Energy prices.

[charlysays]

Even in Portugal 2 or 3 cloudy days means the solar hot water is too cold for a shower and the immersion heater has to be used. We get a lot more than 3 cloudy days here!
Hydro is great but almost every commercial source has been exploited already.
Tidal lagoons are more expensive than a barrage as you need to create 3 walls not one. Most tidal schemes have been abandoned due to silting and marine growth. Tidal lagoons aren't new either. There was actually one in Swansea in the 1800s at the same place where they want to build one now.

Oh for sure, you won't have a shower from it on a cloudy day but it will significantly reduce the work the immersion heater has to do. Even just a 10-15 degree rise in temp is worthwhile. On sunny days I've seen boiling water coming from them.

Yeah tidal lagoons aren't as good as a barrage but they certainly don't cause the issues with wetlands up stream that a barrage would.

There must be a way to make hydro work. Other countries manage it, even France has more hydro than we do which is ridiculous considering our huge coast line and enormous tidal range.

My mate has hydro on his smallholding. A stream, a 10m or so drop, a 1930s impeller / housing and a feed in setup. He basically doesn't pay any electricity bills and charges an electric car off it too. Maintenance isn't huge, mostly just brushing the screen clear where the partial diversion of the steam is. He's been doing it 20 years. Quids in.
Hard to imagine British industry can't scale it up a bit.

 

[fizzy]

Oh for sure, you won't have a shower from it on a cloudy day but it will significantly reduce the work the immersion heater has to do. Even just a 10-15 degree rise in temp is worthwhile. On sunny days I've seen boiling water coming from them.

Yeah tidal lagoons aren't as good as a barrage but they certainly don't cause the issues with wetlands up stream that a barrage would.

There must be a way to make hydro work. Other countries manage it, even France has more hydro than we do which is ridiculous considering our huge coast line and enormous tidal range.

My mate has hydro on his smallholding. A stream, a 10m or so drop, a 1930s impeller / housing and a feed in setup. He basically doesn't pay any electricity bills and charges an electric car off it too. Maintenance isn't huge, mostly just brushing the screen clear where the partial diversion of the steam is. He's been doing it 20 years. Quids in.
Hard to imagine British industry can't scale it up a bit.

France only has 1 tidal power station and has never built any more which says a lot.
As to hydro sadly Britain doesn't have the same topography as France, Norway or Canada. France has some pretty huge mountain ranges.

 

[merryman]

There has been quite a lot of micro-hydro quietly going in on rivers in Lancashire and Cumbria, probably the same in Wales, for some reason Archimedes screws seem to be flavor of the decade, even in low volume, high head, sites, which seems downright weird.

A few years back I saw someone proposing fitting the plinths used for offshore wind turbines with underwater propeller type turbines to catch the flow as tides go in and out, seemed like a good idea, as impact on the marine environment would be minimal, unlike barrages etc, but I haven't heard anything about them since.

 

[willie.macleod]

Experimental data has been produced showing charger efficiency from 49% to 77% (Kieldsen, et al., 2016) and 85.7% (Sears, et al., 2014). This is from the plug to the car.

The authors attribute these figures to value engineering of charging equipment to create readily affordable units rather than those capable of high efficiency. Further to this, Sears et al. state that “Under-dimensioned components cause higher heat dissipation that makes cooling necessary, which is an additional power consumption” meaning that in order to optimise charging efficiency, it is necessary to correctly specify components and software to reduce energy losses.

Sears et at. also states “A power converter with an efficiency of 95 % have a decrease in efficiency of 10 % when operating at half the nominal power”. It is apparent that in order to be able to advertise minimal charging duration, it is necessary to have a high charging capacity i.e.,43kW (63A, 400V) “rapid chargers”. The availability of these charging points is relatively low with only 21.3% of publicly available charging points being able to support ≥63A (Department for Transport, 2021_h). Thus, the majority of charging that will take place, especially for those who charge at home using a standard 13, 16 or 32 amp connection, will incur significant charging losses due to being below the designed peak efficiency of the charger.

If the experimentally derived charger efficiency data are applied to the manufacturer energy consumption figures, the energy usage “from the grid” can be calculated:

View attachment 345671

Are you suggesting here that the most efficient chargers are DC rapids charging at 43kW+?! I don't have access to the papers you are referencing but something doesn't add up here. Fast DC charging generates a lot of losses both in the charger and the battery itself. That's why your battery temperature increases and big fans kick into life in the charger stations to deal with the heat.

Your quote about charging at home incurring significant charging losses due to "below the designed peak efficiency of the charger" suggests a fundamental misunderstanding by the author about how EV chargers work. The rapid DC chargers are the big boxes that have their own heavy charging leads with either a CCS or a CHAdeMO connector. They ARE the charger, and offer direct access to the vehicles battery.

The onboard chargers in EVs are the ones that deal with the 13/16/32A AC connections. They are designed to run at this current level. The author is suggesting, that these chargers are very inefficient. So tonight I carried out my own test to confirm my numbers.

Left home at 69% charge. Reset car trip odometer, reset my miles/kWh. Travelled exactly 14 miles, stopped at council charger to wait for my wife and charge. This was a charge at 16A. Car took 4.11kWh to charge back to 69%.

14/4.11=3.41 miles per kWh.
Car miles per kWh over the 14 miles reading 3.8kWh (exactly what @fizzy was quoting for the model S - wet weather, headwind not helping me)
3.41/3.8*100 = 89.6% efficiency

I quoted 90% efficiency before, that's pretty much exactly what I got. I can repeat this using the rapid charger and charge at 43kW and see what that gets me, I suspect it will be much the same in my case. EV chargers are not as inefficient as that old paper makes out!

 

[Mr Fro]

Are you suggesting here that the most efficient chargers are DC rapids charging at 43kW+?! I don't have access to the papers you are referencing but something doesn't add up here. Fast DC charging generates a lot of losses both in the charger and the battery itself. That's why your battery temperature increases and big fans kick into life in the charger stations to deal with the heat.

Your quote about charging at home incurring significant charging losses due to "below the designed peak efficiency of the charger" suggests a fundamental misunderstanding by the author about how EV chargers work. The rapid DC chargers are the big boxes that have their own heavy charging leads with either a CCS or a CHAdeMO connector. They ARE the charger, and offer direct access to the vehicles battery.

The onboard chargers in EVs are the ones that deal with the 13/16/32A AC connections. They are designed to run at this current level. The author is suggesting, that these chargers are very inefficient. So tonight I carried out my own test to confirm my numbers.

Left home at 69% charge. Reset car trip odometer, reset my miles/kWh. Travelled exactly 14 miles, stopped at council charger to wait for my wife and charge. This was a charge at 16A. Car took 4.11kWh to charge back to 69%.

14/4.11=3.41 miles per kWh.
Car miles per kWh over the 14 miles reading 3.8kWh (exactly what @fizzy was quoting for the model S - wet weather, headwind not helping me)
3.41/3.8*100 = 89.6% efficiency

I quoted 90% efficiency before, that's pretty much exactly what I got. I can repeat this using the rapid charger and charge at 43kW and see what that gets me, I suspect it will be much the same in my case. EV chargers are not as inefficient as that old paper makes out!

Good for you.

 

[fizzy]

Looks like windfarms are taking advantage of us big time.

Wind farms earn hundreds of millions more from energy crisis after delaying Government subsidy contract

According to a new analysis, the taxpayer could be half-a-billion pounds worse off due to a recently revealed delay at just one wind farm

www.gbnews.uk

 

[brewdexta]

It's from GBnews, I wouldn't read that if you paid me.

 

[Kayos]

It's from GBnews, I wouldn't read that if you paid me.

It's like an even shoutier version of the Daily Mail

I won't click daily mail, gbnews or sun links, regardless of content

 

[Hood]

It's like an even shoutier version of the Daily Mail

I won't click daily mail, gbnews or sun links, regardless of content

I personally will look at all (well most) media from one extreme to the other and usually halfway between the two is where the truth is.

 

[Robotstar5]

It's like an even shoutier version of the Daily Mail

I won't click daily mail, gbnews or sun links, regardless of content

I sometimes click on them if something looks interesting, but I usually get a splash screen asking me to turn off my ad blocker, allow cookies etc. so I leave instead.

 

[brewdexta]

I'll look at any reliable news sources, but not media that peddle hate dressed up as news.

 

[JMS1972]

I'll look at any reliable news sources, but not media that peddle hate dressed up as news.

I get that, I've had to remove all news feeds from my phone it was affecting my mental health.

Now just watch TLDR news they do a daily bulletin with actual world news in it. Recommended....

https://youtube.com/c/TLDRDaily

 

[fizzy]

It's from GBnews, I wouldn't read that if you paid me.

The time and telegraph article is the same but you have to pay!

 

[fizzy]

I'll look at any reliable news sources, but not media that peddle hate dressed up as news.

Scotland’s largest wind farm ‘using net-zero loophole to exploit cost of living crisis’

Kwasi Kwarteng set to take action amidst concerns that owners of Moray East are cashing in rather than paying back to taxpayers

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[brewdexta]

I didn't mean that the one news item was necessarily wrong, I just don't want to support gbnews in any way shape or form.

Interestingly it's only right wing rags that are carrying the story from "government sources". An agenda maybe?

 

[fizzy]

I didn't mean that the one news item was necessarily wrong, I just don't want to support gbnews in any way shape or form.

Interestingly it's only right wing rags that are carrying the story from "government sources". An agenda maybe?

I have never watched GB News so didn't realise they were so bad. Was that the one Andrew Neil set up?

 

[Hood]

I have never watched GB News so didn't realise they were so bad. Was that the one Andrew Neil set up?

Aye, I think it was the one that brillo heid started or at least was involved in.

 

[brewdexta]

That's the one. The name is a complete oxymoron. Investors not based in the UK and mostly shovelling views not news.

 

[ajlelectronics]

That's the one. The name is a complete oxymoron. Investors not based in the UK and mostly shovelling views not news.

Sounds like every other news service, apart from the content. At least GB news was set up as antidote to the constant stream of "BBC" propaganda.

 

[brewdexta]

Sounds like every other news service, apart from the content. At least GB news was set up as antidote to the constant stream of "BBC" propaganda.

That is what they purport but they are in a similar vein.