The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

I saw that Octopus Agile prices at tea time tonight were going to be 35p/kWh (the ceiling price) so had a peek at the Drax website to see what the mix of generation was looking like. Wind was meeting just 3.8% of demand at 1.3 GW (5.5% of installed capacity).

What surprised me most, though, was that the wholesale price was only around £20/MWh at 5.30pm which if my maths is right is only 2p/kWh. That’s quite a disconnect between the wholesale price and Agile. (Out of interest the ‘day ahead’ wholesale price for 5.30pm was around £50/MWh.)

JKenH

Now I am a huge fan of electric cars but we still have a long way to go to convince the motoring public (and my wife) that they are a truly realistic alternative to fossil fuelled cars for every journey. 

I have copied this from the Facebook UK EV Drivers Forum. (Before anyone suggests this wouldn’t happen with a Tesla, this was from a Tesla owner)

Yesterday I faced the dragon and lost.... a few hours of my life 🙂

I went to west Wales (Aberystwyth) from Bristol (276 miles total). In a playful hoon mode all the way there, the roads are just brilliant (especially on a Sunday early morning with no traffic).

Got to Aberystwyth University (Polar) at 8:08 AM (after 124 miles). The plan was to leave the car there for 1hr charge and visit the seafront. On screen: charger out of use. On the call with support they confirm there’s nothing they can do. 

Next stop: Morrisons (Geniepoint). App won’t connect. A number of retries and a reset, still will not take the command to start charging. 

I try the only other option in town, a 21kw Type 2 (Dragon Charging, actually Polar) but.. these don’t have cables and I don’t have mine. Who thought 3 rapids will not work?? (My bad.. it won’t happen again).

I abandon the plan to visit the city and drive about 15mins to Tre’r-ddol (Polar). Got there at 9:30 AM. Initially this charger does not take “orders” either. I call, they reset it. Then it appears to work. For 2 mins! After 2% charge it stops. Have to call support again as the app was frozen at “charging” and I can’t try again. Another attempt, another 2% before stopping with error. Another call at support..this time they initiate the charge and it seems working... for 7%!  I drank a coffee and during that it stopped again. Meanwhile an I-Pace shows up with 6 miles left in the “tank”. I drop the news and leave, as they were even more desperate for a charge. I hope those guys managed to charge somewhere!

I drive to Llandrindod Wells, 50 miles in 1h22 (35mph average), no AC no lights no music, foggy windows, I barely reach with 3%. 255 Wh/Mile as it's quite hilly (+666.7 ft elevation). Finally, a charger that works!

I get home 2 hours later than planned (3PM), with nothing visited and very little time for relaxing things to do. The drive was very nice and scenic but sadly I am afraid to do it again. At least, not venture that far. 

EVandPV

JKenH said:

I saw that Octopus Agile prices at tea time tonight were going to be 35p/kWh (the ceiling price) so had a peek at the Drax website to see what the mix of generation was looking like. Wind was meeting just 3.8% of demand at 1.3 GW (5.5% of installed capacity).

What surprised me most, though, was that the wholesale price was only around £20/MWh at 5.30pm which if my maths is right is only 2p/kWh. That’s quite a disconnect between the wholesale price and Agile. (Out of interest the ‘day ahead’ wholesale price for 5.30pm was around £50/MWh.)

Some seriously cheap prices tonight, as low as 0.84p and less than 4p from 11.30pm to 5am.

JKenH

EVandPV said:

JKenH said:

I saw that Octopus Agile prices at tea time tonight were going to be 35p/kWh (the ceiling price) so had a peek at the Drax website to see what the mix of generation was looking like. Wind was meeting just 3.8% of demand at 1.3 GW (5.5% of installed capacity).

What surprised me most, though, was that the wholesale price was only around £20/MWh at 5.30pm which if my maths is right is only 2p/kWh. That’s quite a disconnect between the wholesale price and Agile. (Out of interest the ‘day ahead’ wholesale price for 5.30pm was around £50/MWh.)

Some seriously cheap prices tonight, as low as 0.84p and less than 4p from 11.30pm to 5am.

I found this useful explanation of how Octopus set the Agile prices.

“the Agile price is 2.2 times the wholesale price of energy and between 4.00pm and 7.00pm an additional 12 pence per kWh is included (but capped at 35 pence, come what may).“

https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

joefizz

JKenH said:

Now I am a huge fan of electric cars but we still have a long way to go to convince the motoring public (and my wife) that they are a truly realistic alternative to fossil fuelled cars for every journey. 

The self driving and 'safety' aspects of some of the new upgrades are obviously written by people ensconced in the Tesla naming convention 'radness'. Spent years of my life trying to train that hacker crap out of people.
For example a mate of mine can no longer take the shortest route home. Why? Well the shortest route home goes past a farm, the  farm dog likes nothing better than to run out into the road and run alongside cars barking at them. Car doesnt see it the way a driver does and thinks it should emergency brake... that gets boring after a while.

Another mate (not a Tesla) cant park in his garage any more (well at least until he works out how to turn it off) because as he comes through his gates his labs see him coming and run down the drive to meet the car. The car stops, labs circle the car, car doesnt want to go again...

Progress, eh?

joefizz

Pile_o_stone said:

 How anyone still thinks that nuclear is a good idea is beyond me.

Over the weekend I was reading about the nuclear diamond batteries (yes really!). Right now Im putting it up there with fusion and the flux capacitor but at least someone is looking at ways to see what they can do with the waste now that dumping in the Irish Sea isnt an option ;-)

Pile_o_stone

joefizz said:

Pile_o_stone said:

 How anyone still thinks that nuclear is a good idea is beyond me.

Over the weekend I was reading about the nuclear diamond batteries (yes really!). Right now Im putting it up there with fusion and the flux capacitor but at least someone is looking at ways to see what they can do with the waste now that dumping in the Irish Sea isnt an option ;-)

It seems to be a standard operating procedure for companies that have a dangerous product to publicise these 'future technologies' (aka snakeoil) as the solution. It cons Joe Public into thinking that we only have to put up with the danger for a little while before it's solved. It's been done with nuclear (new power stations that operate on nuclear waste, nuclear fusion, etc.), it's been done with coal fired power stations (carbon sequestering) and its been done with the environment (with this one, they barely make an effort - just airy claims of a technological solution just around the corner).

It's sad that people still fall for it.

joefizz

 (with this one, they barely make an effort - just airy claims of a technological solution just around the corner).

It's sad that people still fall for it.

Yeah, theres a vaccine coming...

EVandPV

joefizz said:

 (with this one, they barely make an effort - just airy claims of a technological solution just around the corner).

It's sad that people still fall for it.

Yeah, theres a vaccine coming...

Apparently, the Russians have one already. 

JKenH

Much of what has been published recently about the comparative performance of Tesla and legacy automakers had led me to believe that Tesla was going from strength to strength while the legacy auto manufacturers were on their knees. 

I was surprised thererefore by these Q2 2020 statistics for the US car market which show Tesla’s year on year performance was very similar to Ford, Volkswagen and our own Jaguar Land Rover. It also fared worse than other brands in its sector such as Mercedes Lexus, and Volvo although it did do better than Audi and BMW.


https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2020-us-vehicle-sales-figures-by-brand/

CleanTechnica’s lead EV correspondent Zachary Sharan also commented

One more brand probably worth highlighting here before going into deeper historical context is Tesla. It may surprise many readers to see Tesla’s US sales down 41%, putting it in the “top 10” of worst relative drops in sales year over year. Overall, Tesla sales (deliveries) only dropped by about 5,000 units year over year, from 95,200 in Q2 2019 to 90,650 in Q2 2020. However, most of those deliveries were in China (where production was up significantly) and Europe. Subtracting those large markets and an estimate for a few other much smaller ones, Tesla’s US deliveries dropped from 54,700 in Q2 2019 to 32,189 in Q2 2020. (Again, these are only our own estimates, not official company data, but they are highly informed based on Tesla’s official global numbers and registration data from dozens of other countries.)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk emphasized on the last Tesla shareholder call that Tesla definitely doesn’t have a demand problem — the company has far more demand than supply — so, as always, the sales data doesn’t give us any actual insight into demand. We only know it was greater than what was delivered. That goes for the US  as well as the world as a whole. Nonetheless, I think it’s generally been assumed that Tesla’s US deliveries didn’t drop as sharply as they did year over year, especially since, historically, US deliveries have typically accounted for about half of the company’s sales. The timing of Tesla Giga Shanghai ramping up as COVID-19 was hitting the US was a bit of a serendipitous savior for the Californian auto company.

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/10/us-auto-sales-down-by-1-5-million-in-2nd-quarter-amplifying-long-trends/