EV are they worth it?

[Harry Bloomfield]

You can't, as you say, bring a coal, oil or gas powered power station online quickly, so they just sit there, ticking over, wasting a lot of the energy that you put into them, "just in case". That used to happen even before we had any renewables.

It did, but not to nearly the same extent has it does now, just in case. Expected power requirements were accurately able to be predicted, and likewise the supply equally predicted and reliable. Now we have the first, but the latter constantly varies by the hour. While ever that consistency is in doubt, the backup has to be running, already up to temperature, which costs as much as when in production. They cannot just instantly switch on the backups.

Does that wastage, feature in your graphs - I think not.

 

[Avocet]

There are far more ICE vehicles than EVs on British roads

The ratio of EV to ICE and the ratio of EV fires to ICE fires are the important figures to compare

OK... so... I suppose you could divide the number of fires by the number of vehicles, and come up with some clever way of quoting the figures like... say... "number of fires per 100,000" of each kind of vehicle?

Are electric cars more likely to catch fire than petrol and diesel cars?

Numerous studies from across the globe show that, despite fearmongering among an anti-EV proportion of global media outlets, electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire than cars powered by petrol or diesel.

www.driving.co.uk

 

[Avocet]

Yes, true, but the problem is the massive amount of storage needed. We have adequately solved short term, small amounts of energy storage - it's the mass storage we are struggling with, enough storage, to last longer than a few minutes.

My home, using gas and electric - gas heated, gas cooking, gas water heating, consumes 5 to 7Kwh of electric per day. So for 24hours use, I would need to store 5 to 7Kwh. Which would involve to pretty hefty, and expensive batteries. My home is just one, of millions.

Translate that storage to a concrete block power storage, and a guess of the top of my head - a 100 ton block, raised to the height of a tower cranes, might generate 7Kw on the way down.

That number doesn't really make any sense. You'd need to put a time on it and express it in kWh for it to be meaningful. I could probably get 7kW out of a car battery for a very short period of time...

 

[Avocet]

Plus the instant ferocity, of EV fires. Diesel is not that flammable, it needs to be atomised, to get it to burn at all, or heated to its point of ignition.

Seems to do it with monotonous regularity though...

 

[Avocet]

Or, look at it the other way around : reduce consumption, and weight of consumption.

Perhaps my EV (when using v2L) can't power an 11kw power shower.

Solution : we go to immersion-heated water storage, which then feeds a shower.


Yes, it can't be done overnight, but very little about the comforts that we currently enjoy was achieved overnight either.


Another point: iirc, RR was mentioned a few years ago, about building modular, small-scale nuclear power generation, as opposed to the current model of multi - billion, multi-decade plants that can each supply 10% of the country.

If we (or a proportion of us) make our own energy use more suitable for V2L-type supply, and a proportion of us also have our own local storage (used EV battery perhaps), the country wouldn't need as much / any base load contingency, or enormous storage solutions.



Or, just ramp up tidal as a supply.

That's exactly what we need. A bit more "can-do" British engineering ingenuity and a bit less British "oh there's no point, why can't we just carry on doing what we've always done, it'll never work" lethargy...

 

[Avocet]

It did, but not to nearly the same extent has it does now, just in case. Expected power requirements were accurately able to be predicted, and likewise the supply equally predicted and reliable. Now we have the first, but the latter constantly varies by the hour. While ever that consistency is in doubt, the backup has to be running, already up to temperature, which costs as much as when in production. They cannot just instantly switch on the backups.

Does that wastage, feature in your graphs - I think not.

And yet, despite all that, we're burning VASTLY less fossil fuel than we were 10 or 20 years ago...

 

[Avocet]

100 tonnes @ 26m = 7.1kWh

...with no losses.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

That number doesn't really make any sense. You'd need to put a time on it and express it in kWh for it to be meaningful.

Eh? I said 'My home, using gas and electric - gas heated, gas cooking, gas water heating, consumes 5 to 7Kwh of electric per day. So for 24hours use, I would need to store 5 to 7Kwh.' That is a Kwh and a time???

 

[bernardgreen]

So along comes a smart guy with a water jet cutting lance, wanders up to the EV, blasts a hole in the top of the battery pack, fills it with water, 15 minutes later, job done, with less water than it takes to put an ICE fire out!

The rest of the promotional sales posting should be read. https://www.coldcutsystems.com/use-case/electric-vehicle/

My source of information on the management of EV that have been in an accident is a fireman at the local fire station.
He described a recent incident, Fire extinguished, then while waiting for the recovery the battery re-ignites. Limited choice of recovery as some recovery services refuse to transport fire damaged EVs on a flat bed due the risk of re-ignition

 

[Brigadier]

Seems to do it with monotonous regularity though...

Destroys roads too, even when it hasn't caught fire.

I had to do a long detour the other day, due to a main A road being closed for resurfacing after a diesel spill.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Destroys roads too, even when it hasn't caught fire.

I had to do a long detour the other day, due to a main A road being closed for resurfacing after a diesel spill.

How many times have motorways been closed for that? Quite a few that I know .

Caused by EV? None that I know of

 

[robinbanks]

while other people carefully analyse and benchmark our products, fix the weaknesses, make them cheaper...

Japanese vehicles. The end

go shopping when their bungalow is 100' in the air...

oh , I was planning to have a lift that would get the occupants to ground regardless the altitude of the house..

 

[Avocet]

Eh? I said 'My home, using gas and electric - gas heated, gas cooking, gas water heating, consumes 5 to 7Kwh of electric per day. So for 24hours use, I would need to store 5 to 7Kwh.' That is a Kwh and a time???

You said: "...and a guess of the top of my head - a 100 ton block, raised to the height of a tower cranes, might generate 7Kw on the way down."

I just pointed out that for it to be a figure in kWh, you'd need to include the amount of time it took to fall. If it took an hour to fall through morqthana's 26m (which isn't Robins 100 feet, it's about 85 feet), it would generate a power of about 7kW for that amount of time. If it took half an hour, it would generate 14 kW for that amount of time. If it took a day, it would generate about 300 Watts for that 24 hours.

 

[morqthana]

Don't tempt the green eco zealot enviro fanatic tree-hugging carbon neutral nazis. They have enough crazy schemes of their own.

None of which are a fraction of the level of craziness which is your entire outlook on life.

If you'd paid for what you believe you'd be entitled to massive compensation, so broken and faulty is it..

 

[morqthana]

Yes, but the good news, is that despite your sentiments, they're actually paying off...

Reality is always going to do its thing despite anything believed by the swivel-eyed weeblers, no matter how desperately they attempt to deny it.