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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:22 am
by dyqik
Apparently the three installed in the municipal parking lot in our downtown area are all broken right now.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:31 am
by plodder
dyqik wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:22 am
Apparently the three installed in the municipal parking lot in our downtown area are all broken right now.
We should probably just cancel the whole carbon thing and let the kids worry about it.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:34 pm
by lpm
It's a bit surprising how sh.t capitalism is being with this.
These machines are able sell electricity at much higher than cost price. But it takes upfront investment to install machines, particularly the ultra fast type at services. Interest rates are exceptionally low and funding is easy to obtain, making that upfront investment easier to cover.
It's a fairly basic business - big outflow on day one, steady profit month after month. Just the sort of thing that should thrive in a low interest rate environment. Capitalism with this sort of business dynamic hates to have machinery in a factory out of order, the machine stops generating cash while still costing you interest.
I suspect what's happened is a muddle of public and private enterprise. Councils got into the subsidies business, plus have control via planning regulations. There are too many amateurs taking decisions, no professionals with years of experience. Some of the companies are so amateurish they can't even handle the basics of taking credit card payments from customers at the pump and give out free charges.
Some companies are starting to offer quality at a higher price - canopies over the chargers, good lighting to make it safe for lone drivers at night, highly reliable chargers. But I believe some locations have artificial price constraints imposed by local councils, as a condition of the initial subsidy or planning rights, and that's f.cking up the proper market mechanisms. You end up with broken chargers, dangerous locations and terrible customer service.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:46 pm
by El Pollo Diablo
Can I just spend a minute to give some praise to Chargemaster? (Now BP Pulse of course)
I recently had the experience of using their system (fairly newly installed, by the looks of things) in Aylesbury, and I must say how impressed I was with just how pathetic, unusable, and absolute f.cking gobshite the entire thing is. I'm not a subscriber, as I don't use their system often enough to make it worth it, but I would like to use their pay as you go service (more expensive per kWh but that's fine). I rocked up to one of their points, plugged in, went into the app, and got a no go. Tried a different charge point. Nothing. Tried another one. Nothing.
I've never had a good experience with it. The app is sh.t, the system doesn't work, and every single one of them can go f.ck themselves.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:09 pm
by lpm
It's bizarre. It's every capitalist's dream to say "I've got a local monopoly in Aylesbury and my customers keep telling me they're fine to pay whatever premium I impose".
The world's sliding into apathy where even the capitalists can't be arsed to rip us off.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:12 pm
by FlammableFlower
As lpm and EPD point out, this part of the infrastructure is really poor. One of the issues is that it really isn't that tricky to put the charging points in, the problem is maintaining them. Even at my workplace with 10 chargers (so 20 vehicles can charge) there are often ones that are out of action. With the current usage it means you can always find another that is working, but it's frustrating. I spend a lot of time clicking on "report a problem". Apparently they trip out fairly easily...
So far the only time I tried to use another place (GeniePoint) it turned out they had network-wide issues and they were all buggered. Not great. I got to work with just a few miles left in the range and the car dashboard lighting up like a christmas tree with warnings.
The ability to charge needs to be much more reliable.
It's also not helped by the profusion of companies all trying to ring-fence their customers. Every single company requires a different app and early on they needed their own RFID card. They all want to keep you using their chargers and not a competitors. Ridiculously inconvenient. Hopefully this will become largely pointless as EV ownership increases. As the market saturates there shouldn't be the need to be so protectionist.
Another problem is that technology is still evolving - plug and socket types, speed of charging, AC vs DC charging - things aren't settled yet.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 4:30 pm
by Little waster
Well that’s easily solved, just standardise all EVs to run off USB-C leads, simples!
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2021 4:34 pm
by dyqik
lpm wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:09 pm
It's bizarre. It's every capitalist's dream to say "I've got a local monopoly in Aylesbury and my customers keep telling me they're fine to pay whatever premium I impose".
The world's sliding into apathy where even the capitalists can't be arsed to rip us off.
The public chargers in my town, including the electricity they supply, were funded off of VW's settlement for the diesel emissions scam. There are new chargers going in around town also funded by that settlement, but electricity won't be free there. We're just waiting for the town monopoly electricity supplier to hook them up.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 5:37 am
by Imrael
It was unreliable public charging that drove me into the arms of tesla for my 2nd EV, so I guess that's sort of a market pressure. Just rather indirectly applied.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:43 pm
by bjn
The UK just access to 1.4GW of Norwegian hydro with the
North Sea Link interconnect now operating. They will now get our wind when we have excess wind generation, we get their hydro when there isn't enough wind. Cheaper, more reliable renewable generation.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:52 pm
by Gfamily
That prompted me to have a look at what's currently going on. It's a bit blowy today.
62% renewable overall
- Screenshot_20211003-154841.jpg (92.09 KiB) Viewed 1913 times
NB IC Nsl is the new one.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 3:06 pm
by Grumble
Gfamily wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:52 pm
That prompted me to have a look at what's currently going on. It's a bit blowy today.
62% renewable overall
Screenshot_20211003-154841.jpg
NB IC Nsl is the new one.
How much wind do we have to have before we send it back the other way?!
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 3:15 pm
by Martin Y
bjn wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:43 pm
The UK just access to 1.4GW of Norwegian hydro with the
North Sea Link interconnect now operating. They will now get our wind when we have excess wind generation, we get their hydro when there isn't enough wind. Cheaper, more reliable renewable generation.
Makes a nice change from our sending them acid rain, as was traditional.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 3:50 pm
by bjn
Grumble wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 3:06 pm
Gfamily wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:52 pm
That prompted me to have a look at what's currently going on. It's a bit blowy today.
62% renewable overall
Screenshot_20211003-154841.jpg
NB IC Nsl is the new one.
How much wind do we have to have before we send it back the other way?!
Not sure, but that spare capacity will ramp up soon. We currently have ~24GW of wind (~14 onshore, ~10 offshore) and there is a bit over 5GW under construction and another 4GW in planning, all offshore. The government has pledged to get us to 40GW of offshore wind by 2030. Those newer farms will have higher capacity factors than existing farms, eg: up to 65% for the planned Dogger Bank farms. (All from wiki).
In 2020 the UK had a peak generation capacity of 64.8GW, with a peak demand of 48.9GW. Source, HMG.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... icity-data
For comparison, nukes are at around 9GWe, solar in the UK is 10GWp*, with net nuke generation losing about 2GW capacity by 2030 due to shut downs, and assuming Hinkley C gets finished.
So in the middle of a windy sunny day in 2030 would see us with ~15 GW going spare with nothing to do.
*Capacity factor for solar in the UK is about 10%. Nonetheless 10GW is way more than I thought we had.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:33 pm
by bjn
Dumping
a link (pdf) here so I can read it later and share it with you lot.
Another paper on cost projections of renewables, storage and H2 electrolysers from Oxford Uni.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:55 am
by Millennie Al
bjn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:33 pm
Dumping
a link (pdf) here so I can read it later and share it with you lot.
It's very annoying. Why do people draw such nice graphs as we see on p.6 and then put them on different scales so we cannot visually compare them???
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:15 am
by Grumble
bjn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:33 pm
Dumping
a link (pdf) here so I can read it later and share it with you lot.
Another paper on cost projections of renewables, storage and H2 electrolysers from Oxford Uni.
Isn’t that the same one that BOAF linked earlier?
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=109&start=1150#p95529
Bit of a shame we can’t pin posts within threads.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:31 am
by bjn
Bother, it appears to be. Silly me.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:41 am
by Grumble
bjn wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 5:31 am
Bother, it appears to be. Silly me.
These things have a way of getting buried, maybe it’s worth splitting the thread for?
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:19 pm
by Bird on a Fire
This is pretty cool - Google Maps adding an option (default in some circumstances) to choose the lowest-carbon route
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... r-journeys
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:20 am
by Woodchopper
The strength of the wind blowing across northern Europe has fallen by as much as 15 per cent on average in places this year, according to data compiled by Vortex, an independent weather modelling group.
The cause of the decrease is uncertain, say scientists, but one possible explanation is a phenomenon called global stilling. This is a decrease in average surface wind speed owing to climate change.
“Near-surface wind speed trends across the globe found that winds have generally weakened over land over the past few decades,” said Paul Williams, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading. “This suggests that the phenomenon is part of a genuine long-term trend, rather than cyclic variability.”
One explanation for this could be that “human-related climate change is warming the poles faster than the tropics in the lower atmosphere,” Williams noted. “This would have the effect of weakening the mid-latitude north-south temperature difference and consequently reducing the thermal wind at low altitudes.”
Projections from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change support this trend. Wind speeds over western, central and northern Europe are predicted to drop by as much as 10 per cent in the summer months by 2100, based on 1.5C warming above pre-industrial levels.
Less wind has a direct impact on the amount of electricity that can be generated by the many wind farms across Europe.
In March this year, Britain experienced its longest spell of low wind output in more than a decade.
The power output as a percentage of total installed capacity averaged just 11 per cent between February 26 and March 8, according to Drax, the power generation company. This accounted for less than a quarter of the average for the rest of the two months either side of this period.
Again, on September 6 in the UK, wind provided only 2.5 per cent of electricity generation compared with an average of 18 per cent over the past year. This led to two units at West Burton A, one of the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power plants, being switched on to help with the shortfall.
The trend threatens the UK’s pledge for electricity generation to be carbon neutral by 2035, as it relies on fossil fuels to supplement its energy needs.
https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843-dbe ... c66127ea80
If there is a feedback loop then I assume that there would probably need to be more wind generators in order to compensate for lower wind speeds.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:46 am
by Grumble
Get that application for solar in Morocco sorted
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:16 pm
by plodder
Obviously all the new wind turbines are taking power out of the air and making the world turn a bit faster.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 3:58 pm
by sheldrake
lpm wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:34 pm
It's a bit surprising how sh.t capitalism is being with this.
You can't just install stuff in public places that involve live current outlets etc.. because it will make you money. There will be planning processes and palms to grease.
Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels
Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 4:14 pm
by lpm
But presumably Welcome Break on the M4 isn't deemed a public place? The company must own it all, the car park and the infrastructure and the rats in the food hall. Yes, need planning permission, but there aren't any neighbours to object to a row of chargers spoiling their view of the petrol station.
Likewise petrol stations must own their forecourts and Sainsburys must own their car park. Or rent from people who have an incentive to cash in. Councils want to boast about progress so hard to see why planning should be too hard.
The tricky bit must be getting enough electrons to each location through a grid built for the old world?