Synthetic Fuels

[DVD3500]

On 07/10/2023 at 17:54, Colin Lindsay said:

China is putting TWO new coal fired stations onto their grid per day, so with that capacity, they should be world leaders in electric cars soon. 

Source?

All I could find is that they are "allowed" to build 2 per week. It doesn't mean they will or do.

The same report also said they are building more renewables than any other country. The main motivation seemed to be energy independence from Russia.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-plants-set-become-costly-second-fiddle-renewables-2023-03-22/

BTW: The Autocar podcast said this morning that Nissan will be putting solid state batteries into their cars for the 2028 model year.

Solid state batteries are lighter, more energy dense and even less likely to suffer thermal runaway as their operating bands are are greater. They can also charge faster and take deeper discharges. Oh and they use even less precious metals or can be made from recycled batteries.

Other manufacturers are likely to follow suit.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by DVD3500

[Chris A]

11 hours ago, Puglet1 said:

People laughed when I said I’d bought a Yeti but after doing much research it suits my needs perfectly and performs much better than some may think!

I bought mine for the name 😁

[Colin Lindsay]

17 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

Source?

All I could find is that they are "allowed" to build 2 per week. It doesn't mean they will or do.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2317274-china-is-building-more-than-half-of-the-worlds-new-coal-power-plants/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/china-approves-biggest-expansion-in-new-coal-power-plants-since-2015-report-finds

https://www.power-technology.com/news/china-permitting-two-coal-fired-power-plants-per-week/

Building work has restarted at hundreds of Chinese coal-fired power stations, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.

The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China.

The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet.

The study says government attempts to cancel many plants have failed.

 

[Gully]

30 minutes ago, Chris A said:

I bought mine for the name 😁

They're great cars! I had one on a few occasions when my series of Octavias were being serviced. I would have happily bought one, but needed a bigger boot and depth of load area to take skis.

Gully

[Ian Foster]

14 hours ago, Puglet1 said:

bought a Yeti but after doing much research it suits my needs perfectly and performs much better than some may think!

+1 for that. We have had ours since 2013 and it now has just over 60k miles on it. It's a 1.8 turbo (petrol) TSI 4x4 and pretty much does everything well.

Not too many stupid gadgets on it either.

Ian

[Wagger]

Doing some really basic calculations, I have family members who generate up to 6kwh per day from their solar systems. This would power a 1kw heater for six hours. (On a 50% duty cycle could be 12 hours. Only during summer sunshine too).

An electric car would use approximately 10kw per hour.

Therefore, we will need to generate about three times as much power as we do now from the grid to run only electric cars.

It appears to be a very tall order.

I know my calculations are very basic, so I am willing to be corrected.

 

[Wagger]

OK a little more calculation.

A Nissan Leaf will do (maybe) 150 miles on a 40kwh battery, That is approximately 3 hrs at 50 mph using 13kw per hr.

Currently, the cost of a kwh is about 33p, so a recharge costs between £12 and £15. This does look very attractive if one can afford to buy an EV. However, if one did 50 miles per day this would need an extra 13kwh per day and that is 13 units at 33p. Approx £4 extra per day. My current usage is about £4 per day, so my usage would double if I was working.

Therefore, if umpteen million of us go electric, we will need far more power generated into the grid. About twice what we use now. THEN, they will hike the price up just as they did with liquid fuels AFTER most of us had a car.

I have only ten more years of driving, judging by performance of my siblings with eyesight problems etc, so I will not be buying an EV unless I win the lottery and can afford a solar installation.

My mini solar station that cost me £200 is keeping the mobility scooter, phones and Vitesse battery charged for free right now. That's the emergency transport taken care of. Just need about 200 times more panels.

[Gully]

2 hours ago, Wagger said:

OK a little more calculation.

A Nissan Leaf will do (maybe) 150 miles on a 40kwh battery, That is approximately 3 hrs at 50 mph using 13kw per hr.

Currently, the cost of a kwh is about 33p, so a recharge costs between £12 and £15. This does look very attractive if one can afford to buy an EV. However, if one did 50 miles per day this would need an extra 13kwh per day and that is 13 units at 33p. Approx £4 extra per day. My current usage is about £4 per day, so my usage would double if I was working.

Therefore, if umpteen million of us go electric, we will need far more power generated into the grid. About twice what we use now. THEN, they will hike the price up just as they did with liquid fuels AFTER most of us had a car.

I have only ten more years of driving, judging by performance of my siblings with eyesight problems etc, so I will not be buying an EV unless I win the lottery and can afford a solar installation.

My mini solar station that cost me £200 is keeping the mobility scooter, phones and Vitesse battery charged for free right now. That's the emergency transport taken care of. Just need about 200 times more panels.

It's much worse for people doing greater mileages when they have to use public fast chargers - it's now costing some of my colleagues more to charge their EVs than it used to to fill up with diesel.

Gully

[AndyTV8]

Regarding the charging - most EV/PHEV owners will be operating with an EV-friendly electricity tariff at their home address, in my case we pay £0.075/kWh.  The theoretical Nissan Leaf charge would probably cost around £3.

I completely agree that once you more into the public charging network the cost-aspects move drastically in favour of Diesel/Petrol, home-based charging is the key to real running cost savings.

…… Andy 

[PeteH]

On the subject of Home power generation, Last year, (my first FULL year of operation.) I made a total of aproximately 50 to 60% of my annual consumption, from 6.8Kw of panels, Primarily West facing with 30% facing South. The biggest asset was the installation of the 5Kw battery pack, which about 80% of the time manages my overnight consumption. Obviously we only export at Max during the Mid year. But I have sold in excess of 4Mw/hrs to the Grid in that period. All round, bearing in mind that at our age, we will never entirely recoup our investment. I am more than happy with the return on the system, which is financially greater than it would have "earned" as saving`s.

As for E-V`s, in principle as transport for the individual, especially those of us who live rurally, they get my thumb`s up, however the infrastucture to support the change does not exist, and will not exist for many years yet. Even IF you have the means to charge at home, there is not the scale of recharge points needed, and the reports of those not working in some cases 2 out of 3. Further underpins the (infra)structural need.

Pete

[Colin Lindsay]

The biggest shift in EV charging will be to educate owners that you charge your car; you DO NOT let it sit there plugged in all day while you go to work, then pick it up at hometime, nor is it your private parking space. A number of local EV owners were complaining that the single charge point in one of our local towns had the same car parked there, plugged in, for almost 24/7.

[johny]

Surely that needs to be dealt with in the cost? You overstay by more than a certain amount and get more money taken from your account - after all apart from the inconvenience the company is losing the sale of power to the next customer

[DVD3500]

6 minutes ago, johny said:

Surely that needs to be dealt with in the cost? You overstay by more than a certain amount and get more money taken from your account - after all apart from the inconvenience the company is losing the sale of power to the next customer

That was written into EU law this year. The fines can be quite high.

Before that the charger closest to me was almost always blocked by a BMW (it's almost always a BMW...) hybrid that only had a 12 KW battery and it would sit there all weekend.

The charger was a 11 KW charger so even if he slowed the charging to half (a common practice to help battery longevity) it would only take him a little over 2 hours.

I experimented with living without home charging for 3 weeks in January.

It took a little more planning but was very doable.

Slow chargers at places like cinemas and theaters as well as near work were great. Fast or semi-fast at super markets were even better: You could leave the heat on while you shopped and the car was warm when you got back.

Car was almost always up to 80% within the 30 or so minutes I was shopping.

The infrastructure is really not too terribly hard.

Here in Germany things have really taken off.

Since getting our Enyaq in Sept 2022 it went from a fast charger every 50 km or so to about every 10 KM.

We don't even plan our stops anymore. We take of and at 40% start looking for a charger on the navigation. If there are none free (which has only happened once) we drive to the next one.

By the time we all do bio breaks and/or walk the dog the car is 80-100% and we continue.

It really is a piece of cake.

 

[Chris A]

18 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

That was written into EU law this year. The fines can be quite high.

Here in France it is an offense to park an ic car in a charging point space it is also an offence to park an EV that isn't being charged in one.

[johny]

I always think its better to hit peoples wallets rather than by law. The conventional car in a charging point space makes sense but an EV plugged in - is it charging or not? As if the police havent got enough to do....

[Colin Lindsay]

56 minutes ago, johny said:

Surely that needs to be dealt with in the cost? You overstay by more than a certain amount and get more money taken from your account - after all apart from the inconvenience the company is losing the sale of power to the next customer

Over here, up until last April, it was free to charge an EV. (And at present I'm still not sure!) There were reportedly some fairly heated arguments with EV drivers trying to charge their cars and cars already plugged in that were often left for days. I just had a look on Google Earth and the charger is sitting empty, which tells me they now have to pay. It's also beside a 60-minute parking restriction sign, which has been there for years... but must not apply to charging EVs.

 

 

[Mjit]

4 hours ago, johny said:

I always think its better to hit peoples wallets rather than by law. The conventional car in a charging point space makes sense but an EV plugged in - is it charging or not? As if the police havent got enough to do....

Well the simple one would be to charge people for how long their EV is plugged in, rather than how much electricity they pull.  Want to leave it there blocking the charger from 9 to 5?  Go for your life - but you'll be charged for 8hrs of charging time (even though you only recieved a 30min 'top-up').  Most people would be motivated to pop back and unplug - and if you've done that you might as well move the car.

The other option would be to change the way the charging cable is 'locked' to the car.  In my limited experience currently it seems the car locks on to the cable - so someone can't just yank it out and plug it in to their car the second you walk away.  If the charger was given control of the lock instead/as well you could site the 'pump' in the middle of 4 parking bays.  As soon as the plugged in car's full the 'pump' could unlock the cable from the car/switch from "Engaged" to "Available" and someone in one of the other bays could unplog from car A/plug in to theirs and start their charging cycle.

[PeteH]

Of course the obvious answer is not to have an E-V and to go to the garage and stick 60litre of Diesel in? 5 min  in and out. But I guess that`s far too simple🙄

Pete

[johny]

oooh and far too contaminating!

[Chris A]

50 minutes ago, PeteH said:

Of course the obvious answer is not to have an E-V and to go to the garage and stick 60litre of Diesel in? 5 min  in and out. But I guess that`s far too simple🙄

Pete

Sounds good to me 

[Wagger]

Had a discussion at a family gathering yesterday. The main concern of us all was how will the government cope wih the revenue lost from liquid fuels? Surely, they will have to recover it from elsewhere.

[Chris A]

41 minutes ago, Wagger said:

Surely, they will have to recover it from elsewhere.

Or, reduce expenditure to the same extent. I know which option I'll bet on.

[AndyTV8]

Any prospective government has the same conundrum to solve…. They have had plenty of time to think about it and plan accordingly. There will undoubted be increases in some taxes to cover reduced revenue from fossil fuel taxes, the only open question is which taxes. (And don’t bet against reduced expenditure in parallel)

…….. Andy 

[DVD3500]

Almost all EVs have a pulsing green light when they are charging (pity if you are red/green blind)... most are locked while charging and unlocked once they hit whatever the limit is set by the driver.

At work we actually have charging stations that automatically unlock at 12 noon so people can share stalls.

 

[Mjit]

On 13/10/2023 at 19:10, PeteH said:

Of course the obvious answer is not to have an E-V and to go to the garage and stick 60litre of Diesel in? 5 min  in and out. But I guess that`s far too simple🙄

Pete

Or you go the route Nio are pushing, where batteries are 'hot swappable'.  Basically while the plugging in would be the norm you also have a number of automated service centres spread around the country where you drive up, the garage takes control of your car (you still in it) and rolls you into a service bay, automatically removes your battery/replaces it with a fresh, fully charged one, you drive off with a full 'tank'.  So when you do need to make a long journey 'refuling' doesn't take norticably longer in a Nio EV than it does in a ICE powered car.