Driving Too Slow (2023 Update)

A guy in the EU sells a light, metal arm that parks against the wall and swings out to support the cord. I don't know if it's long enough to reach across the side walk. There's also the cord length issue, but I suppose the EVSE cable can be used with an extension.

Cables are designed to dissipate the heat from the current carried. If you encase it in the plastic sleeve it might overheat. A friend designed furniture for offices and had to respect all sorts of regulations about that sort of thing.

Perhaps I misunderstood John Larkin's comment here. I took his "free" to mean "zero cost" - some people /do/ get zero-cost car charging at their place of work, and then it is quite relevant that it is paid for by your employer. It is also relevant that most people do not have access to zero-cost charging - precisely because /someone/ has to pay for it, and it's not cheap.

But maybe he wrote "free" meaning "not occupied".

That the gas price to produce electricity in the UK has increased massively +300% in the past 6 months and energy "suppliers" are going bust left right and centre. They are tight lipped about the exact reasons why they do not have electrical supply to their boondoggle but it was due to come into service last June and has just failed to open yet again!

I am not. EU development funds and a greenish council not very bright about high technology is a recipe for this sort of thing to happen.

Note that they were claiming at the outset to sell electricity by the kWh at 20p (fast) and 25p (superfast) when it was announced. It is no longer clear if there will be anyone willing to sell to them at that price or right now enough electricity for it to function at all.

They already have done. That or their preferred cheapest possible electricity supplier has already gone to the wall. Suppliers going bust has thrown many UK households thrown into a pool where some other larger supplier takes over supply gives them a much less favourable variable tariff that more nearly reflects current price to supply. (even then they are all losing money hand over fist right now)

Almost no electricity supply companies can make any money on domestic sale of electricity. The cost to make electricity (apart from hydro) is higher than the capped retail sale price to consumers. It is a mad house!

The only suppliers operating on a sound financial basis in the UK at present have either nuclear or hydro as well as gas generating capacity in their portfolio and are cross subsidising the loss making retail arm from that. Industry is screaming blue murder they pay full price.

Those that merely buy and sell gas/electricity are failing spectacularly and it isn't over yet. A few more go down with each week that passes. They won't get a chance to up their capped prices until April now.

Actually it is critical to arranging electrical power. You have to buy it from someone who is still in business when the hardware is complete. There have been so many failures in the UK supply industry that it has become chaotic - especially if you want the lowest possible price.

It is the lowest cost box shifters that have failed first.

So why has it taken the so long? The physical kit was all installed for the opening last June but then it was cancelled with a few days notice and rescheduled for this month. Then it was cancelled with a few days notice. Rinse and repeat. Some exemplar of how to do a superhub!

This is quickly becoming a worldwide disaster, after decades of playing with subsidized windmills, rooftops and other nonsense instead of building enough nuclear what else could we expect. In Bulgaria, they are "building" a second nuclear plant for over 30 years now, must have spent zillions on "consulting" to practically zero results, other than ongoing wrestling who is to build it. Consequently an energy crisis.

You furriners don't understand perfectly good American. It should be a required college course in your distant lands.

I can usually understand most of what 'merkins write, though I cannot understand why you want to wear your pants on the outside, or use such half-hearted swear words. (Except Samuel Jackson - he's got the hang of it!)

I never understood why "bloody" is a swear word in some remote islands.

I think you don't understand Larkin's post. It was intended to denigrate EV owners as if they all expect "free" charging as in "free beer". So he did mean exactly "free" to the EV owner and costs to anyone else being irrelevant in this context.

Actually, I find free charging everywhere I go. First there are the free chargers provided by many businesses and cities/counties. These are typically level 2 chargers which cost very little to operate. They are often as free as free parking because the cost is about the same. Free beer is harder to find. In my case my charging is provided for free by Tesla as it came with the car. You can protest that it was paid for in the price of the car, blah, blah, blah, but in reality it wasn't. They had discontinued free charging with the cars, but had a promotion where you go free charging if you were referred by someone. The price of the car did not change when they started the promotion or when it ended. So clearly there was nothing added to the price for the "free" charging.

I expect you would be in the Olympics if they had a "jumping to conclusions" event. Probably win gold.

So you think nuclear is the solution to the energy problem other than the fact that it is prohibitively expensive to build it?

In the UK the present nuclear generation plant being built is not going to return the profit the money bags expected. So in the future the UK government is going to allow them to pass all risk to the rate payers and they can plan and build nuclear projects as inefficiently as they wish!

Yes, what a grand idea!

It has been made too expensive, this is true. Not because it is inherently expensive though. Because it is regulated (which it should be for obvious reasons) it has become a convenient cow to milk by plenty of people who contribute nothing to society but milking that cow. My estimate is that about 80% of the cost goes there. IOW the problem with nuclear is only social.

There is *no* other way we know to generate the energy we need. All the windmill nonsense has led us into the current energy crisis. They are not even as good as fusion energy which at least is

10 years away - has been that since the 50-s. The only result of the windmill & rooftop nonsense spent on for decades now instead of on the stable and proven nuclear technology is the energy crisis we are only just entering.

Firstly, fluids like ammonia have triple points well below 0 F (below -50, even) so heatpumps for that range are well-known. Second, you ask for brand names? Why ask an Australia resident, if your zip code is 60601?

Bill was right. Heat pumps CAN work. Your local market for installers is a different matter entirely.

You sound like a Trmper claiming the election was stolen with absolutely no evidence or even identification of those milking the cow. No, the costs of nuclear has nothing to do with milk or even ice cream.

Ah, there it is. No, the election was not stolen nor is wind or solar power without utility. (pun not intended)...

I can only hang my head in sorrow that so many ignore the reality of renewable power which is happening and gaining momentum. I find it amusing that you talk about it "spent on for decades now" as if it is a massive failure while instead the prices continue to drop as the scale increases. We do need better energy storage, but in the mean time fossil fuels can serve a backup role with ever diminishing contribution to our carbon pollution.

In fact, it is ironic that you talk about nuclear as a solution when it has the exact same problem as renewable, it is not dispatchable. While everyone screams about how massive storage is needed to accommodate the variation in output of renewables, they ignore the mismatch between supply and demand of nuclear. Nuclear can be throttled slowly, but the changes in demand during the course of a day are too large for nuclear to be much of a bigger part of the US energy supply than it is now. Also, the economics, as they are, for nuclear are always based on the assumption they will be run continuously other than when refueling. The enormous capital expenditure requires this or the return on investment becomes unsuitable or the price has to rise.

So you want to replace non-dispatchable power with non-dispatchable power. Not a good argument.

Renewables may ramp down uncontrollably, but the peak power they deliver is entirely controllable. Solar cells can be manipulated to deliver the peak current desired at a higher voltage than the value that optimises power extraction, and windmills have variable pitch sails.

And I did make the point that the cost only looks astronomical because the peaking plants only get paid for when they are in use - they exist the whole year round, and have to get paid enough when they are working to cover a whole year's interest on capital, staff salaries and maintenance.

Peaking plants are a sensible investment. <snip>

If you vastly over-provision the installed capacity, that will reduce the probability of outages. But see the /excellent/

for a discussion of the UK alternative. In particular he insists the numbers add up ("numbers not adjectives"), and gives several alternative mixes for the UK in the future.

(Excellent => lauded by _everybody_ from Big Energy to Greens to politicians)

Yup.

IMHO those costs should be included in the cost of the renewable energy. They shouldn't be conveniently ignored by the renewable energy salesmen and lobbyists.

Yup.

Grid scale storage will be too - when the technology is not only available (in the location) but also proven. People will make /lots/ of money from it.

Who on earth are they selling to and lobbying?

In Australia the debate is between he people who make a lot of money out of digging up coal and want the government to keep them in business, and the energy utilities who want to keep on putting solar farms and windmills because that lets them produce energy more cheaply than burning coal. The energy utilities have got a whole lot of legacy power stations, and quite bit of dispatchable hydro power and a grid that covers the eastern half of the continent, so they haven't been under pressure to add new peaking plants, but they are starting to buy grid scale batteries.

The Tesla grid scale battery in South Australia made a lot of money - unexpectedly - by taking over the short term phase and voltage regulation of the South Australian segment of the east coast grid. About 70% of it's capacity seems to be devoted to that and makes ten times as much money as the. other 30% which buys up excess capacity when it is cheap and sells it back when the market will pay more.

More seems to have been bought recently, and even more is being bought by utility generators in other eastern states.

The technology does look to have been proven. Vanadium flow batteries would probably be even better, but they aren't yet being produce in volume, though

lists nine grid-scale examples. They clearly work, but people do still seem to be thinking about tweaking the technology to make them work better, and the people who sell them do seem to feel the need to set up demonstration systems.

Oh what's that? Heat pumps don't universally work everywhere and have constraints that makes them effectively useless for heating outside of a hot ass prison colony?

Politicians and companies that give them money when they buy their plant.

Organisations like Greenpeace (and to a lesser extent Friends of the Earth) target people that give them donations.

I'm not a fan of Greenpeace; they use disreputable tactics to push their points.

Yes, but I regard that as a technically interesting niche market.

The massive grid-scale storage domain interests me more in the context of using renewable to ditch fossil fuels.

Let's hope something is /proven/ before too long.