EV Discussion thread

Exiled_Tyke

thevilla said:

But, if everyone who charged at 03:30 had charged at 15:30 what would emissions look like?

Time for bed I think.

The most sensible and pertinent thing I've read on these boards today. Thank you.  That really is the point.  Statistics  can tell any story we want them to tell but cutting through them to the underlying issues is the only way we'll start moving irreversibly forward.   We can't afford to be put off by the anomalies but keep pushing forward for every form of energy use which will in the long term contribute to eradicating our use of !!!!!!. 

JKenH

thevilla said:

But, if everyone who charged at 03:30 had charged at 15:30 what would emissions look like?

Time for bed I think.

Good point. Despite wind and solar providing half of our generation at 15.30 compared to only a third at 03.30 it would still have been the marginal generator, most probably gas, that would have taken up the slack with a commensurate increase in emissions.

Some, however, who don’t like the marginal generator argument, might argue that charging at 15.30 when 50% of the grid was powered by wind/solar (renewables) and 30% gas is better than when the grid has a 33% renewables/35% gas mix. 

JKenH

Exiled_Tyke said:

thevilla said:

But, if everyone who charged at 03:30 had charged at 15:30 what would emissions look like?

Time for bed I think.

The most sensible and pertinent thing I've read on these boards today. Thank you.  That really is the point.  Statistics  can tell any story we want them to tell but cutting through them to the underlying issues is the only way we'll start moving irreversibly forward.   We can't afford to be put off by the anomalies but keep pushing forward for every form of energy use which will in the long term contribute to eradicating our use of !!!!!!. 

But isn’t a big part of the EV argument based on statistics. Isn’t the evidence of increasing CO2 and increasing temperatures based on statistics? As you say, statistics can tell any story we want them to tell and that is why there is so much scepticism around statistics led arguments. However if we just ignore statistics and go with gut feelings we can sometimes make false assumptions or base our actions on a false premise/understanding. 

As for anomalies, we are increasing the proportion of our electricity being generated from renewables to the extent that in the last 3 months it has been 32% and 8% of that is from solar. (Is that statistic an anomaly?) Given that most solar farms face south that is concentrated in the 8 hours between 0800 and 1600 GMT and we see from the statistics for 21 August that solar was producing 7GW for several hours or over 20% of demand. Only 7% of our generation was from solar that day, lower than the 8% average for the last 3 months - so I wasn’t using an anomalous day (with high solar PV) to make my argument, it was simply based on the day off the discussion. 

I am not suggesting that it is always better for CO2 emissions to charge your car in the middle of the day rather than overnight but neither can we safely say that the grid is always cleaner overnight, although in winter it probably is. (I haven’t  any statistics to support that btw.) Most of us choose (or in my case chose) to charge our cars overnight because it was cheapest then and that makes perfect sense but, if we are concerned about emissions, we shouldn’t assume that limiting our charging to overnight is always the best solution.

ABrass

Marginal generation is useful when looking at small changes. It's unhelpful when looking at longer trends and leads you into stupid logical positions.

More Renewable power was added to the mix last year than was used by EVs added last year. But marginal generation says that every one of those EVs was powered by Gas.

The only way to make the sums balance is to allocate every bit of additional renewable power to the existing EVs, which because cleaner, whilst making 2022 cars the dirtiest EVs ever built.

JKenH

ABrass said:

Marginal generation is useful when looking at small changes. It's unhelpful when looking at longer trends and leads you into stupid logical positions.

More Renewable power was added to the mix last year than was used by EVs added last year. But marginal generation says that every one of those EVs was powered by Gas.

Aren’t we building out renewable generation to take the dirtiest old generation off line? If we then add more EVs, less of the old dirty generation gets removed. 

Ipso facto the new EVs are powered by dirty generation.

ABrass

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

Marginal generation is useful when looking at small changes. It's unhelpful when looking at longer trends and leads you into stupid logical positions.

More Renewable power was added to the mix last year than was used by EVs added last year. But marginal generation says that every one of those EVs was powered by Gas.

Aren’t we building out renewable generation to take the dirtiest old generation off line? If we then add more EVs, less of the old dirty generation gets removed. 

Ipso facto the new EVs are powered by dirty generation.

And then the year after they're just part of the baseload. So they magically drop their CO2 intensity to the same as the rest of the grid and start benefiting from the ongoing cleanup.

Which is clearly nonsense.

JKenH

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

Marginal generation is useful when looking at small changes. It's unhelpful when looking at longer trends and leads you into stupid logical positions.

More Renewable power was added to the mix last year than was used by EVs added last year. But marginal generation says that every one of those EVs was powered by Gas.

Aren’t we building out renewable generation to take the dirtiest old generation off line? If we then add more EVs, less of the old dirty generation gets removed. 

Ipso facto the new EVs are powered by dirty generation.

And then the year after they're just part of the baseload. So they magically drop their CO2 intensity to the same as the rest of the grid and start benefiting from the ongoing cleanup.

Which is clearly nonsense.

As you say, that is clearly nonsense. Good to agree on something.

subjecttocontract

I just don't think the country is ready for BEV's for everyone. Whilst they might suit my wife who never travels more than 30 miles from home, they don't suit me. I just made a 250 mile journey to Yorkshire then onto the Lake district & 300 miles home. It would have been a nightmare making sure I had enough charge or could find a charger. I pulled into a couple of service areas and both times there were people waiting for chargers. Any long journey requires planning but no guarantee a charger is working or available. definitely not for me.

ABrass

Thankfully there is no possibility of switching all users to EVs at the moment. So it doesn't need to be ready for it.

Should we be prioritising charger more? Yes, but we are relying on the dead hand of the market rather than investing in EV chargers as a national infrastructure project.l like the roads themselves.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

Marginal generation is useful when looking at small changes. It's unhelpful when looking at longer trends and leads you into stupid logical positions.

More Renewable power was added to the mix last year than was used by EVs added last year. But marginal generation says that every one of those EVs was powered by Gas.

Aren’t we building out renewable generation to take the dirtiest old generation off line? If we then add more EVs, less of the old dirty generation gets removed. 

Ipso facto the new EVs are powered by dirty generation.

And then the year after they're just part of the baseload. So they magically drop their CO2 intensity to the same as the rest of the grid and start benefiting from the ongoing cleanup.

Which is clearly nonsense.

Plus of course a BEV driving on 100% gas generation leccy, is still far cleaner than an ICEV in terms of CO2(e) emissions, before we even consider exhaust pollution in towns and cities.

Best tongue-in-cheek argument I've heard about adding new/additional leccy consumption, was that an old 400W plasma TV is fine, and clean, but adding a new 50W LED TV in a new room would be high emissions. 

But, perhaps in this example, we should consider the new 50W LED TV, is replacing/displacing an old one powered by a petrol gennie.