Which electric car to buy?

[Velma's Dad]

You obviously don’t get it, I’m afraid.
I’m not concerned how the electricity is generated, whether it be by solar, wind, nuclear or whatever, maybe hot air , the fact of the matter is by going ALL electric which was the main thrust of COP26 then the resilience of the Power Distribution Network becomes very, very important. Storms are supposed to become more frequent and more severe.
One storm, last week, and power has not been restored to everyone after 8 days.
Those who had heating systems that did not depend on electricity had some heating ability, others did not.
Maybe people will take notice if a similarly devastating storm hits the Midlands, London or the South East and large numbers of consumers have no electricity for a week or more.
In the future we are promised electric boilers, heat pumps and electric vehicles powered by electricity from nuclear, solar and wind. All completely useless if the Distribution grid is severely damaged. How are the electrically powered emergency vehicles going to get around if they cannot be charged. How are hospitals going to cope without diesel generators etc.
The Law of Unintended Consequences raises its head. Put all your eggs in one basket - an electrically powered economy/world - and Power Distribution assumes massive importance.

I can't imagine anyone would deny that modern life is almost completely reliant on distribution of electricity. That's been the case for decades and the more recent shift towards 'green' electric space heating EVs makes only a marginal difference to national-level resilience in practice.

Yes a vehicle with a fuel tank of fossil fuel can (currently) stay in service longer than an EV but fuel stations are electric powered. Food supplies and some medicines rely on cold chains. As WG says, some after Arwen last week may have had access to heating systems not requiring electricity - but most will not and that's been the case for a long time (having said that I do remember cooking our Xmas lunch on a neighbour's oil fired AGA, during a power cut in about 1990). Modern communications are, obviously, completely grid power dependent - from 2025 I gather that old non-internet landlines capable of working in a power outage will be binned completely. Etc etc. None of this has much to do with how the power in the grid is generated.

I've worked on the ground in many natural disasters around the world and in anything other than the least-developed rural communities the restoration of power grids is always fundamental to recovery, beyond the immediate life-saving phase.

The solution to these challenges is to make the power distribution grid as resilient as possible. There are well understood engineering approaches towards that, which are applied routinely in countries more prone to natural hazards than the UK is - or has been anyway. There seems, to me, little point in debating whether/how long the country could survive if the power grid goes down for a lengthy period, the thing is to ensure as far as possible that it does not.

The retention of some adequate short term life-sustaining emergency response capacity in a serious crisis (eg having access to some ICE vehicles that can be refuelled from hand-pumped ground tanks maintained by the military, or diesel generators to re-charge safety-critical EVs) is something that most countries have organised. The UK is very unusual in not having a national emergency management organisation or coordinated EM infrastructure: that would cost money but of course the UK hasn't been disaster-prone, to date anyway. The government's view of that may change as Arwen-scale storms increase in frequency.

 

[WelshGas]

Interesting reading.. Food for thought.

Practices, provision and protest: Power outages in rural Norwegian households

Electricity plays a vital role in everyday life. However, electricity-dependent practices are often taken for granted, and the complex underlying infr…

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[Velma's Dad]

Interesting reading.. Food for thought.

Practices, provision and protest: Power outages in rural Norwegian households

Electricity plays a vital role in everyday life. However, electricity-dependent practices are often taken for granted, and the complex underlying infr…

www.sciencedirect.com

Just skimmed that. Interesting that almost all the Norwegian survey respondents had retained their wood stoves despite being on heat pumps etc. But then these appear to be communities living at the 'end of the line'.

We have two wood stoves and several months of wood and that's our main backup for an extended power cut although here in the SE we haven't had one of those for many years now (fingers crossed).

Our second-line plan is of course to jump in the Cali, drive to the first village where there's power still on, park up outside the pub, fire up the diesel heater, and that's us for the duration.

 

[GrannyJen]

Sorry I disagree. You are confusing Climate Change and Enviromental Damage, as many do.
The Coal Laws of the 50’s were designed to deal with smoke particles producing an environmentally damaging smog. Nothing to do with the Climate Changing properties of excessive production of CO2 and other climate warming gases.
Diesel vehicles are less damaging to the Climate than Petrol vehicles, but more damaging to the Enviroment due to NO and particular emmisions.

no, I am not confusing anything.

I was not talking about climate change: I was illustrating that sometimes responses to crises that give rise to "It can't be done" cries of impending doom and damnation can be done and do succeed and, of course not on the same scale as the cessation of production of ICE vehicles, but something that in it's own way received the same predictions of gloom and "can't be done" and was done and achieved its objectives.

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

Just skimmed that. Interesting that almost all the Norwegian survey respondents had retained their wood stoves despite being on heat pumps etc. But then these appear to be communities living at the 'end of the line'.

We have two wood stoves and several months of wood and that's our main backup for an extended power cut although here in the SE we haven't had one of those for many years now (fingers crossed).

Our second-line plan is of course to jump in the Cali, drive to the first village where there's power still on, park up outside the pub, fire up the diesel heater, and that's us for the duration.

I like the second-line plan

 

[WelshGas]

no, I am not confusing anything.

I was not talking about climate change: I was illustrating that sometimes responses to crises that give rise to "It can't be done" cries of impending doom and damnation can be done and do succeed and, of course not on the same scale as the cessation of production of ICE vehicles, but something that in it's own way received the same predictions of gloom and "can't be done" and was done and achieved its objectives.

I'm afraid you still don't get it. Read my response to your original " Battersea " post.

All I was referring to was the closure of Battersea Power Station that supplied a 1/3 of London - your words - via underground cabling that are more resistant to Storm Damage just meant the building of power stations in more remote places with power transmission to populated areas via Overground High Tension lines which due to their very nature are going to be more susceptible to storm damage and hence a less resilient power distribution system if storms increase in their severity.

The reasons why there was an outcry when the burning of certain fuels was banned and smokeless fuels promoted is immaterial, but the changing nature of Power Distribution is.

We now have a growing network of small solar , wind and hydraulic power plants all over the country all connected by overland power cables that may not be resilient enough to cope with damage from severe storms. Total dependancy on electric power will be problematic , as shown by Storm Arwen.
Even the Norwegians have recognised this as a problem. See Post 352.

 

[Velma's Dad]

The reasons why there was an outcry when the burning of certain fuels was banned and smokeless fuels promoted is immaterial, but the changing nature of Power Distribution is.

In your replies to Jen's post, the changing nature of power distribution is only material in your head - because you chose to try to take the discussion in that direction.

As I'm sure most of the rest of us got, Jen was simply using an example to demonstrate how proposed solutions to societal problems initially often get push-back from a vocal minority or even majority, but meanwhile the government and engineering community often just get on and fix it regardless.

Another fine example of that is offshore wind generation in the UK, which while the naysayers bleated on for about a decade about how it could never happen at any meaningful scale, it's just happened anyway. (And yes of course every new technology raises new issues, we all get that - I'm sure the nation's roses suffered from the diminution of horsesh1t supplies when the internal combustion engine took over).

 

[Amarillo]

And are extremely hypocritical. Do what I say not what I do.
Governments, in the majority, represent the people and so carry out the wishes of the people , or have I got that wrong?

I don’t support Insulate Britain’s methods, but I do have some sympathy with their aim. And, yes, they are hypocritical, but aren’t we all to a greater or lesser degree?

I see nothing wrong with people protesting about things they believe in. When this oversteps the mark - such as glueing themselves to motorways - I have every confidence in the legal system dealing with them appropriately.

But back to Greta- all she seems to be guilty of is trying to accelerate change, with considerable success. If she riles some descendants of Socrates in the process, it is all well and good.

 

[TallManwithGlasses]

You obviously don’t get it, I’m afraid.
I’m not concerned how the electricity is generated, whether it be by solar, wind, nuclear or whatever, maybe hot air , the fact of the matter is by going ALL electric which was the main thrust of COP26 then the resilience of the Power Distribution Network becomes very, very important. Storms are supposed to become more frequent and more severe.
One storm, last week, and power has not been restored to everyone after 8 days.
Those who had heating systems that did not depend on electricity had some heating ability, others did not.
Maybe people will take notice if a similarly devastating storm hits the Midlands, London or the South East and large numbers of consumers have no electricity for a week or more.
In the future we are promised electric boilers, heat pumps and electric vehicles powered by electricity from nuclear, solar and wind. All completely useless if the Distribution grid is severely damaged. How are the electrically powered emergency vehicles going to get around if they cannot be charged. How are hospitals going to cope without diesel generators etc.
The Law of Unintended Consequences raises its head. Put all your eggs in one basket - an electrically powered economy/world - and Power Distribution assumes massive importance.

The answer to the grid problem already exists... Local storage.

Large capacity battery storage will solve all the issues you speak of, whether it be individual house batteries or hyper-local storage. There are already companies who are deploying EV charging stations that have their own batter storage and so are completely mobile.

Plus, when we have transitioned to home battery storage a community could effectively create their own grid to maintain local services until the national connection is repaired.

I realise that not every one can afford to install battery storage into their homes, but they will be able to soon as prices continue to drop. Not to mention the fact that we're going to HAVE to transition to this new way of thinking, unless we all want to either burn or drown.

 

[GrannyJen]

I'm afraid you still don't get it. Read my response to your original " Battersea " post.

All I was referring to was the closure of Battersea Power Station that supplied a 1/3 of London - your words - via underground cabling that are more resistant to Storm Damage just meant the building of power stations in more remote places with power transmission to populated areas via Overground High Tension lines which due to their very nature are going to be more susceptible to storm damage and hence a less resilient power distribution system if storms increase in their severity.

The reasons why there was an outcry when the burning of certain fuels was banned and smokeless fuels promoted is immaterial, but the changing nature of Power Distribution is.

We now have a growing network of small solar , wind and hydraulic power plants all over the country all connected by overland power cables that may not be resilient enough to cope with damage from severe storms. Total dependancy on electric power will be problematic , as shown by Storm Arwen.
Even the Norwegians have recognised this as a problem. See Post 352.

I'm so sorry you feel "I don't get it.

Either way your renowned obdurate attitude will leave me bowing out now as I cannot be bothered to get dragged in to another 15 page exchange of you insisting that you are right

Just remember one thing, every time you use statements to others such as "you still don't get it", well, perhaps sometimes, you, all of us, should look in the mirror when we have to resort to such statements and and question why "me", that person in the mirror, is the one that doesn't get it.

 

[Ch1pbutty]

The answer to the grid problem already exists... Local storage.

Large capacity battery storage will solve all the issues you speak of, whether it be individual house batteries or hyper-local storage. There are already companies who are deploying EV charging stations that have their own batter storage and so are completely mobile.

Plus, when we have transitioned to home battery storage a community could effectively create their own grid to maintain local services until the national connection is repaired.

I realise that not every one can afford to install battery storage into their homes, but they will be able to soon as prices continue to drop. Not to mention the fact that we're going to HAVE to transition to this new way of thinking, unless we all want to either burn or drown.

Some ideas...

Powerwall | Tesla

Powerwall is a home battery designed to store energy from solar or the grid, so you can use it anytime you want—at night or during an outage.

www.tesla.com

Solar Roof | Tesla

Solar Roof replaces your existing roof and brings it to life with beautiful solar tiles that can power your home for decades with the energy you produce.

www.tesla.com

 

[Amarillo]

Who needs an electric car when you have a bike for transporting the kids and long loads?

 

[Velma's Dad]

The answer to the grid problem already exists... Local storage.

Large capacity battery storage will solve all the issues you speak of, whether it be individual house batteries or hyper-local storage. There are already companies who are deploying EV charging stations that have their own batter storage and so are completely mobile.

Plus, when we have transitioned to home battery storage a community could effectively create their own grid to maintain local services until the national connection is repaired.

I realise that not every one can afford to install battery storage into their homes, but they will be able to soon as prices continue to drop. Not to mention the fact that we're going to HAVE to transition to this new way of thinking, unless we all want to either burn or drown.

Coincidentally I was looking at the practicalities of this the other day, as a family member has just installed a large ground-based PV array with battery storage on their farm in Scotland.

The most popular home battery at the moment is the Tesla Powerwall. They aren't cheap at about £10k per unit installed but can hold 13.5 kWh which is a couple of day's leccy for a medium sized house (not including space heating/HW of course). However, if used with solar panels, you won't want to designate that whole 13.5 kWh as 'reserve' because then you'd have no working storage for the panels, while sod's law says the grid power will go off after a long winter's night when the PVs have been dark.

Another thing I learnt about PVs was that they usually need to be set up so they disconnect if the grid power goes down, to avoid sending current the 'wrong way' into the grid which would be a hazard for repair workers. To have the PVs available in grid outages you have to be able to 'island' the property which I gather is considerably more complex/expensive to set up. I'm not sure if the Powerwalls can do that out of the box, maybe they can.

I have no doubt that home battery storage is going to be a biggish thing but I can see it's a tad more complicated than sometimes made out - even though eminently solvable.

 

[Ch1pbutty]

Coincidentally I was looking at the practicalities of this the other day, as a family member has just installed a large ground-based PV array with battery storage on their farm in Scotland.

The most popular home battery at the moment is the Tesla Powerwall. They aren't cheap at about £10k per unit installed but can hold 13.5 kWh which is a couple of day's leccy for a medium sized house (not including space heating/HW of course). However, if used with solar panels, you won't want to designate that whole 13.5 kWh as 'reserve' because then you'd have no working storage for the panels, while sod's law says the grid power will go off after a long winter's night when the PVs have been dark.

Another thing I learnt about PVs was that they usually need to be set up so they disconnect if the grid power goes down, to avoid sending current the 'wrong way' into the grid which would be a hazard for repair workers. To have the PVs available in grid outages you have to be able to 'island' the property which I gather is considerably more complex/expensive to set up. I'm not sure if the Powerwalls can do that out of the box, maybe they can.

I have no doubt that home battery storage is going to be a biggish thing but I can see it's a tad more complicated than sometimes made out - even though eminently solvable.

Best Practices During Power Cuts | Tesla Support United Kingdom

Powerwall brings you energy independence and security, so life in your home can carry on uninterrupted when the grid goes down. Learn more about how Powerwall functions during extended power cuts.

www.tesla.com

//

How Powerwall Provides Backup Power​

When a utility power cut does occur, Powerwall disconnects within a few seconds from the grid and rapidly restores backup power to your home on one phase. While transfer times depend on the nature of the grid fault, you won’t even notice the cut in most cases.

Depending on the inverter, your Powerwall can recharge from your solar system, even during backup mode, so you can keep running your home from solar and Powerwall. A traditional solar system without a Powerwall does not function during a power cut.

If more solar energy is produced than can be used or stored during a cut, Powerwall will signal the solar system to reduce output or completely switch off. Powerwall will then signal the solar system to increase power output again once required.
//

 

[Velma's Dad]

Thanks, that answers it. I guessed it might have a lot of intelligence built in. I assume most Powerwall buyers will also use one (or more) plugged-in EVs as part of their backup storage regime, so you could 'rob' power from one of your cars to power your microwave etc while the grid's down, if you needed to. Or power up a car to make a getaway. Quite cute.

[EDIT] Oops, looks like it actually can't 'shunt' power back in from a car, Tesla or otherwise. Less cute.

 

[WelshGas]

I'm so sorry you feel "I don't get it.

Either way your renowned obdurate attitude will leave me bowing out now as I cannot be bothered to get dragged in to another 15 page exchange of you insisting that you are right

Just remember one thing, every time you use statements to others such as "you still don't get it", well, perhaps sometimes, you, all of us, should look in the mirror when we have to resort to such statements and and question why "me", that person in the mirror, is the one that doesn't get it.

 

[Amarillo]

Coincidentally I was looking at the practicalities of this the other day, as a family member has just installed a large ground-based PV array with battery storage on their farm in Scotland.

The most popular home battery at the moment is the Tesla Powerwall. They aren't cheap at about £10k per unit installed but can hold 13.5 kWh which is a couple of day's leccy for a medium sized house (not including space heating/HW of course). However, if used with solar panels, you won't want to designate that whole 13.5 kWh as 'reserve' because then you'd have no working storage for the panels, while sod's law says the grid power will go off after a long winter's night when the PVs have been dark.

Another thing I learnt about PVs was that they usually need to be set up so they disconnect if the grid power goes down, to avoid sending current the 'wrong way' into the grid which would be a hazard for repair workers. To have the PVs available in grid outages you have to be able to 'island' the property which I gather is considerably more complex/expensive to set up. I'm not sure if the Powerwalls can do that out of the box, maybe they can.

I have no doubt that home battery storage is going to be a biggish thing but I can see it's a tad more complicated than sometimes made out - even though eminently solvable.

Electric cars come with up to 85kWh batteries.

Is there any reason for not using car batteries for emergency power?

I think that the average house needs 10kWh per day for a heat pump (more in winter, less in summer), and 7kWh for other purposes. So a large Tesla battery should be good for about 5 days.

 

[GrannyJen]

In your replies to Jen's post, the changing nature of power distribution is only material in your head - because you chose to try to take the discussion in that direction.

As I'm sure most of the rest of us got, Jen was simply using an example to demonstrate how proposed solutions to societal problems initially often get push-back from a vocal minority or even majority, but meanwhile the government and engineering community often just get on and fix it regardless.

Another fine example of that is offshore wind generation in the UK, which while the naysayers bleated on for about a decade about how it could never happen at any meaningful scale, it's just happened anyway. (And yes of course every new technology raises new issues, we all get that - I'm sure the nation's roses suffered from the diminution of horsesh1t supplies when the internal combustion engine took over).

When I went to UVA in 1995, shortly after my arrival I was accosted by the head of the environmental sciences department. This professor was terribly excited. Apparently one of their modules included references to the UK Clean air act of 1956. In particular it focussed on disaster, both current and impending, channelling thinking and the sheer amount of vested interests that had to be overcome.

The cause of his excitement was the discovery that a newcomer to the faculty of UVA was not only a Londoner but one who also would have memories of the great smog of 1952 and subsequent killer smogs such as 1958. I hesitated to tell him that my memories of events when I was 5 years of age were rather fragile but surprised me how much I do recall.

One of the many discussions we had played out how it would have happened in Virginia given that most of the state of Western Virginia is one big open caste coal pit and those seams extend all the way into western Pennsylvania.

The answer came just over 20 years later. A Presidential candidate, needy for the votes of Western Virginia and the Pennsylvania rust belt pulled the USA out of the Paris climate accords. Trump needed the coal and steel vote too much.

 

[WelshGas]

Electric cars come with up to 85kWh batteries.

Is there any reason for not using car batteries for emergency power?

I think that the average house needs 10kWh per day for a heat pump (more in winter, less in summer), and 7kWh for other purposes. So a large Tesla battery should be good for about 5 days.

Fine if you have a drive to park your EV on. A touch of “ I’m alright Jack “.

 

[Velma's Dad]

Electric cars come with up to 85kWh batteries.

Is there any reason for not using car batteries for emergency power?

I think that the average house needs 10kWh per day for a heat pump (more in winter, less in summer), and 7kWh for other purposes. So a large Tesla battery should be good for about 5 days.

I think that's all good in theory but at this point the home hardware and control systems to enable such flexible use of stored electricity don't really exist. I assume they will at some point though.

I must ask my mate who is an electrician specialising in EV power points.

 

[andyinluton]

The answer to the grid problem already exists... Local storage.

Large capacity battery storage will solve all the issues you speak of, whether it be individual house batteries or hyper-local storage. There are already companies who are deploying EV charging stations that have their own batter storage and so are completely mobile.

Plus, when we have transitioned to home battery storage a community could effectively create their own grid to maintain local services until the national connection is repaired.

I realise that not every one can afford to install battery storage into their homes, but they will be able to soon as prices continue to drop. Not to mention the fact that we're going to HAVE to transition to this new way of thinking, unless we all want to either burn or drown.

It all sounds fine for your typical cali owner in a sprawling mansion set in extensive grounds. It doesn't work when you get to your local authority block of flats. No where to put the batteries within the flats, anywhere available at ground level will already be built on. Just the cost of cabling will be prohibitive.

We are already running into problems in London where every new development is 100% electric, a recent project I was involved with needed £10k per one bedroom flat, spent on the UKPN infrastructure just to provide a supply, these days you don't just need to allow for installing a new substation, you need to allow for upgrading all the way back up the line.
As gas boilers are replaced with electric heating & the increased demand for car charging comes on stream the problem is going to get a lot lot worse before it gets better.

 

[clarinetbcn]

Electric cars come with up to 85kWh batteries.

Is there any reason for not using car batteries for emergency power?

I think that the average house needs 10kWh per day for a heat pump (more in winter, less in summer), and 7kWh for other purposes. So a large Tesla battery should be good for about 5 days.

If only those without power had known this. As mentioned above, the technology already exists.

This video is from 2017, things are certainly more advanced now.

 

[andyinluton]

We also seem to going backwards with technology, the old BT landlines used to work with a wired phone irrespective of power cuts because something like 75% of every telephone exchange consisted of battery rooms to give immediate power back ups, strategic exchanges then had standby generators.
These days it appears that once your local vodafone mast gets cut you are stuffed.

 

[Amarillo]

Fine if you have a drive to park your EV on. A touch of “ I’m alright Jack “.

I don’t know what direction the future has for us, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that an electricity supply company would roll up to a block of flats suffering a power outage with a truck containing a 10,000 kWh solid state battery.

Even now they have a number of diesel generators that can be deployed.

 

[starbug]

I don’t know what direction the future has for us, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that an electricity supply company would roll up to a block of flats suffering a power outage with a truck containing a 10,000 kWh solid state battery.

Even now they have a number of diesel generators that can be deployed.

why can't we have electric heaters why we got to have heat pumps ?