Power cuts - Shut off EV chargers first?
Discussion
Any can we stop perpetuating this myth that keeping your ICE for longer is the greenest option.
ICEs produce around 85% of their carbon footprint during use, and, on average, a car will pass through 4 or 5 users during its life.
The planet does not know or care how many times a particular car changes hands throughout its life.
There seems to be some sort of bonkers theory on here that perfectly good ICEs are being discarded at the roadside at the end of their first lease to be replaced by a new car.
What usually happen when you sell your ICE is that someone somewhere else buys it and keeps using it, until it reaches the end of its natural life, at which point it is notionally replaced by a new car, and it matters not who buys that new car.
Even if it's someone who only buys new cars, for every person who can afford to do that there are 4 or 5 who buy used, which explains why the used car market is 4 or 5 time larger than the new car market.
You should not need a degree in rocket surgery to comprehend this.
The greenest option would be to not replace an ICE when it reaches the end of its life. Eventually though, we will run out cars and the age of car ownership will come to an end.
The next greenest option is to only allow the sale of new cars that have a substantially lower LIFETIME carbon footprint. And don't start crapping on about payback, which is a pointless snapshot in time comparison that tells you nothing about the entire life cycle of the car.
Yes, a new EV might not pay itself back during the first ownership. What it will definitely do though is result in a much lower total carbon footprint over its entire life, by at least a factor of 2 and up to a factor of 5, if all electricity can be made to be renewable.
Thats why we need the legislation to make sure that new car buyers make the right choice for every subsequent user of that car. The single largest contributor to ongoing carbon footprint from UK transportation is the burning of fossil fuels in passenger cars.
Unless you are happy with reducing your annual mileage and/or travelling at much lower average speeds, the ONLY way to address that is to reduce the number of ICEs on the roads.
And no I'm not an evangalist, I don't own an EV, I love my petrol cars, but I also understand and accept why things are progressing the way they are.
ICEs produce around 85% of their carbon footprint during use, and, on average, a car will pass through 4 or 5 users during its life.
The planet does not know or care how many times a particular car changes hands throughout its life.
There seems to be some sort of bonkers theory on here that perfectly good ICEs are being discarded at the roadside at the end of their first lease to be replaced by a new car.
What usually happen when you sell your ICE is that someone somewhere else buys it and keeps using it, until it reaches the end of its natural life, at which point it is notionally replaced by a new car, and it matters not who buys that new car.
Even if it's someone who only buys new cars, for every person who can afford to do that there are 4 or 5 who buy used, which explains why the used car market is 4 or 5 time larger than the new car market.
You should not need a degree in rocket surgery to comprehend this.
The greenest option would be to not replace an ICE when it reaches the end of its life. Eventually though, we will run out cars and the age of car ownership will come to an end.
The next greenest option is to only allow the sale of new cars that have a substantially lower LIFETIME carbon footprint. And don't start crapping on about payback, which is a pointless snapshot in time comparison that tells you nothing about the entire life cycle of the car.
Yes, a new EV might not pay itself back during the first ownership. What it will definitely do though is result in a much lower total carbon footprint over its entire life, by at least a factor of 2 and up to a factor of 5, if all electricity can be made to be renewable.
Thats why we need the legislation to make sure that new car buyers make the right choice for every subsequent user of that car. The single largest contributor to ongoing carbon footprint from UK transportation is the burning of fossil fuels in passenger cars.
Unless you are happy with reducing your annual mileage and/or travelling at much lower average speeds, the ONLY way to address that is to reduce the number of ICEs on the roads.
And no I'm not an evangalist, I don't own an EV, I love my petrol cars, but I also understand and accept why things are progressing the way they are.
ajap1979 said:
Isn’t the greenest option not to travel at all?
Keep up, GT9 just said that above. 'greenest option is to not replace retired ICE cars at all'.But the world doesn't work that way, the demand for personal transport remains so the question is which technologies can be applied to make it as efficient as practically possible. That's the direction we're headed in.
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
ChocolateFrog said:
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
coetzeeh said:
One large steel manufacturing plant has greater demand than all EV's combined.
In the event of demand exceeding available generation these plants will be set to idle - these contingencies already exist, and have been in place before the current power crisis.
but that would be a dull article stating facts, not some made up scare story. in time EVs are more likely to solve problems like this rather than cause them.In the event of demand exceeding available generation these plants will be set to idle - these contingencies already exist, and have been in place before the current power crisis.
Shaw Tarse said:
Wingo said:
Life all round becomes tricky if there are power cuts......................no twitter and facebook access you lose power to your local network...............the end of the world.....................
Plenty of people still manage to Facebook from their phone during a power cut.When installing servers now, the highest cost we have is the power to run cooling. Maybe we do need to turn off all the crypto miners, turn off all social media and gaming servers if power is short.
Simond S said:
Shaw Tarse said:
Wingo said:
Life all round becomes tricky if there are power cuts......................no twitter and facebook access you lose power to your local network...............the end of the world.....................
Plenty of people still manage to Facebook from their phone during a power cut.When installing servers now, the highest cost we have is the power to run cooling. Maybe we do need to turn off all the crypto miners, turn off all social media and gaming servers if power is short.
Obviously most EV trips are not at all critical and could be avoided one way or another - but the point is that any one trip could be critical, so cars need to be kept available, they're a key part of our infrastructure and would be amongst the last things to disrupt.
ChocolateFrog said:
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
Combine that with mandatory black boxes and road use taxation and away we go..
SWoll said:
ChocolateFrog said:
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
Combine that with mandatory black boxes and road use taxation and away we go..
In short, they can't tax it that way or turn it off. You can just install a heavy plug in your garage and charge from there, that is if you can't even buy a "stupid" charger.
SWoll said:
ChocolateFrog said:
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
Combine that with mandatory black boxes and road use taxation and away we go..
I also agree that smart connected chargers are likely - they make a huge amount of sense as they can be used to balance the grid and solve the problem of solar/wind power over supply. But sadly that same central control would also make rationing possible, although as per my post above, I can't see them doing that in a hurry as there are a lot of other things that could be powered down before attacking the transport network - including personal cars.
And anyway, unplug from the smart charger and make do with the granny charger. That sounds like a cheeky way to dodge rationing, but in reality it would probably achieve what the government would be seeking in a power shortage - an overall reduction is EV charging load because reliance on the
granny charger would reduce the length and number of trips of a significant % of people, even though it doesn't need to, it would have that effect as people would worry about charge times.
ChocolateFrog said:
lornemalvo said:
I think some of you have sort of sussed me out. It is a genuine news story and someone may have to make decisions about prioritising energy usage (which can be done in many ways). It wasn't trolling ( there can be a nasty side to that), but possibly at the back of my mind it may have been a gentle wind up of the EV brigade
It was an obvious troll post. I plug mine in through a granny charger how would they turn it off?
BAMoFo said:
They may or may not be able to turn it off, but if people are all on Smart Meters it wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to create an algorithm that can determine when an EV is being charged on a granny plug. Even easier on a home charger that is connected to the internet.
I think you overestimate how smart the current smart meters are...If you want a practical way of cutting power consumption how about turning off every alternate street light in built up areas and motorways?
You could reduce the UK's energy consumption by around 10% overnight.
https://www.altitudeservices.co.uk/news-and-articl...
If you question the biased article (They want to sell stuff), perhaps something more plausible.
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/highways/major-...
You could reduce the UK's energy consumption by around 10% overnight.
https://www.altitudeservices.co.uk/news-and-articl...
If you question the biased article (They want to sell stuff), perhaps something more plausible.
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/highways/major-...
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