Electric cars.

[hoppyscotty]

No but we shouldn't believe blindly what we're being told by those with incentives on either side of the argument, even the side you might agree with...its not as if organisations and institutions on any side of any argument or issue have never been found out to be wrong, incentivised to push a certain agenda or downright lied in the past. The fossil fuel industry is worth billions, but now so is the renewables industry and they're as incentivised to push the narrative and lobby the government towards policies that suits them just as much as the 'evil oil companies. I wouldn't believe what Shell says about the national Grid any more than I'd believe an anti fossil fuel YouTube channel when they try to tell us renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and are just better in every way. Very very rarely..i.e. almost never, are such complex issues this binary. But in actual fact nothing is wholly good or bad and everything has trade off's. It's the trade off's is what I'm interested in and where the debate should be centred.

Even if you are a climate change denier (and they're even lower than the flat earthers and moon landing deniers) you have to see the benefits and need to start to transition away from fossil fuels wherever possible anyway. It's a question of how and not if. What is missing is an objective cost benefit analysis - well they're not missing they've been done, but they don't always come out with the 'correct' answer so we never get to see them unless you search them out. The issue of climate change is and should be irrelevant - there are plenty of other good social political reasons to transition away from fossil fuels. But it's going to take centuries and require the invention of technologies we cant even imagine yet...and big clue...the answer is not batteries...they're no more sustainable than fossil fuels.

We narrowly avoided blackouts last winter apparently, ironically because we had an unseasonably warm winter...or at least a warmer winter than expected...if we'd had a colder winter then the chances are we would have had blackouts because we're running our electricity generating capacity too close to its max capacity, which is where the National Grid claiming that "all is OK...nothing to see here" doesn't quite add up...so climate change (warming) saved us from energy blackouts it would seem...but we're told climate change (warming) is all bad...but last winter it seems it was good.....go figure. So whatever state our national grid is in it clearly isn't ready to double or triple the demand on it any time soon. But we'll see, this winter is shaping up to be a cold one and if we have energy blackouts then that will be an awakener for alot of people.

 

[AlBrew]

Should I feel stupid because I read what the National Grid says about their own network and believed it? What would they have to gain by lying? Surely if they admitted their network, for some mysterious reason, can't handle any more than 50% of the load it could handle 20 years ago, they'd get more investment?

No you shouldn't, you provided some information with a link to the source, the reply was just "I think not" followed by some conspiracy propoganda musings, which is just an opinion, didn't even have an anecdote to back it up.

 

[tigertim]

So whatever state our national grid is in it clearly isn't ready to double or triple the demand on it any time soon.

But it doesn't need to double or triple its output - it largely just needs to scale output down less at night. Even if they are lying about (or even just exaggerating) their large theoretical headroom, there's an additional~12GW of capacity available at night before reaching the output it's currently producing at this precise moment.

ETA: I seem to remember the feared energy blackouts last winter were mainly as a result of worries about natural gas availability due to Pootin, as the rest of Europe also scrambled to secure LNG resources - nothing to do with a lack of energy generation capacity.

 

[hoppyscotty]

No you shouldn't, you provided some information with a link to the source, the reply was just "I think not" followed by some conspiracy propoganda musings, which is just an opinion, didn't even have an anecdote to back it up.

My comment was based on the apparent possibility of blackouts but that anecdote came later...so claims that all is OK doesn't appear to fit with their claim that all is OK. Not claiming its even my opinion...just saying it doesn't make sense in the context of our current lack of spare capacity. Of course smoothing can help when it comes to battery powered things but how much of our energy demand can be transitioned over to batteries. Maybe the NG has a very pessimistic assumption about the take up of BEV's in their modelling, at least initially.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

No but we shouldn't believe blindly what we're being told by those with incentives on either side of the argument,

I have seen this bloke showing videos of his solar set up with he uses for his house and to charge his car i think we can assume he will give us his honest opinion -

If you dont want to watch him tear holes in what the Daily Mail journo said in his article watch from the start of the second video.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Yes I've seen him he does good content - I think he demonstrates what the art of the possible is if you invest many tens of thousands of pounds on your house and cars - the reality is most people don't have the funds, or if they did are too old to make the investment pay, nor have a suitable home to replicate his setup so we cant assume that his set up will be a typical or even common setup up and down the country. Just speculation...not an opinion, anecdote, or conspiracy theory....

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Yes I've seen him he does good content - I think he demonstrates what the art of the possible is if you invest many tens of thousands of pounds on your house and cars - the reality is most people don't have the funds, or if they so we cant assume that his set up will be a typical or even common setup up and down the country. Just speculation...not an opinion, anecdote, or conspiracy theory....

This is not about his solar set up its about him giving his honest views on the subject of the lights going out "When we all switch to EV" and him providing links to back up everything he says, the bottom line is there is enough electricity being produced now and there will be enough as we move through the 2040 and beyond.

 

[MashBag]

South Korea can deliver nuclear plants at a third of the cost we can in the UK.

I am sure that applies to hs2 projects and water projects as well, for obvious reasons.

 

[hoppyscotty]

This is not about his solar set up its about him giving his honest views on the subject of the lights going out "When we all switch to EV" and him providing links to back up everything he says, the bottom line is there is enough electricity being produced now and there will be enough as we move through the 2040 and beyond.

Yep got that...was commenting on his other videos I've seen that are more around demonstrating domestic solar and heat pumps do work and debunking the myths around them, but either way its a huge investment.

But it seems we've been a net importer of electricity for 40 years, which was a surprise to me, so I guess that means we don't have sufficient generating capacity to be self supporting? we can just buy lekky off our neighbours. Another surprise to me, and the missing piece in the jigsaw, is our electricity demand is reducing...and has been reducing since about 2004, despite an increasing population. I always thought that though we're being more efficient with our energy use through improved tech that the growth in population outpaced that, but it seems not. But ultimately if we can just purchase more lekky from our neighbours as and when we need it then that seems to be the strategy thats worked fine for the last 40 years...so I guess we're all good then.

 

[MashBag]

Should I feel stupid because I read what the National Grid says about their own network and believed it?

Its not an ideal position

What would they have to gain by lying?

Er... loads

Surely if they admitted their network, for some mysterious reason, can't handle any more than 50% of the load it could handle 20 years ago, they'd get more investment?

Would you invest in something that clearly had **** management?

 

[AlBrew]

Its not an ideal position


Er... loads


Would you invest in something that clearly had **** management?

I did

 

[tigertim]

Its not an ideal position


Er... loads


Would you invest in something that clearly had **** management?

Looks like another response which contradicts, but gives no examples or points to any evidence.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Given that the national grid only provides around 20% of the UK's overall energy requirements and road transport is 30% of the UK's energy consumption then the transition to EV's is shifting a huge amount of energy demand from direct petrol and over to the grid. Without significant expansion of the national grid generating and distribution capacity we have no chance in supporting the move from gas and diesel/petrol over to electric options.

We're going round in circles here, but you have to remember the greater energy efficiency of electric way up thread I estimated that replacing the entire UK vehicle fleet - trucks and all - would add about 18GW of continuous demand, or 54GW for 8 hours a night. The average British car drives less than 20 miles a day on average - for a modern EV that's less than 5kWh - and it's relatively steady through the year and most of it is demand that can easily be shifted off-peak. As I said earlier, I know someone who was in the sweet spot where they were doing 15-20,000 miles a year powered entirely by charging overnight at home. Electrifying heating is relatively more challenging as it's much more seasonal and harder to time-shift, other than for small flats where Economy 7 storage heaters are probably the best option.

But 18GW continuous or 54GW at night over a couple of decades is doable - not nothing ,but doable.

So there is currently 50% over capacity on the national grid right now??? I think not.

There's two separate issues - power generation capacity and grid capacity. Both need to increase, the problem with the grid is not so much total capacity as local bottlenecks, which are a big problem but which are being worked on.

We narrowly avoided blackouts last winter apparently, ironically because we had an unseasonably warm winter...or at least a warmer winter than expected...if we'd had a colder winter then the chances are we would have had blackouts because we're running our electricity generating capacity too close to its max capacity, which is where the National Grid claiming that "all is OK...nothing to see here" doesn't quite add up...so climate change (warming) saved us from energy blackouts it would seem...but we're told climate change (warming) is all bad...but last winter it seems it was good.....go figure. So whatever state our national grid is in it clearly isn't ready to double or triple the demand on it any time soon. But we'll see, this winter is shaping up to be a cold one and if we have energy blackouts then that will be an awakener for alot of people.

You're misunderstanding the problem last winter, which was not about power stations, but a lack of fuel for them. Europe as a whole barely had enough gas in storage to heat itself and power its gas-fired power stations, never mind sparing any for the UK. We have almost no gas storage - we avoided Brussels' requirement to build gas storage facilities because at the time we could meet our demand from the North Sea, but now that North Sea gas is in decline - overall we import about half our gas, we told ourselves that we didn't need to build storage because we'd always be able to import liquified natural gas (LNG). Which is fine until you are in the real world of last year, where the price of LNG went up 10x and there simply wasn't any spare on the world market.

So burning gas - for heating or to generate electricity - is not as reliable as one might think, you need the gas before you can burn it. We currently import half our gas and some of our oil and those numbers are only going to go up. So the question for those advocating "business as usual" is - are you kidding yourself about the reliability and security of fossil fuels? How much needs to be spent on gas storage and warships to secure our gas supply? What happens if there's wars involving Russia and the Middle East at the same time? Oh, hold on...

Or is it a better plan to conserve our limited supplies of domestic gas for use only when the wind doesn't blow, but otherwise generate most of our electricity cheaply from domestic sources of renewables? This report from the government's advisors on this stuff suggest that by 2035 our mix in a typical year could look like 70% variable renewables, 20% low-carbon baseload (nuclear and eg biogas) and 10% storage, with just 2% of our electricity being generated from natural gas. I don't agree with all of it, and part of its purpose is to prod the government into doing things that aren't happening at the moment, but it's well worth a read if you're interested in this stuff.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/delivering-a-reliable-decarbonised-power-system/

 

[Chippy_Tea]

But ultimately if we can just purchase more lekky from our neighbours as and when we need it then that seems to be the strategy thats worked fine for the last 40 years...so I guess we're all good then.

You need to read the whole thread, I won't go into detail as it has all been covered but one example is below, we won't need to generate a huge amount of electricity we will use less in other areas.

It takes about 6 kWh of electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline, which can drive a normal car about 30 miles. It also takes about 6 kWh of electricity to drive an electric car 30 miles.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It’s also important to bear in mind that a significant amount of electricity is used to refine oil for petrol and diesel. Fully Charged’s video Volts for Oil estimates that refining 1 gallon of petrol would use around 4.5kWh of electricity

It takes about 6 kWh of electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline

1 gallon of petrol takes 4.5kw of energy to refine? Doesn't quite pass the BS test.

4.5kWh of energy is plausible, 4.5kWh of electricity raises an eyebrow, as most of the energy consumed in refineries comes from "burning" crude oil and associated gas, rather than buying in electricity from the grid.

From what I can tell, most of these figures have their origins in a series of reports from Argonne National Laboratory, which looked at total energy going in and out of refineries in the US and came up with 85-90% of the energy in came out again - it varies depending on the refinery and what assumptions you make, like whether you count the energy content of asphalt. Split the difference and call it 87.5%, then 12.5% of the energy in crude oil is consumed in refining. There's 8.9kWh in a litre of petrol, so 33.7kWh in a US gallon (which is what most of the numbers on the internet use) and 40.5kWh in an imperial gallon. So there was 46.3kWh in the crude oil used to make that imperial gallon of petrol and 5.9kWh has been used in the process, or 38.5kWh and 4.8kWh for the US gallon.

But on average in the US only 1/25 of that energy comes from grid electricity.

https://publications.anl.gov/anlpubs/2011/01/69026.pdf

. Of course smoothing can help when it comes to battery powered things but how much of our energy demand can be transitioned over to batteries. Maybe the NG has a very pessimistic assumption about the take up of BEV's in their modelling, at least initially.

The whole of the teatime peak is being transitioned to grid batteries, which will help a lot - there's planning permission for 20-25GW of battery storage with the same again in pre-planning.

But no, the NG aren't being particularly pessimistic about BEVs, it's just that BEVs aren't too much of a problem - as I say electrifying heating is rather more difficult.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

ELECTRIC VEHICLE GRID IMPACT​

Myth buster -
Fact: If 80% of all passenger cars become electric, this would lead to a total increase of 10-15% in electricity consumption.

So far, the market entry of EVs has been very predictable and the electric grid is constantly being developed in parallel. Current EV market trends show low to moderate energy uptake rates.

The projected growth in e-mobility will not drive an immediate or substantial increase in total electrical-grid power demand, according to a study by McKinsey & Company. This means EV’s aren’t likely to cause any abrupt surprises or disruptions in our power supply and there is no need for new electricity-generation capacity in the near future.

If we take Germany as an example, EV growth won’t cause any large increases in power demand through 2030. On the contrary, EVs could add 1% to the total and require about five extra gigawatts (GW) of generation capacity. That amount could grow to roughly 4% by 2050, which would only require an additional capacity of about 20 GW. Moreover, this new-build capacity will likely involve renewables, including wind and solar power, with some gas-powered generation.

At the same time, electric vehicles are 5 to 6 times more energy-efficient than the best internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicle. In passenger cars, EVs consume 25% the amount of energy in comparison to ICE vehicles. E-trucks consume about 50% of their diesel equivalents’ own energy consumption.

This means that when a majority of the vehicles on our streets are electric, the total amount of energy consumed in transport is significantly less than what it is now. And electric vehicles only continue to get more efficient and green.

https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-will-overload-the-power-grid

 

[AlBrew]

ELECTRIC VEHICLE GRID IMPACT​

Fact: If 80% of all passenger cars become electric, this would lead to a total increase of 10-15% in electricity consumption.

So far, the market entry of EVs has been very predictable and the electric grid is constantly being developed in parallel. Current EV market trends show low to moderate energy uptake rates.

The projected growth in e-mobility will not drive an immediate or substantial increase in total electrical-grid power demand, according to a study by McKinsey & Company. This means EV’s aren’t likely to cause any abrupt surprises or disruptions in our power supply and there is no need for new electricity-generation capacity in the near future.

If we take Germany as an example, EV growth won’t cause any large increases in power demand through 2030. On the contrary, EVs could add 1% to the total and require about five extra gigawatts (GW) of generation capacity. That amount could grow to roughly 4% by 2050, which would only require an additional capacity of about 20 GW. Moreover, this new-build capacity will likely involve renewables, including wind and solar power, with some gas-powered generation.

At the same time, electric vehicles are 5 to 6 times more energy-efficient than the best internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicle. In passenger cars, EVs consume 25% the amount of energy in comparison to ICE vehicles. E-trucks consume about 50% of their diesel equivalents’ own energy consumption.

This means that when a majority of the vehicles on our streets are electric, the total amount of energy consumed in transport is significantly less than what it is now. And electric vehicles only continue to get more efficient and green.

https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-buster-electric-vehicles-will-overload-the-power-grid

A very quick search confirms all of this, I find it hard to even find anything negative on the subject (from Google at least). I was going to post links to the top 10 search results but it feels like I'm wasting my time and allowing false ballance in the debate by giving it so much effort.

 

[Bernie]

About EV fires

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-fires

 

[JockyBrewer]

About EV fires

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-fires

That article somewhat encapsulates the problem around EV fire discussion at the moment.

The article talks about how firefighters will need to develop and learn techniques for fighting EV fires, the same as they have developed ICE fire fighting techniques for the past 100 years.

And yet the first comment:
"Talk to a fireman, they will tell you it takes ten times more water to put out. The acid from fire is far more deadly."

 

[Bernie]

That article somewhat encapsulates the problem around EV fire discussion at the moment.

The article talks about how firefighters will need to develop and learn techniques for fighting EV fires, the same as they have developed ICE fire fighting techniques for the past 100 years.

And yet the first comment:
"Talk to a fireman, they will tell you it takes ten times more water to put out. The acid from fire is far more deadly."

This is exactly the point of the article; firemen need to be better informed. There's no acid in Li ion batteries, the electrolyte is one of a range of flammable organics.