Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

gefnew · 27 November 2017 at 10:49PM

Hi All
here is a item about car batteries and smart charging and feeding some of it back to the grid etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42013625
regards
gefnew

NigeWick · 28 November 2017 at 10:37AM

gefnew wrote: »

here is an item about car batteries and smart charging and feeding some of it back to the grid etc.

If @tonyseba is correct, and I think he is, in 10-15 years time there will only be about 10-20% of the number of private vehicles that we have now. Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEVs) will mean that most people will just use an app to call a car when they want one to take them to where they want to go. The vehicle will then go and service another passenger. When you want to go home, you just call another vehicle. That will leave say 4 million cars to charge off peak (or like me, home solar) and put electricity back at peak times meaning we'll perhaps need another 10% of electricity generation in total. If all new builds are oriented correctly and have solar PV plus batteries we will be well on the way to having a resilient renewable energy system.

zeupater · 28 November 2017 at 3:30PM

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hi Z, can you check some assumptions/calculations for me, as my brain went another ponder whilst out for a walk.

Assumptions:-

1. HPC in today's money is to get £97/MWh, and the latest NAO predictions (page 39) for 2025 onwards is around £50/MWh for wholesale leccy, so the subsidy is £47/MWh (average).

2. Generation per year will be approx 3,200MW x 24hrs x 365 days x 0.92%cf = 25,789,440MWhs (26TWh's).

3. The subsidy payments will be approx £1.212bn pa (£47/MWh).

4. The latest off-shore wind contracts are approx £60/MWh in today's money (£57.50 2012), and on-shore wind and PV should be comfortably under £60/MWh based on German contracts falling to around £40/MWh but not including all infrastructure costs.

5. So the big 3, on-shore wind, off-shore wind and PV should be £60/MWh or less, so would require £10/MWh (or less) subsidy, going forward.

If these assumptions are fair enough, then that means the big 3 could generate a MWh for each £10 of subsidy support. So £1.212bn would buy us an annual generation of 121,200,000MWhs = 121TWh's, or roughly 33% of the UK's annual leccy consumption, v's 7% from HPC.

The reason I've asked/pondered this is because the economics of RE v's nuclear appears to have moved massively these last few years, and also compliments earlier discussions we've had about how much seems to have changed or fallen into place this year.

All the best.

Hi

Looks pretty fair ... in simple terms (47/10)x7%=32.9% ...

However, I strongly believe that even the NAO 2016 reassessment of wholesale electricity prices will be subject to severe generation cost & price competition pressure well before the expected date and would anticipate that £5-10/MWh would be scrubbed from the forecast 'hump' in Fig:10 and presume that avoidance of political embarrassment resulting from the unreasonably generous strike prices and the resultant pressure on ongoing programs has been taken into consideration ...

Anyway, whilst scratching the head about this adding £125-£250million/year of additional cfd support to HPC alone, I'd hazard a guess that the level of support would still be severely underestimated if using such a simplistic averaged wholesale pricing approach, have a think about this ....

The average wholesale electricity price is just that, the average over the entire day/period ... however, demand fluctuates and requires far more generation during the day than at night with higher daytime supply pricing - now the logic bomb ... generation at HPC would be pretty consistent with similar energy generation during 12 night-time hours as the 12 daytime, therefore the average wholesale price from HPC will (/should) be lower than the overall average price by a considerable sum ... if the overnight/weekend average generation is half of weekly daytime with lower average wholesale pricing we could easily be looking at an underestimation of subsidy by a further £12-£18/MWh, so around £300million to £450million per year! ... '£quite-a-few-billion' (at 2016 prices) over the total length of the cfd support period ....

As they say .... 'The devils in the detail' .... a potential £425-£700 million underestimate based on the level of detail which has been provided ! ...

HTH
Z

zeupater · 28 November 2017 at 3:43PM

NigeWick wrote: »

If @tonyseba is correct, and I think he is, in 10-15 years time there will only be about 10-20% of the number of private vehicles that we have now. Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEVs) will mean that most people will just use an app to call a car when they want one to take them to where they want to go. The vehicle will then go and service another passenger. When you want to go home, you just call another vehicle. That will leave say 4 million cars to charge off peak (or like me, home solar) and put electricity back at peak times meaning we'll perhaps need another 10% of electricity generation in total. If all new builds are oriented correctly and have solar PV plus batteries we will be well on the way to having a resilient renewable energy system.

Hi

Fine if you live in heavily urbanised areas, however if the kettle's on & we need a jar of coffee or a pint of milk some of us would need to wait for at least 20minutes for an autonomous vehicle to arrive even if they were available & despatched immediately! ...

It's great for energy & transport policies to evolve, but sometimes the authors of such systems need to get out of their plush urban-centric mindset and take a realistic approach .... to apply a basic level of logic to this, the first question to ask would be ...

... 'with the level of public transport available in (say) London, why do people living in & around (say) London use/own cars ?' .... it's the same question to the same problem - and will likely have the same answer ..

HTH
Z

Martyn1981 · 28 November 2017 at 4:36PM

Couple of articles on a similar theme:

First solar homes go on sale in £125 million Leeds eco village

Solar homes to be able to trade energy across Northern Powergrid network under new project

NigeWick · 29 November 2017 at 11:07AM

zeupater wrote: »

Fine if you live in heavily urbanised areas, however if the kettle's on & we need a jar of coffee or a pint of milk some of us would need to wait for at least 20minutes for an autonomous vehicle to arrive even if they were available & despatched immediately!

How often does that happen to you? Our cupboards are always well stocked and I suspect that people who live way out in the countryside will have even more provisions on hand. I honestly think you're going past extreme with your scenario. There are very few people 20 minutes drive from a market town that will have several vehicles available as taxis are now. And, "ordinary" people that do own autonomous vehicles for hire may well live out in the sticks too.

I'm not saying you're definitely wrong about this but I certainly think you are.

DanBuskh · 29 November 2017 at 12:07PM

Well i am off to Sweden this year, hope i don't face this problem over there.

Martyn1981 · 29 November 2017 at 1:57PM

The EU is upping its targets.

EU Energy Committee’s proposal to upgrade 2030 RE target to 35% welcomed

The European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) has voted on a new binding renewable energy target of 35% by 2030. This represents a considerable improvement from the 27% target set by the latest version of Clean Energy Package 2020-2030, developed by the European Commission. The final version is expected to be released in 2018.

Furthermore, in a separate vote, they have proposed to lower energy consumption by 40%, and increase energy efficiency, by 2030 at the EU level, thus reflecting greater ambitions than the EU Commission, which proposed a 30% reduction. For the overall goal to be reached, each EU country will have to set its own corresponding national energy-efficiency targets.

Tougher targets will need higher deployments of RE ..... speaking of which:

European PV market expected to grow by 35% in 2018 – GTM Research

European countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are all forecast to be gigawatt-scale markets in 2018. Globally, around 606 GW of new PV capacity is forecast to be installed between 2017 and 2022.

silverwhistle · 29 November 2017 at 4:55PM

NigeWick wrote: »

How often does that happen to you?

I have to say that I agree, I'm not sure it's the best example Z could have chosen. Where I lived in the Italian Alps you'd see people at the local supermarket loading up with packs of long-life milk (yeugh) and more polenta than I'd eat in a year. People adapt to the situation. [ Incidentally, remember you can freeze semi-skimmed milk. :-) ].

Not having a car until I was 28 and a motorbike for only 2/3 years before that meant different habits and behaviours and definitely better organisation. My mum has never driven, and motorists often forget what a large percentage of households don't have transport. Politicians (particularly right wing ones) are good at ignoring this.
You'll often see people loading their groceries into taxis at Aldi, Lidl, Waitrose; or into their saddle bags.

If I were to analyse my own journeys now that I'm retired I'd probably be horrified with the cost I'm prepared to pay for convenience and making up for the inadequacies of Southern Railways..

zeupater · 29 November 2017 at 5:41PM

NigeWick wrote: »

How often does that happen to you? Our cupboards are always well stocked and I suspect that people who live way out in the countryside will have even more provisions on hand. I honestly think you're going past extreme with your scenario. There are very few people 20 minutes drive from a market town that will have several vehicles available as taxis are now. And, "ordinary" people that do own autonomous vehicles for hire may well live out in the sticks too.

I'm not saying you're definitely wrong about this but I certainly think you are.

Hi

The issue is that the milk etc is a valid example, one of many hundreds of everyday situations which could be used, but the real test is that in major urban areas where there's currently an abundance of transport available - taxi / private hire / uber / bus / bike / tram / train / tube - and people still have cars! .. why, because they're more convenient when you want to use one ...

Around here, we have a bus stop nearby and with a little planning you could work out the timetable so that there's not a couple of hours waiting in the rain to take you to some shops (15 minutes) or major shops (45-60minutes)... don't think about catching a taxi drivers eye as there aren't any ... private hire cars, well book one for pickup ASAP and you'll be lucky if it's here in 15-20 minutes & you can almost guarantee that you'll get a call-back saying they've driven up & down the road and can't find us (it's surprising how inaccurate most GPS-map databases are!) ... having got to the nearest train station to shop (/enjoy yipee!) in the nearest city (there aren't many coaches around here) our one or two (if you're lucky) trains/hour are going to take approx 1 hour each way ... that's the reality around here and autonomous vehicles would make little difference - they would likely average the same time to arrive as a private hire car ...

Think about it this way ... next time you need to travel by car, get in and press the 'start' button then wait for a 1200second countdown before anything happens ... that's the reality of autonomous transport around here based on the reality of transport around here ... private hire cars take as long as they do because the supply is limited by demand ... exactly the same applies to autonomous vehicles - nobody is going to invest in a fleet which cannot pay for itself so supply will need to reflect demand .... the knock-on effect being that when demand peaks (pub/restaurant/general going out) somebody's going to be disappointed and when that's happened a couple of times people will go back to the showroom and buy their own car ...

Now, if I lived in a massively subsidised city such as London with ample roads, people, public transport and everything else in close proximity my viewpoint may be different ... but like millions of others living in London at the moment we'd likely still have a car just for the added convenience, so why would just one additional form of shared/hired or scheduled transport make any real difference? ...

... it's far more likely that autonomous vehicles will replace taxi & private hire drivers in major urban areas where demand & income warrant the capital expense, however, the pre-owned private-hire cars around here will still need to be pre-owned as demand & distance based cost simply can't justify new vehicles ... apart from that, who's going to make the call ... "Sorry, but I've driven up & down the road 3 times & can't find your house .. I'm sitting at the crossroads facing the pub - which way do I go ?" ... classic, but it happens all the time - if you think that's bad, try and get a parcel delivered to houses with a name & a postcode, but no number!!

... isn't technology 'wonderful'/'often overstated' (delete as appropriate) ...

HTH
Z

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