Electric vehicles true colours

[DAPPH]

Electric cars will provide a huge battery storage infrastructure when up and working.

Have you seen the electric car battery project in Portugal that is on the news today ?

 

[DAPPH]

Something people often forget is that a big proportion of energy used (burning or electric) is dumb heat. Storing lots of heat is not complicated nor expensive. You just dump excess generation into hot water.

I was recently reading about a Scandinavian house that generates all of its own electric and heat for the whole year. Obviously an extreme example but proves a concept. It had a very well insulated and large hw storage system.

Many clever options combined will all help.

You can also store a lot more heat in Glauber's crystals /salts and then use a heat exchanger to extract it as needed . I was looking into covering a 9 x 45 mtr long section on my old railway embankment in well insulated barrels of it , heated by solar panels , wind generators and PV panels to use as a massive heart store for a project I was looking into .

 

[daleyd]

So true Slim,.
I really didn't want to engage on this thread and accept it's unlightly anyone will change their position, but the misinformation, opinion and downright lies being put about as fact do need challenging before they are accepted by the disinterested as fact.

Fizzy has a valid point of view and I accept a lot of what he's saying, I just don"t understand why he is so certain all the time and so implacable opposed to renewable.

I've absolutely no axe to grind with any particular method, and in fact a fair bit of my work is in the nuclear sector - but to bury your head in the sand and say it doesnt have flaws (At the same time pointing out supposed flaws in other things) is crazy.

Nuclear is going to make up an important part of our energy generation in years to come, but to not look and invest in other forms of energy/storage is short sightedness in the extreme. Wind/solar/batteries are not without their own problems, but as part of an energy mix surely they have to play a part. What we fairly obviously can't do is keep digging stuff up and burning it ad infinitum (In gas turbines/coal plants/nuclear reactors or whatever) as our only source of energy.

 

[DAPPH]

But there is no demand at night!!!
In the day the cars are in use. Just travel the M4!

Not all cars are in use .


An observation I make is :-
You drive around London , the sides of lots of streets & driveways are chock a block with peoples cars that rarely do more than 100 miles a month .
Here where I live the roads are parked solid all hours of the day & night by owners who live within 30 mtrs of their car . Being retired and active I travel these sort of roads on my way to my sea angling venues so tend to see the streets at all hours .

The only time things thin out .. ( Some are almost empty ) are the first few days of the school holidays , public holidays & big showground style events when the owners use them for suicidal trips on the motorways & A roads .

 

[DAPPH]

And that's a balancing act. Poverty kills plenty of people. Destroy our economy to clear smog and kill those at the bottom.

Then it becomes a version of Darwin's ideas ..those that adapt survive .

 

[fizzy]

So true Slim,.
I really didn't want to engage on this thread and accept it's unlightly anyone will change their position, but the misinformation, opinion and downright lies being put about as fact do need challenging before they are accepted by the disinterested as fact.

Fizzy has a valid point of view and I accept a lot of what he's saying, I just don"t understand why he is so certain all the time and so implacable opposed to renewable.

It just makes my blood boil that politicians of all parties have muddied the waters so much throwing money at crackpot schemes when the cash could be used for more hospitals and doctors.
Not a scientific brain amongst any of them.
Our electric costs cripple the country and drive business elsewhere.

 

[slimjim]

I had a silly thought this morning about motorsport in the future. Imagine the Lewis etc pulling in for a pit stop - and then waiting 4 hours whilst batteries recharge in the F1 car

Why is that what happens in formula E?

 

[Dcal]

It just makes my blood boil that politicians of all parties have muddied the waters so much throwing money at crackpot schemes when the cash could be used for more hospitals and doctors.
Not a scientific brain amongst any of them.
Our electric costs cripple the country and drive business elsewhere.

Fair enough.
But how do you know they are crackpot until you try to test and depelop them. It's called R&D and we don't do half enough of it.
At one stage wind and even, dare I say it, nuclear were crack pot ideas but both are now well proven.
Both have their issues but both also can and do generate low carbon electricity.


Politicians are perfectly able to squander money. I'm not sure you or I in isolation are best placed to tell them what to squander it on and you are deluded if you think any money saved will go to the health service.

 

[fizzy]

Fair enough.
But how do you know they are crackpot until you try to test and depelop them. It's called R&D and we don't do half enough of it.
At one stage wind and even, dare I say it, nuclear were crack pot ideas but both are now well proven.
Both have their issues but both also can and do generate low carbon electricity.


Politicians are perfectly able to squander money. I'm not sure you or I in isolation are best placed to tell them what to squander it on and you are deluded if you think any money saved will go to the health service.

I do not think wind is well proven. Far too expensive and too erratic.

 

[fizzy]

As this post is all about electric vehicles....
If the politicians see sense and build loads of nuclear power stations or when fusion is perfected I will become an instant fan!

 

[garethp]

I do not think wind is well proven. Far too expensive and too erratic.

Google it and you'll find plenty of sources saying new large scale onshore wind farms generate power at a lower cost than a new nuclear power station.

And that's before you get into the problems we have building new nuclear and the lack of funding, issues with designs and other hold up's

Don't get me wrong I don't believe turbines everywhere are the answer but they do definitely have their place in the grid

 

[daleyd]

As this post is all about electric vehicles....
If the politicians see sense and build loads of nuclear power stations or when fusion is perfected I will become an instant fan!

Ah - Fusion - the power source of the future. And it always will be...

 

[Dcal]

Wind errratic, yes but with the weather forecasts and data processing used today completely predictable. Not available all the time though so the prediction might be there won't be any.
Expensive, not when you compare it to nuclear unless you add in storage to make it fulltime, then I agree, very

 

[HughF]

https://www.current-news.co.uk/blog...-national-grids-new-distributed-resource-desk

Makes for an interesting read, as does this:

https://www.inverse.com/article/49260-tesla-world-s-largest-battery-price-detailed-in-new-report

Pretty impressive ROI

 

[fizzy]

Google it and you'll find plenty of sources saying new large scale onshore wind farms generate power at a lower cost than a new nuclear power station.

And that's before you get into the problems we have building new nuclear and the lack of funding, issues with designs and other hold up's

Don't get me wrong I don't believe turbines everywhere are the answer but they do definitely have their place in the grid

Yes those costs are based on speculative bids for windfarms that haven't been built. The actual costs are far higher.

 

[garethp]

Yes those costs are based on speculative bids for windfarms that haven't been built. The actual costs are far higher.

And neither have any of the new reactors

 

[cheb]

If you think you are averaging 70 mph on those Skye trips you must be doing well over 150 mph for a fair part of your journey .

Right enough it is a Transit 260 so that about half it's top speed.

The trick to keeping up a good average is don't spend half the trip stopped.

 

[mgarym]

The biggest problem is we are using too much energy and fully replacing fossil fuels dosent see viable.
what this program with brian cox from 2min on to see what we need to build to replace fossil fuels and take
into account these are calculations done in 2009.

 

[DAPPH]

Why is that what happens in formula E?

No, a computer tells them when to head into their pit stops . They stop in their teams bay , jump out and get into an identical fully charged vehicle , seem to recall it takes about 8 seconds to change over .

 

[fizzy]

Just saw this article.

Despite spending over 2 trillion on renewables the World'd carbon footprint is increasing. If they had invested that in nuclear power stations there would have been a huge decrease.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...arbon-emissions-jump-to-all-time-high-in-2018

Of course Britain is a lot lower than most countries. Basically 100x less than China. France even lower despite a bigger population that us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions