EV are they worth it?

[Harry Bloomfield]

But there are solutions to intermittency.. You store the energy when it's available and replenishing quickly and use the store when it's not

Energy mass storage is incredibly difficult and expensive to install, expensive to use. Once available storage is expended, then what?

Instead of bashing windmills for being intermittent compared to your beloved fossil fuels, trying to see that it's all the same thing just different timescales (the timescales of fossil fuels being irrelevant to your short life) get on board with a notion that intermittent can be smooth out by technology in a way that you can appreciate it in the time that you have left to live

They are not >my beloved fossil fuels, I am glad to see the back of them, but they need to be replaced with something clean, green ----- and economical. Windmills meet the clean spec., but I don't see them as either green, or economical. They need an incredible amount of backup, and backup is itself far from green due to all the chemicals involved.

Remember - I have worked in generation, around the UK - horrible filthy places, coal dust everywhere, including the roads around the area.

Everyone seems terrified of nuclear, but from what I see, it meets the spec. of what is needed.

 

[morqthana]

So a couple of ways it is already working are:
-Intelligent Octopus (and I think others?) customers get something like 6 hours cheap EV charging a day, but the times of that charging is managed by Octopus, depending on price and demand
-Load management rewards are happening again this winter for consumers with smart meters - payments for reduced use at times of short notice acute demand, and payments for additional consumer discharge at those times from house batteries or V2G
-Sadly tiny (though technically successful) trials where car charging and V2G is managed automatically on a half-hourly basis to balance supply and demand

Just thinking - if you were in the group of Tesla owners who get free charging from Tesla Superchargers, you could charge up there, go home, and flog the power to your supplier for pure profit.


But what I'm really wondering is never mind V2G - what about V2H (house)?

Does anybody know how feasible it is/would/could be for an EV owner to use their car as an emergency supply just for themselves, in just the same way they could use a generator? So car -> inverter -> changeover switch?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Does anybody know how feasible it is/would/could be for an EV owner to use their car as an emergency supply just for themselves, in just the same way they could use a generator? So car -> inverter -> changeover switch?

Possible, just switch off the export. Then what do you do, with a flat car battery, next morning

 

[morqthana]

Either wonder where that huge amount of energy had gone or wonder why I'd been such a tw@ as to use it for my house when the battery was almost flat to start with.

 

[Brigadier]

At a daily average UK leccy usage rate of 10 Kwh, you could run your house for a week from a typical fully-charged EV (77 Kwh battery).

 

[Avocet]

As a proportion of income, is what matters.

As a proportion of NHS costs attributable to smoking, is what we were talking about.

 

[Avocet]

Energy mass storage is incredibly difficult and expensive to install, expensive to use. Once available storage is expended, then what?



They are not >my beloved fossil fuels, I am glad to see the back of them, but they need to be replaced with something clean, green ----- and economical. Windmills meet the clean spec., but I don't see them as either green, or economical. They need an incredible amount of backup, and backup is itself far from green due to all the chemicals involved.

Remember - I have worked in generation, around the UK - horrible filthy places, coal dust everywhere, including the roads around the area.

Everyone seems terrified of nuclear, but from what I see, it meets the spec. of what is needed.

I'm not sure what the problem with windmills is? Sure, they blight the landscape a bit, but they are very easily removed and all you're left with, is a block of concrete at ground level The steel is as recyclable as any other steel, as is the generating equipment. The blades have been cited as a problem, but even for those, we are starting to find solutions.

Nuclear, on the other hand, is ruinously expensive and the waste is impossible to dispose of. All we can do, is keep hanging on to it (closely guarded) and hope that some future generation can come up with a solution. Have we learned absolutely nothing about storing up problems for future generations?!

For all that, I am resigned to at least some new nuclear in the short-to-medium term, to provide baseload while we get to grips with renewables, but feel we should keep it to an absolute minimum.

I'd also hope that those anti-EV folk who oppose EVs on the grounds that you need to mine vast amounts of ore to get sufficient lithium, would oppose nuclear on similar grounds?

 

[Avocet]

Just thinking - if you were in the group of Tesla owners who get free charging from Tesla Superchargers, you could charge up there, go home, and flog the power to your supplier for pure profit.

Absolutely no reason why not - other than it adding to the number of charge-discharge cycles on their batteries.

But what I'm really wondering is never mind V2G - what about V2H (house)?

I think V2L (Vehicle to Load) is the term they use?

Does anybody know how feasible it is/would/could be for an EV owner to use their car as an emergency supply just for themselves, in just the same way they could use a generator? So car -> inverter -> changeover switch?

Absolutely and completely feasible! At present, vehicles thus equipped, can only supply limited power - around 2-4 kW, I think, but that could increase with time. Ford are making a big thing about you being able to use power tools from the eTransit. You wouldn't be able to run (say) an electric shower from your EV, but you could certainly keep the lights on, fridge and freezer, etc.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Sure, they blight the landscape a bit,

A bit? Doubt you would like one next door.

 

[Avocet]

A bit? Doubt you would like one next door.

Obviously, in an ideal world, I'd prefer to rely on the electricity fairies to provide me with clean, green electricity, 24/4, with no visual impact. But given that's unlikely, I'd sooner put up with living next to a wind farm than living next to one of these....

 

[Odds]

As a proportion of NHS costs attributable to smoking, is what we were talking about.

Considering the amount of tax levied on tobacco, i'd hope most of it goes to subsidising treatment on the NHS.
Smokers are helping to keep the Health Service afloat!
You're welcome.

 

[Avocet]

Considering the amount of tax levied on tobacco, i'd hope most of it goes to subsidising treatment on the NHS.
Smokers are helping to keep the Health Service afloat!
You're welcome.

The trouble is, they're not. They're still an overall net drain on the NHS. The best they can hope to claim, is that they are offsetting some of that drain with the smoking taxes.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

As a proportion of NHS costs attributable to smoking, is what we were talking about.

Not quite - we were assessing whether smokers pay their way, or not, in regard to any extra care load, they might impose on the NHS.

My assessment was, that we ought to be grateful to those who smoked, and contributed all of those extra taxes.

 

[Avocet]

Not quite - we were assessing whether smokers pay their way, or not, in regard to any extra care load, they might impose on the NHS.

Isn't that what I said?

 

[bernardgreen]

Back on topic

A aquaintance of mine has two very valuable vintage cars which are kept in a climate controlled garage that is compliant with the insurance company's requirements. One of those requirements is that lithium batteries are not stored or used in the garage. His wife's electric car is therefore banned from that garage. A new detached garage will have to be built for that car.