Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => That CAN'T be true! => Topic started by: Jolly2 on 26/12/2020 04:22:28
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Arguing that electric cars are more environmentally friendly because they are electric as many do while ignoring the real environment damage that is comming more from the mining of the materials to make the cars and the system of overall production, beside the fact that the energy source that powers the vehicle can also be highly damaging to the environment, seems to me rather rediculas.
Hence I consider the suggestion that electric cars are more environmentally friendly as merely an expression of green wash.
There will surely be no environmentally friendly vehicles until the entire production line, energy sourses, waste and repair management are also environmentally friendly.
This goes down the line with everything we produce I would argue, as such the issue has never been consumption it has always been production.
If products are created in an environmentally friendly way, sustainably, with limited waste that doesnt damage the environment, there should be no issue at all with consumption.
Yet somehow producers have managed to shift the blame for their production choices onto consumers, when often consumers have no idea about the actual production methods in use by a given company and they certainly do have the ability or time to check every available product or necessarily they dont even have the necessary skills to identify what is or is not environmentally sustainable and that's also with in a background where companies seek to hide their negative behaviours intentionally.
Ergo throwing all the blame on to consumers is a joke and a half.
I heard recently that 100 companies produce 70% of the worlds Co2, it has been a rather long standing statistic that corporate business practice accounts for around 75% of all environment damage and pollution, yet somehow its consumers that are to blame?
The constant mantra about lowering consumption which is comming from the corporate sector that is in control of the environmental narrative as they fund the research, own the media companies and are driving the ideas and are using their position simply to lay the blame where it doesn't belong.
Ofcourse they want to maximize profits and not pay the true cost of their business practice. But if that practice isn't addressed as the principle issue, I argue no amount of change is going to achieve anything.
Ultimately the corporate sector made the problem and it appears rather then actually attend the issue they seeking to carry on regardless but force mankind to compensate their failures and lack of willingness to pay the true cost of their production.
I find it hard to believe those responsible will ever be capable of solving this problem. Ergo we need a better option.
Suggestions welcome.
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Ergo throwing all the blame on to consumers is a joke and a half.
The idea of capitalism is that businesses should provide what consumers demand.
If consumers demand more environmentally friendly products, then a capitalist economy should produce them, fairly efficiently.
- I agree with you that this environmental assessment should cover the whole lifecycle
- That is why some European legislation is aimed at the manufacturer paying the costs of disposing of the product, so they design products that have a long lifetime, and are easier to recycle.
There is a limited number of consumers who want to buy a car in a given year. A car manufacturer can probably get 3x the profit from a car that has 3x the price, 3x the mass, and consumes 3x the petrol; so their corporate mission becomes "persuade the consumer that they need a gas-guzzler".
- As I recall, several decades ago the US car industry painted itself into a similar corner. The US car industry crashed, as small Japanese cars took their market (now a number of other small cars from Asia, Europe and USA are available)
- Now the electric cars seem to be the flavor of the decade
Economic studies have shown that green industries generate as much economic output as traditional industries (and inspire more innovation than traditional manufacturers). But politicians today are being sponsored by the big manufacturers today, not the big manufacturers of tomorrow, so "bought" politicians are always looking backwards, never forwards.
By promoting an awareness of "green" credentials, we should be steering consumer choices, and government incentives towards effectively solving the needs of tomorrow, not the propping up creaking achievements of yesterday.
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Pretty much every part of a gasoline or diesel engine can be replaced or reworked with very little environmental impact. Body shells can be melted down and re-formed, and a fair bit of scrap plastic now appears as vehicle moldings. Unlimited but unreliable free electricity from wind can be used to convert biological waste into reliable fuel and oil, which then gets recycled as the next generation of plants converts the exhaust CO2 and H2O back to sugars.
So with a bit of capital investment the internal combustion vehicles already on the road, on the sea and in the sky can be made to run on sunshine. Jet engines are a bit more complicated but nobody was manufacturing turbine blades from single crystals a century ago, so who knows what next? What's not to like?
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Pretty much every part of a gasoline or diesel engine can be replaced or reworked with very little environmental impact. Body shells can be melted down and re-formed,
I'm sure there is some pollution, with gas releases from that process, and possibly waste from elements of body shells that can't be remoulded, or residues from cleaning processes in preparation for remoulding.
They would have to be addressed also. But I see your point.
. and a fair bit of scrap plastic now appears as vehicle moldings.
As above.
Unlimited but unreliable free electricity from wind
Again the manufacture of wind turbines is not environmentally friendly currently. There need to be a shift in production methods.
can be used to convert biological waste into reliable fuel and oil, which then gets recycled as the next generation of plants converts the exhaust CO2 and H2O back to sugars.
So with a bit of capital investment the internal combustion vehicles already on the road, on the sea and in the sky can be made to run on sunshine. Jet engines are a bit more complicated but nobody was manufacturing turbine blades from single crystals a century ago, so who knows what next? What's not to like?
There are definitely positives.
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Ergo throwing all the blame on to consumers is a joke and a half.
The idea of capitalism is that businesses should provide what consumers demand.
No thats AN idea of capitalism, there are many forms a capitalist system can take.
If consumers demand more environmentally friendly products, then a capitalist economy should produce them, fairly efficiently.
The "Should" is a huge assumption. Capitalists refuse to pay the full cost of their business, and have happily lied about or hidden their real activities, consumer demands can be manipulated, that is why there is a massive investment into advertising and marketing precisely to manipulate consumer demand, and the companies responsible for the problem are the very ones funding the advertisers to promote their products often with green wash; which we see massively happening, "free range eggs" as an example they open the door at the end if the shed allowing any chickens that are able to go outside to wonder around a few square meters of fenced in dirt. The image they sell bares no relationship to the reality.
The very suggestion that consumers drive production is a lie the producers love, it entirely shields them.
Sandwiches had to promoted arround 5 sperate times, years apart, because no one wanted ready made sandwiches, repeatedly they tried to sell ready made sandwich and everytime they ended up selling none, but eventually after advertising and marketing campaigns people started to buy them. consumers WERE NOT ASKING FOR READY MADE SANDWICHES! Producers decided they would impose a product on people they never asked for.
So its simply a lie that producers respond to consumer demand. Producers rather make their products(widgets) as they choose and then convince people to buy them via advertising.
The little consideration given to consumers by producers is merely "what can we do to make you buy our product?"
As such I categorically disagree with the suggestion consumers can have any serious impact, they can have some but producers hold all the cards.
- I agree with you that this environmental assessment should cover the whole lifecycle
- That is why some European legislation is aimed at the manufacturer paying the costs of disposing of the product, so they design products that have a long lifetime, and are easier to recycle.
Designed obsolescence should be outlawed for most products. Consumers should be able to upgrade and repair products, rather then having to throw them away and buy new every few years.
There is a limited number of consumers who want to buy a car in a given year. A car manufacturer can probably get 3x the profit from a car that has 3x the price, 3x the mass, and consumes 3x the petrol; so their corporate mission becomes "persuade the consumer that they need a gas-guzzler".
- As I recall, several decades ago the US car industry painted itself into a similar corner. The US car industry crashed, as small Japanese cars took their market (now a number of other small cars from Asia, Europe and USA are available)
- Now the electric cars seem to be the flavor of the decade
There are two types of people who buy a car, the first require the functionality the latter want a status symbol. I have little time for the latter.
Economic studies have shown that green industries generate as much economic output as traditional industries (and inspire more innovation than traditional manufacturers).
Inherently they will simply because they have more concerns in the production process.
But politicians today are being sponsored by the big manufacturers today, not the big manufacturers of tomorrow, so "bought" politicians are always looking backwards, never forwards.
Sponsored a word, bribed is a better one.
By promoting an awareness of "green" credentials, we should be steering consumer choices, and government incentives towards effectively solving the needs of tomorrow, not the propping up creaking achievements of yesterday.
Except as you say, governments are under the yoke of old business and old business owns the media, and funds the advertising, and has I would suggest a GREEN WASH solution that doesn't actually change anything.
I think it's time the politics like education are free from the telos of business.
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I worked as a baker 60 years ago. I don't think I've ever seen an advert for a ready-made sandwich: they fly off the shelves all by themselves. Granted it took some time for packaging to evolve to the point that they could be made in a factory and shipped to supermarkets, but it always seemed to me to be a sensible response to a latent demand.
I once arrived in Linlithgow at 1 pm to visit a client at 1.30. Feeling more than a little peckish I followed my nose to a bakers shop whose window was crammed with pies, pasties, rolls and sandwiches. On the door was a notice "CLOSED FOR LUNCH".
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I had a similar experience in Scotland I went to a bakers shop to buy a sandwich but was told no sandwiches because the had run out of bread while all around there were wrapped cut loaves for sale, apparently it was a bookmaking problem I had to buy a cut loaf ,unwrap it and had to present the good lady with some slices and ask her to put some filling in and take the remaining bread away and dunp it
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The root of the problem is status competition.
A consumer society is one in which people compete for status by consuming stuff, and thus the economy, and use of resources grows exponentially as people consume more and more. Marketing men devise ever more manipulative ways making people feel inadequate and inducing them to throw away perfectly good stuff and buy new. This is what the fashion industry does when an elite at the top of society decides to do something different. Conspicuous outrage psychology professor Steven Pinker calls it: demonstrating status by saying "look at me I'm so high status I don't need to conform to society's norms and follow others". The social layer beneath then seeks to acquire status by copying, followed by the next layer down, and the next etc. As this occurs, each layer then has to change again in order to avoid looking like the copycats beneath, and so the process perpetuates indefinitely, consuming resources and creating waste as it goes. In Spent, Geoffrey Miller describes an entertaining example of marketing: luxury car manufacturers advertising in magazines bought by poor people who could never afford to buy one. Why? Because it fuels the jealousy that makes the rich people buy them.
The problem of course is that status competition is a zero sum game. If the Jones' are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Smiths, and the Smiths are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Jones', then they become locked into an escalating war when no amount of consumption can ever make them both happy at the same time.
Then there's habituation. When you're driving to the car dealer's to pick up your new car, you're full of excitement at how it's going to improve your drive to work, but you've completely forgotten that you once felt exactly the same way about the one you're sitting in, and now can't wait to get rid of.
You often hear talk of 'built-in obsolescence' blamed for waste, but this is naive, throw-away products are an inevitable consequence of economic growth (and miniaturisation). Economic growth occurs because automation is used to produce more stuff with the same labour, making everyone richer, but one persons income is another's labour charge, so as we all get richer labour becomes more and more unaffordable, and labour-intensive activities become uneconomical. Whilst manufacture is easily automated, because it involves repeating the same steps endlessly, repair isn't, because each fault is (relatively) unique. Thus as the economy grows, more and more products become uneconomical repair, who's going to spend £20-30 on skilled labour to mend a kettle when you can buy a new one for £15? (Public services are generally more labour intensive than the private sector too, but people who don't understand this point to the growth of the public sector as evidence of a left-wing takeover when it's actually just another by-product of economic growth.)
As Steven Pinker also points out, waste itself is a status symbol: "Look at me, I can afford to throw away all this perfectly good stuff". I can remember 'money saving expert' Martin Lewis being puzzled that he overheard someone in a queue boasting about spending a fortune on gym membership he never used. No puzzle really, it's an example of conspicuous waste. Buying a Rolex instead of a Timex, buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford, buying gold plated bath taps instead of chrome, all examples of needless consumption in the pursuit of status.
What's needed is an alternative to consumption as a means of competing for status.
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The root of the problem is status competition.
A consumer society is one in which people compete for status by consuming stuff, and thus the economy, and use of resources grows exponentially as people consume more and more. Marketing men devise ever more manipulative ways making people feel inadequate and inducing them to throw away perfectly good stuff and buy new. This is what the fashion industry does when an elite at the top of society decides to do something different. Conspicuous outrage psychology professor Steven Pinker calls it: demonstrating status by saying "look at me I'm so high status I don't need to conform to society's norms and follow others". The social layer beneath then seeks to acquire status by copying, followed by the next layer down, and the next etc. As this occurs, each layer then has to change again in order to avoid looking like the copycats beneath, and so the process perpetuates indefinitely, consuming resources and creating waste as it goes. In Spent, Geoffrey Miller describes an entertaining example of marketing: luxury car manufacturers advertising in magazines bought by poor people who could never afford to buy one. Why? Because it fuels the jealousy that makes the rich people buy them.
I doubt that, seems more likley the rich seek approval amongst their peers the beggars dont fit on their radar.
The problem of course is that status competition is a zero sum game. If the Jones' are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Smiths, and the Smiths are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Jones', then they become locked into an escalating war when no amount of consumption can ever make them both happy at the same time.
Then there's habituation. When you're driving to the car dealer's to pick up your new car, you're full of excitement at how it's going to improve your drive to work, but you've completely forgotten that you once felt exactly the same way about the one you're sitting in, and now can't wait to get rid of.
You often hear talk of 'built-in obsolescence' blamed for waste, but this is naive,
Disagree, products created to be repaired, upgraded, and adapted for other uses, have a completely different form of production. And the suggestion that phones that can be repaired, and upgraded easily would make more waste then what we currently have is rediculas.
throw-away products are an inevitable consequence of economic growth (and miniaturisation). Economic growth occurs because automation is used to produce more stuff with the same labour, making everyone richer,
Doesnt make everyone richer makes those that own the machines richer.
but one persons income is another's labour charge, so as we all get richer labour becomes more and more unaffordable, and labour-intensive activities become uneconomical.
Disagree the issue isnt labour costs, it's excessive profits. Increased wages increases disposable income, prices find there position in a fluctuating market place, the argument you espouse is more a complaint those who seek to pay less make.
These are all arguments about profit.
Whilst manufacture is easily automated, because it involves repeating the same steps endlessly, repair isn't,
Which is also an answer to the mass unemployment automation threatens.
because each fault is (relatively) unique. Thus as the economy grows, more and more products become uneconomical repair, who's going to spend £20-30 on skilled labour to mend a kettle when you can buy a new one for £15? (Public services are generally more labour intensive than the private sector too,
The only way you are getting a 15 buck kettle is from sweat shops in Asia, terrible mining conditions, and extreme exploitation. 15 buck kettles shouldnt exist and only exist as an example of the profit driven insanity this system exists by.
but people who don't understand this point to the growth of the public sector as evidence of a left-wing takeover when it's actually just another by-product of economic growth.)
As Steven Pinker also points out, waste itself is a status symbol: "Look at me, I can afford to throw away all this perfectly good stuff". I can remember 'money saving expert' Martin Lewis being puzzled that he overheard someone in a queue boasting about spending a fortune on gym membership he never used. No puzzle really, it's an example of conspicuous waste. Buying a Rolex instead of a Timex, buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford, buying gold plated bath taps instead of chrome, all examples of needless consumption in the pursuit of status.
This is consumption by the 1% it's not as wasteful as you suggest simply because it is limited by the numbers engaging in it.
What's needed is an alternative to consumption as a means of competing for status.
Disagree we simply need better products, produced in a better way. Quality not price should drive economic incentives, and sustainability should be a mark of high quality
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The root of the problem is status competition.
A consumer society is one in which people compete for status by consuming stuff, and thus the economy, and use of resources grows exponentially as people consume more and more. Marketing men devise ever more manipulative ways making people feel inadequate and inducing them to throw away perfectly good stuff and buy new. This is what the fashion industry does when an elite at the top of society decides to do something different. Conspicuous outrage psychology professor Steven Pinker calls it: demonstrating status by saying "look at me I'm so high status I don't need to conform to society's norms and follow others". The social layer beneath then seeks to acquire status by copying, followed by the next layer down, and the next etc. As this occurs, each layer then has to change again in order to avoid looking like the copycats beneath, and so the process perpetuates indefinitely, consuming resources and creating waste as it goes. In Spent, Geoffrey Miller describes an entertaining example of marketing: luxury car manufacturers advertising in magazines bought by poor people who could never afford to buy one. Why? Because it fuels the jealousy that makes the rich people buy them.
I doubt that, seems more likley the rich seek approval amongst their peers the beggars don’t fit on their radar.
It’s obvious that all levels of society compete with their peers for status. Even the poor will buy consumer goods they don’t need (often on credit from loan sharks) when they can barely afford essentials, simply because they see their friends & family with the latest iPhone or TV or whatever. They don’t want to feel left out, because it’s humiliating, so they will pay for the things that people notice by skimping on something that’s less conspicuous instead.
The problem of course is that status competition is a zero sum game. If the Jones' are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Smiths, and the Smiths are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Jones', then they become locked into an escalating war when no amount of consumption can ever make them both happy at the same time.
Then there's habituation. When you're driving to the car dealer's to pick up your new car, you're full of excitement at how it's going to improve your drive to work, but you've completely forgotten that you once felt exactly the same way about the one you're sitting in, and now can't wait to get rid of.
You often hear talk of 'built-in obsolescence' blamed for waste, but this is naive,
Disagree, products created to be repaired, upgraded, and adapted for other uses, have a completely different form of production. And the suggestion that phones that can be repaired, and upgraded easily would make more waste then what we currently have is rediculas.
I designed radios for a living, you won’t get far lecturing me how they’re manufactured and repaired. Electronic consumer goods are less repairable than they were because they’re integrated, miniaturised, and cheaper to manufacture whilst the skilled labour of a repairman has just gone up and up in price, along with his income.
throw-away products are an inevitable consequence of economic growth (and miniaturisation). Economic growth occurs because automation is used to produce more stuff with the same labour, making everyone richer,
Doesnt make everyone richer makes those that own the machines richer.
So the poor in society still live like mediaeval peasant farmers then, with no electricity, potable water, healthcare, education, transport etc? Yes, of course they do. All but the very poorest enjoy some level of consumer goods too, such as washing machines, fridges, cookers, TVs, and radios. There weren’t many of those around in the Middle Ages.
but one persons income is another's labour charge, so as we all get richer labour becomes more and more unaffordable, and labour-intensive activities become uneconomical.
Disagree the issue isnt labour costs, it's excessive profits. Increased wages increases disposable income, prices find there position in a fluctuating market place, the argument you espouse is more a complaint those who seek to pay less make.
These are all arguments about profit.
You’ve just contradicted yourself. First you say there are excessive profits then you say prices find their own level in a competitive market place. Profits or not, as labour gets more expensive, labour intensive activities also get more expensive, that’s why a lot of employment has moved to the far east.
Whilst manufacture is easily automated, because it involves repeating the same steps endlessly, repair isn't,
Which is also an answer to the mass unemployment automation threatens.
This is so obviously untrue it’s absurd, it was the Luddites argument, and history has proved them spectacularly wrong.
(In England) 500 years ago, 58% of the workforce was employed on the land just to grow enough to feed everyone, now it’s 1.2%. Why, because most of the work is now done by mechanisation. Are the other 57% all unemployed? No, of course they aren’t, because they now have jobs producing all the wealth we simply wouldn’t have if they were still needed to feed us. The reason we have wealth like cars, TVs, washing machines, fridges etc. is because automation has freed up spare labour that would otherwise have been needed elsewhere.
because each fault is (relatively) unique. Thus as the economy grows, more and more products become uneconomical repair, who's going to spend £20-30 on skilled labour to mend a kettle when you can buy a new one for £15? (Public services are generally more labour intensive than the private sector too,
The only way you are getting a 15 buck kettle is from sweat shops in Asia, terrible mining conditions, and extreme exploitation. 15 buck kettles shouldnt exist and only exist as an example of the profit driven insanity this system exists by.
The reason goods are cheaper to manufacture in Asia is that their labour is cheaper, because they are less wealthy, because they are less developed, because they started to industrialise later. If allowed to continue, trade will eventually level out the difference in wealth, and our labour will become more competitive again, but therein lies the problem, the environment can’t sustain the level of economic activity we already have, let alone more. What’s needed is a reduction in consumption by the first world who consume the most.
but people who don't understand this point to the growth of the public sector as evidence of a left-wing takeover when it's actually just another by-product of economic growth.)
As Steven Pinker also points out, waste itself is a status symbol: "Look at me, I can afford to throw away all this perfectly good stuff". I can remember 'money saving expert' Martin Lewis being puzzled that he overheard someone in a queue boasting about spending a fortune on gym membership he never used. No puzzle really, it's an example of conspicuous waste. Buying a Rolex instead of a Timex, buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford, buying gold plated bath taps instead of chrome, all examples of needless consumption in the pursuit of status.
This is consumption by the 1% it's not as wasteful as you suggest simply because it is limited by the numbers engaging in it.
Around 90% of the world’s wealth is consumed by just 10% of the world’s population. That’s us in the first world, we are the problem. With just a 20% reduction in our consumption you could triple the income of the poor without any additional burden on the planet.
What's needed is an alternative to consumption as a means of competing for status.
Disagree we simply need better products, produced in a better way. Quality not price should drive economic incentives, and sustainability should be a mark of high quality
And by the time you’ve finished producing these utopian products, there will still be a population competing to consume more and more of them in order to outdo their mates. The problem is that status is measured in relative consumption, but environmental damage is measured in absolute consumption, meanwhile, the ones who already have the most are the ones striving hardest to consume more. If you want to fix a problem you need to identify the cause first.
One final word on status: it really is important, and not the fatuous pursuit that my posts may have made it appear. Professor Michael Marmot has done a lifetime of research into this, and status is one of the biggest determinants of both mortality and morbidity. Low status kills, and before you come back with the obvious retort: yes, poverty kills too, but low status kills as well, quite independently of poverty. It’s a serious problem for society, because as I said above, status competition is a zero sum game.
In this respect, I think that the Scandinavian countries have it nearer to right than the rest of us. They’ve reduced wealth inequality to a much lower level than most, and it appears they are less preoccupied with status, and have lower levels of many of the social ills that plague western societies.
The ethos of the meritocracy has a lot to answer for in my view. On the face of it, it sounds entirely reasonable: “you too can win the race if you just run faster”, but the problem is that that implies that if everyone runs faster they can all win, which is patently absurd. Winning (and status) is a zero sum game, so in a society where everyone runs as fast as they can (or consumes as much as they can), there will still be some who come last, and by the light of the meritocracy, they’re lazy good-for-nothings who deserve their position in society. There have to be winners and losers, but the winners don’t have to win by such a large margin.
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Yes it is greenwashing.
Even if a car could be 100% renewable they still require parking spots & roads (void of life).
Then there is the noise negatively effecting animals behaviours.
An ever increasing number of cars. The size of cars seems to be increasing.
Cars are fantastic but most of the population would be better off never owning a car & just hiring one a few times of year.
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Ergo throwing all the blame on to consumers is a joke and a half.
The idea of capitalism is that businesses should provide what consumers demand.
Not the issue, it's a question of how they provide, not what they provide.
If consumers demand more environmentally friendly products, then a capitalist economy should produce them, fairly efficiently.
Again doesnt solve the problem of green wash.
- I agree with you that this environmental assessment should cover the whole lifecycle
- That is why some European legislation is aimed at the manufacturer paying the costs of disposing of the product, so they design products that have a long lifetime, and are easier to recycle.
There is a limited number of consumers who want to buy a car in a given year. A car manufacturer can probably get 3x the profit from a car that has 3x the price, 3x the mass, and consumes 3x the petrol; so their corporate mission becomes "persuade the consumer that they need a gas-guzzler".
- As I recall, several decades ago the US car industry painted itself into a similar corner. The US car industry crashed, as small Japanese cars took their market (now a number of other small cars from Asia, Europe and USA are available)
- Now the electric cars seem to be the flavor of the decade
Economic studies have shown that green industries generate as much economic output as traditional industries (and inspire more innovation than traditional manufacturers). But politicians today are being sponsored by the big manufacturers today, not the big manufacturers of tomorrow, so "bought" politicians are always looking backwards, never forwards.
By promoting an awareness of "green" credentials, we should be steering consumer choices, and government incentives towards effectively solving the needs of tomorrow, not the propping up creaking achievements of yesterday.
Changes nothing, when the issue is business' produce the majority of the problems and refuse to pay the costs of producing in a better most sustainable way.
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The root of the problem is status competition.
A consumer society is one in which people compete for status by consuming stuff, and thus the economy, and use of resources grows exponentially as people consume more and more. Marketing men devise ever more manipulative ways making people feel inadequate and inducing them to throw away perfectly good stuff and buy new. This is what the fashion industry does when an elite at the top of society decides to do something different. Conspicuous outrage psychology professor Steven Pinker calls it: demonstrating status by saying "look at me I'm so high status I don't need to conform to society's norms and follow others". The social layer beneath then seeks to acquire status by copying, followed by the next layer down, and the next etc. As this occurs, each layer then has to change again in order to avoid looking like the copycats beneath, and so the process perpetuates indefinitely, consuming resources and creating waste as it goes. In Spent, Geoffrey Miller describes an entertaining example of marketing: luxury car manufacturers advertising in magazines bought by poor people who could never afford to buy one. Why? Because it fuels the jealousy that makes the rich people buy them.
I doubt that, seems more likley the rich seek approval amongst their peers the beggars don’t fit on their radar.
It’s obvious that all levels of society compete with their peers for status. Even the poor will buy consumer goods they don’t need (often on credit from loan sharks) when they can barely afford essentials, simply because they see their friends & family with the latest iPhone or TV or whatever. They don’t want to feel left out, because it’s humiliating, so they will pay for the things that people notice by skimping on something that’s less conspicuous instead.
Which doesn't matter if the products are produced in an eco friendly and sustainable way
The problem of course is that status competition is a zero sum game. If the Jones' are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Smiths, and the Smiths are only happy when they have a bigger car than the Jones', then they become locked into an escalating war when no amount of consumption can ever make them both happy at the same time.
Then there's habituation. When you're driving to the car dealer's to pick up your new car, you're full of excitement at how it's going to improve your drive to work, but you've completely forgotten that you once felt exactly the same way about the one you're sitting in, and now can't wait to get rid of.
You often hear talk of 'built-in obsolescence' blamed for waste, but this is naive,
Disagree, products created to be repaired, upgraded, and adapted for other uses, have a completely different form of production. And the suggestion that phones that can be repaired, and upgraded easily would make more waste then what we currently have is rediculas.
I designed radios for a living, you won’t get far lecturing me how they’re manufactured and repaired. Electronic consumer goods are less repairable than they were because they’re integrated, miniaturised, and cheaper to manufacture whilst the skilled labour of a repairman has just gone up and up in price, along with his income.
Sure. Certainly less resources involved in fixing a broken device, then throwing it away, and then buying a new one.
Wages need to go up. Cheep Labour is all about a select few pocketing the difference in increased profits.
throw-away products are an inevitable consequence of economic growth (and miniaturisation).
Only under the current system that is obsessed with profit.
Economic growth occurs because automation is used to produce more stuff with the same labour, making everyone richer,
Doesnt make everyone richer makes those that own the machines richer.
So the poor in society still live like mediaeval peasant farmers then, with no electricity, potable water, healthcare, education, transport etc?
A nonsense reply
Yes, of course they do. All but the very poorest enjoy some level of consumer goods too, such as washing machines, fridges, cookers, TVs, and radios. There weren’t many of those around in the Middle Ages.
And, we are not living in the middle ages, but if everyone had a phone they could simply upgrade and repair. The waste we see wouldn't exist.
but one persons income is another's labour charge, so as we all get richer labour becomes more and more unaffordable, and labour-intensive activities become uneconomical.
Disagree the issue isnt labour costs, it's excessive profits. Increased wages increases disposable income, prices find there position in a fluctuating market place, the argument you espouse is more a complaint those who seek to pay less make.
These are all arguments about profit.
You’ve just contradicted yourself. First you say there are excessive profits then you say prices find their own level in a competitive market place.
There is no contradiction. Wage costs and the price people are prepared to pay for a good or service fluctuate. They are not interlinked, especially when people have more disposable income.
Profits or not, as labour gets more expensive, labour intensive activities also get more expensive, that’s why a lot of employment has moved to the far east.
they moved to increase their profits, and save on labour costs they didnt need to they just wanted more money.
Whilst manufacture is easily automated, because it involves repeating the same steps endlessly, repair isn't,
Which is also an answer to the mass unemployment automation threatens.
This is so obviously untrue it’s absurd, it was the Luddites argument, and history has proved them spectacularly wrong.
Not a luddite arguement, machines can still produce, it's a question of repairing or throwing away what they produce.
(In England) 500 years ago, 58% of the workforce was employed on the land just to grow enough to feed everyone, now it’s 1.2%. Why, because most of the work is now done by mechanisation. Are the other 57% all unemployed? No, of course they aren’t, because they now have jobs producing all the wealth we simply wouldn’t have if they were still needed to feed us. The reason we have wealth like cars, TVs, washing machines, fridges etc. is because automation has freed up spare labour that would otherwise have been needed elsewhere.
because each fault is (relatively) unique. Thus as the economy grows, more and more products become uneconomical repair, who's going to spend £20-30 on skilled labour to mend a kettle when you can buy a new one for £15? (Public services are generally more labour intensive than the private sector too,
The only way you are getting a 15 buck kettle is from sweat shops in Asia, terrible mining conditions, and extreme exploitation. 15 buck kettles shouldnt exist and only exist as an example of the profit driven insanity this system exists by.
The reason goods are cheaper to manufacture in Asia is that their labour is cheaper, because they are less wealthy, because they are less developed, because they started to industrialise later. If allowed to continue, trade will eventually level out the difference in wealth, and our labour will become more competitive again, but therein lies the problem, the environment can’t sustain the level of economic activity we already have, let alone more. What’s needed is a reduction in consumption by the first world who consume the most.
Wrong! The only reason why production is in Asia, is because the corporate producers can exploit them more.
but people who don't understand this point to the growth of the public sector as evidence of a left-wing takeover when it's actually just another by-product of economic growth.)
As Steven Pinker also points out, waste itself is a status symbol: "Look at me, I can afford to throw away all this perfectly good stuff". I can remember 'money saving expert' Martin Lewis being puzzled that he overheard someone in a queue boasting about spending a fortune on gym membership he never used. No puzzle really, it's an example of conspicuous waste. Buying a Rolex instead of a Timex, buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford, buying gold plated bath taps instead of chrome, all examples of needless consumption in the pursuit of status.
This is consumption by the 1% it's not as wasteful as you suggest simply because it is limited by the numbers engaging in it.
Around 90% of the world’s wealth is consumed by just 10% of the world’s population.
You mean America and Europe.
That’s us in the first world, we are the problem. With just a 20% reduction in our consumption you could triple the income of the poor without any additional burden on the planet.
"Could" but wouldn't, the corporations currently exploiting them would just pay them even less
What's needed is an alternative to consumption as a means of competing for status.
Disagree we simply need better products, produced in a better way. Quality not price should drive economic incentives, and sustainability should be a mark of high quality
And by the time you’ve finished producing these utopian products, there will still be a population competing to consume more and more of them in order to outdo their mates.
Dont agree, you are soo indoctrinated by the current system, you cant see past it.
The problem is that status is measured in relative consumption,
Only in the current system, anything can become a symbol of status
but environmental damage is measured in absolute consumption,
No it isn't, is measured by rain forest destroyed, rivers polluted, water supplies filled with lead, ocean oil spills or habitat destruction. Certainly not measured by consumption .
meanwhile, the ones who already have the most are the ones striving hardest to consume more. If you want to fix a problem you need to identify the cause first.
Which is how we produce products, not the consumer that buys them
One final word on status: it really is important, and not the fatuous pursuit that my posts may have made it appear. Professor Michael Marmot has done a lifetime of research into this, and status is one of the biggest determinants of both mortality and morbidity. Low status kills, and before you come back with the obvious retort: yes, poverty kills too, but low status kills as well, quite independently of poverty. It’s a serious problem for society, because as I said above, status competition is a zero sum game.
You mean low paid.
In this respect, I think that the Scandinavian countries have it nearer to right than the rest of us. They’ve reduced wealth inequality to a much lower level than most, and it appears they are less preoccupied with status, and have lower levels of many of the social ills that plague western societies.
The ethos of the meritocracy has a lot to answer for in my view.
The problem isnt meritocracy, the problem is the elites don't want one.
On the face of it, it sounds entirely reasonable: “you too can win the race if you just run faster”, but the problem is that that implies that if everyone runs faster they can all win, which is patently absurd.
That's not meritocracy, that's a line in corporate storytelling. Meritocracy is about the people in power having the merit to be there, today, as business rules, its about who is the best at exploiting people.
Winning (and status) is a zero sum game, so in a society where everyone runs as fast as they can (or consumes as much as they can), there will still be some who come last, and by the light of the meritocracy, they’re lazy good-for-nothings who deserve their position in society. There have to be winners and losers, but the winners don’t have to win by such a large margin.
You're a bit lost I fear.
Do you know who the priests of the modern era are?
They are not scientists. Never will be scientists because science is terrible at narrative.
No the priests of today are economists and the rulers are the owners of business.
There is now a move to become technocratic, to follow China. And we are seeing certian technocrats take the lead in an attempt to become the priests of the future. But technocracy isnt really about science or based on science, its the same society we see suggested in a Brave new world.
To quote from the book:
On science
“It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
Technocracy isnt about building a better world with technology, rather it's about using technology to control the population.
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The root of the problem is status competition........ Buying a Rolex instead of a Timex, buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford, buying gold plated bath taps instead of chrome, all examples of needless consumption in the pursuit of status.
Now and again, I come across "Jet Life" magazine in the crew room of an airport. It makes a nice change from the weather and accident reports and I assume it is put there by someone with a sense of irony. Never mind Rolex and Ferrari - every aviator appreciates good engineering on a bad day - but my favorite advert was for a $38,000 bikini. Nigel the Navigator said "If that's the new uniform, you'd better get the bloody cabin heater fixed".
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Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
said the pope/president/philosopher.
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Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
said the pope/president/philosopher.
It's a quote from the book 'Brave New World' statement was made by one of the ruling elites, related to how the society isnt scientific, it just pretends to be scientific. The only actual experiment they run, is the question of 'wether the system could handle the influence of an outsider,' it does and he hangs himself.
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Electric vehicles are necessary stepping stones toward independence from fossil fuel. Even when currently working technologies are not as clean as we prefer.
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Arguing that electric cars are more environmentally friendly because they are electric as many do while ignoring the real environment damage that is comming more from the mining of the materials to make the cars and the system of overall production, beside the fact that the energy source that powers the vehicle can also be highly damaging to the environment, seems to me rather rediculas.
Hence I consider the suggestion that electric cars are more environmentally friendly as merely an expression of green wash.
This isn't true at all though. The amount of materials that go into the fabric of an electric car is only slightly more than that of a fossil car, and most of it is, or can be, just as recyclable as a fossil car.
But that's missing the enormous mineral elephant in the room; the huge pile of mineral oil that the fossil car burns over its life! That pile is an order of magnitude bigger than the car and cannot be recycled.
Meanwhile the electric car can overwhelmingly be recycled, even a lot of the battery.
For electric vehicles, we're talking a factor of over 300 more recyclable.
Source:
https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2021_02_Battery_raw_materials_report_final.pdf
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But that's missing the enormous mineral elephant in the room; the huge pile of mineral oil that the fossil car burns over its life! That pile is an order of magnitude bigger than the car and cannot be recycled.
Er, no. The energy required to make the average family car, from mining to roadside, is about the same as it consumes in its working life. That's the weakness of the "all electric now" argument - you have to burn an awful lot of fuel to replace the existing stock of perfectly adequate vehicles.
As far as recycling the hardware is concerned, it's difficult to see the difference. Most of the metal and plastic is the same apart from the steel in an internal combustion engine being replaced by a greater mass of copper metal and lithium salts. Regenerative braking certainly reduces brake pad wear, and much was made of the lack of a clutch, but these items rarely need replacing more than twice before the bodywork falls off.
One is reminded of the traveller who asked the way from Dublin to Cork, and was told "If I wanted to go to Cork, I wouldn't start from here." The time to introduce electric cars is about 100 years ago.
,
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Er, no. The energy required to make the average family car, from mining to roadside, is about the same as it consumes in its working life. That's the weakness of the "all electric now" argument - you have to burn an awful lot of fuel to replace the existing stock of perfectly adequate vehicles.
Don't you think that where the energy comes from really matter? In your case, the fossil fuel cars would be twice as polluting as electric cars.
Where do you get your data?
How long is the expected working life of a vehicle?
Did you take engine oil changes into account?
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car suggests 17 tonnes of CO2 emitted per average car manufactured. It would emit that much in about 80,000 miles driving. Whilst it is true that most cars nowadays will run for more than 100,000 miles, a fair number get destroyed or rust to bits at a much younger age.
Oil changes are pretty insignificant, say a gallon every 10,000 miles in addition to a gallon of fuel every 50 miles.
the fossil fuel cars would be twice as polluting as electric cars
if you start from scratch, yes. But right now we have more than enough cars anyway - "that ship has sailed".
The question still remains as to how much more copper steel and plastic we will need to install the required infrastructure for electric cars to replace gasoline and diesel, and what will we do about the other 50% consumed by buses and trucks?
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Things like steel and aluminium don't need fossil fuels for recycling though.
But that's missing the enormous mineral elephant in the room; the huge pile of mineral oil that the fossil car burns over its life! That pile is an order of magnitude bigger than the car and cannot be recycled.
Er, no. The energy required to make the average family car, from mining to roadside, is about the same as it consumes in its working life. That's the weakness of the "all electric now" argument - you have to burn an awful lot of fuel to replace the existing stock of perfectly adequate vehicles.
You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why? And they're not 'perfectly adequate', they're more expensive to run and their total purchase cost is higher and their emissions are killing the planet, or more accurately, making our planet drier, hotter and more inhospitable for HUMAN life. Already a lot of cars are being replaced with plug-in hybrids.
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Our opinions are shaped by information sources we chose to read or watch. Online sources are suggested by algorithms based on our previous choices of information types, which amplify our pre-existing biases.
If we start with a conclusion, we will be able to find sources supporting that conclusion on the internet, whether or not it accurately describes objective reality. That's why conspiracy theories are thriving.
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You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why?
As I write, less than 10% of UK electricity is being generated by renewables. Most industries are on short time and at least half of our non-transport energy consumption is direct heat by coal, gas or oil.
Mining for iron, copper and lithium cannot be powered by unreliable energy sources - mines have to be lit and ventilated 24/7, even without drills, explosives , trucks, dumpers...... You might be able to use grid power for some refining processes but that's still subject to a limit of 20% unreliables before the essential conventional backup stations become uneconomic. Then you have to transport the raw material by ship and truck.
they're more expensive to run
Only because of the tax regime. Given that 50 - 90% of electricity is generated from fossil fuel in most countries, at about 50% thermal efficiency, the input energy cost per mile of an electric car at 90% final conversion efficiency is about the same as that of a fossil-fuelled car. Actual fuel cost in the UK is less than 5p per mile for a hefty family car (2 liter diesel). EDF (the French company that owns most of the UK electricity supply) reckons 4p per mile for an electric car, but this must increase with an infrastructure levy if we are to replace the entire fleet of gas guzzlers with charging points - the motorist, after all, pays for the cost of fossil fuel distribution.
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You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why?
As I write, less than 10% of UK electricity is being generated by renewables. Most industries are on short time and at least half of our non-transport energy consumption is direct heat by coal, gas or oil.
I make it more like 20%, which is unusually low. A week ago or so it was over 80%. The average is over 50% low carbon now.
Mining for iron, copper and lithium cannot be powered by unreliable energy sources - mines have to be lit and ventilated 24/7, even without drills, explosives , trucks, dumpers...... You might be able to use grid power for some refining processes but that's still subject to a limit of 20% unreliables before the essential conventional backup stations become uneconomic. Then you have to transport the raw material by ship and truck.
Bullshit, mines can be connected to a grid like anyone else. And we're well past 20% now. The UK grid last year was 30% renewables and over 50% if you include nuclear. And growing extremely rapidly. Many, many other places are on ~100% renewable. 0% of them have fallen over due to renewables. Meanwhile for example the Texas grid went down because its natural gas pipelines froze- fossil fuels.
they're more expensive to run
Only because of the tax regime. Given that 50 - 90% of electricity is generated from fossil fuel in most countries, at about 50% thermal efficiency, the input energy cost per mile of an electric car at 90% final conversion efficiency is about the same as that of a fossil-fuelled car.
Not the UK, the UK grid is greener and cheaper at night, and people use that to charge up. The UK grid is over 50% low/no carbon energy, and the percentage is higher still at night.
Actual fuel cost in the UK is less than 5p per mile for a hefty family car (2 liter diesel). EDF (the French company that owns most of the UK electricity supply) reckons 4p per mile for an electric car, but this must increase with an infrastructure levy if we are to replace the entire fleet of gas guzzlers with charging points - the motorist, after all, pays for the cost of fossil fuel distribution.
Nope. The grid is lightly loaded at night, and the electric cars suck down their power then. No more widescale infrastructure is needed. The National Grid has stated they can take it. Indeed, they WANT a whole bunch of battery electric vehicles connected because they can use it for balancing the grid.
And that's not what the studies show. The cheapest electricity sources of all time are wind and solar. And that's not the subsidised price; that's the price.
And the pollution. Those diesel and petrol cars produce immense pollution. Who pays for that? We all do, through our taxes, and through our bad health, through asthma, heart disease and other nasty issues.
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I'm writing at 23:40. According to Gridwatch the UK is consuming about 30 GW - 50% of max capacity - of electricity. 59% of this is being generated by fossil fuel, 19% by nuclear, just over 7% from biomass and less than 2.5% from wind. So if you charge your car from tonight's wind, you won't get far tomorrow.
It is entirely possible that on a warm summer evening with a steady 20kt wind, there might be enough spare grid capacity to charge our 35,000,000 cars at 1 kW, giving them a range of 30 miles or so the next day. Except that we don't have plans for 35,000,000 charging points, or sufficient windmills to do even half of the job. And whilst the average car does indeed only do about 30 miles per day on average, that's not a lot of use if you need to go 60 miles tomorrow.
If you think EDF, whose business is to sell electricity, have got their pricing wrong, you would do well to inform them.
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Why would I need to charge it tonight, when I charged it last thursday when the grid was swimming in green electricity?
And there already are far more than 35 million charge points, every 13 amp socket in the UK is a charging point.
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Someone has made some research into this for decades now. Let's see if someone else has some counter arguments.
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Why would I need to charge it tonight, when I charged it last thursday when the grid was swimming in green electricity?
possibly because you drove somewhere on Friday. And remember even with the grid running at full capacity, you can only do 30 miles on one night's charge because everyone else is charging theirs too.
And there already are far more than 35 million charge points, every 13 amp socket in the UK is a charging point.
Very few of which are by the roadside, which is where most of the cars are parked at night. and if everyone else is charging their cars, you can only get 5 amps from your socket.
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The million mile powertrain is no big deal. Trucks and buses have similar powertrain lifetimes but the problem with cars is that the doors rust and fall off and suspension and steering components loosen and break. Unless the car is made of plastic (horror!) or aluminum (initial CO2 footprint about 7 times that of steel), in which case it's only trivial stuff like suspension and steering that fails and the doors stay on. Aero engines generally cover 10,000,000 miles before major overhaul.
The best traction batteries are down to half capacity (replacement level) in about 100,000 miles, at which point a small diesel engine is just running nicely. Coupled to a modern automatic gearbox, it should cover another 100,000 without major overhaul and still deliver 90% power.
Battery technology is not new, and the demand for improved energy density and lifetime has been around since the 1860s, but the chemistry of liquid fuels still has the advantage. As I see it, the present use of "artificial" energy at UK levels (about 5 kW per capita, roughly the world average) is not indefinitely sustainable: our descendants are either going to have to live without heating, lighting, manufacturing and transport, or reduce their numbers to a level where they can live in comfort for ever.
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https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-systems-30-cheaper-than-rival-gas-peaker-plants-for-firming-renewables/
Battery storage 30% cheaper than gas peaker plants for firming renewables.
The contest is over. Faster, cheaper, more flexible than gas turbines – battery energy storage must be the future peaking energy service provider of choice, according to a new paper by Australia’s Clean Energy Council.
Australia's Clean Energy Council (CEC) says in a newly published paper that large-scale battery energy storage has become the best way to spread energy generated by solar and wind throughout any day, and to instantly respond to peak energy needs in the National Electricity Market (NEM) for long and short durations.
The paper compares the levelized cost of energy delivered by a new 250 MW gas peaker plant with 250 MW four-hour and two-hour grid-scale batteries. It finds that overall – when various costs are calculated – that the batteries are 17% (two-hour) and 30% (four-hour) cheaper.
Improvements in battery-operating technology mean storage now outperforms gas-fired peaking plants on speed and reliability of response, which was the basis of gas technology’s biggest claim to a place in the future renewables-based electricity system.
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Back to the problem of emergency equipment. A gas-powered generating station does not self-degrade with time, and fuel storage is virtually indefinite. Batteries use active chemistry and have finite internal impedance so they self-discharge and self-destruct over time. Cheap today, but how long before you have to replace it? I wonder who funds the "Clean Energy Council"? Probably not the oil or gas industry.
But that ain't the problem anyway. To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total, not short-term peak, storage capacity, increase your generating capacity to allow you to recharge the store whilst supplying normal load, and then upgrade the entire system to supply all the other energy uses. Household consumption, for instance, uses 4 times as much gas and oil as electricity. Industrial consumption is pretty similar. And cars only account for about 40% of transport fuel consumption.
Part of the problem is that fossil fuels are so efficient and efficiently distributed that people ignore them and faff on about electricity, which provides very little of our actual requirement.
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To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,
Or a big enough grid.
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Battery technology is not new
The relevant bits of battery tech- for example Li ion batteries- are new.
It's a bit silly to pretend otherwise.
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To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,
Or a big enough grid.
No, dear. The grid is what distributes the stuff. No matter how many miles of wire, you need to add 5 days' storage for when the wind doesn't blow.
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Back to the problem of emergency equipment. A gas-powered generating station does not self-degrade with time, and fuel storage is virtually indefinite. Batteries use active chemistry and have finite internal impedance so they self-discharge and self-destruct over time. Cheap today, but how long before you have to replace it? I wonder who funds the "Clean Energy Council"? Probably not the oil or gas industry.
Let's ask someone with first hand experience in this matter, such as Australian consumers.
https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saved-consumers-116-million-in-electricity-costs-last-year/
The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, has almost paid for itself, saving consumers around $116 million in higher power costs in 2019, a study by engineering and project management firm Aurecon has concluded.
That figure is nearly treble the $40 million saving in 2018.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR), 230km north of Adelaide, is owned and operated by French renewable energy producer Neoen, and connected to the company’s adjacent wind farm. It holds enough power for 8,000 homes for 24 hours, or more than 30,000 houses for an hour during a blackout
The lithium-ion battery is partly the result of a 2017 Twitter bet between Musk and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes that Tesla would supply the battery within 100 days or it was free.
In November last year, Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.
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Battery technology is not new
The relevant bits of battery tech- for example Li ion batteries- are new.
It's a bit silly to pretend otherwise.
So are all sorts of things like electronic fuel injection. Nobody is pretending anything, and when lithium batteries stop catching fire, self-discharging or degrading with use, I'm sure we'll find a use for them that's almost as versatile as a petrol can. And maybe with 5 times the present energy density and a 200 kW charge rate with no heat problem, like I get from a petrol pump.
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To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,
Or a big enough grid.
No, dear. The grid is what distributes the stuff. No matter how many miles of wire, you need to add 5 days' storage for when the wind doesn't blow.
Given large enough area, when the wind doesn't blow in one place, it would likely blow somewhere else. It can also be complemented with solar panels.
If the grid is large enough to cover solar panels on the Sahara, Europe can rely on renewable energy.
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So are all sorts of things like electronic fuel injection. Nobody is pretending anything, and when lithium batteries stop catching fire, self-discharging or degrading with use, I'm sure we'll find a use for them that's almost as versatile as a petrol can. And maybe with 5 times the present energy density and a 200 kW charge rate with no heat problem, like I get from a petrol pump.
When is the last time you heard that lithium battery caught fire? Is there no improvement can be made?
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The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, ..................
Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.
So the battery costs about twice as much per kilowatt as a gas generator plant and doesn't actually generate electricity.
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When is the last time you heard that lithium battery caught fire? Is there no improvement can be made?
It was the reason the Dreamliner fleet was grounded, and the reason why you can't send bare lithium batteries through the mail
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Given large enough area, when the wind doesn't blow in one place, it would likely blow somewhere else. It can also be complemented with solar panels.
Given the entire North Sea, Irish Sea and English Channel, plus a few mountains, there has been almost no wind electricity generated in the UK for the last 4 days.
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The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, ..................
Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.
So the battery costs about twice as much per kilowatt as a gas generator plant and doesn't actually generate electricity.
There is a fixed cost, and there is a variable cost. Have you put that into calculations?
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Given large enough area, when the wind doesn't blow in one place, it would likely blow somewhere else. It can also be complemented with solar panels.
Given the entire North Sea, Irish Sea and English Channel, plus a few mountains, there has been almost no wind electricity generated in the UK for the last 4 days.
So... you don't understand the concept of "large enough".
Or you don't understand what the grid is for.
author=alancalverd
link=topic=81292.msg636165#msg636165 date=1618318937]No, dear. The grid is what distributes the stuff. No matter how many miles of wire, you need to add 5 days' storage for when the wind doesn't blow.
If you have enough wire, it reaches to where the wind is blowing.
That's the whole damned point.
I explained it here
The fact that wind is unreliable is a good reason to install more windmills in more diverse locations.
The people who built he grid knew this (and it applied to coal fires power stations too- they still need to close for maintenance sometimes).
It's a pity that people seem to have forgotten in the mean time.
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Given the entire North Sea, Irish Sea and English Channel, plus a few mountains, there has been almost no wind electricity generated in the UK for the last 4 days.
Wind is not the only form of renewable energy.
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It was the reason the Dreamliner fleet was grounded, and the reason why you can't send bare lithium batteries through the mail
The battery technology is improving rapidly, in terms of energy density, safety, lifetime, efficiency, cost, etc. In another thread I've shared an article about massless battery. The battery itself is strong enough to act as structural support for the equipment it supposed to power. Good luck designing similar strategy with gas or coal.
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A massless battery, eh? Made of nothing, and strong enough to support something - wow. Never mind footling applications like transport, the entire world of civil engineering is your oyster!
Meanwhile I have a 50 liter tank under my car, that weighs about 70 kg when full, takes me 600 miles or so (getting lighter all the way!) and takes about 3 minutes to recharge.
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Given the entire North Sea, Irish Sea and English Channel, plus a few mountains, there has been almost no wind electricity generated in the UK for the last 4 days.
Wind is not the only form of renewable energy.
AFAIK no wave or tidal system in the UK has delivered more energy that it took to build, which is a pity as we have huge tides and plenty of waves.
Solar cells are great but don't make much electricity at night, or indeed most days in the UK, because we are a long way north and famously cloudy.
Biomass is surprisingly marginal: the energy density is so low and the energy cost of pre-processing so high, that the net yield can be negative.
Sewer gas is free and combustible, but surprisingly there isn't very much around!
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There is a fixed cost, and there is a variable cost. Have you put that into calculations?
If you are using a device such as the megabattery only for emergency and spike capacity, the variable cost is fairly irrelevant. You have to amortise the fixed cost over the life of the device, and the life of a gas or diesel generator can be a hundred years or more with almost no maintenance.
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If you have enough wire, it reaches to where the wind is blowing.
Provided that nobody else wants the product. Once you leave UK territorial waters you start meeting other consumers, who have the same problems and aspirations. You might try putting a windmill in the middle of the Atlantic but you'd need an awful lot of concrete and steel just to reach the surface.
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If the grid is large enough to cover solar panels on the Sahara, Europe can rely on renewable energy.
During the day, perhaps.
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Provided that nobody else wants the product. Once you leave UK territorial waters you start meeting other consumers,
Like the French- from whom we buy electricity and , to whom we sometimes sell it.
This is the point of a grid it let's you get round local shortages,
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If the grid is large enough to cover solar panels on the Sahara, Europe can rely on renewable energy.
During the day, perhaps.
And, according to you the night can be five days long.
To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total, not short-term peak, storage capacity,
If the grid is big enough... the Sun never sets on the British Empire.
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The UK grid last year was 30% renewables and over 50% if you include nuclear.
I don't think nuclear power counts as renewable. Fast breeder reactors were supposed to squeeze a bit more out of the fuel but AFAIK only two are operating commercially these days.
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If the grid is large enough to cover solar panels on the Sahara, Europe can rely on renewable energy.
During the day, perhaps.
And, according to you the night can be five days long.
To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total, not short-term peak, storage capacity,
If the grid is big enough... the Sun never sets on the British Empire.
The wind frequently doesn't blow for 5 days at a time, so you need at least that amount of storage for a UK-based renewable energy supply. If you use solar, you need 12 hours' backup storage and a generating capacity of at least twice peak demand at all times when the sun is above the horizon.
At midwinter the Sahara receives less than 10% of the midsummer solar input, so that determines your installed capacity requirement (unless you are proposing 6 months' storage!) and the generator is going to be operating well below capacity for a fair bit of the time, which rather takes the edge off the investment.
And that still only replaces your present electricity supply, which accounts for about 30% of actual energy use. The other 70% comes almost entirely from fossil fuel.
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Why would I need to charge it tonight, when I charged it last thursday when the grid was swimming in green electricity?
possibly because you drove somewhere on Friday. And remember even with the grid running at full capacity, you can only do 30 miles on one night's charge because everyone else is charging theirs too.
That would be quite a trip. Most cars would still be full from several days earlier, when the grid was even greener.
And there already are far more than 35 million charge points, every 13 amp socket in the UK is a charging point.
Very few of which are by the roadside, which is where most of the cars are parked at night. and if everyone else is charging their cars, you can only get 5 amps from your socket.
So you don't think that diversity applies to cars? Only every other type of electric appliance, just not electric cars? Uh huh. So everyone in the ENTIRE COUNTRY made a several hundred mile trip, on Friday? You're being super ridiculous.
The UK grid last year was 30% renewables and over 50% if you include nuclear.
I don't think nuclear power counts as renewable. Fast breeder reactors were supposed to squeeze a bit more out of the fuel but AFAIK only two are operating commercially these days.
According to you, the grid was supposed to have exploded when it hit 20%. It's currently on 30%. Other grids are on 98+% renewable. Denmark is on 50% wind. Ireland is more disconnected grid, and is on 36.3% wind power as of 2020. Nothing went bang or got ridiculously expensive. All of these numbers are growing rapidly.
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If the grid is big enough... the Sun never sets on the British Empire.
Set, please. Past tense. And all those happy colonial subjects of our dear Queen Victoria seem to think that they can use a bit of electricity too. Send an electric gunboat!
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So everyone in the ENTIRE COUNTRY made a several hundred mile trip, on Friday?
No, just 30 miles per day, like they do. Bastards.
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So ~6 kWh? You think six lousy kilowatt hours predominately taken over many hours in the early mornings is going to blow up the grid? LOL
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The wind frequently doesn't blow for 5 days at a time,
When?
When did the wind stop for 5 days over the whole of the Earth's surface?
Or are you still refusing to understand what a grid is for?
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Well the weather does has correlations, particularly seasonal and spatial. End of February to the beginning of March, I was watching it there was very little wind power over pretty much the whole of the Northern Hemisphere:
https://www.electricitymap.org/map
It's RARE but it DOES happen.
That's why NOBODY is, or should be suggesting we 100% rely on just wind with no backup or storage or generation diversity. Notably solar was doing pretty well. The more different sources of power you have the better. Not even nuclear is completely reliable, as Texas recently found out, and France found out a few years ago, when a large fraction of their nuclear fleet was taken out of service for 'checks'.
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there was very little wind power over pretty much the whole of the Northern Hemisphere
Just as well we have a spare hemisphere then.
But, yes you are right. Only the determinedly stupid would consider a system with only one form of supply.
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A massless battery, eh? Made of nothing, and strong enough to support something - wow. Never mind footling applications like transport, the entire world of civil engineering is your oyster!
Let me make it simpler so a 5yo can understand.
Imagine a normal battery car.
Take out its battery.
Take out its chassis.
Put the new strong battery shaped as the chassis.
Reassemble the car.
Can anyone help me make it even simpler so a 1yo can understand?
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Batteries for cars are traditionally made largely of lead.
If you made the chassis of a car from lead, it would fall apart under its own weight.
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You might try putting a windmill in the middle of the Atlantic but you'd need an awful lot of concrete and steel just to reach the surface.
You might try floating solar panels.
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Batteries for cars are traditionally made largely of lead.
If you made the chassis of a car from lead, it would fall apart under its own weight.
No commercial BEV now use lead as its main ingredient.
The strength comes from combination of battery shells and how they are packed together to form a battery unit.
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Those came out when I searched for massless battery on youtube. It seems like many of us need to update our knowledge to catch up with latest progress of science and technology.
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Like the French- from whom we buy electricity
Principally nuclear, and remarkably little. There are 5 such links to our nearest neighbors.The trade is actually two-way (and predates the EU!). We can buy up to 3 GW nuclear surplus in summer, and sell up to 3 GW of gas backup power in winter, but nobody is interested in selling more. Right now, the trade is effectively zero, with 61% of UK power being gas, 20% nuclear, 8% biomass, 5% coal and less than 0.03% being imported. Tonight's wind is supplying less than 1% of current demand, all over western Europe, and I don't think the sun is shining.
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Massless batteries therefore seem to be a case of "ignoring the weight of the elephant".
So you want to use the battery case as the primary structural element of the car. Great, but that means you have to scrap the entire car every 3 years when the battery starts to fade. And the chassis has to be very stiff because battery plates don't like being bent or bumped. So we end up with a much greater weight of plastic in order to pretend that it doesn't exist. Then there's the intriguing problem of plate area: all the plates in series must have the same area to avoid hot spots at maximum load, which means all the structural elements must have the same cross section, which further increases the mass of the weightless battery because none can be thinner than the thickest!
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You might try putting a windmill in the middle of the Atlantic but you'd need an awful lot of concrete and steel just to reach the surface.
You might try floating solar panels.
I "floated" that idea about 50 years ago, using a raft of solar panels to electrolyse sea water. You pump the oxygen back into the water so the fish grow faster, and pipe the hydrogen to the shore where it becomes your primary fuel.
Alas, the ocean is not a static puddle of distilled water. Whatever horizontal surface you float on the sea will quickly get covered in salt spray and interesting biological stuff, and the wind and waves are not kind to transparent glass or plastic.
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So ~6 kWh? You think six lousy kilowatt hours predominately taken over many hours in the early mornings is going to blow up the grid? LOL
When you have installed your 35,000,000 kerbside charging points you will need to generate and deliver 35,000,000 times 6 kWh over, say, 8 hours. Roughly 30 GW, or 65% of current grid nominal capacity.
You might also consider the effect of temperature on actual battery capacity. Quotes from a Tesla enthusiast:
Cold (anything below 7°c) outside temperatures will lower your car’s efficiency by anywhere from 10-40%, not only does the car need to keep the cabin warmer (obvious) but the #1 priority of your Tesla computer system is to keep your battery safe & long lasting so it needs to keep itself temperature controlled!
High (anything above 26°c) outside temperature, just like in cold conditions but in reverse, however, the efficiency drop is generally much lower, closer to 5-15% reduction of range.
Yes, on a cold day (like most British mornings) the battery spends 10 - 40% of its power trying to keep itself and you warm, so you will need something closer to 8 - 10 kWh of charge to travel that magic 15 miles (assuming you want to come back as well). That doesn't leave much power in the grid for trivial things like trains, refrigeration or hospital lighting, but it might just be manageable if we switch off all the street lights.
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I "floated" that idea about 50 years ago, using a raft of solar panels to electrolyse sea water. You pump the oxygen back into the water so the fish grow faster, and pipe the hydrogen to the shore where it becomes your primary fuel.
Alas, the ocean is not a static puddle of distilled water. Whatever horizontal surface you float on the sea will quickly get covered in salt spray and interesting biological stuff, and the wind and waves are not kind to transparent glass or plastic.
Why should we go through a middleman, instead of directly use the electric energy or storing it into battery?
You can use drones to automatically make the cleaning as frequent as needed.
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Massless batteries therefore seem to be a case of "ignoring the weight of the elephant".
So you want to use the battery case as the primary structural element of the car. Great, but that means you have to scrap the entire car every 3 years when the battery starts to fade. And the chassis has to be very stiff because battery plates don't like being bent or bumped. So we end up with a much greater weight of plastic in order to pretend that it doesn't exist. Then there's the intriguing problem of plate area: all the plates in series must have the same area to avoid hot spots at maximum load, which means all the structural elements must have the same cross section, which further increases the mass of the weightless battery because none can be thinner than the thickest!
You don't seem to follow the most update battery technology. It can be made to last more than 10 years. Let's not underestimated the ability of AI designers. They can often help us think out of the box.
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FWIW it's not in production yet, and for all I know may never be, but my understanding of the state-of-the-art in lithium ion battery technology is that Tesla's batteries in their labs have built-in cell heaters and can do a ten-minute charge from empty to full several thousand times without any significant loss of capacity. 😎
Apparently, high temperature was long thought to be the enemy of lithium batteries, but it turned out that heating the batteries up immediately before fast charging greatly reduces damage. If that works in the real world as well as it does in the lab, the next version battery packs are going to be really something.
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No commercial BEV now use lead as its main ingredient.
No car uses a chassis made of lithium either.
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I would worry about integrating batteries into the chassis because if I hit a pothole or a gatepost (yes, it happens) I'd distort the plates, either creating an immediate short circuit and fire, or a hotspot that catches fire the next time I accelerate.
I would love to have an electric car. No use for work, but when I retire I could go to the shops or tear around the local countryside with mindboggling acceleration. I have offroad parking with 100 amp mains accessible, and as soon as Tesla become as reliable as Skoda, I'll be in the queue. But if the hoi polloi get them, someone will need to build an awful lot of windmills, a magic storage system, and lots of 13A sockets at the roadside. Or maybe a few more fossil-fuelled power stations.
The electric car is a theoretical partial solution to the problem of urban air quality - the other 50% being due to buses and trucks. But it is a long way from being a practical form of personal transport for all because we don't have a magic electricity tree, or even an inkling of how to make one.
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Why should we go through a middleman, instead of directly use the electric energy or storing it into battery?
Because over 70% of energy use is not electrical, and a fair bit of electrical energy is used for heating, where hydrogen would be more efficient. Plus hydrogen storage is very cheap and simple.
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FWIW it's not in production yet, and for all I know may never be, but my understanding of the state-of-the-art in lithium ion battery technology is that Tesla's batteries in their labs have built-in cell heaters and can do a ten-minute charge from empty to full several thousand times without any significant loss of capacity. 😎
Apparently, high temperature was long thought to be the enemy of lithium batteries, but it turned out that heating the batteries up immediately before fast charging greatly reduces damage. If that works in the real world as well as it does in the lab, the next version battery packs are going to be really something.
Maybe not yet. Sandy Munro has researched Tesla's tabless battery pack and revealed the potential for structural energy storage.
Here is another research on it.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/21/tesla-battery-day-here-is-everything-i-think-will-be-announced/
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No commercial BEV now use lead as its main ingredient.
No car uses a chassis made of lithium either.
Lithium is not even the majority of currently existing battery packs. And there is no restrictions that future batteries must contain Lithium either.
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I would worry about integrating batteries into the chassis because if I hit a pothole or a gatepost (yes, it happens) I'd distort the plates, either creating an immediate short circuit and fire, or a hotspot that catches fire the next time I accelerate.
Why do you think that those can't happen with currently existing battery, with dead mass chassis?
There is a demonstration video showing the safety of new model battery being safely cut into pieces using scissors while fully charged.
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The electric car is a theoretical partial solution to the problem of urban air quality - the other 50% being due to buses and trucks. But it is a long way from being a practical form of personal transport for all because we don't have a magic electricity tree, or even an inkling of how to make one.
Buses and trucks will be electrified too. Solar roof will be almost as cheap as ordinary roof. Many Tesla users testified that their solar pack and power wall generate plenty of energy to be used for charging their cars and home appliance. They can even sell the excess of energy to the grid.
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I would worry about integrating batteries into the chassis because if I hit a pothole or a gatepost (yes, it happens) I'd distort the plates, either creating an immediate short circuit and fire, or a hotspot that catches fire the next time I accelerate.
Why do you think that those can't happen with currently existing battery, with dead mass chassis?
There is a demonstration video showing the safety of new model battery being safely cut into pieces using scissors while fully charged.
Quite possibly. Now consider a battery delivering 250A at 400V, and short-circuit one cell. Or partially open-circuit a cell so the internal impedance rises. Not a pretty sight. Which is why batteries are generally not made subject to bending or impact stresses.
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Buses and trucks will be electrified too. Solar roof will be almost as cheap as ordinary roof.
Indeed, I have been offered a solar roof at pretty much the cost of a tiled roof. Problem is that I already have a roof, as does everyone else, so you need to spend another £30,000 or so per car to install an independent charging system. Except that most people will want to charge their cars at night, when the roof isn't working.
Solar electricity is not reliable in the UK, never delivers more than 25% of peak capacity over a year (or any at night) and we are now entering the second week in which wind power is delivering less than 10% of its installed capacity.
So, having decided that we need to double the secure generating capacity of the grid and install 35,000,000 kerbside charging points in order to replace the cars, you now want to add another 50% for trucks and buses and a couple of million truck charging points .
Should we build more nukes, or burn more gas?
Why not just use diesel, and save the environmental and financial cost of replacing the entire fleet of vehicles, plus doubling the number of conventional power stations?
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Why should we go through a middleman, instead of directly use the electric energy or storing it into battery?
Because over 70% of energy use is not electrical, and a fair bit of electrical energy is used for heating, where hydrogen would be more efficient. Plus hydrogen storage is very cheap and simple.
How much is in chemical usage?
How much is specifically in hydrogen form?
Electricity is the most fluid form of energy. It's easy to distribute and transform into other forms of energy.
Hydrogen explosion is one of the most common examples cited in industrial process safety training. In gas form, it's easy to leak and produce explosive mixture with oxygen in the air.
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Quite possibly. Now consider a battery delivering 250A at 400V, and short-circuit one cell. Or partially open-circuit a cell so the internal impedance rises. Not a pretty sight. Which is why batteries are generally not made subject to bending or impact stresses.
It is not necessary to remove the chassis materials entirely. Just enough to reduce its mass to be replaced by the structural battery, hence the final overall construction is still as strong as currently existing BEV.
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Indeed, I have been offered a solar roof at pretty much the cost of a tiled roof. Problem is that I already have a roof, as does everyone else, so you need to spend another £30,000 or so per car to install an independent charging system. Except that most people will want to charge their cars at night, when the roof isn't working.
That's why you'll also need the battery. You generate excessive energy during the day and spend it during the night.
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Solar electricity is not reliable in the UK, never delivers more than 25% of peak capacity over a year (or any at night) and we are now entering the second week in which wind power is delivering less than 10% of its installed capacity.
So, having decided that we need to double the secure generating capacity of the grid and install 35,000,000 kerbside charging points in order to replace the cars, you now want to add another 50% for trucks and buses and a couple of million truck charging points .
When the solar cost is cheap enough, it would be economically feasible to quadruple solar capacity to compensate for the deficiency. Tony Seba has mentioned this in one of his videos.
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Should we build more nukes, or burn more gas?
Why not just use diesel, and save the environmental and financial cost of replacing the entire fleet of vehicles, plus doubling the number of conventional power stations?
Because of the variable cost I mentioned earlier.
Fossil fuels require exploration, extraction, refinery, storage, and distribution, which are expensive and dangerous. I know because I've worked in those fields before. I was the lead system engineer of a fossil fuels storage and distribution facility project. I've also worked on other projects in extraction and refinery facilities. Before that, I've also worked as electric and instrumentation maintenance personnel in a natural gas purification plant.
Some of my close relatives are still working there. Safety is one of the highest concerns, which is justified by recent explosion in an oil refinery facility.
On the other hand, variable costs in wind and solar is negligible. Almost all of their costs are fixed, either for building them or maintenance.
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It is not necessary to remove the chassis materials entirely. Just enough to reduce its mass to be replaced by the structural battery, hence the final overall construction is still as strong as currently existing BEV.
What works very well in practice is to make the chassis from entirely structural materials that can be assembled by bolts or welds, and cut and welded if they get bent, then insert a battery whose shape is optimised for electrical performance, protected from mechanical damage by the chassis.
There is one exception: the upper surfaces of an aircraft can usefully be made from solar cell materials because those surfaces are fairly uniform and not normally subject to impact.
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When the solar cost is cheap enough, it would be economically feasible to quadruple solar capacity to compensate for the deficiency.
They still only work half the time, and sadly that's exactly when most people will be wanting to use their cars, not charge them. So for every car on the road you need a new roof and another battery to save the charge to transfer to the car later. It's all getting very big and expensive!
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Because of the variable cost I mentioned earlier.
Fossil fuels require exploration, extraction, refinery, storage, and distribution, which are expensive and dangerous.
And we know exactly how expensive (5 p per mile) and how dangerous (not very - few cars catch fire spontaneously).
The rational objection to fossil fuels is their finite quantity. The problem is that we don't have a feasible alternative that can support the present level of energy consumption. Which suggests that the rational solution is to reduce consumption to a level that can be sustained by renewables.
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How much is in chemical usage?
about 69%. The other 1% is horses.
How much is specifically in hydrogen form?
Not much these days, but until 1963, about half of the static use was hydrogen. Now mostly replaced by methane.
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They still only work half the time, and sadly that's exactly when most people will be wanting to use their cars, not charge them. So for every car on the road you need a new roof and another battery to save the charge to transfer to the car later. It's all getting very big and expensive!
Let's say that a self sufficient system in The Sahara requires 10 kW solar panel and 100 kWh battery. If it's installed in a place with sunlight intensity only half of that, you need twice amount of solar panel, but the battery is the same.
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And we know exactly how expensive (5 p per mile) and how dangerous (not very - few cars catch fire spontaneously).
If you generate your own electricity, it would be less expensive, e. g. 0 p per mile. If the numbers look too small, try to change the unit of distance to a bigger one, such as a light second.
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The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, ..................
Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.
So the battery costs about twice as much per kilowatt as a gas generator plant and doesn't actually generate electricity.
I try to be open minded as far as possible. I don't reject new ideas out right unless they are evidently unfeasible.
If Neoen calculates that gas generator is actually more profitable than battery, they should have gone to that direction, not increasing their battery size instead. They can compare fairly since they have the experience with both of them.
Their financial reports should show if their calculations were false, and their stakeholders will react accordingly.
Again, you seem to miss the variable cost in your calculations. The investment is not a one time purchase and then stop and forget. They still have to operate and maintain the facilities. It's only economically feasible if the overall cost is significantly less than the benefits.
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How much is in chemical usage?
about 69%. The other 1% is horses.
How much is specifically in hydrogen form?
Not much these days, but until 1963, about half of the static use was hydrogen. Now mostly replaced by methane.
How would you distribute hydrogen safely and economically? Are there investors who firmly believe that hydrogen as energy source is economically feasible so they put their money into it?
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The gas grid presently holds and distributes 35% of the UK's total energy. Until 1963, 50% of the gas was hydrogen. It has been economically feasible and indeed profitable since 1790.
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How would you distribute hydrogen safely and economically? Are there investors who firmly believe that hydrogen as energy source is economically feasible so they put their money into it?
https://www.keele.ac.uk/sustainable-futures/ourchallengethemes/providingcleanenergyreducingcarbonemissions/hydeploy/
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Let's say that a self sufficient system in The Sahara requires 10 kW solar panel and 100 kWh battery.
You could say that, but a static 10 kW panel will only produce ~ 2.5 kW average during clear daylight and nothing at night so you need to install about 30 kW of generating capacity to charge the battery during the day. But if you are also using power during the day, you need to install 60 kW of peak generating capacity to supply 8.3 kW continuously.
UK energy consumption is about 5 kW per capita, so to supply the UK alone, from a hot desert location, you need to install 40,000,000 x 60 kW solar panels, each with a 100 kWh battery. At 50 sq ft per kW, that's about 500 square miles of panel: just feasible, perhaps, but it's not a happy environment for batteries and you have to find some way of preventing the whole thing getting covered with sand.
Now let's get that power to the UK. Say we install a 1,000,000 V DC cable (the reactive losses over 3000 miles would be very expensive with an AC supply). It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.
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. It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.
It may make more sense to use a collection of wires- preferable with interconnections between them.
What some people would call... a "grid".
Why are you so resistant to this idea?
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If you generate your own electricity, it would be less expensive, e. g. 0 p per mile.
Plus the amortisation of the generating equipment.
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. It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.
It may make more sense to use a collection of wires- preferable with interconnections between them.
What some people would call... a "grid".
Why are you so resistant to this idea?
Who is resisting anything? By all means estimate the cost of a 3000 mile grid of any description , allowing for the fact that 1000 miles is under (over? I think not!) the sea and it will be carrying about 8 times the maximum load of the UK's present grid.
You could reduce the undersea bit to around 100 miles by routing the power through such friendly and cooperative territories as Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, the ever-stable Balkans, and our jealous neighbors in Europe, but we're now looking at around 12,000 miles times as many overhead wires as you think fit.
I rather think that our hosts would be resistant, or would at least demand a slice of the cake, and a whole generation of unemployables (formerly known as students) would complain about electrical colonialism and throw your statue into the Thames.
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jealous neighbors
Jealous of what?
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Our electricity crossing their land. Either electricity is a desirable commodity, in which case everyone will want some, or it isn't, in which case there is no point in generating and transmitting it. Just look at the fun caused by the UK government signing a contract with a UK company to manufacture a few tons of vaccine in Belgium, or having the gall to protect inshore fishing grounds!
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You do know that there is an international trade in electricity, don't you?Our electricity crossing their land.
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I quoted the current figures in reply #67 above.
65 years on, the "UK-other" trade is minimal with a maximum cable capacity of 5 GW, mostly to soak up excess French nuclear power, and at present net zero. The reason is that no nation state is going to install much more than required to meet its peak demand. There is a potential export of 1 GW from Holland "when there is excess wind power in Europe", but as the prevailing wind is westerly, and the east wind is cold, it hardly ever happens!
If the UK adopts electric cars, so will everyone else in Europe (because green votes count), so there will be a dearth of electricity in the civilised world.
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Transition to electric vehicle is inevitable. You can only delay it, presumably for some financial gain while sacrificing others and the environment.
The age when internal combustion cars rule is over. Tesla and other BEV (battery electric vehicle) manufacturers are creating a phase transition where we will go from gas (or ICE) cars to battery electric vehicles extremely rapidly. Tony Seba and I agree: don't get caught with an ICE car once the transition happens. Internal combustion engine cars will be worthless in 2025 or 2030 at the latest. Legacy auto manufacturers, auto dealerships, banks that do auto loans, and even consumers will feel some pain as this massive transition happens.
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The gas grid presently holds and distributes 35% of the UK's total energy. Until 1963, 50% of the gas was hydrogen. It has been economically feasible and indeed profitable since 1790.
Why did they stop distributing hydrogen?
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https://physicsworld.com/a/sunny-superpower-solar-cells-close-in-on-50-efficiency/
Key to the success of NREL’s device are three InGaAs sub-cells that excel at absorbing light in the infrared, which contains a significant proportion of the Sun’s radiation. Achieving strong absorption at these long wavelengths requires InGaAs compositions with a significantly different atomic spacing to that of the substrate. Additionally, their device has been designed with intermediate transparent layers made from InGaP or AlGaInAs to keep material imperfections in check. Grading the composition of these buffer layers enables a steady increase in lattice constant, thereby providing a strong foundation for local lattice-matched growth of sub-cells that are not riddled with strain-induced defects.
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The gas grid presently holds and distributes 35% of the UK's total energy. Until 1963, 50% of the gas was hydrogen. It has been economically feasible and indeed profitable since 1790.
Why did they stop distributing hydrogen?
They moved from "town gas " to "North Sea Gas", largely because it was cheaper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas#Conversion_to_natural_gas
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And less smelly - gas production and storage works had a particular miasma.
But importantly, less poisonous. Oxford and Cambridge were prioritised for conversion to minimise suicides and accidental deaths: student accommodation always had radiant gas fires and the first item of academic equipment everyone purchased was a toasting fork.
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Let's say that a self sufficient system in The Sahara requires 10 kW solar panel and 100 kWh battery.
You could say that, but a static 10 kW panel will only produce ~ 2.5 kW average during clear daylight and nothing at night so you need to install about 30 kW of generating capacity to charge the battery during the day.
NO. 10kW of fixed solar panels at the optimum angle in the Sahara make an average of about 2.5 kW over the entire year (solar panels there would make ~2500kWh/yr/kWp), not just during the day; so they make an average of 5 kW during the day.
But if you are also using power during the day, you need to install 60 kW of peak generating capacity to supply 8.3 kW continuously.
Yeahhhhhhhh. About that. **** No.
How is it that you could ever have thought and wrote that 10kWp solar panel in direct sunshine most of the time only makes 2.5kW on average during daylight hours???
UK energy consumption is about 5 kW per capita, so to supply the UK alone, from a hot desert location, you need to install 40,000,000 x 60 kW solar panels, each with a 100 kWh battery. At 50 sq ft per kW, that's about 500 square miles of panel: just feasible, perhaps, but it's not a happy environment for batteries and you have to find some way of preventing the whole thing getting covered with sand.
Now let's get that power to the UK. Say we install a 1,000,000 V DC cable (the reactive losses over 3000 miles would be very expensive with an AC supply). It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.
You really don't get how any of this works. Have you ever actually been an electrical engineer? Because you're not showing it.
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Yes. Which is why I worry.
AFAIK the sun doesn't shine at night in the Sahara, so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day averaged over a year, it must be making 2.5 kW during daylight hours. The power output over time is pretty close to a half sine curve, and a little arithmetic will show you that the area under a half sine of amplitude 10 is ~ 6.2 so the average power over 24 hours is 3.1 kW at midsummer, assuming no cloud or dust, and 2.5 kW over a year is optimistic.
Not that it matters to the UK consumer, because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.
This is the 7th successive day with UK wind power below 15% of installed capacity. Gas and nuclear have been running at around 60% of installed capacity most of the week. If the UK is to go 100% renewable we need to install at least 10,000 GWh of storage capacity and 5 times the present wind generating capacity just to meet present electrical demand reliably. If you want to recharge enough electric cars to replace present fleet useage you will need to double the wind and storage capacity again. Who will pay?
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Yes. Which is why I worry.
AFAIK the sun doesn't shine at night in the Sahara, so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day averaged over a year, it must be making 2.5 kW during daylight hours. The power output over time is pretty close to a half sine curve, and a little arithmetic will show you that the area under a half sine of amplitude 10 is ~ 6.2 so the average power over 24 hours is 3.1 kW at midsummer, assuming no cloud or dust, and 2.5 kW over a year is optimistic.
NO.
If it's 2.5 kW AVERAGED OVER THE ENTIRE YEAR, and IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY AT NIGHT, and the AVERAGE NIGHT IS HALF THE OVERALL 24 HOUR DAY, then the AVERAGE POWER DURING THE DAY TIME IS 5 KW.
THAT'S HOW AVERAGES WORK.
Not that it matters to the UK consumer, because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.
The UK has an average demand of about 30 GW. With further electrification it may well increase. Nobody is suggesting we would get all our power from the Sahara. Renewables work stochastically, and the more different sources you have the better, since the variations average out. But as we've already established, you have ZERO grasp of statistics.
This is the 7th successive day with UK wind power below 15% of installed capacity. Gas and nuclear have been running at around 60% of installed capacity most of the week. If the UK is to go 100% renewable we need to install at least 10,000 GWh of storage capacity and 5 times the present wind generating capacity just to meet present electrical demand reliably. If you want to recharge enough electric cars to replace present fleet useage you will need to double the wind and storage capacity again. Who will pay?
It's true that the wind power is below average right now, but we're moving into the summer wind patterns, and it's been highly productive over winter. Solar production has been strong for the last few days.
The question is not who will pay, the question is who has and will be paying for the fossil fuel production we've been using previously. And the answer is all of us, both with our wallets, as well as our lungs, our asthma, and heart disease. We're spending more on fossil fuel power production per kWh than we spend on renewables.
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so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day
What is that a unit of?
because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.
Actually, you did.
Say we install a 1,000,000 V DC cable (the reactive losses over 3000 miles would be very expensive with an AC supply). It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.
And, while that's a silly design, it's easy enough to improve on it.
How about 330 cables rated for 1000 A ?
Cables with that capacity are commercially available.
https://www.cse-distributors.co.uk/cable/technical-tables-useful-info/table-4e1a/
It would be an expensive project.
But, of course, you only need it to supply the balance of the energy that can't be produced locally.
If the UK had a variety of energy sources then it's unlikely that they would all fail at the same time.
Also, you keep going on about the idea that humanity should reduce the population.
That's a fine idea, but there is even less suggestion of how to implement it than there is for how to transfer a GW of power from the Sahara.
One way to get people to have fewer kids would be to demonstrate that there isn't enough resource for them.
A regular brown-out might do that quite well.
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Now route your 330 cables from the Sahara to the south coast of England,
find some way of persuading everyone over whose land you want to route your cables that they don't need electric cars
and should be honored to allow your power to pass over their land without charge
and estimate the cost of crossing say 3000 miles of land and 300 miles of sea
You can take as a basis the the latest undersea 150 mile 1GW Anglo-French cable, budgeted at £1,000,000,000.
And add 35,000,000 kerbside charging points, plus whatever switchgear and additional wiring is needed to uprate the grid and distribute the juice. and some data infrastructure to allow credit card recharging.
The cost of this venture cannot be borne by existing electricity customers because it will only benefit the owners of electric cars. So how much is it going to add to the capital cost of a car? And how much fossil fuel will be expended to build this project?
Remember the whole structure has to be in place by 2030 to meet government targets for banning the sale of internal combustion vehicles!
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and should be honored to allow your power to pass over their land without charge
That's a straw man you made up, isn't it?
find some way of persuading everyone over whose land you want to route your cables that they don't need electric cars
Ditto.
Do you not think your argument is good enough to stand on its own without making up tosh to support it?and estimate the cost of crossing say 3000 miles of land and 200 miles of sea
I did.
It would be an expensive project.
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Not a straw man.
Wayleaves have to be negotiated (I've done it) and paid for (I've received it).
If electric cars are good for the UK, then they must be good for every other country, surely? and won't they need a magic electricity tree too? So wouldn't they prioritise their own grid?
Thank you for your brilliant financial input! Next time I'm talking to bankers and shareholders about a capital project, I'll present them with a one word budget : "expensive".
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Wayleaves have to be negotiated (I've done it) and paid for (I've received it).
Nobody said otherwise- which is what makes it a straw man.
If electric cars are good for the UK, then they must be good for every other country, surely?
Nobody said otherwise, which is what makes it a straw man.
Do you not think your argument is good enough to stand on its own without making up tosh to support it?
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Next time I'm talking to bankers and shareholders about a capital project, I'll present them with a one word budget : "expensive".
If you are talking to the bankers and shareholders, it makes sense to make sure you have a robust estimate.
But I was talking to you, and you aren't paying for this project, nor are you the decision maker, so I didn't waste my time.
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If the UK had a variety of energy sources then it's unlikely that they would all fail at the same time.
The winged pig flies again!
Yes, all we need is a whole load more of really big mountains, a tidal generator that works, less cloud, more wind, and constant rain.
Right now, we have about 7 GW of solar, 2 GW of wind, and 55 GW of undesirable nuclear and gas producing electricity. There is no significant storage capacity and the total fuel consumption is about 3 times the electricity load.
Your suggestions, backed with cash, are welcome.
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I learn something every day! Relativity is a straw man because nobody said otherwise.
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Electric cars are large grid batteries on wheels. They're pretty much all the grid storage the UK needs; so no, they're the opposite of green wash.
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Problem is that most people will want to charge them when there is no solar power available. This is the tenth successive day with no significant wind (and surface wind generally decreases at night too!). Nuclear power does not respond economically to varying demand. So if I had an electric car, even if it had been made by magic instead of by burning fossil fuel, I'd need to call on the gas-powered grid to recharge it. Except that there isn't enough actual or planned generating capacity of any sort to keep 35,000,000 cars on the road, even if you don't worry about the CO2 emission from the gas stations and the fact that most of it comes from an unreliable country. It's bad enough having the price and availability of road fuel determined by Salman al Saud - would you prefer Vladimir Putin?
To recap on the old story: A traveller in Dublin asked a man the quickest way to Cork. He said "If I wanted to go to Cork, sir, I wouldn't start from Dublin." For the foreseeable future of road transport, we are in Dublin.
https://gridwatch.org.uk/
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Problem is that most people will want to charge them when there is no solar power available.
I'd want to charge mine while it's in the car park at work, plugged in via their meter.
Incidentally, the pandemic has done a fine job of demonstrating that most of us don't need to commute, which makes a big hole in the energy demand.
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Far from it, at least as far as electricity is concerned. Have a look at Gridwatch. There has been a small decrease in industrial use of electricity but that will pick up when "non essential" businesses re-open.
There was a brief dip in road fuel prices a year ago when demand slumped but the peak electricity demand has remained around 40 GW, against a "secure" limit of 45 GW, above which the system requires sun and wind to meet demand.
There is an amusing and very sharp-edged 3.45pm dip in electricity use which picks up again an hour later. I'm struggling to find an explanation: the famous "coronation teatime" surge was due to people switching on kettles and flushing toilets, so it isn't a tea-break phenomenon. Maybe folk switching off their home computers and cookers, and setting out on the school run?
I think the upside of non-commuting is here to stay, but travelling over the last few weeks has been a pleasure - except at school-run time!
You make a good point about work car parks. In addition to 35,000,000 kerbside charging points we will need around 20,000,000 in works car parks,so people can get home.
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Have a look at Gridwatch.
Yeah... 'cos that's going to tell me all about car use.
or, I could look at the reduction in energy use due to people not commuting during lockdown.
https://www.gocompare.com/motoring/reports-statistics/fuel-savings/
https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2020/05/coronavirus-lockdowns-depress-fuel-demand-worldwide
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Gridwatch won't tell you about car use, but it will tell you what is available for electric cars. Sadly, not a lot.
Untangling the gocompare figures it seems that lockdown may have reduced annual car fuel consumption by about 10%. Helpful, but still a long way from Cork! The surprising figure is
On average, Brits spend 58 minutes a day commuting for work by car, covering 3.4 miles each way.
Slightly quicker than walking, about right for a forced march or a jog, and it seems that a bike would be 2-3 times faster than a car!.
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The surprising figure is
You might be surprised; I'm not.
So, here's another question for you, do you think it would be easier to get the developing world to have fewer children, or to persuade Westerners to get on bikes?
Reducing energy use is a whole lot better than trying to find easy sources for it.
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Problem is that most people will want to charge them when there is no solar power available.
Right. But what they do want to do is charge them when the electricity is CHEAP. That's when there's an excess of electricity, when there's excess solar or wind. And further, they're often willing to sell some electrical power when electricity is EXPENSIVE (such as the early evening when solar is dropping off.)
This is the tenth successive day with no significant wind (and surface wind generally decreases at night too!).
Yes, we're getting into summer. Solar is doing really well. This is not a coincidence.
Nuclear power does not respond economically to varying demand. So if I had an electric car, even if it had been made by magic instead of by burning fossil fuel, I'd need to call on the gas-powered grid to recharge it.
Not gas-powered, just the grid.
Except that there isn't enough actual or planned generating capacity of any sort to keep 35,000,000 cars on the road,
It's not difficult, you just build 2.5kW (~12 square metres) of solar panel per car. Most people's roofs can handle that easily. During the winter it will underperform, but wind power overperforms. So: 🤷♂️
even if you don't worry about the CO2 emission from the gas stations and the fact that most of it comes from an unreliable country. It's bad enough having the price and availability of road fuel determined by Salman al Saud - would you prefer Vladimir Putin?
You're looking at this the wrong way. Natural gas usage is going down from here on out, not up.
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What is Tesla's autobidder—and how does it use AI to make millions?
According to an Eletrek article, Tesla's Autobidder software, using their AI-based Opticaster, is now managing 1.2GWh of electricity globally. That's an amazing figure! But what is Autobidder? how does Autobidder work? How does it use artificial intelligence/machine learning? What is Opticaster and how does it relate to Autobidder? How does it make electric companies money? How does it make Tesla a great deal of money? Can we humble consumers get in on this and make money using our own Tesla powerwalls?
Here is what batteries can do to the grid.
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The 2021 Tesla Battery Update Is Here
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Reducing energy use is a whole lot better than trying to find easy sources for it.
Agreed. Let's begin with electricity. We can ignore electric cars for the moment as there aren't many. What in your life and environment would you like to switch off, and persuade aspiring consumers that they don't want?
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But what they do want to do is charge them when the electricity is CHEAP. That's when there's an excess of electricity, when there's excess solar or wind.
That rather compromises the utility of the vehicle.
Yes, we're getting into summer. Solar is doing really well. This is not a coincidence.
current installed capacity is about 10 GW, yielding an annual average of about 1 GW.
Not gas-powered, just the grid.
Right now, at maximum solar intensity, gas is providing 52% of the grid power. At night, that increases to around 70%, with nuclear at 15 - 20%. Assuming no new nuclear power, the grid will have to be principally gas-powered for the foreseeable future if we are to have electric cars as standard.
It's not difficult, you just build 2.5kW (~12 square metres) of solar panel per car. Most people's roofs can handle that easily.
Thus adding £6000 to the cost of your car, assuming you live in a house with a south-facing roof. If you live in a block of flats, you have a problem. A 2.5 kW peak solar panel in the UK will deliver an average of 250W over the year - just enough to keep the lights on.
You're looking at this the wrong way. Natural gas usage is going down from here on out, not up.
Delighted to hear it. What reliable source are you installing to replace it?
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You're still not getting it. If the wind drops entirely for a couple of weeks a year-all we have to do is turn on the CCGT plant we already have to make up the shortfall. This is called a 'backup generator' set. And we already have it, and it's going to be mostly paid off.
Two weeks a year is 4% probably more but it's not a big thing and potentially we could make methane from biomass.
Solar installations are growing at about 20-40% per annum, compound, and are still plummeting in price. Installing it on roofs works, but installing it on brown field sites works even better. Most people understand exponentials better having experience the coronavirus growth patterns. Solar is growing exponentially too. Last time I drew the graph, yearly global solar production was on track to equal the entire world generation by about 2030 give or take 5 years or so. Adding electric cars helps with that, because they can suck down excess power and release it in the evenings obviating the 'duck curve' and keep the power going even when there's no wind or solar without having to start up the CCGTs.
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All that would be true if we had enough spare generating capacity and sufficient grid infrastructure to distribute it. Cars currently consume as much power as the entire present capacity - about 45 GW.
So "all we have to do" is
double the UK electricity generating capacity
double the grid capacity
install 50,000,000 new charging points
build 30,000,000 new cars and
scrap 30,000,000 roadworthy old cars
without burning any more gas.
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Cars currently consume as much power as the entire present capacity - about 45 GW.
When you say "currently" do you mean they used to use roughly twice as much as the grid before the pandemic roughly halved consumption, or do you mean they actually no use about half of the grid capacity?
scrap 30,000,000 roadworthy old cars
What else would we do with them in the end?
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All that would be true if we had enough spare generating capacity and sufficient grid infrastructure to distribute it. Cars currently consume as much power as the entire present capacity - about 45 GW.
Nope. If we had 35 million electric cars, that would be an average power of 7 GW:
~5 kWh/car/day times 35 million cars = 175 GWh/day. Averaged over a 24 hour period, ~7GW
Meanwhile average power demand is about 30GW. Nothing like double.
I mean, yes, sure, if your point is how disastrously inefficient and horrifically polluting current fossil cars are, you've certainly proved your point!
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If we had 35 million electric cars, that would be an average power of 7 GW:
I'm considering replacing the vehicles we have, and the use we make of them, like for like. 50 miles per gallon at 50 miles per hour is about 60 kW input. Average car use is, say, 1 hour/day so power consumption is 60,000/24 x 35,000,000= 87.5 GW. Now the internal combustion engine is about 45% efficient at converting fuel to useful energy, and an electric motor say 90%, so we need ~ 44GW of electricity, just as I said earlier.
As regards pollution, until we find a magic electricity tree, we are going to have to meet the huge extra demand by burning gas. Thermal efficiency of a gas power station is pretty much the same as an i.c. engine, with maybe 5% transmission loss and 5% loss at the charger, so you actually burn more fossil fuel to run an electric car.
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Except that cars don't usually go 50 miles an hour for an hour a day. They average about 30 miles per day at much lower average speeds. Also electric cars have superior aerodynamics. So you're WAY overestimating the real world power that cars use.
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If you take the government's annual fuel consumption figure of about 1 tonne per car (they know, because they collect the fuel tax!) at 47 GJ/tonne and utilisation of 1 hour per day, you get an actual continuous power consumption of 1252 GW for 35,000,000 cars, so my previous estimate is a bit low.
There is no inherent aerodynamic superiority in electric cars. Current Tesla S has a drag coefficient of 0.24 against a BMW 7 of 0.22 and the ancient Citroen CX managed 0.21 on the days when it actually worked (I've had a couple, and probably spent more time under them than in them, mais quelle voiture!)
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In the UK in 2019 we used about 50 billion litres of petrol and petrol
https://www.racfoundation.org/data/volume-petrol-diesel-consumed-uk-over-time-by-year
It delivers about 45 MJ/ Kg or about 35 MJ/Litre
That's roughly 1.8 * 10^18 Joules
A year is 3E7 seconds
So the average power is about 58 GW
UK electricity use is about 300 TW Hr per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/322874/electricity-consumption-from-all-electricity-suppliers-in-the-united-kingdom/#:~:text=Consumption%20of%20electricity%20in%20the,301.76%20terawatt%20hours%20in%202019.
That's about 1.1 *10^18 J
So, in the UK in 2019, the energy supplied as petrol and diesel was roughly twice (more accurately 1.6 times) that supplied as electricity.
So, we need to something really stupid and triple the gird capacity, or we need to do something sensible and reduce the vehicle energy demand.
It's fair to assume that almost all of the petrol and diesel were used in vehicles.
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So we agree on something! I think we are due for a wager.
I bet a pint of Greene King Abbot that I can reduce the birthrate by paying women £1000 a year not to be pregnant, before you can persuade the British public to reduce their car mileage to something sustainable.
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OK.
I win.
The mileage is sustainable; the energy source isn't.
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You mean you are going to get everyone to walk?
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You mean you are going to get everyone to walk?
I haven't made up my mind, but since the problem is not the mileage, but the energy source I don't have any problem meeting the reduce their car mileage to something sustainable
criterion.
If we were actually able to harvest (and that might be a literal harvest) enough energy from the Sun, the mileage wouldn't matter.
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So, in the UK in 2019, the energy supplied as petrol and diesel was roughly twice (more accurately 1.6 times) that supplied as electricity.
Um. Yes, but actually no. You've fallen into the classic trap. These things are not directly commensurate.
That's THERMAL energy. Thermal energy, except for heating spaces, is much less valuable and efficient than electricity because it's high entropy- it's highly disordered energy. Electricity has low entropy and so can be converted into other forms with very high efficiency- it's not limited by the Carnot cycle. Thermal energy; not so much, efficiency is really limited.
Overall, electric cars are about three times more efficient than petrol per kWh of energy input (the mpge measure is per unit of energy is usually well over a hundred, depending on the model and terrain etc. also depending on which gallon you use, electric cars are usually well over 100 mpge_us, the us gallon is rather smaller of course, and so way over 100 mpg_e_uk).
So, no.
So, we need to something really stupid and triple the gird capacity, or we need to do something sensible and reduce the vehicle energy demand.
No and the grid already has the capacity to carry 55+GW of demand- it's carried that before, but usually runs a demand that's more like 20-40 GW. So there's huge capacity that isn't being used, and electric cars overwhelmingly recharge overnight, when demand is low anyway.
National Grid ESO say there's absolutely no problem, and indeed want electric cars, and trucks, deployed as soon as possible, because it's going make the grid more efficient and reduce costs for everyone, from better amortisation of the hardware.
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Thermal energy, except for heating spaces, is much less valuable and efficient than electricity
Yes.
I know all that.
Are you aware that, most of the time in the UK, a car is a space that needs to be heated?
Setting that aside, the electric car may be 3 times as efficient, but that still leaves the "energy bill" in the same ballpark as the electricity supply.
Dividing 1.6 by 3 doesn't suddenly make it 0.1 or anything small enough to be very helpful.
We really should move to dropping our travel energy use.
It's possible that self driving cars will revolutionise that (provided our employers don't want us to start work at 9 sharp).
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Oh wait, I thought you said:
So, we need to something really stupid and triple the gird capacity, or we need to do something sensible and reduce the vehicle energy demand.
And that's because you did.
Setting that aside, the electric car may be 3 times as efficient, but that still leaves the "energy bill" in the same ballpark as the electricity supply.
Dividing 1.6 by 3 doesn't suddenly make it 0.1 or anything small enough to be very helpful.
Let's do the calculation! Dividing 1.6 by 3 gives you 0.5. So the demand goes from 1 to 1.5. Oooh sounds scary.
But note that's kWhs, NOT kW.
Kilowatts would be a problem. Installing extra CAPACITY (kW) costs serious money. Pumping more kWhs through the same capacity makes things cheaper, because hardware amortises down.
Because electric cars want the cheapest electricity they recharge overnight, when the kW demand is lowest. So you're just filling in the demand gap there already is, which has actually been quietly costing everyone money for decades. That's actually why Economy 7-10 etc. was invented to try to make use of it.
Mostly electric cars these days have plenty of capacity. They drive about ~30 miles a day, but have ~150-300 mile range. So there's no big deal. They can wait for when there's a solar or wind peak and then suck down cheap electricity.
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I see you are waiting for a solar electricity peak at night.
This could be a problem.
Oooh sounds scary.
Yes. A 50% increase in average grid power at the same time that we are shutting down coal, cutting back on gas and have run out of "low hanging fruit" for renewables is a bit scary.
We could make our lives easier by staying home.
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We haven't run out of any fruit, there's plenty of scope for more solar and wind power installation, the long pole in the tent for getting a lot of electric cars in the UK is the low availability of electric cars from manufacturers.
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there's plenty of scope for more solar and wind power installation,
Nobody said there wasn't.
But, either the people who installed the first generators were stupid, or the best locations are already taken.
That's what "low hanging fruit" actually means.
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Overall, electric cars are about three times more efficient than petrol per kWh of energy input
Sadly, no. The "energy input" starts at the power station. You can get 90% conversion efficiency from a new battery, but making the electricity from gas, coal or a nuclear reactor is only about 50% efficient.
It's directly comparable to a gasoline engine: the gear train can be 90% efficient but the prime mover struggles to beat 45%.
All that electric cars do is shift the CO2 burden from the point of use to the upper atmosphere.
This is the 10th successive day with no wind above 4 GW, and the umpteenth night with no sun. Sadly, I have to go to work tomorrow, so we'll have to close a hospital ward so I can charge my car.
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there's plenty of scope for more solar and wind power installation,
Nobody said there wasn't.
But, either the people who installed the first generators were stupid, or the best locations are already taken.
That's what "low hanging fruit" actually means.
Except that the costs/kWh of, for example, off-shore wind farms are still going down pretty fast, as are the costs of on-shore solar farms. Cameron's government basically put a moratorium on new on-shore wind turbines, and tried to cancel existing agreements with the claim that, 'nobody really wants any more on-shore wind farms' even though they were cheaper than off-shore ones at the time (and even now still), and polls showed they were really popular. That has since been lifted by BoJo, but the on-shore wind turbine industry had come to a shuddering halt.
So, no. The low hanging fruit has not been picked, the fruit is still growing towards the ground.
Overall, electric cars are about three times more efficient than petrol per kWh of energy input
Sadly, no. The "energy input" starts at the power station. You can get 90% conversion efficiency from a new battery,
Lithium ion batteries have ~98% storage efficiency.
but making the electricity from gas, coal or a nuclear reactor is only about 50% efficient.
Coal plants are usually more like 35-40%. Natural gas CCGT plants can reach ~55% but only after some hours of running.
It's directly comparable to a gasoline engine: the gear train can be 90% efficient but the prime mover struggles to beat 45%.
Gasoline car engines are more like 35% efficient in the round. Diesel engines have approached the efficiency of electric vehicles in some cases but many of them generate large amounts of particulates, and they're rapidly dropping behind as grids become greener.
All that electric cars do is shift the CO2 burden from the point of use to the upper atmosphere.
If your electricity is being generated entirely from coal plants, which until recently some parts of America (and Australia) have been guilty of (about 700g of CO2 per kWh), then it can be true that electric cars can be worse, but the UK's electrical grid is far greener, it's down at 181g/kWh (as of 2020); so it's not even close in the UK; gasoline cars are horrendously more polluting.
This is the 10th successive day with no wind above 4 GW, and the umpteenth night with no sun. Sadly, I have to go to work tomorrow, so we'll have to close a hospital ward so I can charge my car.
Doesn't matter. It's the average over the year that matters. The UK's grid is one of the greener ones in the world, and getting greener every year; but it's still got a long way to go.
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Doesn't matter. It's the average over the year that matters.
Thank you, I'll tell my clients and patients that I may visit some time next year. Who knows, they may have turned green themselves by then?
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Sadly, no. The "energy input" starts at the power station. You can get 90% conversion efficiency from a new battery, but making the electricity from gas, coal or a nuclear reactor is only about 50% efficient.
Well... the point does , kind of... include not using fossil fuels to make electricity so...
If we get half our electricity from non fossil sources then the average quantity of foil fuel needed to generate a KW Hr of energy is halved.
So, even if there are no advantages to economy of scale, and the "CO2 per mile" is the same for an electric car charged by a coal fired power station as it is for a petrol car, that's just another reason to move away from fossil fuel in power staions.
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Just to put hard numbers on this, it's been estimated that a petrol fuelled car emits about 400g of CO2 per mile driven.
An electric car can usually do about 3-6 miles per kWh. The UK grid, emits on average 181 g/kWh. But there are conversion losses between the grid and the back wheels of the electric car (about 40%), so on a very inefficient coal grid (~800g/kWh) and a relatively inefficient electric car, and comparing it to a diesel or small petrol car, the electric car could lose. But on the current UK grid, that just doesn't happen.
So for an inefficient electric car on a coal only grid: 800/(1-0.4)/3 = 440g/mile (electric)
whereas on today's grid:
181/(1-0.4)/3 = 100g/mile (same inefficient electric car)
c.f. 400 g/mile on a petrol car
So it's not remotely close, not even diesels or most hybrids can approach electric car efficiency.
Doesn't matter. It's the average over the year that matters.
Thank you, I'll tell my clients and patients that I may visit some time next year. Who knows, they may have turned green themselves by then?
Nope, just plug it in whenever you want and it will average out. Actually, on today's grid the power that goes into electric cars averages better than 181g/kWh because they're recharged at night which has a higher average percentage of nuclear and wind power than fossil; the gas generators run more during the day.
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Well... the point does , kind of... include not using fossil fuels to make electricity so...
But as we have seen, there is no practical prospect of achieving this in the foreseeable future.
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400g of CO2 is 400/44 moles
9.1 moles of CO2 implies 9.1 moles of carbon.
If that's supplied as octane with a mass of 114 then each mole of carbon is an eighth of a mole of octane so that's 114/8 grams of octane. So a mole of carbon is equivalent to 14.25 grams of octane.
And thus 400g of CO2 is 9.1 *14.25 =130 grams of petrol
The density is about 0.75 so that's 173 ml
Which is 0.038 gallons.
So the figure of 400 grams per mile is equivalent to about 26 miles per gallon.
And that's the same ball park as the figure given here
https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/info-tools/One%20table%20to%20rule%20them%20all%20v1.pdf
which gives 22.1 mpg as the equivalent of 400 g per mile.
And I gather the most popular car in the UK is the Ford fiesta which runs at about 50 mpg.
So, re.
Just to put hard numbers on this, it's been estimated that a petrol fuelled car emits about 400g of CO2 per mile driven.
By whom was that estimate made, and on what basis?
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But as we have seen, there is no practical prospect of achieving this in the foreseeable future.
We are, in fact, doing it now.
As I said, even if we only shift half the generation away from fossil fuels it becomes worthwhile.
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So it's not remotely close, not even diesels or most hybrids can approach electric car efficiency.
Not if you equate efficiency with CO2 emissions per mile. But that's a very distorted definition of efficiency, which for most people is (useful work out)/(energy in).
However you have sort of indicated an ideal temporary reduction in CO2 emission: convert existing cars to run on LPG. This eliminates the problem - of building 30,000,000 electric cars, scrapping the existing fleet, upgrading the grid, installing 50,000,000 charging points and building another 100 gas power stations - at very little cost, and retains the advantage of fast charging. You need a somewhat larger fuel tank for the same range, but the energy density of the lighter LPGs is higher than gasoline so there's very little change in actual performance. We use butane for small forklifts working indoors, and I've driven big pickups fuelled by propane - no problem at all.
Eventually the fossil LPGs will run out but the money saved by not building electric cars and the rest of the paraphernalia can be diverted to building offshore wind farms that power CO2 to CH4 conversion, or anticipate the next phase when we run internal combustion engines on hydrogen . It would be great to convert atmospheric CO2, but in the meantime there's plenty of chalk - an unexploited source of fossil carbon - to stabilise the hydrogen in liquid form.
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Skoda Yetis average 150 g/km, 240 g/mile, according to official figures. Slightly more for petrol, slightly less for diesel. That's a very practical family/business 1.6/2 liter 5 seat SUV with aircon and all the trimmings.
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But that's a very distorted definition of efficiency, which for most people is (useful work out)/(energy in).
The thread isn't about energy efficiency, it's about environmental damage.
Grams of CO2 per "whatever it is that you are doing" is a very sensible unit.
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Skoda Yetis average 150 g/km, 240 g/mile, according to official figures. Slightly more for petrol, slightly less for diesel. That's a very practical family/business 1.6/2 liter 5 seat SUV with aircon and all the trimmings.
So for an inefficient electric car on a coal only grid: 800/(1-0.4)/3 = 440g/mile (electric)
whereas on today's grid:
181/(1-0.4)/3 = 100g/mile (same inefficient electric car)
So the fossil fuel version is only two and a half times worse than using electricity (even if you get all the electricity from coal- which we don't).
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“After 75,368 miles, I’ve spent a total of $1,404 on charging.”
75,000 Miles: Charging vs. Gas
For this comparison, Andy uses a popular Tesla competitor, the BMW 3 Series, from the year 2018, which averages 28 miles per gallon.
It also requires premium gasoline, costing an average of $3.47 per gallon in his county. “To drive that BMW the same amount of miles, the fuel costs would be about $9,353. That’s about $8,000 in savings,” Andy explained.
So there we have it. Andy debunked a popular myth that EV doubters often turn to as a reason for not buying an EV.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/20/tesla-vs-gas-cars-the-true-charging-cost-after-75000-miles/
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So the fossil fuel version is only two and a half times worse than using electricity (even if you get all the electricity from coal- which we don't).
No, 2.5 times more CO2 than using electricity from the UK grid, which uses 40% renewables and 10% nuclear - i.e slightly more CO2 than burning methane to do the same job. And considerably less than doing the same job with coal. Which is hardly surprising, given the chemical constitution of road fuel.
The argument here is not that electric cars do not emit CO2 - that's obvious. But the question is whether it is feasible or desirable to replace all internal combustion cars with electric cars, to which the answer is far from clear.
Way in the future, when all the i.c. cars are dead and we have installed enough grid infrastructure to support electric cars without burning gas and the electric cars have evolved to the point at which we can refuel them as conveniently as liquid fuel, and we have found some way of safely disposing of nuclear waste or storing a week's worth of renewable electrical energy, the answer is obviously yes, but those are awfully big whens and ifs. Certainly not in the next ten years.
Which adds up, in my mind, to electric cars being, for the foreseeable future, "greenwash". It gives me no pleasure to agree with the original poster because I'd love to have one.
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No, 2.5 times more CO2 than using electricity from the UK grid, which uses 40% renewables and 10% nuclear - i.e slightly more CO2 than burning methane to do the same job.
This seems to be a deliberate untruth on your part; the UK grid is about half the CO2 of a natural gas powered grid.
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Let's hear from someone who has first hand experience on it.
1 Year with Tesla Solar Roof: top 11 questions answered + real production numbers & utility bills!
After one year of Tesla Solar Roof ownership, I review my experience and attempt answer all of your most popular questions about the product. I also present my real-world data on energy production and show you my utility bills.
00:00 Intro
00:52 What is the deal with "Permission to Operate"?
01:20 Is the roof a fire hazard?
01:42 Does it make noise?
01:48 Is the roof actually waterproof?
02:04 Are the tiles too shiny from street level?
02:09 Can they survive a hail storm?
02:23 What is the warranty like?
02:50 Why didn't we get Powerwalls?
03:03 How does shade affect energy production?
03:28 Do you have to clean the roof?
03:53 How much energy does it generate?
05:28 Referral information for $100 off solar installation
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No, 2.5 times more CO2 than using electricity from the UK grid, which uses 40% renewables and 10% nuclear - i.e slightly more CO2 than burning methane to do the same job.
This seems to be a deliberate untruth on your part; the UK grid is about half the CO2 of a natural gas powered grid.
Far from an untruth. Gridwatch lists the maximum installed capacities as
Gas 30 GW
Nuclear 8
Wind 15
Solar 10
Biofuel 3
Hydro 2
Roughly 44% gas when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Right now, 49% gas.
You stated that the national grid produces an average of 181 g/kWh of CO2. So the conversion of gas to CO2 generates ~ 360 g/kWh because, as you say, half of the power comes from wind, solar and nuclear.
Assuming someone pays for it, you have to decide how to meet the doubled demand for electricity over the next 10 years if we replace all the cars with electrics. The cheapest and quickest way is to build gas-powered stations, which will meet the timescale with absolute security and yield a short-term profit, but will generate as much CO2 as the diesel cars they replace. How are you going to persuade people to do anything else? Put a premium on electric cars? Reduce the planning time for nuclear plant? Force Her Majesty's Taxpayer to subsidise my business travel? Double the cost of electricity and kill a few more pensioners?
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I presume your decision to ignore the option of "increase the renewables capacity" was deliberate.
Data from
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables
[ Invalid Attachment ]
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Excellent data source. We had 48 GW notional installed renewable capacity, which generated an average of 16 GW in the last year of reckoning (2020).
So if you want to generate another 30 GW from renewables alone, you will need to install around 90 GW of capacity, if you can ignore the variability of supply. If you want to recharge your car when you want, you will need to install some storage, or back up your 90 GW of unreliables with 30 GW of gas power that gets used about 50% of the time. Plus the distribution infrastructure.
Investment in renewables is only viable for as long as it is matched by gas backup. If it became mandatory to increase the power supply by 30 GW securely without building more gas stations, you would have to add yet more peak generating capacity and adequate storage.
So either the cost of electricity will increase or the taxpayer will subsidise my travel. Which do you prefer?
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So either the cost of electricity will increase or the taxpayer will subsidise my travel. Which do you prefer?
That's a false dichotomy, because there are other (obvious) options.
Raise fuel duty is one option
.Investment in renewables is only viable
No.
It's only "commercially" viable...
Governments are allowed to invest in things without expecting a cash return.
Admittedly, our government seems to have forgotten this.
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So the fossil fuel version is only two and a half times worse than using electricity (even if you get all the electricity from coal- which we don't).
No, 2.5 times more CO2 than using electricity from the UK grid, which uses 40% renewables and 10% nuclear - i.e slightly more CO2 than burning methane to do the same job. And considerably less than doing the same job with coal. Which is hardly surprising, given the chemical constitution of road fuel.
The argument here is not that electric cars do not emit CO2 - that's obvious. But the question is whether it is feasible or desirable to replace all internal combustion cars with electric cars, to which the answer is far from clear.
Way in the future, when all the i.c. cars are dead and we have installed enough grid infrastructure to support electric cars without burning gas and the electric cars have evolved to the point at which we can refuel them as conveniently as liquid fuel, and we have found some way of safely disposing of nuclear waste or storing a week's worth of renewable electrical energy, the answer is obviously yes, but those are awfully big whens and ifs. Certainly not in the next ten years.
Which adds up, in my mind, to electric cars being, for the foreseeable future, "greenwash". It gives me no pleasure to agree with the original poster because I'd love to have one.
I would say actually the biggest issue is mining, because to get all the resources necessary to covert or exchange all current transportation to electricity, and to also build all the 5g grid needed to allow for self driving, combined with the electricity generation needed and the charging stations is going to be massively damaging to the environment.
Electric cars will reduce pollution where they are driving but they wont reduce overall pollution, simply because everything needed to manufacture and maintain them.
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So either the cost of electricity will increase or the taxpayer will subsidise my travel. Which do you prefer?
That's a false dichotomy, because there are other (obvious) options.
Raise fuel duty is one option
Which is by taxation.
I would say another option would be publically created energy companies, paid for by borrowing which the company pays back over time. No Taxation, publically own and sells at cost, a cost that would go down once the loans are repaid.
Investment in renewables is only viable
No.
It's only "commercially" viable...
Governments are allowed to invest in things without expecting a cash return.
Admittedly, our government seems to have forgotten this.
Since Thatcher government is influenced more by the market then the concerns of it's society.
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Governments are allowed to invest in things without expecting a cash return.
The first lesson at every Civil Service College course I ever attended, began with the phrase "the government has no money". There is no secret pot of gold. Every penny a democratic government spends ("invests" only applies if there is an expected return) is redirected from tax income or borrowed against treasury bonds (which are repaid with interest from tax income).
So the question remains: are you happy to subsidise my business travel through your taxes? And not just the car: I'm seriously considering an electric airplane which will plug into the same supply.
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Every penny a democratic government spends ("invests" only applies if there is an expected return)
Governments are allowed to invest in things without expecting a cash return.
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Fine, however you want to view it. But the taxpayer pays, so are you happy to subsidise my business mileage?
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Fine, however you want to view it. But the taxpayer pays, so are you happy to subsidise my business mileage?
No, I'm happy to tax it.
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Previous posters have pointed out the environmental problems with electric cars.
Don't these problems mainly stem from our present inability to squeeze enough electrons into a car-battery. to give the car a range as good as a petrol car.
This leads me to wonder whether there are any theoretical limits to electron storage. Would it be possible to make a battery of compact size which contained a huge compressed mass of electrons.
In an analogous way to a huge mass of hydrogen atoms being compressed into a compact cylinder?
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I would say actually the biggest issue is mining, because to get all the resources necessary to covert or exchange all current transportation to electricity, and to also build all the 5g grid needed to allow for self driving, combined with the electricity generation needed and the charging stations is going to be massively damaging to the environment.
Electric cars will reduce pollution where they are driving but they wont reduce overall pollution, simply because everything needed to manufacture and maintain them.
Actually, no. The thing is about mining, normal cars are almost completely recycled, and electric cars will be too. The study that was done recently said there will be just a football-sized lump that right now can't be recycled from an electric car; (which theoretically could still be recycled, but probably won't be) but for fossil cars, the mineral oil that is twenty times the weight of the car, can never be recycled.
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Fine, however you want to view it. But the taxpayer pays, so are you happy to subsidise my business mileage?
No, I'm happy to tax it.
So you are going to tax all vehicles by mileage? Neat idea, but is it practicable and enforceable?
Looking at the financial aspect, wind turbines cost about £1 per peak watt, so by the time we have installed enough turbines and secure grid capacity for 30,000,000 cars we are looking at around £10 per useful watt, £10k per car on average. The investors will want their money back in 5 years, so the average car "fuel" tax will be £2000 per year, 25p per mile, about 3 times the present level. I guess the government can claim it as part of the MoT test, where the recorded mileage is checked.
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So you are going to tax all vehicles by mileage? Neat idea, but is it practicable and enforceable?
What about taxing based on polluting gases released?
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In other words, increasing the cost of peak electricity for everyone, in order to subsidise my business travel, up to the point at which all the electricity is produced from renewables so no more tax is collected. So I won't be investing in the electric car infrastructure because there's no guarantee that I'll get my money back.
Fact is, of course, that vehicles are already taxed on the basis of emissions - or at least fuel used. Perfectly reasonable in principle, except that the fuel tax is not spent on transport infrastructure, so if we all use electric cars we will have to pay more tax on other things to pay for health, defence, sleaze, etc....Or increase the car fuel tax to 4 times current levels - around 32 p per mile plus the actual cost of electricity.
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So you are going to tax all vehicles by mileage? Neat idea, but is it practicable and enforceable?
What about taxing based on polluting gases released?
Yes, the idea of taxing polluting gas released does have an appeal, but could it be enforced on internet forums
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Looking at the financial aspect, wind turbines cost about £1 per peak watt, so by the time we have installed enough turbines and secure grid capacity for 30,000,000 cars we are looking at around £10 per useful watt,
The capacity factor of wind turbines built today is ~0.35-0.4, so it's more like $2.5 per watt (average), so you're out by a factor of 4 already, and all the conclusions you drew from this $10 value, are wrong.
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So you are going to tax all vehicles by mileage? Neat idea, but is it practicable and enforceable?
What about taxing based on polluting gases released?
Yes, the idea of taxing polluting gas released does have an appeal, but could it be enforced on internet forums
People who live in glass houses shouldn't vote for a window tax.
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Looking at the financial aspect, wind turbines cost about £1 per peak watt, so by the time we have installed enough turbines and secure grid capacity for 30,000,000 cars we are looking at around £10 per useful watt,
The capacity factor of wind turbines built today is ~0.35-0.4, so it's more like $2.5 per watt (average), so you're out by a factor of 4 already, and all the conclusions you drew from this $10 value, are wrong.
Yearly average isn't the problem. Over the last month, UK wind output has been about 10% of installed capacity, down to 2% at minimum. So if you want to ensure that the lights stay on all the time, never mind charging motor cars, you need to install at least 10 x peak demand and 5 days' storage or some equivalent means of alternative supply. If anything, my figures are somewhat optimistic as I've made some guesses at the cost of installing the 50,000,000 new charging points, doubling the capacity of the grid cabling and switchgear, and adding some storage
Remember that there is only one grid, and it already has to supply 25 GW continuous demand for trivial things like hospitals and refrigeration plus another 15 GW daily peak domestic and industrial demand. If we want to replace all fossil fuel use we will need another 50 GW to replace domestic and industrial gas heating, plus 30 GW for cars and another 15 - 20 GW for trucks and buses. Your estimate of the capital cost of doing all, or just the car part, of this with adequate (say 95%) security of supply at all times, would be of interest.
Generating electricity when the wind blows isn't a problem. Generating a sufficient surplus and storing it for when the wind doesn't blow, and getting it to where it is needed whenever it is needed, is both a technical and a financial conundrum.
As an aside, I wondered how many miles I would have to drive at 0p per mile to make it worth investing in a new electric car and scrapping the entirely functional vehicle I already have. The answer is around 90,000. If I have to pay for the electricity, it doesn't make financial sense at all.
The electric car is a brilliant solution, just 150 years too late.
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If we want to replace all fossil fuel use we will need another 50 GW to replace domestic and industrial gas heating,
Not really.There are other options, most notably hydrogen.
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Agreed hydrogen is the ideal means of storing energy that has been generated by....er.....magic? There is very little free hydrogen on the planet.
Assume 90% efficiency in converting wind electricity to hydrogen, so you need to install around 110 GW of wind turbines, build 80 GW of electrolytic production plant, double the storage and distribution capacity of the gas grid, change all the methane burners to hydrogen, and add about 50,000 standardised hydrogen filling pumps.
It's still a lot cheaper and greener than electric cars because we can modify existing petrol cars (and trucks and furnaces) to burn hydrogen at very little cost.
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Here's the "greenwash" clincher. Read the Polestar website https://www.polestar.com/uk/polestar-2
It's a truly lovely medium-size all-electric car, and according to the manufacturer, it takes 26.2 tonnes of CO2 emission to make one. I could drive over 100,000 miles in my diesel car and emit less CO2 than that.
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Here's the "greenwash" clincher. Read the Polestar website https://www.polestar.com/uk/polestar-2
It's a truly lovely medium-size all-electric car, and according to the manufacturer, it takes 26.2 tonnes of CO2 emission to make one. I could drive over 100,000 miles in my diesel car and emit less CO2 than that.
How much less?
The electric car will have fewer moving parts and should have a longer life.
Perhaps you need to compare the Polestar car to two diesels.
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Agreed hydrogen is the ideal means of storing energy that has been generated by....er.....magic?
And again, you make a fool of yourself by pretending that renewables don't exist.
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How much less? around 10%, possibly 15%.
Apropos moving parts: we all use tyres, so no difference there. I expect to replace one clutch, a couple of injectors and maybe two sets of brake pads, and get 200,000 miles from a diesel car before something expensive breaks or the body rusts apart - the engine is the last to go, and AFAIK the Polestar, Tesla et al bodies and suspensions are also made of steel, which will be the life-determining part. I doubt that the battery of any electric car will be giving 90% performance after 100,000 miles, by which time a good diesel is just about perfect. But the immediate point is that replacing internal combustion vehicles with electrics before they fall apart is environmentally damaging..
Yes, I have heard of renewables, but I have also been at pains to point out in several posts that there is no economic way that the UK can power 30,000,000 cars from renewables of any sort, except by forcing the taxpayer to subsidise the mileage of business users by paying for the essential infrastructure.
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We've repeatedly refuted every point you've made, but I note that hasn't stopped you repeating your false claims as if we haven't.
Here's the "greenwash" clincher. Read the Polestar website https://www.polestar.com/uk/polestar-2
It's a truly lovely medium-size all-electric car, and according to the manufacturer, it takes 26.2 tonnes of CO2 emission to make one. I could drive over 100,000 miles in my diesel car and emit less CO2 than that.
Except that it would take about 20 tonnes of CO2 to make your diesel car, and it emits about another 20 tonnes of CO2 in operation or so.
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The point is that (1) I (and 29,999,999 others) already have a perfectly functional car, so replacing it before it has done another 100,000 miles would be more environmentally damaging than using it until it dies and (2) the only way we can power a significant number of electric cars in the foreseeable future is to burn more gas or persuade the taxpayer to subsidise my business.
I have made no claims, merely quoted government and National Grid statistics and manufacturers' specifications.
I would very much like to have an electric car, and I assume from your enthusiasm that you are prepared to subsidise it. Many thanks, but I doubt that you speak for the majority of taxpayers, nor on behalf of the environment.
As I said earlier, the time to introduce electric cars is 150 years ago. Then power supply might have evolved to meet demand and the demand would have levelled off at the point where the power supply was sustainable. Starting now, with the intention to completely replace fossil-fuelled cars, they will be an economic and environmental embarrassment .
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Perhaps we could make cars powered by steam engines?
The big advantage of steam-engines is that they don't need any special fuels like petroleum or diesel. Anything combustible will do. Such as wood, rags, or even bundles of old newspapers. These will suffice to heat the boiler.
And the boiler itself only needs to contain water.
This simple combination of just something to burn, plus ordinary water, seems very satisfactory from a Green viewpoint.
Far more satisfactory, than the complicated "batteries" required to propel electric cars. These batteries not only use up a lot of energy in their manufacture, but also rely on rare minerals, whose difficult extraction from the Earth's crust consumes even more energy.
So the simple steam-engine seems a much better and Greener propulsive mechanism for cars.
Why then, aren't we using steam cars?
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The point is that (1) I (and 29,999,999 others) already have a perfectly functional car
The UK plan for "net neutral" is 2050
Do you (and 29,999,999 others) expect to be driving the same car in 30 years?
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The big advantage of steam-engines is that they don't need any special fuels like petroleum or diesel. Anything combustible will do. Such as wood, rags, or even bundles of old newspapers. These will suffice to heat the boiler.
We are trying to cut down on CO2 and particulates, not create more.
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As I said earlier, the time to introduce electric cars is 150 years ago.
Yes, and you were wrong then, and wrong now.
Then power supply might have evolved to meet demand and the demand would have levelled off at the point where the power supply was sustainable.
That's funny, because that's pointedly NOT what the national grid ever say, for example:
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted
"There are two aspects to whether we have the capacity to manage lots of EVs being plugged in at once – whether we have enough energy and then whether we have sufficient capacity on the wires that carry that energy to where it’s needed.
Enough capacity exists
With the first of these, the energy element, the most demand for electricity we’ve had in recent years in the UK was for 62GW in 2002. Since then, due to improved energy efficiency such as the installation of solar panels, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16 per cent. Even if the impossible happened and we all switched to EVs overnight, we think demand would only increase by around 10 per cent. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002 and this is well within the range of manageable load fluctuation."
Gee, do you think they know more about the UK's electrical grid and power supply than you do? Because, yes, yes they do.
Starting now, with the intention to completely replace fossil-fuelled cars, they will be an economic and environmental embarrassment .
Which of us pointing out that the UK's grid is already much, much greener and cheaper to run than your diesel car didn't you understand?
On a website, that contains posts about science, your posts repeatedly don't contain any. Just your uneducated, unverified opinion.
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That's funny, because that's pointedly NOT what the national grid ever say, for example:
There's an element of "They would say that wouldn't they?" because they want to sell us the extra electricity.
But, of course, they are in the business of selling electricity. They know that doing so requires installation and maintenance of infrastructure.
They are no more frightened of paying to build new capacity than Tesco is scared of the price of building a new supermarket.
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The HV wires can indeed carry twice the current load. That is the entire remit of National Grid.
But who is going to install the kerbside charging points for citydwellers, and run the supply to them?
What supply? There are several different standards.
Where is the new electricity going to come from? The old 62 GW was based on coal and gas, which could be relied on 24/7 but won't exist in the near future.
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Why would they ever need to build any new capacity for this? There's already time of day charging incentives that the overwhelming majority of electric car charging use that pushes the charging to overnight, when the electricity is cheap and the grid is relatively quiet; and smart chargers and smart meters are becoming ever more common.
The UK grid's production capacity is INCREASING. They're adding more renewable energy/power, as well as keeping the old natural gas production. But they're also burning less fuel, so the costs are not changing very much.
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Worth looking at the "quiet" grid. Overnight demand is about 10 GW less than daytime peak. There is no solar and consistently less wind power available at night.When the UK goes to "net zero" we will be using magic electricity to replace gas space heating, for which the demand peaks at night.
It is important to remember that, apart from biofuels (which annoy lots of environmentalists) and hydropower (not significantly available in the UK), all renewables are unreliable.
However if we ignore battery-powered cars, there is hope. Britten-Norman are experimenting with hydrogen fuel-cell powered aircraft and Rolls-Royce with hydrogenated bioester fuel as a replacement for aviation kerosene for jets and turboprops. Both technologies retrofit existing aircraft and solve the problems of rapid refuelling and energy storage.
Gasoline and diesel engines can burn hydrogenated bioesters with little modification and gradual replacement of worn-out i.c. vehicles with fuel-cell electrics may be even more efficient, particularly as we will need to supply the gas grid with hydrogen for industry and space heating anyway.
If anything, it looks as though the electricity grid will be used in future only for feeding hydrogen-generating plant!
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But who is going to install the kerbside charging points for citydwellers, and run the supply to them?
It's a bit like asking "Who is going to build supermarkets and deliver stock to them?".
Someone who wants to sell the electricity that is delivered through them.
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When the UK goes to "net zero" we will be using magic electricity to replace gas space heating, for which the demand peaks at night.
Why do you think storage batteries are "magic"?
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Because they can hold 26,000,000,000,000,000 joules at no cost, just to recharge electric cars when the wind doesn't blow for 10 days - like today. Or if they cost something, the initial capital will be paid for by everyone else, for which I and other high-mileage users thank you.
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It's a bit like asking "Who is going to build supermarkets and deliver stock to them?".
Someone who wants to sell the electricity that is delivered through them.
There's a difference between building on a field or brownsite and digging up a city street, particularly when every such entrepreneur wants to dig up all the other streets at the same time.
If it doesn't happen quickly and evenly, there will be unseemly competition for kerbside charging points at 6 pm. The only way to prevent middleclass rioting will be to wait until all the streets are equipped before switching any on, so I won't be the first to install the kit because I won't make any money until the last guy finishes his project, and he won't be in a hurry in case the one before is delayed......
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There's a difference between building on a field or brownsite and digging up a city street, particularly when every such entrepreneur wants to dig up all the other streets at the same time.
So, more like cable TV than a supermarket.
OK.
So what?
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I don't see people fighting in the street to plug their TV into the cable.
Suppose I electrify your street, with a socket for every parking space. Then somebody else parks in front of your house and charges his car overnight. No problem, you can use your neighbour's space. Until a third party uses that one....Your street has suddenly become a favorite charging spot for everyone who hasn't got one.
One suggestion I made some time ago is that nobody should be allowed to buy an electric car until he has an assigned parking and charging spot. Easy enough to make it personal with a lock and key, but suppose I want to buy an electric car tomorrow (because my disgusting old diesel has died) and I will be the first in the street. "They" will have to dig up the street as far back as the 11 kV supply and install a transformer station (because eventually the whole street will need to be electrified). So either they will have to mark out dedicated parking spaces for everyone and install charging points whether or not they are needed, or they will have to dig up the road again every time anyone buys a new car (because there won't be any i.c. cars on sale in 10 years' time) or Her Majesty's Taxpayer will have to subsidise my travel by paying for a facility he doesn't and can't use until his petrol car dies.
Cable TV doesn't require major road works. The trench from the distribution box to my house was cut with a diamond wheel, cable laid and covered within an hour, then we had the option of using it or not, at no charge for saying no. EWven if I didn't use it, having a cable access point increased the saleability of my house without impacting on anyone else.Similarly for blocks of flats. But assigning a space on a public road is a different matter: in effect, "they" have increased my exclusive domain. Do I need permission to arrogate it?
There are of course plenty of "permit only" parking spaces already in most cities. But if someone has parked outside your house, it's only a matter of inconvenience to park somewhere else. If they have occupied your assigned charging point, you can't go to work tomorrow. I see a growth market in lift trucks and vehicle pounds.
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You're stressing out about this, but people who actually have electric cars aren't; they've usually got a whole week's worth of charge in their cars, and they just top it up occasionally. Look, most people commute ~30 miles per day to and from work. The days of range anxiety are long gone. Most electric cars have a range of 150-300 miles. If you've forgotten or not been able to charge your car AND you've nearly run out of juice, you just need to stop at a rapid charger (50 kW) for about 5 minutes to get enough range. In the rich parts of London now, there's whole streets full of Porsche Taycan's and Teslas parked on the roads without garages, and they're doing just fine.
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Early adopters will win. No question. If you have off-street parking and only make short journeys, an electric car is better than a bicycle and almost as good as a scooter. My concern is for the long term, when everyone else has an electric car.
I haven't seen streets full of parked electric cars in London, but I only regularly visit the Harley Street area. Where are they?
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Where are they?
Barnet.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9330031/Electric-car-North-South-divide-revealed-ownership-EVs-rises-53.html
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Starts at 16:46, apparently there's a load of Ubitricity chargers in the lamposts and stuff.
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Where are they?
Barnet.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9330031/Electric-car-North-South-divide-revealed-ownership-EVs-rises-53.html
Not parked on the street. Barnet is all about gravel driveways, as shown in the photo.
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Anyway the good news is that at least 3 major Japanese manufacturers (and one tiny outfit in Wales) are working on hydrogen internal combustion cars, thus solving all the problems.
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Yup apart from the practical problems which include:
1) high cost of hydrogen fuel
2) low efficiency of hydrogen production
3) the refuelling stations keep exploding
4) low energy storage density in cars
5) heavy storage density in cars
6) short life of fuel cell membranes
7) the chicken and egg problem of almost complete lack of filling stations
and several more I may have forgotten.
Meanwhiles Teslas and many other electric car types are barrelling down the German Autobahns and motorways of the world in large numbers and can plug into almost any socket, cost nearly as little to buy as a fossil car, have running costs and total cost of ownership well below that of fossil cars, have ranges not dissimilar to fossil cars.
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Hydrogen fuel costs nothing because it is made by electrolysis, using the spare capacity of wind and solar electricity that would otherwise be used to charge your car (or attract subsidies for not making electricity).
Efficiency of electrolysis is around 80% and the byproducts, oxygen and hot water, are valuable.
Hydrogen was the principal fuel (as "town gas" - 50% hydrogen) for the western world for about 200 years with no more explosions than the current methane. Production by electrolysis rather than the hot "producer gas" process is even safer.
Energy storage density is about 70% of what can be practically achieved with gasoline.
The distribution network already exists (the gas grid) and will have to switch to hydrogen anyway, when the methane runs out.
Not fuel cells, but existing internal combustion engines with slight retrofit modifications (you can already buy a propane or methane conversion kit).
Home fast charge systems are not intercompatible. Those in service stations charge a lot more for electricity. You could charge your car from a domestic mains socket if you or your destination have a private driveway, or you could get a life.
The "large numbers" of electric cars are about 0.4%.
The running costs are low right now because you aren't paying 80% fuel tax - yet. The Treasury isn't going to let go of £27 billion a year without a fight!
Range is unimportant as you have said that most of them are parked in Barnet driveways when they aren't doing the school run.
Tesla currently ranks 23/30 for reliability, scarcely above the equally fashionable Range Rover.
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Energy storage density is about 70% of what can be practically achieved with gasoline.
Really?
Are you sure you don't mean 13%?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_reactions_(oxidation)
H2 at 690 bar : 1250 W Hr / litre
Gasoline : 9500 W Hr / litre
Hydrogen is great; but the range of a vehicle with sensible tank size will be small.
Anyone for methanol?
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Hydrogen is great; but the range of a vehicle with sensible tank size will be small.
All depends on what you call a sensible size. The energy density of hydrogen per unit mass is pretty similar to gasoline and 10 times that of a lithium ion battery, so a hydrogen-fuelled car will be a bit larger than its gasoline equivalent, but lighter than an electric car with the same range and power.
Methanol is a bit disappointing in comparison, but if you want to synthesise a liquid fuel from organic waste and hydrogen, propane is easy to handle and can replace gasoline with very little modification to the engine.
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The energy density of hydrogen is much lower than gasoline all round. The mass density is multiple times lower, once you include the mass of the tank, and the volumetric density is too:
"To carry the energy equivalent of 400 L of diesel oil would require a truck to carry a 5 kL hydrogen storage tank, with a weight of 3.4 t."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/compressed-hydrogen
That's quite a lot; it's a factor of ten worse than diesel and adds significantly to the axle weight.
The fuelling stations are extremely rare and tend to explode:
https://uk.motor1.com/news/354304/hydrogen-fuelling-station-explodes-norway/
Putting hydrogen through the existing UK gas pipes is likely to be a nightmare due to hydrogen embrittlement on high pressure steel pipes as well as escapes at low pressure joints:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319913006800
Additionally hydrogen is the most flammable and most explosive gas there is and, charmingly, it also burns with an invisible but extremely hot flame. People walk into flames they can't see. The idea of piping it around the whole UK fills me with dread, particularly through a network that was never designed for it.
There's simply too many problems with it.
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Additionally hydrogen is the most flammable and most explosive gas there is and, charmingly, it also burns with an invisible but extremely hot flame. People walk into flames they can't see. The idea of piping it around the whole UK fills me with dread, particularly through a network that was never designed for it.
It was indeed designed for it, 150 years ago, and currently provides half of the UK energy needs . The 20th - 21st century expansion of the grid was mostly done with plastic pipes.
Baffles me why they still deliver hydrogen in steel tanks, and why it is the most-produced heavy chemical. Does industry never learn that it is impossible and dangerous? A bit like bumble bees - too busy flying to realise it can't be done!
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It was indeed designed for it, 150 years ago
In the intervening years, quite a lot of the pipes have been replaced with things like steel and plastic.
In reality, those were designed to contain methane, not town gas.
Baffles me why they still deliver hydrogen in steel tanks, and why it is the most-produced heavy chemical. Does industry never learn...
Industry does lots of things that we don't trust "the man in the street " to do.
Many of your posts indicate that you don't understand this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk%E2%80%93benefit_ratio
If you read about it, you may be less baffled in future.
This related idea may also ease your perpetual bafflement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis
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Oh well, I'd better tell Toyota and Audi that they are wasting their time. Beats me how those idiots ever get to make anything that works. As for NASA, using ridiculous stuff like hydrogen as rocket fuel and in their fuel cells - no wonder nobody really believes they flew to the moon.
Bumblebees, bumblebees.....why don't they listen to the voice of science?
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As for NASA, using ridiculous stuff like hydrogen as rocket fuel
Their vehicles run about 5 inches per gallon.
Did you somehow think they were relevant?
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Oh well, I'd better tell Toyota and Audi that they are wasting their time. Beats me how those idiots ever get to make anything that works.
By the same stupid argument, you need to tell Tesla that their cars don't work.
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Bumblebees, bumblebees.....why don't they listen to the voice of science?
Science caught up with how bumblebees fly some time ago.
https://www.livescience.com/33075-how-bees-fly.html
Why haven't you?
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Oh well, I'd better tell Toyota and Audi that they are wasting their time. Beats me how those idiots ever get to make anything that works.
By the same stupid argument, you need to tell Tesla that their cars don't work.
My point precisely. But I'll leave it to you to pass on the bad news.
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As for NASA, using ridiculous stuff like hydrogen as rocket fuel
Their vehicles run about 5 inches per gallon.
Did you somehow think they were relevant?
Are you suggesting that they would fly better with an electric motor?
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Oh well, I'd better tell Toyota and Audi that they are wasting their time. Beats me how those idiots ever get to make anything that works.
Yeah, about that:
https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-to-debut-three-new-electrified-vehicles-for-u-s-market/
Doesn't look like their hydrogen strategy has worked out.
As for NASA, using ridiculous stuff like hydrogen as rocket fuel and in their fuel cells - no wonder nobody really believes they flew to the moon.
Oh I know something about that. Liquid hydrogen is MUCH denser than compressed hydrogen. It's also EXTREMELY inefficient to manufacture. First you have to make the hydrogen. This is not particularly hard. Then you have to liquefy it. This takes an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Bet you thought water had a high heat capacity, well, hydrogen, it's much worse. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, that heat of liquefaction is wasted.
This means that liquid hydrogen is extremely inefficient to manufacture. And it has nothing to do with cars. It has to be stored in vacuum containers, and even then long-term storage requires active cooling. Even aeroplanes would have difficulty handling it and would have to store it in the fuselage, wing tanks have too much surface area, it would boil off too quickly.
So, no, not the same thing at all. Even with the extra density from liquefaction it's only marginally worth it even for rockets. The main issue is the remarkably low density of the hydrogen, makes the tankage extremely heavy for rockets. There's a sizeable fraction of the space industry that claim that hydrogen is an expensive mistake even in rocketry, still, and you'll note that the Falcon 9 doesn't use it.
As for NASA, using ridiculous stuff like hydrogen as rocket fuel
Their vehicles run about 5 inches per gallon.
Did you somehow think they were relevant?
Are you suggesting that they would fly better with an electric motor?
Electric pumps are a decent choice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab_Electron
They use lithium ion batteries for power.
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Science caught up with how bumblebees fly some time ago.
https://www.livescience.com/33075-how-bees-fly.html
Why haven't you?
Because it was always pretty obvious to me that bumblebees knew enough about the aerodynamics of powered flight to ignore the opinion of experts.
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Are you suggesting that they would fly better with an electric motor?
No, that's just you making up irrelevant nonsense again.
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Because it was always pretty obvious to me that bumblebees knew enough about the aerodynamics of powered flight to ignore the opinion of experts.
The opinion of the experts was (as is often the case) " We need to do more work on this".
They knew that the problem lay with their analysis, not the bee.
The fact that they published the disparity shows that they knew their models were inadequate.
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What is the pollution from alcohol like for cars? All Ford cars were originally run on alcohol due to prohibition in America Ford ended up converting all his cars to petroleum.
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Elon Musk shows how to easily convince a room full of oil giants at the Oil and Gas Summit in Norway 2014.
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What is the pollution from alcohol like for cars? All Ford cars were originally run on alcohol due to prohibition in America Ford ended up converting all his cars to petroleum.
CO2 and H2O, same as any other organic molecule. These are "emissions" rather than "pollution" because they are natural constituents of the atmosphere.
Possible less nitrogen oxides (pollutants) due to the lower combustion temperature compared with gasoline or hydrogen, but low combustion temperature = low efficiency with low molecular weight alcohols.
Problems arise with water content and the fact that alcohols dissolve various rubber compounds and do not lubricate steel surfaces (hence "no biodiesel" on some filler caps), but these can be overcome with a bit of modification. There's a fine example of a Top Gear episode where they raced a BMW diesel against all comers in an endurance event: the greater range of the diesel gave them an advantage but their nod to the environment made them late for the start because the biodiesel had destroyed several seals in the fuel line.
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These are "emissions" rather than "pollution" because they are natural constituents of the atmosphere.
By your definition, there pretty much aren't any pollutants.
Alcohol tends, in general, to burn more cleanly than diesel or petrol.
Once it has been through a catalytic converter, the exhaust fumes are fairly well scrubbed.
The big advantage to alcohol is that you can make it from plants. If you are careful you can have a "carbon negative" fuel (albeit that it's zero carbon once you burn it). It's a renewable energy source.
These days a fuel cap that says "No Biodiesel" might as well say "Bad Design".
The specifications for biodiesel limit the alcohol and water present.
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By your definition, there pretty much aren't any pollutants.
Good point! Plenty of sulfur compounds are emitted by volcanoes and rotting vegetation, methane from anaerobic bacteria, etc. and it would be interesting to know how much NOx is generated by thunderstorms.
However the "good stuff" is simply nitrogen, oxygen, water and CO2 - AFAIK none of the other constituents is essential to life and most of that which is not inert, is poisonous.
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By your definition, there pretty much aren't any pollutants.
Good point! Plenty of sulfur compounds are emitted by volcanoes and rotting vegetation, methane from anaerobic bacteria, etc. and it would be interesting to know how much NOx is generated by thunderstorms.
However the "good stuff" is simply nitrogen, oxygen, water and CO2 - AFAIK none of the other constituents is essential to life and most of that which is not inert, is poisonous.
At least they are not highly concentrated in a densely populated area where many people breathe the air, such as city streets.
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CO2 and H2O, same as any other organic molecule. These are "emissions" rather than "pollution" because they are natural constituents of the atmosphere.
Just because they're natural, doesn't make it a good thing if you double the amount! Plenty of things are NATURAL, but kill you just fine.
Coroners have a saying: it's the dose that makes the poison
The Earth's climate hasn't changed this fast in millions of years. Very few species have the ability to react to significantly higher temperatures well. Not even humans, a few extra degrees during a heatwave, and you're talking tens of thousands of deaths.
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By your definition, there pretty much aren't any pollutants.
Good point! Plenty of sulfur compounds are emitted by volcanoes and rotting vegetation, methane from anaerobic bacteria, etc. and it would be interesting to know how much NOx is generated by thunderstorms.
However the "good stuff" is simply nitrogen, oxygen, water and CO2 - AFAIK none of the other constituents is essential to life and most of that which is not inert, is poisonous.
Lots of words.
None of which detracts from the fact that your definition was tosh.
And, as has been pointed out, too much water or oxygen will kill you.
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Installing an array on your roof is environmental exhibitionism—and it's contagious.
Indeed, a few months after they were installed, I got a knock on my door. It was a neighbor from around the corner who'd seen my solar array and, like me before him, was intrigued. We clambered up on my roof, and I told him how they'd cut my electricity bill by about 80 percent, and frankly I was happy as a clam. With the tax credits I got, the panels would pay for themselves in seven years, after which it would be—well, crazy-cheap electricity for life.
My neighbor walked back home. And a few months later, a solar canopy popped up on his roof too.
Solar, it turns out, is a virus—a good one. Researchers have been documenting this, and it offers some intriguing hope for climate-change mitigation. Now that we know solar uptake has a social spread, we may be able to make it spread faster.
"Solar Panels Could Be the Best Fad Ever | WIRED" https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-best-social-fad-ever/
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The Earth's climate hasn't changed this fast in millions of years.
The rate of change was much greater 10,000 , 130,000 and 325,000 years ago, just to pick some spectacular examples. But don't let the facts get in the way of popular opinion.
Humans seem too have adapted to ambient temperatures above 40°C and below -40°C since the species evolved. The problem with climate change is that, having established a local ecological niche, individual humans don't like moving, or having others move into their territory.
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Hysteria
Just because they're natural, doesn't make it a good thing if you double the amount! Plenty of things are NATURAL, but kill you just fine.
ScienceThe Center for Disease Control has designated 100,000 ppm of carbon dioxide as life-threatening, or "immediately dangerous to life.". More recently, Dr. Peter Harper of Health and Safety Executive has determined that exposure to lower levels, starting at 84,000 ppm for 60 minutes or more, will also result in fatality.
Boring fact The global average atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2019 was 409.8 parts per million
Crying "wolf" is not always an effective strategy, however virtuous the objective.
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cience
Quote
The Center for Disease Control has designated 100,000 ppm of carbon dioxide as life-threatening, or "immediately dangerous to life.". More recently, Dr. Peter Harper of Health and Safety Executive has determined that exposure to lower levels, starting at 84,000 ppm for 60 minutes or more, will also result in fatality.
And this is how Alan tells us that he does not know what "immediately" means.
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Permitted occupational exposure level of CO2 is 5000 ppm, indoor concentrations of 2500 ppm are not unusual. Below 50 ppm it is arguable that the equilibrium CO2 may be insufficient to stimulate normal respiration. Increasing the atmospheric content from 300 to 450 ppm is not a matter of first-order concern to human health.
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Oh, no. It's not poisoning humans directly. It's poisoning the biosphere.
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Increasing the atmospheric content from 300 to 450 ppm is not a matter of first-order concern to human health.
Nobody said it was.
So why go on about it?
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Oh, no. It's not poisoning humans directly. It's poisoning the biosphere.
Not according to the plants, which relish it
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels.
and therefore provide more food for animals.
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Plants aren't usually able to use the increased CO2 unless all of the other nutrients are available, and they're metabolically able to increase their growth rate. In practice above a certain amount of CO2, nothing good happens.
And there's a far worse problem: most plants are MASSIVELY harmed by droughts which are becoming more and more common due to climate change.
Climate scientists agree, high CO2 is NOT a good thing!
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Climate scientists agree, high CO2 is NOT a good thing!
Farmers think otherwise, and some actually pay to increase CO2 levels in greenhouses. But what do they know about growing crops, eh?
Better still, a lot of "other nutrients" are generated by the Haber-Bosch process which involves burning fossil fuel and emitting CO2, just to feed the human population. Ignoring a convenient hypothesis just to stop people starving - disgusting!
But we are drifting away from the topic.
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The Haber-Bosch process cracks methane to produce hydrogen (with CO2 as a waste product) which is then reacted with nitrogen to make ammonia. That hydrogen could be produced from renewable energy instead and then no CO2 is emitted.
The fact that it's boosted in some greenhouses doesn't solve the problem that raised CO2 in the atmosphere is creating massive droughts and triggering enormous forest fires that are ENORMOUSLY more harmful to plant life.
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The Haber-Bosch process cracks methane to produce hydrogen (with CO2 as a waste product) which is then reacted with nitrogen to make ammonia.
Strictly, the H-B process is only the second step- the reaction of H2 and N2.
As you say, other sources of H2 could be used- notably electrolysis.
The H-B process could be made carbon neutral (though it's always going to use a lot of energy).
Nitrogen fixation by legumes (and a few other plants) is a better bet in some cases.
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The nitrogen fixing bacteria in the legumes and elsewhere aren't terribly efficient at it, otherwise we could just run some bioreactors instead of using the H-B process. It's an area of active research though.
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otherwise we could just run some bioreactors instead of using the H-B process.
For a very long time, we did.
The bioreactors were called "fallow".
If humanity decided to eat beans instead of grass, that would help a lot.
(Though it would presumably generate other problems)
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Certainly if we ate beans instead of using animals to convert grass to protein, we'd reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions by 25 - 30% at no cost or significant social change.
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The recent gas shortage in the Southeast of the US, prompted by Russian hackers using ransomware on a major oil and gas pipeline that feeds that portion of the United States made me realize just how stressful driving a gas or ICE car really is. Yes, the hoarding and lines at gas stations during the shortage were temporary, but on a daily basis, driving a BEV like our Tesla Model Y has proven to be so much more predictable and so much less stressful that it really has changed our attitude toward driving. Range anxiety? On a daily basis that happens much more in an ICE car than in our Tesla!
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"Range anxiety" is a misnomer. It's not generally a good idea to drive more than 200 miles without a break. The problem is time.
Assuming that you have planned your journey to break and recharge at, say, 175 miles (allowing for Sod's Law), this works OK today because there will be nobody else using the recharging stations. But in 2030, if there is a queue of more than 2 per station, you will have to wait at least 90 minutes to refuel, depending on the charging speed of the slowest car in front of you. You can't get out of the car because you will lose your place in the queue. Remember your pee bottle!
In 90 minutes you could have refuelled along with the two ICE vehicles ahead of you, paid obeisance to Greggs and the toilet, and driven another 70 miles.
And what happens when the Russkies turn off the electricity grid?
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But in 2030, if there is a queue of more than 2 per station, you will have to wait at least 90 minutes to refuel, depending on the charging speed of the slowest car in front of you. You can't get out of the car because you will lose your place in the queue. Remember your pee bottle!
What if in 2030 there would be more supercharging stations, and the charging time improve significantly? Do you think that those cases are unlikely?
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And what happens when the Russkies turn off the electricity grid?
Same as when they turn off the gas pipe now.
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And what happens when the Russkies turn off the electricity grid?
For business owners, it's easier to build an independent charging station than an independent gas station. If you use solar cells, the operational cost can be near zero.
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But in 2030, if there is a queue of more than 2 per station, you will have to wait at least 90 minutes to refuel, depending on the charging speed of the slowest car in front of you. You can't get out of the car because you will lose your place in the queue. Remember your pee bottle!
What if in 2030 there would be more supercharging stations, and the charging time improve significantly? Do you think that those cases are unlikely?
You have 9 years from now to install 50,000,000 kerbside charging stations and 160,000 supercharging stations (I'll assume that it takes 10 minutes to recharge the next generation) , and double the UK's secure (i.e. non-renewable) electricity supply. Please present your budget, explain how you are going to fund the capital and labor, who is going to do the work, how you will do it without acquiring new land or disrupting existing traffic flows, and, if you persuade me to invest in the project, what return I can expect on my capital.
Allow at least 2 years for every planning application, and have a 30% contingency for those plans that are rejected.
Consider the emergency services' access requirements when digging up roads.
Explain why it is a Good Thing to emit 1,000,000,000 additional tonnes of CO2 in the next 9 years in order to replace perfectly good working vehicles already on the road.
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For business owners, it's easier to build an independent charging station than an independent gas station. If you use solar cells, the operational cost can be near zero.
So I can charge my car at the office, but not necessarily at the client's premises, and never at night.
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You have 9 years from now to install 50,000,000 kerbside charging stations
Roughly two per car...
Presumably that's chosen to make it look more difficult.
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The trouble with electric cars is that their batteries don't contain enough energy to go a long distance.
That's because the batteries rely entirely on electrons . And these are fundamental particles, which can't really be interfered with or "engineered" to suit our purposes.
What we can engineer is secondary products - atoms. Such as atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
We can utilise these atoms to release energy by the simple chemical process of combustion.
Therefore I think the future of cars is hydrogen-powered combustion engines.
The "electric car" interlude may be seen as a brief dalliance with an impracticable technology. Like Zeppelins were.
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The trouble with electric cars is that their batteries don't contain enough energy to go a long distance.
That's because the batteries rely entirely on electrons . And these are fundamental particles, which can't really be interfered with or "engineered" to suit our purposes.
What we can engineer is secondary products - atoms. Such as atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
We can utilise these atoms to release energy by the simple chemical process of combustion.
Therefore I think the future of cars is hydrogen-powered combustion engines.
The "electric car" interlude may be seen as a brief dalliance with an impracticable technology. Like Zeppelins were.
Burning fuel is the transfer of electrons to oxygen.
Did you think you had a point?
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You have 9 years from now to install 50,000,000 kerbside charging stations
Roughly two per car...
Presumably that's chosen to make it look more difficult.
And because OBVIOUSLY an electric car needs to be fully charged at all times, unlike a fossil car, which only needs to be charged up every week or two, even though they have similar ranges.
Oh. Wait. No.
So you only need about a tenth or so of that number. In fact less, because a large percentage have driveway parking.
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The trouble with electric cars is that their batteries don't contain enough energy to go a long distance.
That's because the batteries rely entirely on electrons . And these are fundamental particles, which can't really be interfered with or "engineered" to suit our purposes.
What we can engineer is secondary products - atoms. Such as atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
We can utilise these atoms to release energy by the simple chemical process of combustion.
Therefore I think the future of cars is hydrogen-powered combustion engines.
The "electric car" interlude may be seen as a brief dalliance with an impracticable technology. Like Zeppelins were.
Burning fuel is the transfer of electrons to oxygen.
Did you think you had a point?
Yes, my point was - we can't alter sub-atomic particles such as electrons. We can however alter atomic interactions, such as are involved in chemical processes like combustion.
And combustion using hydrogen burned in in air, is much cleaner than gasoline or diesel burned in air.
That's why I assert that the best environmental solution is to develop cars fuelled by hydrogen. Not electric batteries.
The batteries require too much complicated manufacturing. And use of scarce mineral resources. And too many "re-charging" stations to make them realistic for a country to sustain.
This is what I predict - in 2050, we will be driving hydrogen-fuelled cars. The "electric-car" experiment will have been consigned to the dust-bin of history. Like "steam-cars" were, last century.
Unless of course, there's a big advance in nuclear-fusion technology.
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We can however alter atomic interactions, such as are involved in chemical processes like combustion.
Which are essentially the same as those used in batteries.
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We can however alter atomic interactions, such as are involved in chemical processes like combustion.
Which are essentially the same as those used in batteries.
But surely, Combustion engines only need some fuel to burn. The fuel can be anything. Coal, peat, wood, bundles of old newspapers, old rags, straw, bones, plastic bottles, methane gas, petrol, diesel, fish and chip oil, etc.
All these substances can power the engine. That's the appeal of it. It's a simple and direct universal heat-engine.
An electric battery can offer only a weak substitute for the power of combustion, don't you think?
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But surely, Combustion engines only need some fuel to burn. The fuel can be anything. Coal, peat, wood, bundles of old newspapers, old rags, straw, bones, plastic bottles, methane gas, petrol, diesel, fish and chip oil, etc.
All these substances can power the engine. That's the appeal of it. It's a simple and direct universal heat-engine.
An electric battery can offer only a weak substitute for the power of combustion, don't you think?
Have you tried to fill a gasoline car with coal? I know someone who inadvertently fill a diesel car with gasoline. Can you guess what happened next?
Converting one form of combustion fuel into another needs chemical process which is not cheap nor safe.
A significant portion of the energy from the combustion will be heat, which will be wasted through exhaust gas. The engine needs cooling to operate, which took extra wasted energy.
Do you still want to talk about air pollution? Or engine oil periodic changes?
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You have 9 years from now to install 50,000,000 kerbside charging stations
Roughly two per car...
Presumably that's chosen to make it look more difficult.
No. The adverts all promote home charging, so that's 30,000,000 for a start. Not sure where Wolfekeeper lives, but very few residences in London or other major cities have private driveways, and nearly all seem to have cars parked outside. Then we might need a few at destinations for those who (like yourself) want to use their employer's electricity to get home, and some fast chargers to replicate the 90000 very fast charging stations known as fuel pumps.
The motor car has evolved to be a convenience and a time saver. Until the ratio of charging time to range for electric cars approaches that of ICEs, and a suitable supply grid evolves, they will not approach the level of acceptability of the IC engine.
Face it, the electric motor predates the birth of Nicolaus Otto but despite being a lot simpler and safer, has never been considered or seriously developed as a sensible alternative to internal combustion for personal transport. Possibly something to do with chemistry and physics.
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Have you tried to fill a gasoline car with coal? I know someone who inadvertently fill a diesel car with gasoline. Can you guess what happened next?
No need to guess. Very embarrassing but it's a rare and easily-fixed problem. Fuel Doctors (other roadside recovery companies are available) usually turn up within the hour, syphon out the gasoline, give you a credit (it's still useable fuel) for what they extract, then bung in a gallon of diesel to get you back to the filling station, who welcome your repeat custom!
Converting one form of combustion fuel into another needs chemical process which is not cheap nor safe.
Oil refineries and gas works have been doing it for hundreds of years in huge quantities and very cheaply. A few small explosions have caused much less panic and devastation than Chernobyl.
A significant portion of the energy from the combustion will be heat, which will be wasted through exhaust gas. The engine needs cooling to operate, which took extra wasted energy.
Carnot efficiency applies to electricity generation too. It's only insignificant with nuclear (negligible fuel cost) and renewables (unreliable).
Do you still want to talk about air pollution?
Is it really better to exhaust CO2 and other combustion products high into the stratosphere from a power station rather than at low level here the CO2 is absorbed by plants? Or engine oil periodic changes?
one gallon per 12,000 miles, and it's recoverable for heating or even road fuel. I use a lot more oil for cooking in a year, and that's all oxidised by me and my family.
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The motor car has evolved to be a convenience and a time saver. Until the ratio of charging time to range for electric cars approaches that of ICEs, and a suitable supply grid evolves, they will not approach the level of acceptability of the IC engine.
Similar argumentations had been used to resist transition from horse carts to ICE cars. What can beat the convenience of grass fuel?
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Face it, the electric motor predates the birth of Nicolaus Otto but despite being a lot simpler and safer, has never been considered or seriously developed as a sensible alternative to internal combustion for personal transport. Possibly something to do with chemistry and physics.
You're right. That's why Tesla invested a lot on improving battery technology to reduce cost to make BEV price comparable to ICE cars in the same category.
(https://thedriven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ray-will-ev-forecast.jpg)
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A horse just standing still in a field emits as much CO2 in a year as a small car travelling 10,000 miles. Refuelling horses takes even longer than refuelling electric cars. Maximum speed is 30 mph (which is where the urban speed limit evolved!) Horse sh1t filled London streets in Victorian times (a detail often overlooked in films and TV series) and some traffic jams lasted for days.
However the London Transport Executive used to compare road transit speeds across the City and Westminster, and in the 1960s the average was about 6 mph compared with 10 mph in the 1860s.
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Oil refineries and gas works have been doing it for hundreds of years in huge quantities and very cheaply. A few small explosions have caused much less panic and devastation than Chernobyl.
Let's hope someone will come up with an economically feasible idea to produce gasoline from coal, wood, bones, straw, or plastic bottles.
Compare that to converting different forms of electricity. It can come in different voltages and frequencies. Convertion among them can be done conveniently and efficiently.
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Ah, projections.
In the words of Sam Goldwyn, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Banning the sale of IC vehicles will undoubtedly increase the sale of EVs in those countries where it is politically feasible and desirable, regardless of whether it makes sense. The potential market for mains sockets in India is huge, though there doesn't seem to be any wire behind most of the walls.
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Let's hope someone will come up with an economically feasible idea to produce gasoline from coal, wood, bones, straw, or plastic bottles.
A good friend of mine runs a profitable company that does so already. They make industrial liquid fuel and gas and there is a lot of R&D going into synthetic aviation fuels. The economics of road fuel are still in favor of getting it out of the ground.
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Horse sh1t filled London streets in Victorian times (a detail often overlooked in films and TV series) and some traffic jams lasted for days.
ICE version of horseshit are CO, SOx, NOx, and brake pads dust. They get worse during traffic jam. Most drivers keep their ICE running even when the car is not moving.
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Let's hope someone will come up with an economically feasible idea to produce gasoline from coal, wood, bones, straw, or plastic bottles.
A good friend of mine runs a profitable company that does so already. They make industrial liquid fuel and gas and there is a lot of R&D going into synthetic aviation fuels. The economics of road fuel are still in favor of getting it out of the ground.
Good luck for them. I hope we don't have to extract fuel from the ground anymore, which would end up in the atmosphere.
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Ah, projections.
In the words of Sam Goldwyn, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
But not impossible. Some futurists have made some pretty much accurate predictions in the past.
Banning the sale of IC vehicles will undoubtedly increase the sale of EVs in those countries where it is politically feasible and desirable, regardless of whether it makes sense. The potential market for mains sockets in India is huge, though there doesn't seem to be any wire behind most of the walls.
Price drop due to improvement of battery manufacturing would be enough to motivate people to shift to BEVs. Their range and performance have already surpassed ICE.
India has ambitious target for renewable energy. The sockets don't have to be connected to wires behind walls. They can use battery packages connected to solar roofs. With adequate capacity, you can still charge your car during the night.
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I hope we don't have to extract fuel from the ground anymore, which would end up in the atmosphere.
Only until it is absorbed by plants. after all, it originated in the atmosphere umpteen zillion years ago!
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The economics of road fuel are still in favor of getting it out of the ground.
As long as you don't have to pay the full costs.
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You have 9 years from now to install 50,000,000 kerbside charging stations
Roughly two per car...
Presumably that's chosen to make it look more difficult.
No. The adverts all promote home charging, so that's 30,000,000 for a start. Not sure where Wolfekeeper lives, but very few residences in London or other major cities have private driveways, and nearly all seem to have cars parked outside.
There's these AMAZING INVENTIONS that ALREADY have ELECTRICAL POWER ON THE STREETS called 'LAMP POSTS':
https://char.gy/
All you do is plug your car in once every week or two overnight, and walk away. Come back: FULLY CHARGED.
They're not expensive. They're a socket and a computer controlled switch.
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The economics of road fuel are still in favor of getting it out of the ground.
As long as you don't have to pay the full costs.
AFAIK it isn't subsidised. In fact, it is heavily taxed. And don't bleat on about the environmental cost because so far nobody has explained how the UK is going to generate enough electricity to run 30,000,000 cars without burning fossil fuel. Especially as we are now told that gas boilers will be banned from 2025 and everyone will be using magic heat pumps driven by fairy electricity. Though in fairness, "They" are also advocating hydrogen gas boilers, because they haven't read the threads in this forum where you have explained that it is too dangerous and leaks out of steel pipes.
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India has ambitious target for renewable energy. The sockets don't have to be connected to wires behind walls. They can use battery packages connected to solar roofs. With adequate capacity, you can still charge your car during the night.
So you need two batteries and a solar panel to power one car. Scrap the entirely useable tuk-tuk and buy a brand new electric car (there aren't any old ones) plus a second battery and a solar panel (never mind the fossil fuel expended to build these things - they are modern and desirable), and save the planet. All we need to do is end rural poverty, which has been going on for far too log anyway and is really, really unfashionable.
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You don't need a second battery, the cars are statistically grid batteries. They're not plugged in all the time, but they're plugged in enough of the time that doesn't matter. You just need solar panels with inverters, cars and grids.
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AFAIK it isn't subsidised.
It is subsidised- if you forgive the cliche- by the people getting flooded in Bangladesh who are not charging you for the cost of rebuilding their homes.
Surely you know this sort of thing.
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They" are also advocating hydrogen gas boilers, because they haven't read the threads in this forum where you have explained that it is too dangerous and leaks out of steel pipes.
Actually, they do know about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
But what concerns them more is diffusion through plastic.
And then there's the work being done to see how it permeates through a house if your pilot light fails or whatever.
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I hope we don't have to extract fuel from the ground anymore, which would end up in the atmosphere.
Only until it is absorbed by plants. after all, it originated in the atmosphere umpteen zillion years ago!
Plants can't absorb all exhaust gases. Some of them will end up in the ocean, some others will end up in our lungs.
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You don't need a second battery, the cars are statistically grid batteries. They're not plugged in all the time, but they're plugged in enough of the time that doesn't matter. You just need solar panels with inverters, cars and grids.
So I install my solar panel at home to charge the car. Problem is that the sun doesn't shine at night, and I'm supposed to be at work during the day, so I can't use my car to go to work.
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So plug it in when you get to work. This isn't rocket science, it's a 13 amp power extension, only about one electric car in ten needs to plug in on any given day. Virtually all car parks already have lighting and power anyway already.
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This is beginning to make sense. Cover the car park with solar panels. Assume about 10 sq m per car, this will give you around 1 MWh per year, 2.7 kWh per day in the UK. That will almost cover a 5 mile journey each way at 300 Wh per mile - current good performance for a small Tesla.
Except that you will be lucky to get 1 kWh during the working day in winter, when the car will actually be consuming rather more power than average.
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I mean, you can put solar panels on car parks. But you don't have to. Anywhere that connects to the grid is fine. During the winter there's more wind power and less solar power. So use that instead.🤷♂️
Don't forget, cars that are plugged in long term in car parks and lamp posts aren't rapid charging. A million cars charging at 3kW is only 3 GW. The grid can easily take that.
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A million cars charging at 3kW is only 3 GW. The grid can easily take that.
But the plan is to replace 30,000,000 cars and, as of this week, 20,000,000 gas boilers, with fairydust.
Now here I am with money to invest in lamp post charging sockets. Assuming that all lamp posts are convertible, I will need to spend about £400 for a robust waterproof 13A socket, a 15A isolating contactor, a self-resetting overload trip, an earth leakage current trip, a suitable card reader and an energy meter, then add a telephone line (BT won't install any cables on the same pillar as a mains cable, but let's ignore the wiring regulations for a moment) and pay line rental, wayleaves, and installation labour costs. Say £1000 per socket if I'm installing a thousand or more. The meter must be changed or calibrated every 10 years (bloody regulations!)
As you say, only 1 car in 10 needs recharging, so I have to spend £10,000 in order to supply 3 kW, assuming that the lamp supply (normally 100W or less) can be uprated.
How long will it take for me to get my money back? If I borrow £1,000,000 at 5%, will I ever make a profit?
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but the plan is to replace 30,000,000 cars
So, that's 90 GW.
It's currently cold + wet in much of the UK
Renewables are delivering about 14 GW
"Others" are giving about 6.5 GW
So we need to roughly quadruple the non-fossil fuel power
Wind power is growing about 30 or 40% per year
So that's about 5 or 6 years.
Looks like a reasonable plan to me.
It's not trivial, but it's not impossible.20,000,000 gas boilers, with fairydust.
You didn't spell hydrogen correctly.
Essentially Alan's view seems to be that a bike with only a front wheel will not work, and a bike with only a back wheel will not work.
So there is no point making back wheels or front wheels; bikes are impossible.
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My view is that there is no likelihood of the UK producing and distributing enough secure electricity from renewable sources to replace all the cars and domestic gas boilers.
You have previously discounted hydrogen, but even accepting your miraculous conversion, we still need the capital plant and capturable wind to make and distribute the gas.
There is little point in promoting back wheels and prohibiting the sale of roller skates if nobody makes front wheels, frames, saddles and drive chains.
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My view is that there is no likelihood of the UK producing and distributing enough secure electricity from renewable sources to replace all the cars and domestic gas boilers.
I'm fairly sure we don't produce enough fossil fuel to do it either.
We have not got close since the North Seal oil more or less ran out.
So we will be importing energy as usual.
If we are prepared to pay a premium then we can import renewables.
As for
nobody makes front wheels, frames, saddles and drive chains.
Production is already ramping up.
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but the plan is to replace 30,000,000 cars
So, that's 90 GW.
No f'n it isn't!
Cars drive ~30 miles a day on average. An electric car uses about 150-300 kWh/mile. Call it 250. So that's under 10 kWh per day. There's 24 hours in a day, so that's an average of just over 300 watts per car. 30 million cars, average of 9 GW. We could do that TODAY without redoing our grid. Add some solar panels, and we're there. Don't forget these cars are going to arrive slowly over a decade or more-plenty of time to add renewable capacity.
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I did the arithmetic here
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=81292.msg637211;topicseen#msg637211
" the average power is about 58 GW"
That's the average power delivered by diesel and petrol in the UK- almost all of it is used in vehicles.
Even allowing for the poor efficiency of ICE, dropping power to 9GW would require a sacrifice in something- probability spurious acceleration and the ability to massively exceed the speed limit.
But it does indicate that 90GW for much more efficient electric vehicles is a silly number.
I apologise for thinking that Alan might have got it right. I should know better.
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If we are prepared to pay a premium then we can import renewables.
From? The UK has by far the greatest potential for wind generation of any nation in Europe, and the others are at least as determined to electrify their road transport. We've discussed the politics and economics of a dedicated cable to supply the UK exclusively from the Sahara.
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And I apologise for using Wolfekeeper's recharging figure of 3 kW when he later says he meant 300W.
Whatever the average utilisation may be, the diversity of demand is irrelevant for liquid fuels because you can recharge at 33 MW (UK limit is 50 liters/minute at ~40 MJ/l) from a car pump, any time you happen to be passing a garage. Not the case for electric cars.
It is likely (as asserted by Wolfekeeper and Hamdani) that there will be an electric vehicle demand surge around 6 - 7 pm when between 3 and 30 million vehicles will all demand 300 or 3000 watts at the same time from their 13A sockets. But anyone able to shell out £30 - 50k for a new car will almost certainly install a standard 7.2 kW home fast charger (because as Wolfekeeper says, everyone has a private driveway) so the peak demand will actually be between 25 and 250GW. If you live in a city, it's often quite cheap to access a 3-phase supply, where the home charger will deliver 22 kW. So to avoid "cup final brownouts", the Powers that Be will have to assign your recharging time slot.
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I did the arithmetic here
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=81292.msg637211;topicseen#msg637211
" the average power is about 58 GW"
That's the average power delivered by diesel and petrol in the UK- almost all of it is used in vehicles.
Even allowing for the poor efficiency of ICE, dropping power to 9GW would require a sacrifice in something- probability spurious acceleration and the ability to massively exceed the speed limit.
But it does indicate that 90GW for much more efficient electric vehicles is a silly number.
I apologise for thinking that Alan might have got it right. I should know better.
Yes, and even then you rather messed up the calculation. Electricity is low entropy energy which can be converted to motion extremely efficiently (equivalently, electric motors and lithium ion batteries are extremely efficient). Wherea petrol is thermal, high entropy, energy. You can only convert petrol to motion with incredible waste (Carnot's theorem).
But let's look at the figures. An electric car gets about 0.25 kWh to the mile.
Meanwhile, a UK car on average gets about 39 miles to the gallon.
Let's convert that into energy:
0.25 kWh = 3.6e6 *0.25 = 900e3 J
One gallon of fuel = 4.5 * 35E6 J = 157 MJ
Energy per mile = 157E6/39 = 4e6 J.
That's a factor of 4.5 lower energy (in the form of electricity) needed for electric cars per mile. And no, you don't have to sacrifice anything very much. Electric drive trains can be very powerful.
The only thing you really do lose is range at very high speed. At high speed the aerodynamic losses drain the battery faster because the useful energy in the battery is lower than you can get in a petrol tank, even allowing for the much greater efficiency. So you have to recharge more often at high speed. But most people average about 50-60 mph on motorways under real traffic conditions. But an electric car barrelling down an autobahn at full tilt is going to have to recharge after an hour.
And I apologise for using Wolfekeeper's recharging figure of 3 kW when he later says he meant 300W.
NO! BOTH ARE CORRECT.
If you plug an electric car in, it will usually take at least 3kW. But it's only going to charge for a few hours to top off the battery and then switch off.
But that 3kW matters because it sizes the local wiring.
What is the AVERAGE current draw? Around 300 watts.
That 300 watts matters, because it sizes the total grid demand across the whole country.
Whatever the average utilisation may be, the diversity of demand is irrelevant for liquid fuels because you can recharge at 33 MW (UK limit is 50 liters/minute at ~40 MJ/l) from a car pump, any time you happen to be passing a garage. Not the case for electric cars.
No, because you set the car to charge overnight, or whenever the electricity is cheap.
It is likely (as asserted by Wolfekeeper and Hamdani) that there will be an electric vehicle demand surge around 6 - 7 pm when between 3 and 30 million vehicles will all demand 300 or 3000 watts at the same time from their 13A sockets.
No, I never said that. People WILL NOT be usually charging their cars at peak demand. People are using economy 7 or 10 because the electricity is half the price.
But anyone able to shell out £30 - 50k for a new car will almost certainly install a standard 7.2 kW home fast charger (because as Wolfekeeper says, everyone has a private driveway) so the peak demand will actually be between 25 and 250GW.
Every single little bit of this is absolute and complete bullshit. I NEVER said that, and nobody would ever do that. Even the vehicle chargers would probably notice the grid frequency dropping and cut off their charging and wait for it to recover.
If you live in a city, it's often quite cheap to access a 3-phase supply, where the home charger will deliver 22 kW. So to avoid "cup final brownouts", the Powers that Be will have to assign your recharging time slot.
Right, so in your imaginary world, EVERYBODY decides, they need to charge their cars, at exactly the same time, paying twice or more the cost per kWh, to charge their cars at 22 kW, and every car has a 22 kW charger.
Are you off your meds? Because absolutely nothing you're claiming makes any sense at all. Not a single thing.
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No, because you set the car to charge overnight, or whenever the electricity is cheap.
And it can be done automatically, without human intervention, and gives us profits from price difference.
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The UK has by far the greatest potential for wind generation of any nation in Europe,
Due to monumental stupidity, we are no longer part of the EU. While Europe is still conveniently "near", it's not the only option.
We've discussed the politics and economics of a dedicated cable to supply the UK exclusively from the Sahara.
It would need protection- just like the oil supply.
Of course the sensible thing to do would be to transport something like hydrogen or whatever- just like we do with oil.
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Yes, and even then you rather messed up the calculation.
If you think that 58 divided by 4.5 is 9, I'm in good company.
The point of my calculation was that it provides good reliable data on two important things.
What energy is used in transport and also how much CO2 is produced.
As I said...
Even allowing for the poor efficiency of ICE,
Powers that Be will have to assign your recharging time slot.
Or they could use the existing system of monitoring the mans frequency and shedding loads when the grid is under pressure.
Just like they already do.
Or, as has been pointed out by someone sensible, they could get people to use economy 7 style systems - just like they already do.
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Quote from: alancalverd on Yesterday at 23:15:25
The UK has by far the greatest potential for wind generation of any nation in Europe,
Due to monumental stupidity, we are no longer part of the EU. While Europe is still conveniently "near", it's not the only option.
The cross-channel electricity trade predates the EU and continues today. Problem is that the cable capacity is pretty small =- it was intended to soak up night-time excess nuclear capacity from France, nobody is building nukes in Europe these days, and our neighbors are even more enthusiastic to use the wind they don't have, than we are. .
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Or, as has been pointed out by someone sensible, they could get people to use economy 7 style systems - just like they already do.
So your car ceases to be a personal convenience and becomes a state-monitored privilege that can be withdrawn. The communist dream: electric Trabants!
People WILL NOT be usually charging their cars at peak demand. People are using economy 7 or 10 because the electricity is half the price
Surely they will want to charge their cars as soon as they get home? My point is that this will create a new peak demand.
Of course the sensible thing to do would be to transport something like hydrogen or whatever- just like we do[ with oil.
Agreed.
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Or, as has been pointed out by someone sensible, they could get people to use economy 7 style systems - just like they already do.
So your car ceases to be a personal convenience and becomes a state-monitored privilege that can be withdrawn. The communist dream: electric Trabants!
So what you're saying is that your fossil car is not licensed? Because your car already is a state-monitored privilege that can be withdrawn.
People WILL NOT be usually charging their cars at peak demand. People are using economy 7 or 10 because the electricity is half the price
Surely they will want to charge their cars as soon as they get home? My point is that this will create a new peak demand.
If they need their car to be topped up because they're making a long journey and they're willing to pay a premium, sure. Just like people pay more for petrol on motorways and A-roads. And, it's still cheaper than paying for petrol!
But most people prefer to pay less, and the car capacity is sufficiently large that it's not worth it. The whole point of Economy 7 etc. is to move demand to the early hours where electricity is plentiful and greener.
Of course the sensible thing to do would be to transport something like hydrogen or whatever- just like we do[ with oil.
Agreed.
Except that's not actually sensible for cars because hydrogen costs a lot more all round, and there's heavy conversion losses.
This seems to be roughly the state of the art, the hydrogen fuel costs four times as much per mile as electric vehicles:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/26/hydrogen-cars-have-4x-annual-fuel-cost-2-70-times-the-carbon-debt-as-electric-vehicles/
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So what you're saying is that your fossil car is not licensed? Because your car already is a state-monitored privilege that can be withdrawn.
Taxed, not licensed. I can have as many cars as I like, and drive as far as I like. The privilege is only withdrawn if I am demonstrably incompetent.
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This seems to be roughly the state of the art, the hydrogen fuel costs four times as much per mile as electric vehicles:
If you buy petrol at £1.20 per liter, deduct VAT at 20% leaving
£1 per liter, deduct fuel tax at 60 p/liter to give
fuel cost 40 p per liter
10 miles per liter is pretty normal, so the actual fuel cost is 4p/mile.
250 Wh/mile for an electric car at 12p/unit works out at....4p per mile.
So the "cost saving" for an electric car is simply tax avoidance.
How long before the Treasury notices that tax receipts have fallen by £20 billion per year? And what will they do about it? Tax everyone else to subsidise my business mileage? Tax electricity at the same rate as petrol and freeze a few pensioners to death?
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250 Wh/mile for an electric car at 12p/unit works out at....4p per mile.
So the "cost saving" for an electric car is simply tax avoidance.
You know that bit where I said that most people charge their car on economy 7, because economy 7 is about half the price, and you totally didn't get it? Yeah, about that, imagine I'm still laughing in your face about that because I am.
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Economy7 night tariff is about 10.8p per unit, say 3.6 p per mile. But if you happen to top up the car at the E7 day rate of 18.8p you will probably exceed the 4p/mile benchmark.
E7 dates from the days of expanding nuclear and coal plant. It is preferable to keep reactors and very large (> 100 MW) coalfired generators working 24/7. Fewer companies are offering the tariff nowadays and it is likely to disappear in the foreseeable future.
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It doesn't matter, the point is that there are, and will continue to be cheap tariffs available for off-peak at times where there is a glut of electricity on the UK grid.
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Watch out for flying pigs.
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Oh really, so you're claiming that low price tariffs that have existed for about 40 years, don't exist? On the contrary, the National Grid have stated they want demand side flexibility, which implies variation in pricing, otherwise the demand side won't be bothering.
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No, I'm quoting the current tariff prices from EDF, and expert opinion (Moneysupermarket and others) on the future of cheap electricity.
Recharging 30,000,000 cars every night at the same time as people are cooking dinner and firing up their new non-gas boilers, is almost the antithesis of flexiblity. Problem is that Members of Parliament are all in the bar or having sex with pigs by 6 pm so there's no source of hot air and flatulent language to drive the windmills.
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Recharging 30,000,000 cars every night
Is not what anyone is suggesting.
It has already been pointed out a few times that they don't need charging every night.
Why are you banging on about it?