The Death Of Fossil Fuels

[dyqik]

I wish my laptop battery was that good.

143 cycles, and it's at 25% of design capacity.

[bmforre]

I wish my laptop battery was that good.

143 cycles, and it's at 25% of design capacity.

Low weight is a main selling point for laptops. Also their batteries are small relative to power available from an ordinary charger.
So keeping to 25% - 75% may be desirable for longevity but not for sales.

What is the quality of the charging control circuitry and software inside different laptops? Particularly the protection against overcharging and too-low discharge?

[bjn]

Apologies for interrupting all your deeply technical stuff with a really basic couple of questions. What could I expect in terms of improvement in a) range and b) recharging speed in BEVs over say, 5 years and 10 years, and also overall battery life/ability of the battery to maintain its range as it er, gets older? The answer to that part of the question seems to be that it's far less of an issue already but I'm asking anyway. I also realise recharging speed is likely to be dependent on aspects of charging infrastructure but I just want to try and get a better understanding of this overall. Is it right to be as optimistic as the BEV proponents say?

The recharging speed issue is one reason why I am unsure whether batteries will be the final winners. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the most likely but there is still research into fuel cells, and hydrogen, or other fuels (maybe even ammonia, but that's quite nasty) might still win for that reason.

If you can recharge at a low power while your car is parked where it normally would be, ie, home, work and shops, the need to charge rapidly only becomes an issue for long trips, but you are probably taking a pee/coffee/snack break at a services anyway. What about the people who can't charge at home, work, shops? There are low powered chargers in the lampposts on my street, one is literally outside my front gate, and more are springing up all the time.

Hydrogen has one single advantage, that is the ability to 'recharge' a car in a shorter time than an EV can. Apart from that, it's a right pain. Most importantly, electrolysed H2 from has much less than half the efficiency of a BEV in terms of electricity used per km. From my understanding, the current efficiency is actually about 1/3. It's not just the losses in electrolysis and the fuel cell, but in compressing and cooling the H2.

Assuming no subsidies, what market is happy to at least double their cars' fuel costs in order to justify filling up/recharging in just a few minutes? I can't see one. That's before we go into the lack of a H2 production or distribution infrastructure and the complexity and cost of that infrastructure.

I can't find the links now, but ironically the H2 charging stations in California were rate limited because they needed batteries on site to deliver enough power to drive the compressors to squeeze the H2 into cars. If the batteries got depleted, drivers had to wait to fill up.

[dyqik]

I wish my laptop battery was that good.

143 cycles, and it's at 25% of design capacity.

Low weight is a main selling point for laptops. Also their batteries are small relative to power available from an ordinary charger.
So keeping to 25% - 75% may be desirable for longevity but not for sales.

What is the quality of the charging control circuitry and software inside different laptops? Particularly the protection against overcharging and too-low discharge?

I suspect that thermal control is also a major factor with laptops. This is a top end Microsoft Surface Pro, so should be fairly good software and design wise. But it's the model before they introduced battery life protection software.

[bjn]

I wish my laptop battery was that good.

143 cycles, and it's at 25% of design capacity.

Low weight is a main selling point for laptops. Also their batteries are small relative to power available from an ordinary charger.
So keeping to 25% - 75% may be desirable for longevity but not for sales.

What is the quality of the charging control circuitry and software inside different laptops? Particularly the protection against overcharging and too-low discharge?

I suspect that thermal control is also a major factor with laptops. This is a top end Microsoft Surface Pro, so should be fairly good software and design wise. But it's the model before they introduced battery life protection software.

They will also be cycling the thing very deeply.

[discovolante]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I got caught up in other stuff today so just wanted to acknowledge for now

[bjn]

Interesting top down simple hypothetical model for 2030, showing the impact of BEV efficiency for primary energy demand in the USA. It assumes all cars and light trucks were electrified, dumps coal completely, increase wind and solar at less than projected rates and makes up any short fall with gas. Primary energy demand drops by 13%, but overall efficiency of the system grows from 33% to 42%, with actual usable energy growing by about 9% in line with projections.

Whether it happens or not doesn’t matter, but it gives an idea as to how efficiency of generation and use can change things. Note that you don’t get that kind of efficiency with an equivalent H2 fleet.

Life need not be a hair shirt future.

[Grumble]

Interesting top down simple hypothetical model for 2030, showing the impact of BEV efficiency for primary energy demand in the USA. It assumes all cars and light trucks were electrified, dumps coal completely, increase wind and solar at less than projected rates and makes up any short fall with gas. Primary energy demand drops by 13%, but overall efficiency of the system grows from 33% to 42%, with actual usable energy growing by about 9% in line with projections.

Whether it happens or not doesn’t matter, but it gives an idea as to how efficiency of generation and use can change things. Note that you don’t get that kind of efficiency with an equivalent H2 fleet.

Life need not be a hair shirt future.

Really interesting, but ffs “quadrillion BTUs” abbreviated to “quads”. I guess the units of consumption are irrelevant really but I have no idea what a quadrillion BTUs looks like.

[bjn]

Interesting top down simple hypothetical model for 2030, showing the impact of BEV efficiency for primary energy demand in the USA. It assumes all cars and light trucks were electrified, dumps coal completely, increase wind and solar at less than projected rates and makes up any short fall with gas. Primary energy demand drops by 13%, but overall efficiency of the system grows from 33% to 42%, with actual usable energy growing by about 9% in line with projections.

Whether it happens or not doesn’t matter, but it gives an idea as to how efficiency of generation and use can change things. Note that you don’t get that kind of efficiency with an equivalent H2 fleet.

Life need not be a hair shirt future.

Really interesting, but ffs “quadrillion BTUs” abbreviated to “quads”. I guess the units of consumption are irrelevant really but I have no idea what a quadrillion BTUs looks like.

Yeah, bulk energy units out of the US are horrid. My (un) favourite is the MToe, mega tonne of oil equivalent.

[bolo]

A quad is about the same as an exajoule. Do you have a good mental picture of what an exajoule looks like?

[Grumble]

A quad is about the same as an exajoule. Do you have a good mental picture of what an exajoule looks like?

I’ve got a better idea of a joule than a BTU. Which is ironic, as I’m British.

[bmforre]

A quad is about the same as an exajoule. Do you have a good mental picture of what an exajoule looks like?

I’ve got a better idea of a joule than a BTU. Which is ironic, as I’m British.

Not too ironic; I believe the famous Joule was British too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pre ... itting.jpg

He was "an English physicist, mathematician and brewer". Why do we hear so little about his brewing?

[Bird on a Fire]

A quad is about the same as an exajoule. Do you have a good mental picture of what an exajoule looks like?

I’ve got a better idea of a joule than a BTU. Which is ironic, as I’m British.

Not too ironic; I believe the famous Joule was British too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Pre ... itting.jpg

He was "an English physicist, mathematician and brewer". Why do we hear so little about his brewing?

I was intrigued by the brewing.

There is a modern Joules Brewery that sorta-kinda continues the legacy, and gives an account of the story here https://www.joulesbrewery.co.uk/our-story

There are also some pictures of beer logos and buildings here http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.ph ... 6_Sons_Ltd

[nekomatic]

There is a The J P Joule pub in Sale, south Manchester.

Unfortunately it’s a Wetherspoons.

[Millennie Al]

no practical degradation if the charge is kept between 25% and 75% after 10,000 cycles.

That's all very well, but it means halving your range, so a theoretical 250 mile range becomes 125 miles.

[Grumble]

no practical degradation if the charge is kept between 25% and 75% after 10,000 cycles.

That's all very well, but it means halving your range, so a theoretical 250 mile range becomes 125 miles.

That post was about laptops without thermal battery management. Cars cope better with deep cycling, especially because they can keep the battery at a stable temperature.

[nekomatic]

Also, you weren’t going to regularly run your EV battery right down to 0% anyway, and presumably the occasional dip below 25% in an unexpected situation doesn’t suddenly wreck it. So it’s the reduction from 100% to 75% full that would have more impact on the practical range.

But “100%” is a flexible concept in Li-ion battery charging anyway. By choosing a higher or lower voltage to stop charging, within limits, you can fit more or less charge into the cell, with the trade-off of shorter or longer lifetime.

My work laptop lets me choose to only charge up to 80% in order to extend the battery lifetime, but annoyingly it doesn’t apply artificial intelligence to my Outlook contents to deduce when I’m going somewhere tomorrow and charge to 100% tonight. Not relevant at the moment, obvs.

[bjn]

no practical degradation if the charge is kept between 25% and 75% after 10,000 cycles.

That's all very well, but it means halving your range, so a theoretical 250 mile range becomes 125 miles.

There is a reason I have you on ignore. Every time I make the mistake of looking at one of your posts it’s full of derp. In this particular case, if you look at the text in the image I posted,

“Lithium-ion batteries do better under conditions where they are not charged and discharged 100% every cycle - like an EV.”

It fits in with typical usage patterns of an EV, you have the range if you need it, but most of the time you don’t drive from 100% down to 0%. And even if you did, we now have chemistries that show only 10% degradation after 10,000 cycles. Which is 20 years if daily cycling. Still not a problem.

ETA or what Nekomatic said.

[jimbob]

Apologies for interrupting all your deeply technical stuff with a really basic couple of questions. What could I expect in terms of improvement in a) range and b) recharging speed in BEVs over say, 5 years and 10 years, and also overall battery life/ability of the battery to maintain its range as it er, gets older? The answer to that part of the question seems to be that it's far less of an issue already but I'm asking anyway. I also realise recharging speed is likely to be dependent on aspects of charging infrastructure but I just want to try and get a better understanding of this overall. Is it right to be as optimistic as the BEV proponents say?

The recharging speed issue is one reason why I am unsure whether batteries will be the final winners. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the most likely but there is still research into fuel cells, and hydrogen, or other fuels (maybe even ammonia, but that's quite nasty) might still win for that reason.

If you can recharge at a low power while your car is parked where it normally would be, ie, home, work and shops, the need to charge rapidly only becomes an issue for long trips, but you are probably taking a pee/coffee/snack break at a services anyway. What about the people who can't charge at home, work, shops? There are low powered chargers in the lampposts on my street, one is literally outside my front gate, and more are springing up all the time.

Hydrogen has one single advantage, that is the ability to 'recharge' a car in a shorter time than an EV can. Apart from that, it's a right pain. Most importantly, electrolysed H2 from has much less than half the efficiency of a BEV in terms of electricity used per km. From my understanding, the current efficiency is actually about 1/3. It's not just the losses in electrolysis and the fuel cell, but in compressing and cooling the H2.

Assuming no subsidies, what market is happy to at least double their cars' fuel costs in order to justify filling up/recharging in just a few minutes? I can't see one. That's before we go into the lack of a H2 production or distribution infrastructure and the complexity and cost of that infrastructure.

I can't find the links now, but ironically the H2 charging stations in California were rate limited because they needed batteries on site to deliver enough power to drive the compressors to squeeze the H2 into cars. If the batteries got depleted, drivers had to wait to fill up.

Oh, I do think that batteries are likely to be the way to go and the momentum is with them. And the lifetime of the battery is unlikely to be an issue.

The bit in red, though, I guess it would have been significantly less of an issue than if it had been a fully electrical charging station.

[bjn]

I can't find the links now, but ironically the H2 charging stations in California were rate limited because they needed batteries on site to deliver enough power to drive the compressors to squeeze the H2 into cars. If the batteries got depleted, drivers had to wait to fill up.

Oh, I do think that batteries are likely to be the way to go and the momentum is with them. And the lifetime of the battery is unlikely to be an issue.

The bit in red, though, I guess it would have been significantly less of an issue than if it had been a fully electrical charging station.

They could have sorted it with better interconnects, which you'd need for a high speed BEV charging station, but I still found the irony funny.

[dyqik]

Also, you weren’t going to regularly run your EV battery right down to 0% anyway, and presumably the occasional dip below 25% in an unexpected situation doesn’t suddenly wreck it. So it’s the reduction from 100% to 75% full that would have more impact on the practical range.

I think this is related to how Tesla sell their different range models: back in Hurricane <x> in Florida, they announced that owners of the shorter range model would get an OTA update to temporarily allow more range while evacuating.

So presumably the software limits the discharge to ensure a long battery life/fewer warranty replacements on the cheaper models, while the more expensive models have the cost of a replacement or two built in to the prices.

[Bird on a Fire]

To be honest I'm half expecting batteries to be a subscription service, like they're doing with ink cartridges and stuff. More money = more range. Miss a monthly payment and you can't drive. Seems to be the direction capitalism is going: sell you something then make you rent it too.

[Grumble]

EV reviews commonly talk about usable battery. Figures plucked out of air but you may see a vehicle with a 45kWh usable battery, 50kWh total battery. They never let them get to actual 0%. Tesla go lower in % than most hence one reason they get such good range.

[Grumble]

To be honest I'm half expecting batteries to be a subscription service, like they're doing with ink cartridges and stuff. More money = more range. Miss a monthly payment and you can't drive. Seems to be the direction capitalism is going: sell you something then make you rent it too.

Some started like that. The original Leaf you had a separate contract for the battery I think, but all that has stopped now it’s become apparent how well the batteries last.

[shpalman]

To be honest I'm half expecting batteries to be a subscription service, like they're doing with ink cartridges and stuff. More money = more range. Miss a monthly payment and you can't drive. Seems to be the direction capitalism is going: sell you something then make you rent it too.

But you already have to pay for the kWh going into the charging of it, some way or another.

Ink cartridges are an example of a razor and blades business model, not really a subscription model.