Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Great news for large scale storage in the UK as regulations are to be changed / eased.

BEIS unveils ‘significant’ changes to planning regulations for energy storage

The government is set to remove a significant barrier to utility-scale storage sites, proposing changes to planning regulations to allow projects over 50MW to proceed without government approval.

The new proposals, unveiled yesterday by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) follow a previous consultation in January​ on planning policy for storage sites.

As it stands, projects over 50MW in England and 350MW in Wales must secure approval via the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) process. The previous consultation proposed to keep the 50MW threshold but create a new capacity threshold for co-located storage to bypass the requirement for NSIP approval.​

But under the new proposals, larger storage projects could receive consent from tlocal planning authorities under the Town and Country Planning Act.

Requiring storage projects to go through the NSIP has been cited as a significant hurdle for large storage projects, in particular by the Electricity Storage Network (ESN), for the additional time and cost it requires.

According to ESN members, NSIP adds an estimated 18 months to three years to project lead times and costs can reach hundreds of thousands, compared to tens of thousands through the local planning regime.

Madeleine Greenhalgh, policy lead for the Electricity Storage Network, said the new proposals are a “significant and positive change”.

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Tories also appear to be considering a revision to the 2040 date for the end of ICE sales, cool!
:

I guess we have to applaud any revision for the date to end ICE sales but given that most cars have at least a 15year life span these days then why not go for something more radical! If it was stopped at the end of next year most would still be on the road beyond 2040! As it is currently, most would still be going in 2065!

We're obviously not taking this matter very seriously!

Martyn1981

Coastalwatch wrote: »

I guess we have to applaud any revision for the date to end ICE sales but given that most cars have at least a 15year life span these days then why not go for something more radical! If it was stopped at the end of next year most would still be on the road beyond 2040! As it is currently, most would still be going in 2065!

We're obviously not taking this matter very seriously!

I'm with you, but the problem seems to be supply limitations at the moment. More than one Tesla Euro Gigafactory .... perhaps?

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm with you, but the problem seems to be supply limitations at the moment. More than one Tesla Euro Gigafactory .... perhaps?

Point taken and agreed with. Just thinking a little further, I wonder if by setting such a deadline there would be a huge demand to get the last ICE's produced so that it may be another three of four years before EV production would need to ramp up significantly to replace them. So about five years hence! Seeing how most of the manufacturers are going hook, line and sinker to get their EV's into the market place asap I wonder if the biggest problem would be the cost to manufactureres of divesting from ICE rather than gearing up to satisfy the mass market for EV's.

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm with you, but the problem seems to be supply limitations at the moment. More than one Tesla Euro Gigafactory .... perhaps?

There appears to be a golden opportunity for the UK to get in on the ground floor of the likely explosion of EV manufacture. We have the facilities, the workforce & the design/engineering expertise to be out in front of this business.

Bringing the date of the ICE ban forward to 2040 probably wont make any practical difference. Doing it by 2035 would give the migration to EVs some impetus now without being too onerous on a struggling car industry.

I'll take a view on 2030 when the outcome of Brexit is known.

GreatApe

A ban on petrol cars makes no sense as hybrids are perfectly acceptable

It should be a ban on any car which doesn't have 40 mile real world electric Only range
Such a ban can be put in place much sooner and would be far more realistic

With charging infrastructure everywhere a plug in hybrid with 50 mile range would see average users like me become 98% electric miles 2% petrol. Perfectly acceptable and even better for the environment as you can build 5-10x as many plug in Hybrids as pure BEVs for a given number of battery cells

There can be 50 mile hybrids and 100 mile hybrids.
Probably 90% would buy the 50 mile version and 10% the 100 mile version

In fact if a 70 mile hybrid Tesla model 3 existed I would wager it would be the best seller of the lot
It would have a lower mass and a lower cost to manufacture. And Tesla could make 3x as many with the same number of batteries. Could even be rear wheels Electric front wheels petrol and in sports mode can use both combined.


Medium range Hybrids solve all the problems of electrification
50 mile range X 5,000 cycles = 250,000 miles which is more than enough for a typical car
All the good sides of petrol and electric and you get 95-99% electric miles


Why carry around a petrol engine and fuel tank if your almost never use it?
Well why carry around 200-400 miles of batteries if you almost never go beyond 70 miles?
A small petrol engine and a small fuel tank would weigh less than the Batteries to take a hybrid from 70 miles to be a full BEV with 300 miles

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

There appears to be a golden opportunity for the UK to get in on the ground floor of the likely explosion of EV manufacture. We have the facilities, the workforce & the design/engineering expertise to be out in front of this business.

Bringing the date of the ICE ban forward to 2040 probably wont make any practical difference. Doing it by 2035 would give the migration to EVs some impetus now without being too onerous on a struggling car industry.

I'll take a view on 2030 when the outcome of Brexit is known.

The UK isn't particularly strong in car manufacturing
The three big countries are China Japan Germany USA
The UK forcing BEV only doesn't give the UK industry a boost as we have free trade any country can sell into the UK

The 2020s will be the decade electrification actually starts

BEVs. 250-400 miles on electric. 100% miles electric
Oil cars. 0 miles electric 500 miles oil. 0% miles electric
Hybrids. 50 miles electric 400 miles oil. Overall 95% miles electric

Longer range Hybrids have the best of all worlds
70 mile hybrid model 3 for say £33k is more interesting than a 210 mile model 3 BEV for £40k

JKenH

GreatApe wrote: »

A ban on petrol cars makes no sense as hybrids are perfectly acceptable

It should be a ban on any car which doesn't have 40 mile real world electric Only range
Such a ban can be put in place much sooner and would be far more realistic

With charging infrastructure everywhere a plug in hybrid with 50 mile range would see average users like me become 98% electric miles 2% petrol. Perfectly acceptable and even better for the environment as you can build 5-10x as many plug in Hybrids as pure BEVs for a given number of battery cells

There can be 50 mile hybrids and 100 mile hybrids.
Probably 90% would buy the 50 mile version and 10% the 100 mile version

In fact if a 70 mile hybrid Tesla model 3 existed I would wager it would be the best seller of the lot
It would have a lower mass and a lower cost to manufacture. And Tesla could make 3x as many with the same number of batteries. Could even be rear wheels Electric front wheels petrol and in sports mode can use both combined.


Medium range Hybrids solve all the problems of electrification
50 mile range X 5,000 cycles = 250,000 miles which is more than enough for a typical car
All the good sides of petrol and electric and you get 95-99% electric miles


Why carry around a petrol engine and fuel tank if your almost never use it?
Well why carry around 200-400 miles of batteries if you almost never go beyond 70 miles?
A small petrol engine and a small fuel tank would weigh less than the Batteries to take a hybrid from 70 miles to be a full BEV with 300 miles

That’s far too sensible. Put me on the waiting list please.

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

That’s far too sensible. Put me on the waiting list please.

I think we can thank the likes of Tesla for making batteries and battery packs cheaper or showing that they can be cheaper and for pushing the development of cells more suited to cars. Especially long cycle life 0-100% charge discharge cycles chemistry

Now that they are affordable longer range plug in Hybrids look like the best solution
Plus perhaps a small 0.2KWh super capacitor to allow rapid acceleration and deceleration
The super capacitor probably won't be required unless you want a sub 9 second 0-60
With a super capacitor it can be the premium hybrid model that can do sub 5 seconds

Tesla should do this Get a hybrid model 3 out
70 mile range on pure electric so a 17KWh battery pack then another 6 gallon petrol tank to allow a further 300 miles. Even though it's a hybrid it would live 90-99% of its life as electric miles

That's probably the sweet spot for the premium end somewhere around 70-100 mile electric range
The middle end of cars can be 50 mile electric 11KWH battery 250 mile petrol
The lower end (the really small city cars) can be 30 mile 6KWh battery and 150 mile petrol

This makes a lot more sense than building pure EVs with 5x the battery packs
It also allows 5 X as rapid deployment of electrification

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

That’s far too sensible. Put me on the waiting list please.

Nope, GA as usual flies in the face of logic and reality.

Already BEV's are coming out cheaper on a TCO (total cost of ownership) basis v's ICEV's, whereas PHEV's are more expensive.

And of course a PHEV locks us into FF's, the very thing we are trying to avoid, and prevents the potential of very long lives as the ICE components will wear.

So more expensive, the worst (as well as best) of both worlds, and continued FF consumption and localised air pollution.

And what does reality think, well worldwide BEV sales are going up, but PHEV sales are falling.


Edit - Timely news article from today:

Green Cab Ditches Hybrids In Favor Of Teslas For Its Taxi Fleet