Electric cars

Gloomendoom

Martyn1981 wrote: »

You don't recall? You seem to have to great lengths to suggest problems, always ignoring explanations.

So explanations of the actual average draw, the existing capacity not used at night, the BMW study showing that V2G actually reduces peak demand. None of this rings a bell.

How about the huge number of posts from EV'ers explaining why the large majority of those 2m EV's would not be charged at peak, and certainly won't need to be charged every day.

How about the tentative (so far) deployment of domestic batts for PV'ers, and also by DNO's on trials to households for peak shaving?

How about the existing 'clubs' in Australia where battery owners sell leccy to the grid at high demand periods at a profit, such as last year at A$1/kWh (A$1,000/MWh (£575/MWh)) when the grid spot price hit A$1.4/kWh.

How about announcements from UK wind and PV farms that they will deploy battery storage (there is no retro-fit penalty) as and when the economics stack up. Those economics would get a boost if demand (price) rose at peaks.

How about time of day tariffs, a recent one was interesting 5p at night, 12p during the day, and 25p during evening peaks on week days - I'll tell you what that tariff is, it's a PV and battery dream. Reduced demand at 12p, no demand at 25p for 8 months of the year due to PV and or batts, and no demand at 25p in the bottom 4 months due to battery arbitrage from 5p leccy charging. So let's say a million households (4%) going 'off-grid' (as good as) during the evening peak in the future.

It's easy to throw out negatives, and near hysterical conclusions (such as EV's not being able to go round corners) but it's far harder to back up these claims in the real world - a world that naturally adapts, especially when there is an economic incentive.

It's certainly easy to wind you up, even without trying.

I have said that there are some problems to overcome before EVs can displace combustion vehicles. I have not said that those problems cannot be overcome.

One of the "hysterical" problems I mentioned was transformer cooling. Long term, it could be a problem. From the International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, February 2015…

Impacts of high penetration level of fully electric vehicles charging loads on the thermal ageing of power transformers

"It is highlighted in the paper that although overnight off-peak charging alleviates the loading of transformers, the nighttime charging may not be so favourable if high FEV penetrations prevent sufficient transformer cooling overnight."

BTW UK loads with data from the National Grid were used in the study.

I did make an "hysterical" comment about electric family saloon cars not being able to go around corners as well as a current supercar. I must admit that I may have exaggerated the consequences to empasise the naivety of simply comparing straight line speed. Apologies, if that wasn't obvious enough. The fact remains, except in a drag race,straight line acceleration doesn't always get you from a to B more quickly.

In an attempt to get the full picture of a Tesla Model S's overall performance I looked for a Nurburgring lap time. I couldn't find one. I did find this: Autozeitung test track lap times . If you can't find the Model S (0-100 kmh 3.5s), it's 267th on the list behind the Ford Focus (0-100 kmh 6.5s) and the Opel Astra (0-100 kmh 6.5s). Needless to say, the top ranks are held by traditional supercars and until an electric powertrain rivalling that of a Model S in Ludicrous mode is combined with the properly developed chassis of a supercar, that is unlikely to change.

Is the hysteria your problem or mine?

zeupater

Gloomendoom wrote: »

... One of the "hysterical" problems I mentioned was transformer cooling. Long term, it could be a problem. From the International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, February 2015…

... Odd, I'm sure that I answered a post made at 13:04 at 12:23!? ...

#Note to self - must get that Tardis booked in for a service, all of this jumping backward & forwards is playing havoc with the service record! ...

Z

almillar

Can I ask, does this Renault supplied charger plug into your mains?

'your mains' as in a 3 pin plug - no. Renaults so far are actually quite simple, there's 1 connector, a 'type 2' on the car, and a type 2 lead, which plugs into a type 2 plug on a charger. Simples. When you buy a Zoe, for example, you get a free charger installation. And by charging over £400 for a 'granny cable' (THAT is a 3 pin UK mains plug), they really are training you to ignore 3 pin charging.

BUT

Also, plugging in after getting back from work, ten hour charge ready for work in the morning. Am I missing a major snag here?

You're not missing anything. What you want will work if the car you buy comes with a 3 pin charger, and if your house's wiring is up to the job (not guaranteed!). You're happy to charge overnight slowly, which could have a use - if you've got a night time electric tariff, charging at night will be cheap for you. A proper charger would do this too, though. If it was during the day, and you had solar panels, you might want to purposely charge slowly - maybe your panels are producing 4kW - plug into 3 pin and take 2kw, leaving 2kw for the rest of the house. If you plugged into your 7kw charger, you'd be taking (and paying for) electric from the grid.

What are we missing that really makes you want to use 3 pin?

You're completely inverting this.
I said 12 Tesla chargers in a motorway service area, and 8 in use when I looked

Er, OK, 8 instead of 12, right...

I didnt mention it, but this was mid-afternoon.
Those Tesla owners want to drive their cars along the motorway during the day, and fast recharge them during the day.

I assumed peak time, yes.

They aren't generously leaving them there as an extra resource, as per your suggestion

I did not suggest that at all. And just to be clear, they're putting them there for their own customer's benefit. And new customers will now have to pay to charge.

I stick with what I said. 2 or 5 MW for cars passing the town on the motorway is about the same consumption as tens of thousands of homes.

Are any of those Tesla owners going home a bit late going to stop and plug in somewhere to help other people cook their evening dinner, and run themselves out of range? I don't think so.

None of this makes any sense, and I don't see your point. You seem to think Tesla owners (I'll add in other electric car users) are stealing electric from homes, and that specifically fridges will switch off to allow cars to charge. That WILL NOT happen. The network will cope. Did you not read my suggestion about batteries being stored right beside the chargers? Was that inconvenient to read?

And as another poster suggests - have a look at smart charging too. Nobody is stealing your cold air!

However, charging EVs at night means supplying that power over an extended period and that may have a negative effect on the distribution infrastructure. Transformer life, for example.

Ignoring the efficiencies of flattening out demand. Maybe those cost savings will pay for any extra 'wear' on transformers.

Where does the electricity come from?
Now, for the follow-on question, can you think why extrapolations of solar PV might be hard between Australia and the UK?
Clues: Climate, land usage.

OK - so it works in Australia because they get loads of sun and they have loads of land. Are you claiming that we simply shouldn't bother with solar panels in the UK because we don't? Plenty of people are able to offset their electric bills in the UK with sold-back solar. Solar panels are getting cheaper and more efficient all the time. It might work BETTER in Aus, sure, but it sounds like you're claiming it doesn't work in the UK at all. Maybe you've always got a dark cloud over you!

Gloomendoom

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

The issue here is the ability/willingness to navigate around problems and leverage their existence to provide opportunities ....

In the case of transformer heat dissipation potentially causing lifespan issues, there's two obvious approaches ...

1. Accept the shorter lifespan and write off increased time-line capital costs against increased energy throughput.

2. Enhance the cooling mechanism utilising revenue provided by increased energy throughput.

Issue solved .. so where would there be opportunities? - well, whilst upgrading the cooling system why not recover the heat and utilise it in a community CHP scheme providing energy efficiency improvements and an additional revenue stream to the network operators ... is it possible?, well I remember reading an article by NG a few years ago which mentioned that they were already trialling the possibility, so it probably is!

Insurmountable problems to some are simply opportunities to others!

HTH
Z

Totally agree. Like I said, I have not said or implied that the the problems cannot be overcome, just that they exist at the moment.

zeupater wrote: »

... Odd, I'm sure that I answered a post made at 13:04 at 12:23!? ...

Z

Sorry, screwed up an edit, managed to delete the whole post, got unavoidably sidetracked for a while and then reposted.

zeupater

Gloomendoom wrote: »

Totally agree. Like I said, I have not said or implied that the the problems cannot be overcome, just that they exist at the moment ...

Hi

:think: .... My current, pressing & immediate problem is that I've just exhaled, it's likely that I'll overcome the problem soon by inhaling .... there you go, done - not a problem after-all (Phew!), so why (apart from effect) raise it, let alone worry myself and/or others ! ... :wall: -

HTH
Z

zeupater

Gloomendoom wrote: »

Remind me. Is this a discussion forum or a mutual (electric car) admiration society?

Hi

It's a thread to discuss EVs, originally seeded by this post ...

Jonamora wrote: »

Just wanted people's opinions on buying an electric car?

Before long all cars will be electric and therfore is it best to sell petrol car at full value and invest in electric car.

I don't want to start a new finance deals for 4 years and be complete but then left with and cat nobody wants or has resale value because all are electric.....thoughts

Jonathan

... so, considering that EVs are not only coming, but here already I can't really understand why people who don't like the idea continually raise issues which are important enough to comment and claim concern over, then, when the relative significance is highlighted, justify those comments with remarks along the lines of .. "I have not said or implied that the the problems cannot be overcome, just that they exist at the moment" ... fine, if there are insurmountable issues they must be raised, but like the problem in the breathing example provided above, why worry about issues which don't really exist because the solution is obvious & straightforward .... take a breath, then concentrate on what really matters ...

With discussions on EVs there are two extreme & vocal camps ... the problem as I see it is that they are currently both wrong, however, the centre-ground is increasingly occupied by those who favour EVs & clean transportation, therefore whatever is required to support that centralist future will happen, despite whatever the two extremes may wish ... so the most likely outcome over the foreseeable future will be a significant proportion of vehicles being pure EVs, with the remainder likely clean-burn hybrids, but importantly, no matter what the marketing departments say, autonomy use will be restricted by type, nature & location for some while yet!

HTH
Z

#Edit: Oops, there you go again ... looks like I've answered yet another post before it was posted .... :whistle:

Martyn1981

Gloomendoom wrote: »

It's certainly easy to wind you up, even without trying.

I have said that there are some problems to overcome before EVs can displace combustion vehicles. I have not said that those problems cannot be overcome.

Why would you want to wind anyone up?

I've no idea why you try so hard to start and maintain arguments based on nonsense, be it EV's unable to corner, the gearbox industry surviving by changing industries, or repeatedly trying to exaggerate charging problems, whilst simultaneously claiming that there is no problem.

Why not just stop being silly and listen to the experts, and in that context, on here, the experts are the EV'ers who have kindly and patiently explained why cars aren't charge fully every day, nor at peak demand times.

I'll make an assumption now, and feel free to argue differently (even if you both agree and disagree at the same time again), but I'll guess that 10% (or less) of EV's will be plugged in and charging during the evening peak, I'll also guesstimate that 40% of EV's will be plugged in during the evening peak, ready for charging at low rates in the night, but willing to sell some of their charge at a nice premium during peak demand prices.

Also, try applying a rational and logical approach to the whole issue, which can be done since we are talking millions or 10's of millions of vehicles, so natural averaging will apply. - If more people demand leccy during peaks, peak prices will rise, if peak prices rise the market will respond with increased supply since you've just made supply storage viable at PV farms, wind farms, grid scale, and DNO level, plus demand side storage just became viable for homes and businesses with own generation or even for arbitrage, plus of course you've just sweetened the pot by making V2G (EV's) even more profitable by upping the value of the cars battery leccy.

David_Aston

Thanks for your comments on my query al.
Your last sentence, why wouldn't anyone wish to plug their car into the mains same way as they plug their vacuum cleaner in?
As an aside, we do have economy 7.

Gloomendoom

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

:think: .... My current, pressing & immediate problem is that I've just exhaled, it's likely that I'll overcome the problem soon by inhaling .... there you go, done - not a problem after-all (Phew!),

Your solution wasn’t a problem because it was hard coded into your DNA and the infrastructure to enable it was already in place. Luckily, you didn’t even have to think about it.

so why (apart from effect) raise it, let alone worry myself and/or others ! ... :wall: -

HTH
Z

Because pushing EV ownership past a couple of million isn’t just a matter of being able to generate enough electricity, as some on here seem to naively believe (see above).

Remind me. Is this a discussion forum or a mutual (electric car) admiration society?

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Where does the electricity come from?

In Aus, from PV generation and battery storage.

AdrianC wrote: »

*ding* Give that man a coconut.

Now, for the follow-on question, can you think why extrapolations of solar PV might be hard between Australia and the UK?

Clues: Climate, land usage.

Are you being serious? You responded to my post, but ignored the part where I said:

and no demand at 25p in the bottom 4 months due to battery arbitrage from 5p leccy charging.

and where will that leccy come from at night .... coconut time - wind. Even 'expensive' off-shore wind could go net subsidy free now(ish) at half the cost of nuclear, and rollout perhaps 24GW's of new capacity by 2030, roughly equal to 13GW's of nuclear power (after taking capacity factors into account) so ~30% of UK demand.

UK could support 30GW by 2030

BTW, do you really believe that the UK doesn't get decent sunshine? Aren't you aware that PV is one of the very cheapest forms of generation in the UK. Admittedly Spain, Australia, Chile etc are better and cheaper, but UK PV competes with UK generation and PV is starting to go subsidy free in the UK. It costs roughly £50/MWh today, v's HPC (Hinkley Point C) at £97/MWh.

[Edit - Perhaps I should have mentioned that schemes to sell stationary and vehicular battery leccy already exist in the UK, but admittedly it's still early days. M.]

So please don't make childish remarks about storage and the UK's ability to use it to store renewable generation for peak shaving.