Would you buy an electric vehicle POLL

would you buy an electric vehicle

  • Yes

  • No


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Highland Mule

Member
Livestock Farmer
I had a chat with the salesman while Mrs Y's Mokka was getting its second service. He worked some figures for me and he reckoned that if we took a new electric Mokka now, trading in the present one, her monthly payments would drop from mid 250s to a bit over 100. He said dealers are desperate for s/h vehicles at the mo' and it is the high trade in values which makes this possible. He did ring in the Spring to see if we would like to take advantage of a special offer but I am just incapable of imagining trading an 18 month vehicle.
Sounds a cracking deal if you can make the range work for you.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I had a chat with the salesman while Mrs Y's Mokka was getting its second service. He worked some figures for me and he reckoned that if we took a new electric Mokka now, trading in the present one, her monthly payments would drop from mid 250s to a bit over 100. He said dealers are desperate for s/h vehicles at the mo' and it is the high trade in values which makes this possible. He did ring in the Spring to see if we would like to take advantage of a special offer but I am just incapable of imagining trading an 18 month vehicle.

never get bogged down on "to soon to change". when the deal looks right then sell - doesn't matter if thetas a week or 10 years !
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
That’s old and as per usual the people at the top know nothing about their business. It’s the people on the ground that fully understand.

its about 12 months old ? in that 12 months ive seen a lot more charger infrastructure added ….. despite covid etc Government also announced big investment/ increase in renewable power since that interview

i would suggest boss of national grid would have some idea really !
 
its about 12 months old ? in that 12 months ive seen a lot more charger infrastructure added ….. despite covid etc Government also announced big investment/ increase in renewable power since that interview

i would suggest boss of national grid would have some idea really !

It’s not the charger infrastructure it’s the grid capacity. You can put a million charging points in but if there’s no grid capacity they don’t work.

And with any big business the people at the top have zero idea about what occurs on the ground. Just look at the Nfu. They are completely disconnected with the reality of agriculture. I prefer to listen to a guy who’s worked in the elec industry for 40 + years. His job is trouble shooting for WP and he says the grid can’t cope with what the government are proposing. The gov promised a grid upgrade about 5 years ago. So far nothing because we’re talking billions and billions. The upgrade and connection for our solar farm was £1.5 mill and that was 4 new poles and a 150m cable run. Imagine the cost of upgrading the entire 33 kva network. It’s mind boggling figures and all for some elec cars that are actually bad for the environment due to the way the batteries are constructed.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
It’s not the charger infrastructure it’s the grid capacity. You can put a million charging points in but if there’s no grid capacity they don’t work.

And with any big business the people at the top have zero idea about what occurs on the ground. Just look at the Nfu. They are completely disconnected with the reality of agriculture. I prefer to listen to a guy who’s worked in the elec industry for 40 + years. His job is trouble shooting for WP and he says the grid can’t cope with what the government are proposing. The gov promised a grid upgrade about 5 years ago. So far nothing because we’re talking billions and billions. The upgrade and connection for our solar farm was £1.5 mill and that was 4 new poles and a 150m cable run. Imagine the cost of upgrading the entire 33 kva network. It’s mind boggling figures and all for some elec cars that are actually bad for the environment due to the way the batteries are constructed.

did you watch the video with the National Grid boss ? plenty capacity and being added at a rate far greater than uptake of new cars is what he says

I can't see he has any reason to lie and really should know a bit about the national grid you would hope


did you actually watch the video ? its quite interesting and does bust a lot of myths around this subject
 

Hampton

Member
BASIS
Location
Shropshire
did you watch the video with the National Grid boss ? plenty capacity and being added at a rate far greater than uptake of new cars is what he says

I can't see he has any reason to lie and really should know a bit about the national grid you would hope


did you actually watch the video ? its quite interesting and does bust a lot of myths around this subject
Actually you are both correct on this.
At the moment there is capacity, and their are plans to increase capacity to cope with future needs.
however, it is not as simple as you are making it out to be @Clive.
The key issue is that historically the majority of the power stations have been in the Midlands, and the big capacity cables run from those stations to the areas of high needs (ie in the Midlands, the big factories) then reducing capacity as you get further away. With the closure of these traditional power stations (I can name 5 in the West Midlands which have closed in the last 15 years) this has had to be replaced by solar, wind etc, however many of these new forms of power are based in areas with lower cable capacity (Cornwall, Wales etc)
As far as I understand, the cost to alter the cabling to allow more forms of renewable power (providing we don’t bite the bullet on nuclear power) will be the most expensive civil engineering project the country has ever faced.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Actually you are both correct on this.
At the moment there is capacity, and their are plans to increase capacity to cope with future needs.
however, it is not as simple as you are making it out to be @Clive.
The key issue is that historically the majority of the power stations have been in the Midlands, and the big capacity cables run from those stations to the areas of high needs (ie in the Midlands, the big factories) then reducing capacity as you get further away. With the closure of these traditional power stations (I can name 5 in the West Midlands which have closed in the last 15 years) this has had to be replaced by solar, wind etc, however many of these new forms of power are based in areas with lower cable capacity (Cornwall, Wales etc)
As far as I understand, the cost to alter the cabling to allow more forms of renewable power (providing we don’t bite the bullet on nuclear power) will be the most expensive civil engineering project the country has ever faced.


Not making out anything myself - just listening to what the National Grid guy in the video interview has to say

if anyone should know it's him
 
The biggest issue I have not seen a sensible solution to is all those people who cannot connect and charge their car at home. It is a large percentage of car owners. Its not just urban people in flats, apartments or terrace houses either. If the government thinks these people will always charge away from home using the national infrastructure they are living in cuckoo land.
 

Highland Mule

Member
Livestock Farmer
The biggest issue I have not seen a sensible solution to is all those people who cannot connect and charge their car at home. It is a large percentage of car owners. Its not just urban people in flats, apartments or terrace houses either. If the government thinks these people will always charge away from home using the national infrastructure they are living in cuckoo land.
Have you seen the lamp posts with built in chargers? Or indeed the bollards that rise out of the pavement and have chargers in them. That would get around the issue for most urban users, I'd say - once rolled out.
 

Highland Mule

Member
Livestock Farmer
The gov promised a grid upgrade about 5 years ago. So far nothing because we’re talking billions and billions.

Plenty of upgrades ongoing across the national Grid. I can't think of a pylon line that's not getting upgraded or been upgraded in the last couple of years.

 

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
The biggest issue I have not seen a sensible solution to is all those people who cannot connect and charge their car at home. It is a large percentage of car owners. Its not just urban people in flats, apartments or terrace houses either. If the government thinks these people will always charge away from home using the national infrastructure they are living in cuckoo land.

Electric cars are pointless if you can't charge at home. Also we are all benefiting from cheap night electric at the moment. When there are 5 million cars being charged at night, there will be no such thing anymore.

So economics of owning an electric car will change massively over next 10 years.
 
Have you seen the lamp posts with built in chargers? Or indeed the bollards that rise out of the pavement and have chargers in them. That would get around the issue for most urban users, I'd say - once rolled out.
No not seen those. That would mean cables running all over the pavements if you could park anywhere near one in the first place. But I live in a small village and I cannot park my car close enough to my house to connect a cable. No lamp posts and nobody is going to be installing pop up bollards any time soon.
 
you would have had a power reserve if you have a EV - an alternative way tom look at things maybe
The way the power network operates is going to undergo quite radical change over the next few years, in fact, it's already underway. National Grid are the Transmission System Operator (TSO) who have historically always been in charge of matching generation and demand, as well as controlling the system to remain within specified voltage and frequency limits and ensuring it's always configured to survive faults. In fact, the issue of total generation vs total demand is often the least of the concerns. This model has always worked well where, as @Hampton points out, the generation was centralised at a few large stations, usually close to a coal field, and the demand was spread out. You could basically assume a trickle-down system where if you pushed power into the 400kV system, it would eventually trickle down through the transmission system then into the distribution system and all the way down to 230V for individual houses. For that reason, the distribution network operator (DNO), who takes over from 132kV down to 230V, had no control over the network, other than being allowed to switch bits on and off for maintenance.

Fast forward to now, the large coal fired stations are going offline and generation is popping up everywhere. That essentially flips the system on its head, where you're pushing power into the low voltage system at 230V then feeding it back up into the transmission system. At the moment, the plan is to change the way the network is regulated by giving the DNOs control over their "patches", leaving it up to them to match generation and demand locally to a certain extent. They'll then change to being known as Distribution System Operators (DSO). One of the big advantages is that the DSOs can sell services to the grid, such as excess power or storage capacity. That includes electric vehicles, so for example, National Grid could say they had 500MW of excess wind generation coming down from Scotland, "Who can take that for me?", at which point, one of the DSOs can store it in all the EVs that happen to be charging and potentially sell it back when the wind dies down. If you can match the generation with demand and provide the necessary voltage support at the local level, then the transmission capacity becomes less important.

Just to touch on what @Chris F is saying, yes, I think the economics of EVs will change drastically in the next 10 years. The early adopters like myself are doing well out of it with the tax incentives and the plentiful public chargers which are rarely busy and sometimes free of charge. Over time, the cost of the EVs is sure to fall, but the cost of electricity is likely to rise. However, there is also the potential to offer these additional services to the grid which may or may not be enabled by smart meters, such as being paid to send power from your EV battery back onto the grid when it's needed. Quite how the sums will end up is impossible to say.
 

Dave645

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
N Lincs
The way the power network operates is going to undergo quite radical change over the next few years, in fact, it's already underway. National Grid are the Transmission System Operator (TSO) who have historically always been in charge of matching generation and demand, as well as controlling the system to remain within specified voltage and frequency limits and ensuring it's always configured to survive faults. In fact, the issue of total generation vs total demand is often the least of the concerns. This model has always worked well where, as @Hampton points out, the generation was centralised at a few large stations, usually close to a coal field, and the demand was spread out. You could basically assume a trickle-down system where if you pushed power into the 400kV system, it would eventually trickle down through the transmission system then into the distribution system and all the way down to 230V for individual houses. For that reason, the distribution network operator (DNO), who takes over from 132kV down to 230V, had no control over the network, other than being allowed to switch bits on and off for maintenance.

Fast forward to now, the large coal fired stations are going offline and generation is popping up everywhere. That essentially flips the system on its head, where you're pushing power into the low voltage system at 230V then feeding it back up into the transmission system. At the moment, the plan is to change the way the network is regulated by giving the DNOs control over their "patches", leaving it up to them to match generation and demand locally to a certain extent. They'll then change to being known as Distribution System Operators (DSO). One of the big advantages is that the DSOs can sell services to the grid, such as excess power or storage capacity. That includes electric vehicles, so for example, National Grid could say they had 500MW of excess wind generation coming down from Scotland, "Who can take that for me?", at which point, one of the DSOs can store it in all the EVs that happen to be charging and potentially sell it back when the wind dies down. If you can match the generation with demand and provide the necessary voltage support at the local level, then the transmission capacity becomes less important.

Just to touch on what @Chris F is saying, yes, I think the economics of EVs will change drastically in the next 10 years. The early adopters like myself are doing well out of it with the tax incentives and the plentiful public chargers which are rarely busy and sometimes free of charge. Over time, the cost of the EVs is sure to fall, but the cost of electricity is likely to rise. However, there is also the potential to offer these additional services to the grid which may or may not be enabled by smart meters, such as being paid to send power from your EV battery back onto the grid when it's needed. Quite how the sums will end up is impossible to say.
I good summing up, I would say that, the old system involved payments for power plants to sit on standby, with the advent of millions of EV vehicles and grid level storage that cost disappears and most production needed to keep the grid running will be running 24/7 as much as possible this makes them more economic and actually drops the price of electric.
I would also note a lot more home users will install home batteries and home solar this also reduces the need to transmit power halfway across the country because as you say these systems are be setup to run at the 230v level when home generation is exported to the grid it’s often only traveling a short distance to find its new home.

as for the battery tech that has already shifted massively over the last 5 years in the next 10 I would expect most will be 95% plus recyclable and have little to no rare Earth materials in them, even the current new generation batteries have reduced massively their rare Earth materials content, and sometimes they have removed them entirely.

roll on 10 years batteries will not be the issue they are now.

for street charging they are testing inductive chargers, that require no direct wire connections to the EV
While not everything is ready for a mass rollout of EV cars etc, they will replace all car sales in the UK.
I think the biggest barrier to the roll out of EV’s is the car makers, they have dragged their feet so long that the biggest problem is going to ramping up production and the fact most are making rubbish EV’s, then add all the supply chains needed to supply the batteries.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
did you watch the video with the National Grid boss ? plenty capacity and being added at a rate far greater than uptake of new cars is what he says

I can't see he has any reason to lie and really should know a bit about the national grid you would hope


did you actually watch the video ? its quite interesting and does bust a lot of myths around this subject
I've seen you link to that video before, so finally watched it. It was very disappointing. The national grid guy basically said nothing about how the network is going to actually achieve anything and overcome problems, he just talked about people charging at work or whilst in town doing something whilst also saying people will have to charge overnight to use off peak power.
He said the sub station didn't need an upgrade when he put a charger in but what about when everyone does?
As the national grid guy, he should be telling us how its going to happen, not oh well the government and private business are looking at this and that.
He also said its very windy in the UK so there's enough power and that was it.
It made me laugh when he said the government will say when its stopping ICE cars so must have a plan as to what's next.
Typical guy at the top waffling without any substance, meanwhile guys like @warksfarmer mate in the power company have to actually deal with the problem.
You're very easily impressed if that convinced you that everything's fine. Electrics coming but its a long way off for the masses.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
I think the major crunch @kiwi pom is just when it's all "½ arsed", when nobody has EVs the infrastructure is OK and when everyone does then it'll be OK too, getting up over the crest of the wave is the tricky bit

if you imagine NZ with 3-4 million EV batteries able to be connected up to the grid then there might be 1 million all hooked in at once, that's a bloody big battery to help smooth things out that simply doesn't exist yet

by the time we get there, who knows how many would have wind generators and solar and have battery banks - and better energy use habits?

We have options now because energy is cheap
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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