Thermal Stores

Magnitio

I do worry about the sale of expensive boilers such as this with long-term paybacks based on cheap-rate overnight electricity. Over the next few years there will be a significant increase in overnight charging of EV's to the point where there won't be an off-peak time.

michaels

Magnitio said:

I do worry about the sale of expensive boilers such as this with long-term paybacks based on cheap-rate overnight electricity. Over the next few years there will be a significant increase in overnight charging of EV's to the point where there won't be an off-peak time.

MY calcs are that there are about 100GWh of potential capacity overnight and even when we get to 1m EVs on the roads (3 years time?) the most they will use is an extra 25gwh so probably a few years yet until it becomes an issue - even longer term probably 50% of EVs will not be charged overnight due to a lack of off street parking so sounds like it is not an immediate issue - and if he do go done the heat pump for gas boiler heating switch then will push up peak consumption more than offpeak so leave more 'spare' night capacity.

Magnitio

michaels said:

Magnitio said:

I do worry about the sale of expensive boilers such as this with long-term paybacks based on cheap-rate overnight electricity. Over the next few years there will be a significant increase in overnight charging of EV's to the point where there won't be an off-peak time.

MY calcs are that there are about 100GWh of potential capacity overnight and even when we get to 1m EVs on the roads (3 years time?) the most they will use is an extra 25gwh so probably a few years yet until it becomes an issue - even longer term probably 50% of EVs will not be charged overnight due to a lack of off street parking so sounds like it is not an immediate issue - and if he do go done the heat pump for gas boiler heating switch then will push up peak consumption more than offpeak so leave more 'spare' night capacity.

If you are looking at long-term paybacks, then you need to consider beyond 3 years. That means taking into account charging of commercial vehicles, buses etc which will have considerably larger energy requirements. On-street charging is also being rolled out, so you don't need to have off-street parking. There will also be an increase in energy storage to help balance out fluctuations in renewable energy production. All of this will flatten the demand across the day and challenge the existing pricing structure.

Martyn1981

Magnitio said:

michaels said:

Magnitio said:

I do worry about the sale of expensive boilers such as this with long-term paybacks based on cheap-rate overnight electricity. Over the next few years there will be a significant increase in overnight charging of EV's to the point where there won't be an off-peak time.

MY calcs are that there are about 100GWh of potential capacity overnight and even when we get to 1m EVs on the roads (3 years time?) the most they will use is an extra 25gwh so probably a few years yet until it becomes an issue - even longer term probably 50% of EVs will not be charged overnight due to a lack of off street parking so sounds like it is not an immediate issue - and if he do go done the heat pump for gas boiler heating switch then will push up peak consumption more than offpeak so leave more 'spare' night capacity.

If you are looking at long-term paybacks, then you need to consider beyond 3 years. That means taking into account charging of commercial vehicles, buses etc which will have considerably larger energy requirements. On-street charging is also being rolled out, so you don't need to have off-street parking. There will also be an increase in energy storage to help balance out fluctuations in renewable energy production. All of this will flatten the demand across the day and challenge the existing pricing structure.

Hiya, actually commercial vehicles including buses, coaches trucks and light goods vehicles 'only' account for about 40% of fuel consumption, cars make up 60%. This dates back about 4 years, so probably excludes the majority of current BEV's, see chart 3 - Road fuel consumption and the UK motor vehicle fleet

I do agree that there will be a flattening effect on demand, and I appreciate you said beyond 3yrs (not 3yrs), but the timeline may be quite a bit longer, perhaps 10yrs+. Hopefully we'll be at 100% BEV car sales by 2030, but it'll still take another 10-15yrs to age out most of the ICE fleet. The impact on UK demand for an all BEV car fleet is probably about +10% net over the whole 20+yr timeline (17% before leccy savings on the reduced fuel refinery side), the National Grid have suggested similar. Add in another 40%* for the other vehicles and we're talking an increase in demand of just less than 1% pa, but the UK is rolling out (roughly on average) +3.5% leccy from RE, a lot of which is off-shore wind with a dusk to dawn weighting. [Also over the last decade we've seen a roughly 10% reduction in leccy demand thanks to energy efficiency, such as low energy lamps, TV's fridge / freezer compressors, etc, but I appreciate much of that would not impact night-time .]

TBF, the BEV demand will be night-time weighted, so more concentrated, but as Michaels mentions, the impact from heat pumps will probably be greater (in the heating months).

So I think you have a good point, but it'll take a much longer time, and run concurrently with an RE rollout that may balance it or some of it, and a heat pump rollout that will probably have a greater impact. Will be fun to watch over the next two decades.


*Edit - very badly written. If the impact set out represents approx 60% of road transport fuel consumption, then the other 40%, would actually represent an additional 67% of the increase for cars, so perhaps a net total increase of about 17% (10% + 6.7%), perhaps call it 'about 20%' net for a rough working figure, and will take 20+ years.