Electric cars

[Dave645]

Great so now you are bringing inverters into the equation, and twice. What's that gonna cost in efficiency? And you are cycling my car battery up and down repeatedly all day? What will that do to it's lifespan?

It will be your choice, my guess is point of use electric rates will start cropping up, and if you allow your car to be used or not discounts.
A car connected could shield you from some of the time of use charges, but it will come with costs, it will be down to the consumer to decide.
Battery tech is shifting gears they are already talking of extended life batteries caperble of pushing a car a million miles on only one battery, with all the charges and discharges that would involve.

 

[Dave645]

I think if Tesla cars got its way, you would only own one car your entire life, and let’s face it that’s a very sensible thing. If totally impossable.
A car that could reliably drive a million miles would last me more than 100 years.

 

[Dave645]

Great so now you are bringing inverters into the equation, and twice. What's that gonna cost in efficiency? And you are cycling my car battery up and down repeatedly all day? What will that do to it's lifespan?

Double Inverters yes if you don’t use solar to charge your car. Which is DC already..

 

[ollie989898]

It will be your choice, my guess is point of use electric rates will start cropping up, and if you allow your car to be used or not discounts.
A car connected could shield you from some of the time of use charges, but it will come with costs, it will be down to the consumer to decide.
Battery tech is shifting gears they are already talking of extended life batteries caperble of pushing a car a million miles on only one battery, with all the charges and discharges that would involve.

That is fine but who pays? We have only dealt with cars so far and we are basically talking about running gas turbines to produce the electricity in the first place.

I have said the same about our own household utilities as well. Our actual electricity consumption here is low- virtually every light bulb in the place is LED and half of those don't get used. Our appliances are either very low consumption or ultra modern so as efficient as you can get- the net result is that actually our electricity bill is really fudge all.

Water and sewerage- all loos have water save functions and we mostly shower, even the kids. No saving to be had there.

Heating oil- an expense.Double glazing already and will be improving insulation in the loft. Only run the heating for about 5 months a year anyway as the place has so much glass. Heating oil use during the spring and summer is fudge all as only hot water to heat.

Cars- current diesel bill easily £100 a month and I don't actually do much driving at the moment. Some households probably spending double or three times that. This is where electric cars make sense to us.

 

[ollie989898]

Double Inverters yes if you don’t use solar to charge your car. Which is DC already..

I don't have solar panels and I have no intention of putting them on the roof- our electricity is fudge all due to reasons I mentioned earlier. The cost of charging a car is a joke compared to paying for diesel so I'm happy just to buy the juice rather than spend 10 or 20 grand on solar panels which will soon get covered in tree crap because of where we live.

 

[ollie989898]

It will be your choice, my guess is point of use electric rates will start cropping up, and if you allow your car to be used or not discounts.
A car connected could shield you from some of the time of use charges, but it will come with costs, it will be down to the consumer to decide.
Battery tech is shifting gears they are already talking of extended life batteries caperble of pushing a car a million miles on only one battery, with all the charges and discharges that would involve.

It will still be cheaper to run, maintain and service an electric car.

 

[ollie989898]

I've also forgotten the intrinsic problem which I should have remembered- any commercial or domestic electrical supply is by default a low voltage system for safety reasons. So you are fudged trying to transmit electricity back to the grid as it will only be available to other consumers (also on low voltage supplies) who are nearby. If your voltage is stuck at a hard limit of 240 volts, your current is as well, so it's not like that paper mill down the road sucking off a 3 phase supply can suddenly be supplied by the 15 cars in the car park outside the doctor's surgery.

 

[Fat hen]

So, battery range is approx 15 miles (not the 20 quoted). Once the battery is exhausted the petrol engine takes over. The petrol tank is small, and on motorway journeys can’t go Gloucester to Newark without filling up.

On long motorway journeys the mpg is approx 30, which is not better than a normal petrol car. If you tow anything you’ll be lucky to get double figure mpg.

It’s supposed to have 4wd. I’m sure I puts power to all 4 wheels, but there is no diff lock, so it gets bogged in on wet grass.

It was recalled for some post production work once. The hire company tried to replace it with a Peugeot 308. “Yeah sure thing. I’ll put the quad in the boot and the collie in the passenger seat. I assume you’ll be happy to have any dead sheep on the back seat?”

All in all, the £21k it cost me would have been infinitely better utilised in buying an ex demo top spec Ford Ranger.

I don't understand the Gloucester to Newark refill. We can go from Brigg to Leeds and back on about half a tank. Using electric when under 50mph and petrol the remainder

 

[unlacedgecko]

I don't understand the Gloucester to Newark refill. We can go from Brigg to Leeds and back on about half a tank. Using electric when under 50mph and petrol the remainder

You're clearly a better driver than me!

Gloucester to Newark is all motorway, so 70mph the whole way...

 

[ollie989898]

That Outlander PHEV has a particularly wussy petrol engine as well so I should think it was pretty gutless.

 

[renewablejohn]

Dont have time at the moment to get into the discussion but for car to grid figures then google Nissan or Enel they have done smart systems with numbers for a Nissan fleet of cars to grid and it comes out at very small numbers making abig difference to the grid. Also the Sona car with the PV panels recharges itself by 34km per day I think that is 18 miles so not far off ollie 20 mile target so in theory demand if all cars where designed like a Sona would be negligible.

 

[Dave645]

I've also forgotten the intrinsic problem which I should have remembered- any commercial or domestic electrical supply is by default a low voltage system for safety reasons. So you are fudged trying to transmit electricity back to the grid as it will only be available to other consumers (also on low voltage supplies) who are nearby. If your voltage is stuck at a hard limit of 240 volts, your current is as well, so it's not like that paper mill down the road sucking off a 3 phase supply can suddenly be supplied by the 15 cars in the car park outside the doctor's surgery.

Most back charging of the grid is unlikely to leave your home, back charging from to the grid is to supplement the grid locally as needed not to pump in the entire supply minus the power stations, and we are in a small village and I have 3 phase to the house. While I said it could run the country at current demands for 50hrs or more the reality is when we are running 30million plus cars etc on electric it would not but it will allow for a a very stable supply and cover peak demands easily. Which is all it needs to do

And you asked what more you can do it’s replace that oil boiler with an air source or ground source heat pump one, it will bump up your electric bill but give you reason to fit solar, my house runs on a ground source heat pump and I have solar hot water on the roof, while I use about 10k of electric per year, about £100 a month that’s heating lighting washing everything. My system is actualy earning me £75 a month. . . And that’s my only bill I pay nothing for gas or oil, and next nothing for water as I use captured roof water for toilets and washing. And every light in my house is LED and some are on automatic sensors to keep them on only when needed. So yes you can do more if you wish to.

At the time solar hot water was affordable where solar electric was mega money at around 7x the price it is now. If I had to replace my solar hot water system for any reason (the roof part) I would fit solar electric in a flash. I can store energy in hot water, and an electric car, and keep exports to a minimum and further cut my running costs.

Tesla roof tiles, are not ugly. just think about it when next your roof needs re tiling. It’s an uneconomic option at any other time in my opinion, but a good compromise to ugly solar panels.
My solar hot water were velux so they looked as nice as possible they look like a big bank of roof windows. But they can make hot water in winter sure not 80 degrees they do in summer but as mine is a buffer tank so it pre heats the mains cold via a big coil in the solar tank, feeding into the heat pump that controls my hot water it reduces hot water demand even with effects as low as 10-20 degrees as long as it’s hotter than the mains cold input temperatures it’s a win.

Every little helps.

 

[Dave645]

They are talking about the revamped Tesla model S and X as having 400 miles of range after the revamp. While I have seen no numbers on how they will do that, battery weight is also supposed to be down as well. Which sounds like an oxymoron, but time will tell the down side is they are very expensive cars. and I am very unlikely to ever own one.
The good news is these things tend to trickle down so we may see the more affordable model 3 getting the same upgrades when it gets a revision, but don’t hold your breath it’s unlikely to be anytime soon.
I expect they will time it for when their competitors start to role out their affordable electric cars that are competing with the model 3 in a big way.

 

[ollie989898]

Most back charging of the grid is unlikely to leave your home, back charging from to the grid is to supplement the grid locally as needed not to pump in the entire supply minus the power stations, and we are in a small village and I have 3 phase to the house. While I said it could run the country at current demands for 50hrs or more the reality is when we are running 30million plus cars etc on electric it would not but it will allow for a a very stable supply and cover peak demands easily. Which is all it needs to do

And you asked what more you can do it’s replace that oil boiler with an air source or ground source heat pump one, it will bump up your electric bill but give you reason to fit solar, my house runs on a ground source heat pump and I have solar hot water on the roof, while I use about 10k of electric per year, about £100 a month that’s heating lighting washing everything. My system is actualy earning me £75 a month. . . And that’s my only bill I pay nothing for gas or oil, and next nothing for water as I use captured roof water for toilets and washing. And every light in my house is LED and some are on automatic sensors to keep them on only when needed. So yes you can do more if you wish to.

At the time solar hot water was affordable where solar electric was mega money at around 7x the price it is now. If I had to replace my solar hot water system for any reason (the roof part) I would fit solar electric in a flash. I can store energy in hot water, and an electric car, and keep exports to a minimum and further cut my running costs.

Tesla roof tiles, are not ugly. just think about it when next your roof needs re tiling. It’s an uneconomic option at any other time in my opinion, but a good compromise to ugly solar panels.
My solar hot water were velux so they looked as nice as possible they look like a big bank of roof windows. But they can make hot water in winter sure not 80 degrees they do in summer but as mine is a buffer tank so it pre heats the mains cold via a big coil in the solar tank, feeding into the heat pump that controls my hot water it reduces hot water demand even with effects as low as 10-20 degrees as long as it’s hotter than the mains cold input temperatures it’s a win.

Every little helps.

You are talking about spending thousands, I don't feel our monthly outgoings are great to worry about it. I can't have solar panels on the roof as they would be covered by tree crap in months and I'm fudged if I am going on the roof up up a ladder that high routinely.

Air source/ground source I could do without the noise of it.

Anyway, you have acknowledged that electric vehicles can't possibly work at a grid level so that pretty much makes them an irrelevance for trying to store electricity from 'surplus' renewable energy.

I say 'surplus' because in reality there is none- the second the wind starts doing a turn they throttle down the gas turbines so there is no excess.

I love the newsprint telling us with some fanfare that Britain just went two weeks without burning coal. In reality we burned a ship load of imported natural gas instead.

 

[renewablejohn]

They are talking about the revamped Tesla model S and X as having 400 miles of range after the revamp. While I have seen no numbers on how they will do that, battery weight is also supposed to be down as well. Which sounds like an oxymoron, but time will tell the down side is they are very expensive cars. and I am very unlikely to ever own one.
The good news is these things tend to trickle down so we may see the more affordable model 3 getting the same upgrades when it gets a revision, but don’t hold your breath it’s unlikely to be anytime soon.
I expect they will time it for when their competitors start to role out their affordable electric cars that are competing with the model 3 in a big way.

Tesla could be going on to use Lifepo4 batteries which are about one third less in weight than the current batteries.

 

[Dave645]

You are talking about spending thousands, I don't feel our monthly outgoings are great to worry about it. I can't have solar panels on the roof as they would be covered by tree crap in months and I'm fudged if I am going on the roof up up a ladder that high routinely.

Air source/ground source I could do without the noise of it.

The ground source is like a fridge running it’s quieter than an oil boiler, air source are normally fitted out side, the only other noise element are the pumps which you likely already have running in your current system. So what noise?
Sounds like your house roof has a lot of trees near it, pity.
Panels can have a self cleaning Finnish to the glass just like windows but, you know your house so, it’s seems your in a bad spot.

 

[ollie989898]

The ground source is like a fridge running it’s quieter than an oil boiler, air source are normally fitted out side, the only other noise element are the pumps which you likely already have running in your current system. So what noise?
Sounds like your house roof has a lot of trees near it, pity.
Panels can have a self cleaning Finnish to the glass just like windows but, you know your house so, it’s seems your in a bad spot.

There are mature trees on three sides of the house. The others I have chopped down! I had so much firewood I had to give it away to a neighbour.

The air source heat pumps are noisy as fudge with those fans going all the time. At least the boiler heats up and does its thing and goes back to sleep!

The biggest saving will come from electric cars. Although given the nature of the wife's workload I'm not sure that will be an option for her for some time.

 

[Dave645]

There are mature trees on three sides of the house. The others I have chopped down! I had so much firewood I had to give it away to a neighbour.

The air source heat pumps are noisy as fudge with those fans going all the time. At least the boiler heats up and does its thing and goes back to sleep!

Yes, air is the more noisy and less efficient, install ground source if you can. You can do it with boreholes if your gardens small. my ground source one only triggers about 2hrs a day even in winter, because the house is very well built, it’s a 10kw pump so it uses around 2.5kw of electric to make 10kw of heat. For about 2hrs a day in the hard winter. It’s what 200mm cavities does for you and triple glazing . Insulation is your friend, I also have a heat recovery system running 24/7 which is cost neutral the power it uses is clawed back in the energy it saves in heating and summer cooling.

 

[renewablejohn]

People who seriously believe that a big economy is ever going to be fully renewable need to watch this:

Thankfully time has moved on since then and so has renewable technology. Biggest problem America has is bad design of there buildings and there apetite for air conditioning.

 

[renewablejohn]

When the power wall out put power it’s converted to AC the cars would have to be linked to do the same.
It ones of the reasons Tesla power walls cost so much it’s not just a box of batteries

Tesla has got the solution wrong. The car should be the powerwall but that requires two way power which Nissan and others use.Tesla is only one way and is now having to catch up but a second battery is really not a viable solution. Nissan undercuts by using a recycled car battery if the home owner wants a second battery.