Electric cars

NigeWick

AdrianC wrote: »

It's arguable that the removal of the subsidies was late.

Professor Keith Barnham (patent for the 43% efficient PV cell) disagrees with that thought and quotes what has been and is happening in Germany.

AdrianC

Martyn1981 wrote: »

PV and on-shore wind rollout has fallen off a cliff.

I must be imaging all the ongoing financing requests for on-shore wind on various P2P lending sites, then.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

I must be imaging all the ongoing financing requests for on-shore wind on various P2P lending sites, then.

Doubt it. With the government declaring that on-shore wind will be excluded from future CfD auctions, they'll need to find alternative ways to raise funds and to find customers, such as PPA's.

You seem to be going in circles. It's not that the public don't want wind, it's extremely popular, see the latest DECC attitudes survey. The problem is that without subsidy support you can't just build wind and hope to sell to the grid, as the wholesale prices make it a financially impossible. But your earlier argument was that you just sold to the grid, and I'm pointing out that that route to market is virtually closed, and the rollout of on-shore wind is suffering badly.

The same applies to PV. 2016 wasn't too bad a year as there were approved schemes in the pipeline. But like wind, the CfD route is currently closed, and the FiT subsidy has been set just too low to keep the industry going, plus the annual limits of about 200MWp are pitiful.

Martyn1981

NigeWick wrote: »

Professor Keith Barnham (patent for the 43% efficient PV cell) disagrees with that thought and quotes what has been and is happening in Germany.

PV is a shocker (pun intended). A decade or so back Prof Mackay published without hot air, and was quite dismissive about PV in the UK as it couldn't supply all of our energy (energy not just electricity) ..... you don't say.

He also stated that typical rooftop PV was about 10% efficient and that he didn't believe that his PV chapter's data would ever need significant revision.

Yet by 2010 we were installing 14% PV, it's now commonly 17.5% (285Wp 1.6m2 panels), and is heading for 20%.

The far cheaper Perovskite PV could hit 24% this year, with estimations in the low 30's. That would double the generation potential of any given roof area, and cost less. And as it's suitable for printing, it could be easily used as cheap coatings for carports and many other surfaces.

Sorry to waffle on (and off topic - though perhaps EV's and PV are a good match), but we may see a price reduction in PV in Europe soon as the MIP (minimum import price, that protects us from cheap Chinese PV (well, protects 2 German PV manufacturers)) has just been voted down and worldwide PV prices are heading for $0.30c/Wp, down from around $7/Wp 10 years ago.

bigadaj

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Doubt it. With the government declaring that on-shore wind will be excluded from future CfD auctions, they'll need to find alternative ways to raise funds and to find customers, such as PPA's.

You seem to be going in circles. It's not that the public don't want wind, it's extremely popular, see the latest DECC attitudes survey. The problem is that without subsidy support you can't just build wind and hope to sell to the grid, as the wholesale prices make it a financially impossible. But your earlier argument was that you just sold to the grid, and I'm pointing out that that route to market is virtually closed, and the rollout of on-shore wind is suffering badly.

The same applies to PV. 2016 wasn't too bad a year as there were approved schemes in the pipeline. But like wind, the CfD route is currently closed, and the FiT subsidy has been set just too low to keep the industry going, plus the annual limits of about 200MWp are pitiful.

The public don't want wind, and indeed solar farms, if it's anywhere near them.

Just look at any submitted planning application, there's a huge raft of objections on everyone by anyone remotely in the area of the development.

laughingboyuk

[QUOTE=._The_280km_range_seems_unrealistic_for_normal_use[/QUOTE]

How many daily UK journies are 280km in the UK (or even 140km x2 return)? Very few.

"On average workers resident in the East of England (17 km) had the longest commutes while working residents in London had the shortest commutes (11 km). In both 2001 and 2011, males commuted further than females. In 2001, 39% of males and 25% of females commuted more than 10 km.26 Mar 2014"

I tried to link to the national archive statistics here but as a new user Im not permitted.

Yes there are those (unfortunate people) who have to drive large distances daily who still need an ICE vehicle until either the battery range or the charging network improve significantly. But for most others an electric vehicle with a range of 120-200 miles on a charge is more than enough. I charge mine once per week at the moment. I have it setup to preheat the cabin before i leave which defrosts the car and leaves it toasty warm as i get in and can do the same from work from the phone app- a silly extra i admit but makes the whole process so much more pleasant.

It took me a while to understand this and also get over the 'range anxiety' but now both me and and my very cynical wife are converts. I even bought the Range extended version of the i3 which doubles the range by having a small engine on board which can charge the battery. In 9 months ownership ive used it 3 times and I could have just charged if I had wanted to.

Martyn1981

bigadaj wrote: »

The public don't want wind, and indeed solar farms, if it's anywhere near them.

Just look at any submitted planning application, there's a huge raft of objections on everyone by anyone remotely in the area of the development.

But your claims don't match the statistics.

If you look at the 19 quarterly DECC public attitude surveys, you'll find that support for renewables has remained strong throughout the 4.5 years.

19th survey S = support O = oppose
Wave and Tidal 75% S 3% O
Solar 82% S 4% O
Off-shore wind 75% S 6% O
On-shore wind 71% S 8% O
Biomass 64% S 6% O
Nuclear 33% S 26% O
Shale gas 17% S 33% O

Something of particular note are the trends. PV, wave & tidal and offshore wind are relatively innocuous, and the numbers haven't changed much from the first survey when they were:

Wave and Tidal 75% S 3% O
Solar 83% S 4% O
Off-shore wind 76% S 7% O

However, the visual and financial impact of on-shore wind is greater, yet the public response has been a steady increase in support and a 33% reduction in opposition from qtr 1 survey:

On-shore wind 66% S 12% O

Nuclear and shale have gone in the opposite direction with support steadily falling, and opposition to shale rising considerably :
Q3 - Nuclear 38% S 27%
Q19 -Nuclear 33% S 26% O
Q8 - Shale gas 27% S 21% O
Q19 - Shale gas 17% S 33% O

None of this proves that folk very near to a planned wind farm will all be in favour of it, but it certainly doesn't seem to validate your claim that anyone even remotely near one will object. I have a 2.5MW turbine near me, and I and all (but one person) I chat with love it.


Sorry for all these numbers and stats on RE, but sadly there are a huge number of myths and misconceptions out there.


Lastly, just for fun. Whilst support for wind is solid in the UK, it's even more impressive when you find out that those supporters, on average, think they are paying 14x more for it than they are:

British public thinks wind power subsidies are 14 times higher than reality

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

It's not that the public don't want wind, it's extremely popular, see the latest DECC attitudes survey.

A 2011 Yougov survey showed 85%, of those who voted on it, in favour of renewables.

bigadaj

The public may or may not like wind, statistics on either side are hugely biased. You've also not addressed my point, that is people may not mind the concept but nimbyism is far stronger, wind or solar farms are fine so long as they are nowhere near the individuals concerned.

There's no debate about the rapid rise of energy costs in recent years being primarily related to renewables, it's simply far more expensive. You can add as many caveats about carbon tax as you want, it's still not a free market, fossil fuels are far cheaper. Whether the uk reduces its carbon footprint or not makes a tiny dent in worldwide emissions, so it's a very expensive way of not making any significant impact on a worldwide basis.

And let's get into the crux of the problem, you can't rely on wind or solar for your base load, so at any point in time there needs to be alternative capacity available to make up for the lack of these renewables, people aren't very forgiving of any technology when the power stops flowing.

I've been involved in several wind planning applications and the opposition is huge.

The U.K. Should be investing in tidal and wave, but that would involve not buying something off the shelf and taking some risk which isn't very popular. There also the huge problem with the planning process, I'd far prefer to go for tidal or wave rather than nuclear, at least at teh current strike price, but any development in the uk will take at least a decade to get through the planning and eia process and construct,and may well be double that.

Martyn1981

You keep referring to Nimbyism but many folk also like WT's. I think you missed the point of what I posted, objections to wind are falling as wind rolls out as the the reality turns out to be fine, not the terrible monsters destroying the countryside that some believed.

As to the reason why energy prices have gone up being due to renewables, what energy price increase, they've gone down the last few years.

Yes you need back up capacity for intermittent renewables, but we already have that as demand can vary from 20GW to 55GW, so it's nothing new. Also, you need back up capacity for nuclear as the unexpected loss of a single reactor can be a serious problem for the National Grid. NG estimate the lifetime costs of back up for HPC at around $12bn.

So all of these issues have swings and roundabouts. Plus wind (on or off shore) is essential as the greater the mix of renewables we have, the more the package works as a whole since they support each other via their differing generation profiles. The best example of this is PV and on-shore wind, which are an almost perfect seasonal pairing.

Regarding tidal, have you been following the news about Swansea, it's looking really good. It's an expensive project coming in at around HPC costs, but possibly needing 60yrs of support, however, the 12 lagoon package should be far cheaper than HPC, especially the Cardiff scheme which is 10x the size of the Swansea 'test' lagoon.

Well worth a read of the Hendry report, or at least a quick scan of Fig 5 page 178.