Electric cars.
Discussion
Last winter the UK power suppliers told us that on 17 days we came within 0.5% of total capacity and that any real increase would have seen power failures right across the country.
What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
It will be dealt with by supply and demand. If lots of people want electricity in the evenings it will be more expensive in the evenings so sensible people will charge their car at some other time wherever possible. You can already get variable rate tarrifs, I'm pretty sure they'll become the norm over the next decade or so.
The national grid have done all sorts of modeling on EVs and haven't manage to come up with a realistic scenario where they will cause an issue for the country's power grid in the short to medium term (their data is all out there if you want to look). In the long term there's obvious time to build more power generation capacity and come up with cleverer solutions to manage the problem (smart chargers, feeling power from cars back ot the grid, etc.).
The national grid have done all sorts of modeling on EVs and haven't manage to come up with a realistic scenario where they will cause an issue for the country's power grid in the short to medium term (their data is all out there if you want to look). In the long term there's obvious time to build more power generation capacity and come up with cleverer solutions to manage the problem (smart chargers, feeling power from cars back ot the grid, etc.).
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 22 October 08:31
If 10 million people all plug in cars at the same time and they all require immediate charging then there would be an issue.
Modern chargers are getting smarter and can delay the charging until the night to help smooth demand and yet still have the car ready for the morning.
Additionally there is talk of the grid being able to use the energy stored in cars to help with peaks in grid demand so cars may be part of the solution in the future.
Not all cars will need charging every day.
Modern chargers are getting smarter and can delay the charging until the night to help smooth demand and yet still have the car ready for the morning.
Additionally there is talk of the grid being able to use the energy stored in cars to help with peaks in grid demand so cars may be part of the solution in the future.
Not all cars will need charging every day.
This ruling last November didn't help. The UK Government had encouraged development of small-scale back-up power generation facilities by means of subsidies to provide power in the event of a shortage. Someone took them to the European Court of Justice which ruled this aid was illegal. There were various sites across the UK up and running and many more under construction or planned. These are now moribund, so we have to find another way.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/1...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/1...
Grindle said:
Last winter the UK power suppliers told us that on 17 days we came within 0.5% of total capacity and that any real increase would have seen power failures right across the country.
What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
Conspiracy mode....What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
It's why smart meters are being pushed on us, the suppliers can switch off/reduce output to homes without a registered EV vehicle
We can import power from other parts of Europe, primarily France (lots of nuclear) and Norway (lots of hydro). We're also building massive wind farms, including some of the biggest wind turbines ever made.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/0...
There are also innovative plans to store energy using programmes like this mineshaft storage
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/2...
And liquid air
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/2...
This links are all coincidentally from the Grauniad, but don't let that put you off.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/0...
There are also innovative plans to store energy using programmes like this mineshaft storage
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/2...
And liquid air
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/2...
This links are all coincidentally from the Grauniad, but don't let that put you off.
Grindle said:
Last winter the UK power suppliers told us that on 17 days we came within 0.5% of total capacity and that any real increase would have seen power failures right across the country.
What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
If you want to charge your EV during Corrie then I will charge you £1000/KW. If however you opt to charge it at 3am when I have a lack of demand that makes my business inefficient then I’ll practically give it to you. What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
What’s important to understand is that the utilities industry is actually really, really efficient. It’s efficient in creation and usage but also in pricing.
The utility company can look at your house and car as one unit or separate units if it wishes. Not in all households as of yet but obviously there is a big drive to enable more detailed data collection.
The utility is capable of already collecting taxation for the government. The government could, tomorrow, say that any property using more than a defined amount of power pays a higher tax on that excess usage. The utility can implement that overnight.
Similarly, as more homes attach car chargers and smart meters so grows the ability to manage and control when the consumer is charging their vehicle or when their house is actually tapping that vehicle rather than the grid. And that’s the key. Shifting half the UK to EVs will help improve the efficiency of the Grid, subject to a vampire invasion not taking place.
In simple terms, if daytime electricity costs 5p, peak usage 10p and night time costs 2p then you can see that consumers will want to top their car up at the 2p rate but also won’t object if during the 10p rate the smart meter decides to draw some 2p power from the car outside rather than the grid at 10p. Power that can be returned at 4am at 2p.
LotusOmega375D said:
I might be being thick here, but if most people decide to charge their EV at night, won’t the utility companies just increase their night time rates?
Yup. And the new night time demand may also smooth out daytime charges. The key is that the reason there are price differentials is because demand is inefficient as little is demanded at night but lots during the day. EVs hold the key to creating a new night time demand that will remove part of that inefficiency as you’d expect to see as a result a reduction in price disparity. But, the average daily mileage in the UK is tiny. For the next decade the typical EV sold will be hugely inefficient in regards to lugging around a heavy 250 mile battery which only travels 10-25 miles a day. It’s not as if many EVs down the line will be plugging in empty and making huge demands. Most will be being plugged in nearly full and be sitting there all night as massive local stores of energy that could be tapped by the property to reduce peak demand on the Grid.
The Grid has huge extra capacity almost all of the time, especially at night when it has to discount it to get it used. The problem being discussed above is the very specific issue of the tiny daily periods of peak demand. For years the media talks about this being the point at which everyone watching Corrie switches on their kettle during the adverts etc.
It’s this ‘peak’ point which is the issue and EVs can smooth it out. Anyone with an EV on their drive can be financially incentivised to set their home to automatically stop calling from the Grid at peak hour andnto call from their car for that short period instead.
If everyone converted to EV and if everyone drove their EV around all day until the battery was flat then the Grid couldn’t cope but that’s not how the real world works. In the real world only a percentage of the population will switch to pure EVs and the bulk of those EVs will be sitting at home more full than empty.
Due to our location on the planet, every year we enter a period of 6 months when darkness prevails and the lights are on. Solar is therefore ineffective 50% - 70% of that time. I’m no meteorologist, but I think it’s generally accepted that average wind speeds decline during the hours of darkness (with some notable wintry exceptions of course). So It could be that renewables will struggle to keep millions of EVs charged at night. The energy companies might actively discourage night time charging by increasing the rates during hours of darkness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily reduce daylight rates to compensate!
LotusOmega375D said:
Due to our location on the planet, every year we enter a period of 6 months when darkness prevails and the lights are on. Solar is therefore ineffective 50% - 70% of that time. I’m no meteorologist, but I think it’s generally accepted that average wind speeds decline during the hours of darkness (with some notable wintry exceptions of course). So It could be that renewables will struggle to keep millions of EVs charged at night. The energy companies might actively discourage night time charging by increasing the rates during hours of darkness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily reduce daylight rates to compensate!
apparently we have one of the best locations in the world for wind generationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Un...
LotusOmega375D said:
Due to our location on the planet, every year we enter a period of 6 months when darkness prevails and the lights are on. Solar is therefore ineffective 50% - 70% of that time. I’m no meteorologist, but I think it’s generally accepted that average wind speeds decline during the hours of darkness (with some notable wintry exceptions of course). So It could be that renewables will struggle to keep millions of EVs charged at night. The energy companies might actively discourage night time charging by increasing the rates during hours of darkness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily reduce daylight rates to compensate!
We aren’t going to be reliant on renewables as a nation though. Like EVs, renewable energy productions will form an important part of our efficient infrastructure not all of it. What we know is that EVs and renewables won’t be 100% of the future, it’s as mad as saying they won’t be zero percent. The extremities are where the loonies reside and loonism is inefficient and unenviromental. It’s about finding the sensible, prudent and efficient balance and despite all the shouty demands of the extremists on either side it is where we end up because it is where we have no choice but to end up.
It’s a little bit like this paper released this week:
https://www.bva.co.uk/news-campaigns-and-policy/bv...
Between the extremist rankings of either side the research always trends towards common sense, balance and the avoidance, as in everything, of extremism.
DonkeyApple said:
For the next decade the typical EV sold will be hugely inefficient in regards to lugging around a heavy 250 mile battery which only travels 10-25 miles a day.
A heavy battery doesn't lead to an EV being hugely inefficient.Yes, more weight means more power to get going, but it then means more inertia and much of this extra power can be recouped when slowing down with regeneration.
Similarly extra power used on hill climbing can be regained on descent with an EV.
In the UK, a typical electric car travels about 4 to 5 mile per kWH of electricity is consumes.
The average daily mileage in the UK is around 10 miles, so that's around 2 kWh of electricity.
The average UK household uses about 10 kWh of electricity per day.
So,a EV is an increase of about 20% in that consumption.
If we move to electric house heating (away from gas) then that's a far bigger issue, as the average UK household gas consumption is 30 kWh per day, or 3 times the electricity used!!
And of course, EVs are agnostic as to the source of their fuel. Put in a small solar array and you can easily recover the extra energy used for your car
(we need at-work charging of course if we want to use that solar power to actually charge our cars, rather than just lower total generation demand)
The average daily mileage in the UK is around 10 miles, so that's around 2 kWh of electricity.
The average UK household uses about 10 kWh of electricity per day.
So,a EV is an increase of about 20% in that consumption.
If we move to electric house heating (away from gas) then that's a far bigger issue, as the average UK household gas consumption is 30 kWh per day, or 3 times the electricity used!!
And of course, EVs are agnostic as to the source of their fuel. Put in a small solar array and you can easily recover the extra energy used for your car
(we need at-work charging of course if we want to use that solar power to actually charge our cars, rather than just lower total generation demand)
caziques said:
DonkeyApple said:
For the next decade the typical EV sold will be hugely inefficient in regards to lugging around a heavy 250 mile battery which only travels 10-25 miles a day.
A heavy battery doesn't lead to an EV being hugely inefficient.Yes, more weight means more power to get going, but it then means more inertia and much of this extra power can be recouped when slowing down with regeneration.
Similarly extra power used on hill climbing can be regained on descent with an EV.
They only look sensible because ICE cars have become unreasonably large and heavy. If twenty years ago when the tech to build reliable, high power small petrol engines became viable we had created a policy to stop cars from getting larger and heavier then current EVs would overtly stand out in this regard.
Heavy cars means more raw materials to make them and more wastage in terms of power usage, tyre and brake dust creation through their life cycle and not to ignore the big impact on space taken up.
The only environmental solution is to focus less on what powers the vehicle and more on incentivising smaller, lighter more efficient vehicles combined with continued and intelligent incentivisationnto use them less. The current type of EV achieves absolutely none of the this apart from a little less brake dust. They are merely an awkward stepping stone to what needs to be done and in reality we’re never needed had sensible policy been implemented twenty years ago.
Saleen836 said:
Grindle said:
Last winter the UK power suppliers told us that on 17 days we came within 0.5% of total capacity and that any real increase would have seen power failures right across the country.
What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
Conspiracy mode....What happens if (in however long to come) circa 10 million people start plugging-in their car in a 2 hour period every evening?
Meltdown i would assume?
It's why smart meters are being pushed on us, the suppliers can switch off/reduce output to homes without a registered EV vehicle
Dave Hedgehog said:
LotusOmega375D said:
Due to our location on the planet, every year we enter a period of 6 months when darkness prevails and the lights are on. Solar is therefore ineffective 50% - 70% of that time. I’m no meteorologist, but I think it’s generally accepted that average wind speeds decline during the hours of darkness (with some notable wintry exceptions of course). So It could be that renewables will struggle to keep millions of EVs charged at night. The energy companies might actively discourage night time charging by increasing the rates during hours of darkness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily reduce daylight rates to compensate!
apparently we have one of the best locations in the world for wind generationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Un...
I've bitten the bullet and tomorrow my electric car journey starts.
In preparation I have changed my electricity supplier to Octopus Agile which is 30 min dynamically priced. The more I avoid 4pm to 7pm the cheaper my electricity is. So far the savings have been significant.
https://share.octopus.energy/warm-snow-738 if you want to convert to Octopus and share £100
I have a 6.72 KW solar array which at max can produce 50KWs of electricity (other days it can sometimes only produce 3 tho). The logic of having a larger than normal array is that I can usually cover daytime demands with Octopus buying my over production.
Finally I have an I3s arriving tomorrow which completes my circle (£5k annual fuel spend should reduce by 80%)
In preparation I have changed my electricity supplier to Octopus Agile which is 30 min dynamically priced. The more I avoid 4pm to 7pm the cheaper my electricity is. So far the savings have been significant.
https://share.octopus.energy/warm-snow-738 if you want to convert to Octopus and share £100
I have a 6.72 KW solar array which at max can produce 50KWs of electricity (other days it can sometimes only produce 3 tho). The logic of having a larger than normal array is that I can usually cover daytime demands with Octopus buying my over production.
Finally I have an I3s arriving tomorrow which completes my circle (£5k annual fuel spend should reduce by 80%)
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