Electric cars, does everyone really think they are amazing.
Discussion
SimonYorkshire said:
pherlopolus said:
Most electricity doesn't come from cng.
More electricity in the UK comes from the burning of CNG than any other source. Have another look at the gridwatch website http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ any time of day any time of year you like and tell me when this isn't true. I'll tell you when it might not be true, early hours of the morning at times least demand when nuclear but also coal power stations continue to chug out a similar amount of electricity but the cleaner CCGT plants which can be taken on/offline far easier than coal plants are taken off line. Also notice how at the moment the grid is just under the yellow band area of concern (rather than black no probs or red big concern band) on it's gauge and let us know where you think the needle on that gauge would be pointing if a few more percent vehicle users switched to EVs...40% is CNG, which means 60% isn't. Coal is virtually non Existent now (2% of total)
10 years ago 75% of electricity was from Fossil Fuels, it is 42% now, and the trend is bound to continue.
Most will charge overnight, when there is lots of surplus generation.
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources. And you can charge your car from solar panels on your roof, Can't do that with an ICE powered one?
t posted by an lpg relic.SimonYorkshire said:
What, so now pro EVers are again defending slow EV charge times on forecourts which they'll have to use if they actually do so some driving instead of just pottering down the shops by saying they charge at home again? And again totally discounting that if home charging/refuelling really was such a draw they might have considered having an LPG vehicle and facility to refuel with LPG at home years ago?
If, for £1000, someone could put an LPG tank which was a couple of cubic feet in volume (i.e. easily fit into the driveway/front garden/porch) that could power my car with no further inconvenience (i.e. someone comes round during the day when I'm at work and seamlessly tops it up) then I'd consider it.As it is I'd imagine you're talking 2+ times as much, plus digging up the driveway to bury a tank, organising top-ups with a supplier, monitoring fill-ups and all the inconvenience and ludicrous expense thereof.
SimonYorkshire said:
Agreed refuelling at home there is little chance of being distracted or engaged in conversation by others when refuelling, agreed this also leaves little scope for 'impulse buys' from a forecourt... But really such big points? How likely is some EVers recharging at some supermarket, coffee shop or again forecourt to succumb to chat, distractions and impulse buys?
Taken in isolation an EV isn't better than the current ICE technology, but the advantage is that the rest of our lives are already electrified. Plugging it in at home needs a simple fitment of a home charger and a few seconds to plug it in, and the reverse to go anywhere. Would you leave an LPG fill hose connected all night unattended?As far as big trips is concerned, yes it'll be an inconvenience, but because it can be left unattended it means I can alter my patterns to do something more entertaining than just monitoring the fill-up. As I already noted I'll regularly do a couple of hundred mile trip, broken with a coffee/wee stop in the middle. Because there's a rapid charger in the services (at the moment) I can plug it in while I'm resting, again totally fuss free and unattended.
It sounds like you're one of those people who don't really visit the petrol station very often, but when I do it's a miserable, boring event which is otherwise quite disruptive to the flow of the day. In summer it's OK, but spring/autumn/winter it's generally windy, cold and often quite wet. You've also got the inconvenience factor of waiting for other people at busy hours. I want to avoid it as much as I can, hence a vehicle I can refuel at home is perfectly suited to my wants.
As far as impulse buys etc goes, again an EV already fits with my regular habits - I go to the supermarket and spend an hour shopping, so if I can recharge the EV while it's sitting in the car park it's more convenient than stopping at the end of my shop to use their filling station for an ICE.
pherlopolus said:
SimonYorkshire said:
pherlopolus said:
Most electricity doesn't come from cng.
More electricity in the UK comes from the burning of CNG than any other source. Have another look at the gridwatch website http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ any time of day any time of year you like and tell me when this isn't true. I'll tell you when it might not be true, early hours of the morning at times least demand when nuclear but also coal power stations continue to chug out a similar amount of electricity but the cleaner CCGT plants which can be taken on/offline far easier than coal plants are taken off line. Also notice how at the moment the grid is just under the yellow band area of concern (rather than black no probs or red big concern band) on it's gauge and let us know where you think the needle on that gauge would be pointing if a few more percent vehicle users switched to EVs...40% is CNG, which means 60% isn't. Coal is virtually non Existent now (2% of total)
10 years ago 75% of electricity was from Fossil Fuels, it is 42% now, and the trend is bound to continue.
Most will charge overnight, when there is lots of surplus generation.
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources. And you can charge your car from solar panels on your roof, Can't do that with an ICE powered one?
I've already mentioned CCGT plants are the first to be shut down during times of less demand (night, early hours of the morning). This leaves solar (of course not at night or early hours of the morning), wind (if there's enough, which there isn't), nuclear (always churning out much the same power regardless of grid status) and coal as the major contributors during night and early hours of the morning. Pumped stations are taken offline (during times of low electric cost), hydro is taken off line (why deplete the reservoirs at night if you might need the extra capacity during the day to meet demand). If you charge your EV up during those hours it's likely the power comes from about a 50/50 mix of nuclear and coal. Switching running of cars from petrol to coal, yeah that sounds great for the environment.
I visit petrol stations / forecourts perhaps more often than the average ice user because whenever I convert a customer car I have to put some LPG in it in order to calibrate and test it, and this is in addition to refuelling my own car. I have considered having an LPG tank here but the thing is after working on a customer car I need to test it on petrol and warm the engine up (after having it to bits) before running it on LPG anyway and the 2 mile trip to the nearest LPG forecourt serves that purpose. If I ever do need to test a customer car in the yard before going to a forecourt I can easily connect a forklift bottle as a temporary measure for that purpose.
Edited by SimonYorkshire on Friday 24th November 11:38
SimonYorkshire said:
andrewrob said:
Forgot to say that 6p per kw is all from renewables too
How so?Didn't specifically pick them for that they were just the cheapest.
andrewrob said:
SimonYorkshire said:
andrewrob said:
Forgot to say that 6p per kw is all from renewables too
How so?Didn't specifically pick them for that they were just the cheapest.
SimonYorkshire said:
Look at the gridwatch site right now... 16,21% coal, 15.02% nuclear, 49,99% CNG, 6.6% wind, 4.5% solar. 4,2% biomass (mostly burning of imported trees), 1.86% hydro. Total so far of 98.38 leaving 1.62% so far unaccounted for. Pumped 1.39% leaving 0.23% unaccounted for but maybe the live data figures changed during my copying. Pumped is the closest thing we have to grid storage, during times of excess electric we pump water to a high position, then the 'pumped' stations turn into hydro plants to sell electricity back to the grid whenever they like, so always sell at times when electricity is most expensive. Pumped stations have very minimal capacity because the water soon runs out. You don't have to be Einstein to correctly guess the percentage of power that will be coming from solar in a few hours from now, the gridwatch site in any case says solar power is probably over estimated.
I've already mentioned CCGT plants are the first to be shut down during times of less demand (night, early hours of the morning). This leaves solar (of course not at night or early hours of the morning), wind (if there's enough, which there isn't), nuclear (always churning out much the same power regardless of grid status) and coal as the major contributors during night and early hours of the morning. Pumped stations are taken offline (during times of low electric cost), hydro is taken off line (why deplete the reservoirs at night if you might need the extra capacity during the day to meet demand). If you charge your EV up during those hours it's likely the power comes from about a 50/50 mix of nuclear and coal. Switching running of cars from petrol to coal, yeah that sounds great for the environment.
You picked a high demand point of the day to check, i'll pick 3am and get back to you.... OFGEM is an average of the quarter. I will make a wild assumption that you know how averages work, but choose to be silly.I've already mentioned CCGT plants are the first to be shut down during times of less demand (night, early hours of the morning). This leaves solar (of course not at night or early hours of the morning), wind (if there's enough, which there isn't), nuclear (always churning out much the same power regardless of grid status) and coal as the major contributors during night and early hours of the morning. Pumped stations are taken offline (during times of low electric cost), hydro is taken off line (why deplete the reservoirs at night if you might need the extra capacity during the day to meet demand). If you charge your EV up during those hours it's likely the power comes from about a 50/50 mix of nuclear and coal. Switching running of cars from petrol to coal, yeah that sounds great for the environment.
Edited by SimonYorkshire on Friday 24th November 11:13
Edited by pherlopolus on Friday 24th November 11:36
rscott said:
andrewrob said:
SimonYorkshire said:
andrewrob said:
Forgot to say that 6p per kw is all from renewables too
How so?Didn't specifically pick them for that they were just the cheapest.
Bulb's promise of all renewable energy boils down to their statement... 'When you switch to Bulb, we make sure that for every unit of electricity you use, a unit is produced and put on the grid by a pollution free renewable source like Llyn Brenig Hydro in North Wales'... Which doesn't really mean much does it? I mean, you think if Bulb starts to dominate in sales of electricity they would continue with that promise? How could they? As it stands, all they have to do to meet their promise is to ensure that their electricity sales are lower than the minimum amount of electricity produced by hydro, solar and wind stations... Any electricity firm that sells less electricity than that generated by wind, solar and hydro power could make the same claim, right up to the point they sell more electricity than that generated by wind, solar, hydro. Mind you, I suppose some people would be daft enough not to realise that they've hyped a point that doesn't actually mean anything. On the same basis, I ensure that this Xmas for every brussels sprout eaten at least one pea is eaten. I ensure that for every unit of electricity produced by hydro power at least 5 units of electricity are produced by nuclear stations and 5 units are produced by burning CNG. I ensure that your EV will be charged with electricity that was produced by the exact mix of different electricity production methods that would have been the case regardless of whether you went with Bulb or a different electricity company.
Offering a discount to EV owners... We're all familiar with getting stuff at a discount if we buy in bulk and EV owners are going to buy electricity in bulk. In a way this serves to highlight the fact that there is profit in electricity generation (of course there is), that electricity producers will therefore be happy to produce electricity to charge EVs (of course they will because it means increased turnover and profits). Of course electricity producers have a vested interest in plugging EVs because this represents a shift in profit from ice fuel companies to the electricity companies, of course we should expect electricity companies to say they don't see any problem if people shift from ice cars to EVs, this represents a shift in profits from the very lucrative ice car fuel sector to the electricity generation sector... who wouldn't want a large slice of oil company profits?
Edited by SimonYorkshire on Friday 24th November 12:53
I find it interesting that you're focusing on one line where I said about bulb using renewables for electricity but ignoring the larger post I made questioning why you were using CNG figures that would be relying on someone committing tax fraud and not mentioning that the fill time is slightly worse than the dreaded 6.6kw chargers you keep going on about.
pherlopolus said:
You picked a high demand point of the day to check, i'll pick 3am and get back to you.... OFGEM is an average of the quarter. I will make a wild assumption that you know how averages work, but choose to be silly.
Please do check at 3am, I was going to suggest you did. Note how I said CCGT stations are taken offline (because it's easy to do that with CCGT) at times of low demand, note how solar power and pumped power won't be produced at that time in the morning, note how nuclear and coal stations will continue running. Where at 3am do you think the power to charge your EV will be coming from? Anyway, you probably got home from work around 6pm and immediately plugged your EV in to charge when you got home... Why is it still charging at 3am (from 6pm, 9 hours later) when you only drove it 20 miles since last night's charge? Did you set a timer to intentionally use power generated mostly from nuclear and coal? andrewrob said:
I find it interesting that you're focusing on one line where I said about bulb using renewables for electricity but ignoring the larger post I made questioning why you were using CNG figures that would be relying on someone committing tax fraud and not mentioning that the fill time is slightly worse than the dreaded 6.6kw chargers you keep going on about.
I didn't see your post on that, I just looked again and found your post, I missed it the first time because you didn't use the forum's quote facility properly.I didn't and don't condone tax fraud. I explained that if someone fills at home with CNG and pays the full amount of tax for using CNG as a road fuel the tax only adds 1.9p per kwh to the cost of the CNG for the user.
Indeed not many people would be prepared to have a car that took hours to refuel with CNG at home even though such car can run on petrol in the case it runs out of CNG on a journey, what makes you think many people would be prepared to have an EV that takes about the same time to refuel/recharge as a CNG car but cannot run on petrol if it runs out of battery power? In fact, the CNG car could even be made to run on LPG as a slightly more expensive backup to CNG for if/when the CNG runs out, this still in addition to the petrol backup, all this still likely at less cost for the customer than them switching from an ice to an EV.
You found an incident of a disaster from someone running a vehicle on CNG, we've already been through comparisons of safety of petrol, LPG and EV batteries and to their credit even a pro EVer said 'Wherever there is a store of bulk energy there are risks'. I could find at least an equal number of incidents involving EV batteries as you could find of incidents involving CNG, I don't see your point having much substance and neither do many others.
pherlopolus said:
Coal is virtually non Existent now 2% of total)
(9% as of 2016) Has it gone to 2% in 11 months? Source? And unlike wind coal is reliable baseload generation.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/u...
pherlopolus said:
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources
.Actually you can't. The electricity coming into your house is the from the same mix of sources as that going next door. It is a national grid.
Edited by irc on Friday 24th November 13:17
irc said:
pherlopolus said:
Coal is virtually non Existent now 2% of total)
(9% as of 2016) Has it gone to 2% in 11 months? Source? And unlike wind coal is reliable baseload generation.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/u...
pherlopolus said:
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources
.Actually you can't. The electricity coming into your house is the from the same mix of sources as that going next door. It is a national grid.
Edited by irc on Friday 24th November 13:17
irc said:
pherlopolus said:
Coal is virtually non Existent now 2% of total)
(9% as of 2016) Has it gone to 2% in 11 months? Source? And unlike wind coal is reliable baseload generation.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/u...
pherlopolus said:
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources
.Actually you can't. The electricity coming into your house is the from the same mix of sources as that going next door. It is a national grid.
Edited by irc on Friday 24th November 13:17
Edited by pherlopolus on Friday 24th November 15:26
irc said:
pherlopolus said:
Coal is virtually non Existent now 2% of total)
(9% as of 2016) Has it gone to 2% in 11 months? Source? And unlike wind coal is reliable baseload generation.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/06/u...
pherlopolus said:
And as someone pointed out, you can buy electricity cheaply that is only from renewable sources
.Actually you can't. The electricity coming into your house is the from the same mix of sources as that going next door. It is a national grid.
Edited by irc on Friday 24th November 13:17
rscott said:
I think we all realise you don't get the specific units of energy generated by renewable sources, however choosing a supplier like bulb or Ecotricity means the input to the grid is from renewable/green gas sources.
Again - Choosing a supplier like Bulb or Ecotricity means you get power from the exact same source (the grid) as next door. If the firm's claim of 'ensuring the same amount of electricity that we sell to customers is also generated by renewable sources' is correct, it only has to mean that the firm supplies less total electricity than total electricity generated by renewable sources, i.e. the company must only supply small amounts of electricity, less than is generated by renewable sources. .SimonYorkshire said:
rscott said:
I think we all realise you don't get the specific units of energy generated by renewable sources, however choosing a supplier like bulb or Ecotricity means the input to the grid is from renewable/green gas sources.
Again - Choosing a supplier like Bulb or Ecotricity means you get power from the exact same source (the grid) as next door. If the firm's claim of 'ensuring the same amount of electricity that we sell to customers is also generated by renewable sources' is correct, it only has to mean that the firm supplies less total electricity than total electricity generated by renewable sources, i.e. the company must only supply small amounts of electricity, less than is generated by renewable sources. .By the way, we don't need to worry about energy from coal soon - the government have committed to ceasing using coal for electricity generation by 2025.
rscott said:
Thank you for trying to restate what I'd already said, but using 3 times as many words. Very useful. Although you're incorrect - bulb & ecotricity claim that every unit they buy is renewable, something I'd expect them to be able to prove.
By the way, we don't need to worry about energy from coal soon - the government have committed to ceasing using coal for electricity generation by 2025.
You didn't say the same thing that I or IRC said, you seemed to believe some firms can supply electricity from totally renewable sources, over the grid...By the way, we don't need to worry about energy from coal soon - the government have committed to ceasing using coal for electricity generation by 2025.
Ahh right, those 2 firms must run their own grids, substations and power stations then? When did they did up your road to put their own cables in if your power comes from different wires to your neighbour? doh.
I think we're all surprised coal hasn't gone already (to be replaced with even more CNG). Another 8 years of coal use you say? That'll charge a few EVs at night for the next 8 years then... even if you go with a supposed green / renewable electricity supplier.
Just checked the gridwatch site again, coal's contribution to electricity generation has increased from this morning (what was it 16% this morning) to 18.3% at the moment. But maybe on a hot day in July 2018 we'll have another completely coal free day of generation, then you'll be able to say your EV was charged that day using mostly nuclear fusion and CNG power. Dunno if I'll be refuelling my car that day but that's statistically unlikely. Statistically very likely you'll be plugging the EV in though, considering it makes sense to keep it's tiny range near max as often as you can because you wouldn't want to be put out by having to top it up taking a few hours when not at home.
Edited by SimonYorkshire on Friday 24th November 19:42
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff