The Death Of Fossil Fuels

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IvanV
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:54 am

bolo wrote:
Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:52 pm
And then there's ERCOT.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:43 pm

BEIS has just released a consultation on longer term storage at BEIS: Facilitating the deployment of large-scale and longduration electricity storage: call for evidence
By longer term, it means
BEIS, p9 wrote:able to store and discharge energy for over 4 hours, and up to days, weeks and months
Larger-scale means over 100MW. So at the very least 400MWh, 4 times larger than the largest battery in Europe (see a short distance above).

This quotation is interesting.
BEIS, p18 wrote:Market signals do not currently create a strong enough incentive to facilitate the storage of electricity for longer durations. Furthermore, where LLES is built, current market signals may incentivise it to cycle daily and provide shorter duration storage. It is important to note that the mechanisms outlined in this call for evidence will not address these signals for longer duration storage. We expect that these price signals will strengthen as renewable deployment increases and gas generation declines in the 2030s. Some stakeholders also see the need for broader market reforms in order to meet net zero; this is discussed in the Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan.
In translation, the price you can get for long term storage is insufficient to encourage anyone to build it. And if they had built it, they would operate it in the manner of short term storage, as close as they could. And BEIS intends to do nothing about that.

So, to the extent that they subsidise deployment of such technologies, and this acknowledges they will have to subsidise them to get any into operation in the near term, for example for the purpose of accelerating R&D, they don't intend to give any kind of certainty over whether there will be a market in the longer term.

One should also bear in mind that if any of these things does get adopted on large scale, then their cost adds to the cost that has to fall on customers and/or taxpayers. Reliable, low carbon electricity is a lot more expensive than interruptible low carbon electricity.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by shpalman » Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:18 pm

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:52 am

Battery storage and the risk of fire

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -day-three

Good that it mentions not only the power rating, but the energy capacity as well.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:23 am

Gfamily wrote:
Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:52 am
Battery storage and the risk of fire

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -day-three

Good that it mentions not only the power rating, but the energy capacity as well.
From my understanding it was going through commissioning tests when it failed. This is definitely not a good thing and needs to be figured out. Given that there are quite a few GWs of grid scale batteries now installed world wide, I don't see it as that big a deal. As stated in the article, it's the first such fire that has ever happened. Once they've figured out what happened, write mitigation into appropriate regs/procedures to deal with it in the future. Hopefully all sorted in a few weeks once the fire has gone out, provided there isn't some sort of systemic issue.

In comparison Queensland's Callide coal fired power station exploded, spraying shrapnel weighing hundreds of kilos, destroying a 400MW generator and shutting down the entire 1.7GW plant for months. It caused nearly half a million people to suffer a blackout, which would have been much worse if it wasn't for battery systems kicking in within milliseconds to stabilize the grid. It will also take over a year to repair.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Aug 02, 2021 5:28 pm

Solar-powered electrolysis for hydrogen production comes to Portugal https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... tion/61369
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Boustrophedon » Mon Aug 02, 2021 11:39 pm

bjn wrote:
Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:23 am
Gfamily wrote:
Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:52 am
Battery storage and the risk of fire

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -day-three

Good that it mentions not only the power rating, but the energy capacity as well.
From my understanding it was going through commissioning tests when it failed. This is definitely not a good thing and needs to be figured out. Given that there are quite a few GWs of grid scale batteries now installed world wide, I don't see it as that big a deal. As stated in the article, it's the first such fire that has ever happened. Once they've figured out what happened, write mitigation into appropriate regs/procedures to deal with it in the future. Hopefully all sorted in a few weeks once the fire has gone out, provided there isn't some sort of systemic issue.

In comparison Queensland's Callide coal fired power station exploded, spraying shrapnel weighing hundreds of kilos, destroying a 400MW generator and shutting down the entire 1.7GW plant for months. It caused nearly half a million people to suffer a blackout, which would have been much worse if it wasn't for battery systems kicking in within milliseconds to stabilize the grid. It will also take over a year to repair.
There was a picture of a UK power station generating set, about 500 MW that exploded due to an overspeed condition, that did the rounds when I was a student (45 years ago?). The room looked normal except that everything had turbine blade shaped holes in it.

If I remember correctly it was due to corrosion in a hydraulic control system that shared it's oil with the turbine. TL:DR someone pissed in the lube oil.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by shpalman » Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:59 pm

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:17 am

I particularly liked the guy saying that explaining why you continue to use your current diesel car is "damning" electric cars. That really convinced me that he's offering level headed and not at all hyperbolic opinions.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:09 am

Guardian wrote:Ian Plummer, commercial director of Auto Trader, said there were now 25,000 public charging points in the UK, of which nearly 5,000 were rapid or ultra-rapid. “Range anxiety and the concern of an inadequate charging infrastructure remain as two of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of an alternatively fuelled vehicle. However, with an average range of over 190 miles on a single charge, modern electric vehicles are more than capable of meeting the vast majority of journeys.”
I always think "range anxiety" is an example of victim-blaming. A better, and neutral description is "long refuelling time". That is clearly an annoying feature if you wish to make long journeys with any kind of frequency.

"Rapid" charging means "takes a few hours rather than overnight". It is only "ultra-rapid" that might give you a decent charge in half an hour. He carefully fails to split out the number of them. They are also often particularly costly to use. Electric cars with longer ranges are available, but are typically very expensive.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by shpalman » Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:33 am

IvanV wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:09 am
Guardian wrote:Ian Plummer, commercial director of Auto Trader, said there were now 25,000 public charging points in the UK, of which nearly 5,000 were rapid or ultra-rapid. “Range anxiety and the concern of an inadequate charging infrastructure remain as two of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of an alternatively fuelled vehicle. However, with an average range of over 190 miles on a single charge, modern electric vehicles are more than capable of meeting the vast majority of journeys.”
I always think "range anxiety" is an example of victim-blaming. A better, and neutral description is "long refuelling time". That is clearly an annoying feature if you wish to make long journeys with any kind of frequency.

"Rapid" charging means "takes a few hours rather than overnight". It is only "ultra-rapid" that might give you a decent charge in half an hour. He carefully fails to split out the number of them. They are also often particularly costly to use. Electric cars with longer ranges are available, but are typically very expensive.
Not really "long refuelling time" as "no idea where the next accessible and working charger would be".

I notice they claim 200-250 mile range but then say that charging from 20% to 80% can be "fast" - that corresponds to only 60% of that quoted range being actually useful. (I'm not going to start on the whole "but you should be taking a break anyway".)
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by shpalman » Wed Aug 04, 2021 11:40 am

For balance here are some happy owners https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... c-vehicles
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Wed Aug 04, 2021 11:50 am

IvanV wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:09 am
Guardian wrote:Ian Plummer, commercial director of Auto Trader, said there were now 25,000 public charging points in the UK, of which nearly 5,000 were rapid or ultra-rapid. “Range anxiety and the concern of an inadequate charging infrastructure remain as two of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of an alternatively fuelled vehicle. However, with an average range of over 190 miles on a single charge, modern electric vehicles are more than capable of meeting the vast majority of journeys.”
I always think "range anxiety" is an example of victim-blaming. A better, and neutral description is "long refuelling time". That is clearly an annoying feature if you wish to make long journeys with any kind of frequency.

"Rapid" charging means "takes a few hours rather than overnight". It is only "ultra-rapid" that might give you a decent charge in half an hour. He carefully fails to split out the number of them. They are also often particularly costly to use. Electric cars with longer ranges are available, but are typically very expensive.
“Particularly costly” meaning that it costs nearly half as much as petrol instead of less than a tenth?
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:34 pm

IvanV wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:09 am
Guardian wrote:Ian Plummer, commercial director of Auto Trader, said there were now 25,000 public charging points in the UK, of which nearly 5,000 were rapid or ultra-rapid. “Range anxiety and the concern of an inadequate charging infrastructure remain as two of the biggest barriers to consumer adoption of an alternatively fuelled vehicle. However, with an average range of over 190 miles on a single charge, modern electric vehicles are more than capable of meeting the vast majority of journeys.”
I always think "range anxiety" is an example of victim-blaming. A better, and neutral description is "long refuelling time". That is clearly an annoying feature if you wish to make long journeys with any kind of frequency.

"Rapid" charging means "takes a few hours rather than overnight". It is only "ultra-rapid" that might give you a decent charge in half an hour. He carefully fails to split out the number of them. They are also often particularly costly to use. Electric cars with longer ranges are available, but are typically very expensive.
In practice how much of an issue is it really? I rarely drive more than 200 miles in a day, and when I do I need to take a break, which is when I would recharge. Having a BEV generally means never having to visit a garage to 'refuel' unless you are on a long journey. So what you might occasionally lose out on, you more than make up for the rest of the time. Don't optimise for corner cases, 200+ mile journeys are rare.

I don't own a BEV yet (current car is going strong and not that old), but my next car will certainly be one. I know a bunch of people that do own them and they are all perfectly happy.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:46 pm

Costing nearly half as much as petrol is of course a valid point but it's worth considering that means costing as much as the actual petrol itself excluding the fuel duty, which will have to be raised elsewhere in future.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:53 pm

One forgotten factor for long journeys is you need to be able to recharge at your destination, not just en route.

If you arrive at your B&B for a long weekend in Snowdonia with 20% left, you can't just plug into your host's fast charger because they won't have one. You'll have to find an ultra-fast charger somewhere else before you can go on scenic drives.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:57 pm

She is in a high-profile climate-related role, though.

It's perhaps not unreasonable to expect somebody being paid to represent the country's low-carbon ambitions to suck up some mild personal inconvenience, especially as the government's strategy is to try to push the blame for emissions onto individual consumers. Reap what you sow, etc.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:01 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:34 pm
I don't own a BEV yet
BEV should no longer be used. "Electric" is better, "EV" at a push - the general public hasn't a clue what a BEV is.

We are at the crucial moment for marketing, turning electric cars from niche products with their own jargon into mass market glamour products. Electric is a strong marketing word, conveying notions of speed, convenience and cleanness.

There's no excuse to buy a new ICE car from 2022 onwards, given there'll be dozens of electric variants available for under £30k. Unless you need a specialist vehicle due to loads of long journeys or heavy towing.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:32 pm

lpm wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:53 pm
One forgotten factor for long journeys is you need to be able to recharge at your destination, not just en route.

If you arrive at your B&B for a long weekend in Snowdonia with 20% left, you can't just plug into your host's fast charger because they won't have one. You'll have to find an ultra-fast charger somewhere else before you can go on scenic drives.
We had a week of in the cotswolds at an Airbnb. They had an electric car charger there. This is all going to happen. Especially as more BEVs appear, there will be a demand and BnBs will lose business if they don’t have chargers. There will be the odd kerfuffle as we transition, but nothing to pearl clutch about.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:33 pm

lpm wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:01 pm
bjn wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:34 pm
I don't own a BEV yet
BEV should no longer be used. "Electric" is better, "EV" at a push - the general public hasn't a clue what a BEV is.

We are at the crucial moment for marketing, turning electric cars from niche products with their own jargon into mass market glamour products. Electric is a strong marketing word, conveying notions of speed, convenience and cleanness.

There's no excuse to buy a new ICE car from 2022 onwards, given there'll be dozens of electric variants available for under £30k. Unless you need a specialist vehicle due to loads of long journeys or heavy towing.
Battery electric vehicle is different to fuel cell electric vehicle is different to plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Differentiating between them is import. So BEV.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:37 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:46 pm
Costing nearly half as much as petrol is of course a valid point but it's worth considering that means costing as much as the actual petrol itself excluding the fuel duty, which will have to be raised elsewhere in future.
Taxing electricity used for charging a car as opposed to used to boil water in a kettle is going to be very hard to do. Most likely it will be via some form of road usage fee. Count the miles each year, levy some sort of charge. You can link it to vehicle weight as well if necessary.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Martin Y » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:42 pm

It seems unlikely they'll start to tax any aspect of electric cars while still pushing uptake. Eventually though the lost income from fuel duty will be clawed back from somewhere else in whatever manner is easy to collect and hard to avoid.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:11 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:34 pm
In practice how much of an issue is it really? I rarely drive more than 200 miles in a day, and when I do I need to take a break, which is when I would recharge. Having a BEV generally means never having to visit a garage to 'refuel' unless you are on a long journey. So what you might occasionally lose out on, you more than make up for the rest of the time. Don't optimise for corner cases, 200+ mile journeys are rare.

I don't own a BEV yet (current car is going strong and not that old), but my next car will certainly be one. I know a bunch of people that do own them and they are all perfectly happy.
So, you are the customer the EV is good for. What about other people with different habits and travel needs?

Electricity from public chargers is not a small fraction of the cost of the equivalent amount of petrol. In fact it can be more expensive, and I'm not just thinking of that rare case recently in the news of £2/kWh. A common misleading trick is to compare the electricity required by "the average EV" with "the average car", as opposed to an equivalent car of similar load capacity. And at ultra-fast chargers, with their much higher capital cost, electricity tends to be charged at much higher prices than typical street chargers.

A typical consumption of an EV that replaces a typical car, (as opposed to "the average EV") is something like 3 miles per kWh. The equivalent modern fossil fuel car might do about 11 miles per litre, as they are a lot more efficient these days, unless you are buying some sporty version. So with petrol at about 135p/l, then electricity becomes more expensive than petrol at about about 37p/kWh for such a car. Maybe your chosen EV does 4 miles/kWh, but then the equivalent fossil fuel car might do 14 miles/litre, so similar figures there.

Generally speaking you can get public charging at less than 37p/kWh. Though for faster chargers, usually not a lot less than that, though there are some examples where it can approach that half price that was being mentioned. Here's a Survey of public charging point prices from What Car, sponsored by Nissan Leaf, so they will have slanted it towards cheap rather than expensive. You will see that, for faster charging (>50kW), prices in the range 25-40p/kWh are typical. There are three 150kW examples at 27p-42p, and just one 350kW at 69p. Half an hour's charge at 150kW will get you about 225 miles for the 3 miles/kWh vehicle.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by monkey » Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:37 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:57 pm
She is in a high-profile climate-related role, though.

It's perhaps not unreasonable to expect somebody being paid to represent the country's low-carbon ambitions to suck up some mild personal inconvenience, especially as the government's strategy is to try to push the blame for emissions onto individual consumers. Reap what you sow, etc.
She could've said "I'm going to drive it till the wheels fall of before I replace it, cos I heard someone say that was better for carbon", and then we'd all have an argument about whether that was true or not.

I'm getting the impression that this Allegra Stratton is either bad at PR (her job), or doesn't really understand climate change and how to beat it, or both. This is not the first time she's been in the papers for saying something silly.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:11 pm

IvanV wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:11 pm
bjn wrote:
Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:34 pm
In practice how much of an issue is it really? I rarely drive more than 200 miles in a day, and when I do I need to take a break, which is when I would recharge. Having a BEV generally means never having to visit a garage to 'refuel' unless you are on a long journey. So what you might occasionally lose out on, you more than make up for the rest of the time. Don't optimise for corner cases, 200+ mile journeys are rare.

I don't own a BEV yet (current car is going strong and not that old), but my next car will certainly be one. I know a bunch of people that do own them and they are all perfectly happy.
So, you are the customer the EV is good for. What about other people with different habits and travel needs?

Electricity from public chargers is not a small fraction of the cost of the equivalent amount of petrol. In fact it can be more expensive, and I'm not just thinking of that rare case recently in the news of £2/kWh. A common misleading trick is to compare the electricity required by "the average EV" with "the average car", as opposed to an equivalent car of similar load capacity. And at ultra-fast chargers, with their much higher capital cost, electricity tends to be charged at much higher prices than typical street chargers.

A typical consumption of an EV that replaces a typical car, (as opposed to "the average EV") is something like 3 miles per kWh. The equivalent modern fossil fuel car might do about 11 miles per litre, as they are a lot more efficient these days, unless you are buying some sporty version. So with petrol at about 135p/l, then electricity becomes more expensive than petrol at about about 37p/kWh for such a car. Maybe your chosen EV does 4 miles/kWh, but then the equivalent fossil fuel car might do 14 miles/litre, so similar figures there.

Generally speaking you can get public charging at less than 37p/kWh. Though for faster chargers, usually not a lot less than that, though there are some examples where it can approach that half price that was being mentioned. Here's a Survey of public charging point prices from What Car, sponsored by Nissan Leaf, so they will have slanted it towards cheap rather than expensive. You will see that, for faster charging (>50kW), prices in the range 25-40p/kWh are typical. There are three 150kW examples at 27p-42p, and just one 350kW at 69p. Half an hour's charge at 150kW will get you about 225 miles for the 3 miles/kWh vehicle.
You are worrying about a corner case. Given that the average annual mileage in the UK for a car is 7,400 miles, of which 2,700 is commuting (just over 10 miles per working day) and 4,400 is for pleasure (12 miles per day over the year) with 400 miles for business (2 miles per working day on average), the vast majority of trips won't need rapid charging. Yes there will be spikey days where you drive to Lands End to John O'Groats and need rapid charging, and there will be road warriors driving stupid distances. However for most people on most days you can top up at home or at a cheap kerbside charger, eg: the 5KW lamppost charger literally outside my front gate with another 4 within eyeshot of my house which went in over the last few months. The infrastructure is appearing as needed. All my BEV owning neighbours had to do was phone the council and request a new charge point, who then told the charging companies about it gave them planning permission, hey presto, new chargers. This is Hounslow as well, not exactly a mega wealthy London borough.

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