuvinate land that has been overfarmed and lost quality. Sort of like the very old system of crop rotation and fallow land.

Anyway, must dash, halfway through a game of pitch and putt on the roof. Really must get a windmill for authenticity.

Mart.

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I probably shouldn't bother, as this is a little old now, but thought it best to correct some of this nonsense.

You state, "Thats how PV works", but of course that's simply not true. It doesn't generate for 1 day out of 30. That's entirely false.

Whilst generation will vary from good days to poor, and can of course be as low against daily target as 0% one day, and as high as 200 to 300% the next, you won't see 29 zero%'s following one 3,000%.

Over a month, generation against target will probably be within 10%+/-, rarely exceeding 20%+/-.

Over a year generation against target will be even tighter since PV tends to average itself out. Good day v's bad day. Good week v's bad week, and so on.

It is irrelevant how much PV produces in a given year or month or even a day, its production needs to match demand continuously

enter non existent fantasy batteries that will save the day, or not

Martyn1981 wrote: »

This is both inaccurate and highly misleading.

PV output from normal (not high efficiency) panels is approx 18W m2, a massive difference from what you have claimed. [250Wp to 285Wp panels at 1.6m2, producing ~ 250kWhs pa.] There are of course low efficiency panels, which are a little cheaper, but with the tumbling price of PV there is no need to use them if land is in short supply/valuable. So 1/3 the land area you suggest.

Next, you haven't made it clear that the 200GW average you have referred to is for all energy (leccy, heating, transport etc). You may have said 'all our needs' but many will think you are referring to leccy.

With average leccy demand at around 40GW, you would therefore need 1/5 of the land area, you suggest. [And of course, PV can be installed on domestic and commercial roofing, and is becoming popular as carpark canopies too, so even if we went down the extreme (and obviously ridiculous route) of putting all our eggs in one basket, then we could still make extra use of already 'occupied' land.]

But, let's still consider your PV farms on 30% of land. So divide that by 3 for the true generation potential, gives us 10%. Then divide that by 5 as we look towards all leccy demand (not all energy), which gives us 2% of England.

Is 2% a scary figure, it certainly sounds a little scary, till you realise that 2% of England is covered in golf courses!

Mart.

18 watts per sqm might be the power per sqm of panel
6 watts per sqm is the power per sqm of LAND

You need maybe 40GW for electricity which = 5.1%
And anther 160GW for "other" which equals a further = 20%

Or ~25% of England......NIMBY


before you even consider that there is a need to buffer all this feast and famine output in seasonal storage which doesn't exist

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

It is irrelevant how much PV produces in a given year or month or even a day, its production needs to match demand continuously

I was simply addressing your claim that PV produces for one day out of 30, which you stated "That's how PV Works."

Clearly that was a false, fabricated, made up piece of nonsense. Just more of your maths tricks.

If it was irrelevant, then why did you make it up in the first place?

cells wrote: »

18 watts per sqm might be the power per sqm of panel
6 watts per sqm is the power per sqm of LAND

You need maybe 40GW for electricity which = 5.1%
And anther 160GW for "other" which equals a further = 20%

Or ~25% of England......NIMBY

More maths tricks. If you spread them thinly enough, you could claim that they cover the whole of England. You are aware (aren't you?) that panels are often combined with land use, such as sheep grazing.

And your argument still relies on the nonsense that if we support PV, then that means trying to get all our energy, or all our electricity from PV rather than a toolbox full of sources. More maths tricks and nonsense.

People that don't like wind use the same argument, "if we want to get all our leccy from wind then we'd need XXX turbines." But we don't want to, so why say it in the first place!

You also, wrongly assume that PV has to be placed on land, ignoring all the available roofspace.

My 37.7m2 of panels cover 37.7m2 of rooves that have no alternative use, and cover 32.7m2 of land (with a house in-between :cool:) when you take trigonometry into account.

PV and wind (and other renewables) work, and work well. Their costs have already fallen fast, and are becoming competitive with fossil fuels now. And all without the CO2 emissions, and the huge and costly pollution emitted by coal burning.

Mart.

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I was simply addressing your claim that PV produces for one day out of 30, which you stated "That's how PV Works."

Clearly that was a false, fabricated, made up piece of nonsense. Just more of your maths tricks.

If it was irrelevant, then why did you make it up in the first place?




More maths tricks. If you spread them thinly enough, you could claim that they cover the whole of England. You are aware (aren't you?) that panels are often combined with land use, such as sheep grazing.

And your argument still relies on the nonsense that if we support PV, then that means trying to get all our energy, or all our electricity from PV rather than a toolbox full of sources. More maths tricks and nonsense.

People that don't like wind use the same argument, "if we want to get all our leccy from wind then we'd need XXX turbines." But we don't want to, so why say it in the first place!

You also, wrongly assume that PV has to be placed on land, ignoring all the available roofspace.

My 37.7m2 of panels cover 37.7m2 of rooves that have no alternative use, and cover 32.7m2 of land (with a house in-between :cool:) when you take trigonometry into account.

PV and wind (and other renewables) work, and work well. Their costs have already fallen fast, and are becoming competitive with fossil fuels now. And all without the CO2 emissions, and the huge and costly pollution emitted by coal burning.

Mart.

If they are so great im sure you have written to your MP telling them that subsidy is not required and is a wasteful expenditure that could go to healthcare instead?


Real world solar Farm. Landmede 45MWp 230 Acres
= 5.3 watts of eletricity per sqm of land


Roofs are a better at conserving land but they cost more. In the same way offshore wind is seen as less of a acceptance problem but costs more.

you will expire well before PV becomes the primary source of energy in the UK....

cells

Anyway back to robo cars....

I used a coach yesterday for the first time in a long time and as I was sat at the front the friendly driver and I spoke about a few things and he mentioned that his coach just ticked past 800,000 miles...I was impressed.

Looks like a vehicle manufactured to do a lot of miles if serviced and maintained properly can have a million mile life


This is significant as it suggest to me robo cars could have 1 million mile lives which would make the robo taxis even cheaper


£20k cost
1 million miles
£65k fuel
£0.5k insurance
= about 9 pence per mile

Generali

The thing that will drive regular cars off the road IMHO is insurance costs. In effect, human drivers will be in an insurance death struggle with zombie robot drivers.

Given that zombie robots won't be allowed to drive until they are considerably better than humans (I think we can all take that as a given) and lots of scrapes will be simple to avoid (car park bumps are close to being automated out of existing), as the zombie robots take over and are so much better at driving, insurance costs for lousy human drivers get split between fewer and fewer people and simply can't be paid for.

TBH I see the same argument with the grid at some point in the future. That's a discussion for another thread which I will get round to starting.

michaels

Currently my insurance costs are a negligible part of car ownership costs and with more automated cars presumably I will also be slightly less likely to crash (as the zombies are better able to get out of my way than regualr drivers) so if anything my premium should fall. There would have to be very few human drivers for the insurance risk to become too lumpy to be insurable.

cells

Generali wrote: »

The thing that will drive regular cars off the road IMHO is insurance costs. In effect, human drivers will be in an insurance death struggle with zombie robot drivers.

Given that zombie robots won't be allowed to drive until they are considerably better than humans (I think we can all take that as a given) and lots of scrapes will be simple to avoid (car park bumps are close to being automated out of existing), as the zombie robots take over and are so much better at driving, insurance costs for lousy human drivers get split between fewer and fewer people and simply can't be paid for.

TBH I see the same argument with the grid at some point in the future. That's a discussion for another thread which I will get round to starting.

but the insurance cost for humans is affordable at the moment and I don't see how it would get less affordable with robo cars?

the insurance industry is not one big fixed cost that needs to be shared amongst a given pool of drivers. less human driver equals less accidents equals less cost

if anything I suspect robo cars will also make human insurance cheaper, few cars equals fewer accidents. and also importantly there will be a lot more data and video to more quickly settle insurance claims rather than inflate the cost with solicitors fees and exaggeration and crash for cash claims etc


Personally I think if its a choice between 20p a mile insta-robo-taxis vs spending £5k to learn to drive buy a car and insure it in the first year then a lot of youngsters will forgo getting a costly licence and first car.

bugslet

cells wrote: »

Looks like a vehicle manufactured to do a lot of miles if serviced and maintained properly can have a million mile life


This is significant as it suggest to me robo cars could have 1 million mile lives which would make the robo taxis even cheaper

Trucks, you generally would expect to get over a million from them before hitting any major problems.