My wife has had the range total up to 840 (but she drives a bit slower
They are pretty much the norm now - although there is a cohort of urban assault vehicles and luxury cars too. Even so they don't affect the UK average mpg figures by all that much with Urban 28mpg, extra-Urban 47mpg and combined 37mpg being the average according to:
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Which also gives a list of the most frugal cars available in the UK and mine doesn't even make it onto the list Honda Insight (petrol hybrid) leads the field by over 10mpg over all others at 83mpg combined.
The advantage of the 800 mile tank range is that fuel prices vary significantly in the UK depending on how easy or difficult it is to deliver fuel to the stations. Generally it is quite a lot cheaper in depressed industrial areas near to oil refineries and expensive in the hills. I fill up when there is a cheap fuel deal and run the tank down elsewhere.
The nearest charger is "only" 50 miles away and not in a direction that I would normally travel. None are on my usual routes. I have checked.
In cities like London I am sure they would make sense. Out here in the sticks I am not convinced the local mains cables could support more than a couple of us adopting electric cars. Pumping stations and the like absorb a lot of the off peak electricity round here.
UK peak usage is winter 5-10pm coming close to bringing the system down due to successive governments prevarication over nuclear new build. Spring and summer electricity usage is so light that sometimes they have entirely coal free days if it is warm sunny and windy at the same time.
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When there are enough of them and smart metered supplies then it might be possible to vary the load to keep power stations at optimal settings.
However that point is a long way away and the so called smart meters they are installing in the UK at present represent a major security threat to infrastructure since they are too easily hacked and could be used by a state level player or talented hacker to thrash bulk load on and off the grid to order.
But none of that really matters in this context. Anything much over 300 mi les for range is not so important in an electric car because you are limite d in how far you go without stopping by the seat vs. ass factor. It is act ually not healthy to sit for long periods and I like to stop every so often . If I take a 30 to 45 minute break every 4 hours, that suits me just fine . So while you may use a long range gas/diesel tank for various things rel ated to minimizing the hassle of using that vehicle, it is not important in an electric car.
Again, only an advantage in a petroleum powered vehicle. Electricity is ch eaper than gas everywhere it seems.
Again, so what??? You don't need it when you charge at home and if it isn' t in the direction you go on trips you won't use it. So why bring it up???
The trips I mostly will be taking in my Model X I won't come closer than 30 miles to a charger. I'll charge at home just fine and likely never need a fill anywhere else.
I have no idea what people feel the need to make up problems for electric c ars. The key part of what you say above is, "I am not convinced". That is a far cry from fact.
Ok, cars could then charge after 10 PM, likely best controlled by the utili ty company. They have programs like that here which cycle thermostats in h omes to even out the loads. Many years ago when I was a kid, we had a sepa rate meter for the water heater which cut it off in the evening peak for a reduced rate. It's not rocket science...
Sounds like the UK is nearly a third world country in term of the electrica l grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TVs an d curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to tell y ou. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, being an i sland. The wind blows the air pollution away. But you still have petroleu m which causes all manner of issues not the least of which is poisoning wel ls and rivers. Getting rid of petroleum powered cars will take some time, but I think it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuclear power. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many re asons. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it could provide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use fo r weapons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possi ble because some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airplanes. The research was done and then ignored.
cal grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess t he UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, being an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
Nowhere near fast enough.
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It was even worse when you were allowed burn coal in house-hold fireplace i n the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 people.
east of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
It's still creating problems in the bigger cities in the UK.
is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuclear power . Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I beli eve it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it could provi de plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weapons. Th e US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible because so me dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airplanes. T he research was done and then ignored.
The US Air Force studies on a nuclear-powered bomber weren't dimwitted.
The argument for looking at the possibility was the same one that lead to n uclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
The Air Force spent enough on paper studies to be fairly sure that the adva ntages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly isn't an y kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space travel project - Project Orion.
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Thermal nuclear rockets got further, though they never made it to free flig ht
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The Nerva nuclear rocket engine run for about two hours on a static test be d, 28 minutes of that at full power.
rical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TV s and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to te ll you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, being an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 people.
least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuclear pow er. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I be lieve it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it could pro vide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weapons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible because some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airplanes. The research was done and then ignored.
nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
vantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly isn't any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space trave l project - Project Orion.
Really? You need a major study to realize flying a nuclear reactor (much l ess in a war plane) is not a good idea???
The study was indeed useful. But the goal it was aimed at was not worth co nsidering. Meanwhile, 60 some years later we have not done anything with t he results. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will be buying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much cheaper to operate.
On Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 2:01:52 PM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com w rote:
e:
ctrical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I gue ss the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, bein g an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
ce in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 peopl e.
he least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
k it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuclear p ower. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it could p rovide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weapons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible becaus e some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airplanes . The research was done and then ignored.
to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
advantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly isn' t any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space tra vel project - Project Orion.
less in a war plane) is not a good idea???
Putting bombers loaded with high explosive into the air is an equally bad i dea.
considering.
Why not? It predated practical in-flight refuelling, which isn't all that e asy, even now.
. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will be bu ying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much cheaper t o operate.
Only if somebody has set up a long-term (roughly 100,000 years) nuclear was te dump in the meantime. We had half a century to set one up, and nobody ha s managed to get around the "not in my back yard" problem yet.
Solar power is lot cheaper, and can be expected to cost a quarter of what i t does now when it finally takes over supply most of our energy (1% to 100% is two factors of ten scaling up in production volume, and each factor of ten can be expected to halve the unit cost - as it has for the two previous ten-fold scale-ups).
Solar does need batteries and pumped storage to make it dispatchable, but that's do-able.
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published in 2008, proposed that the batteries in electric cars (which spen d most of the time parked) could serve the purpose when there got to be eno ugh of them.
lectrical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe th e TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what t o tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I g uess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, be ing an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
lace in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 peo ple.
the least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
ink it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuclear power. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it could provide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weapon s. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible beca use some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airplan es. The research was done and then ignored.
d.
d to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
e advantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly is n't any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space t ravel project - Project Orion.
ch less in a war plane) is not a good idea???
idea.
Huh??? We've been flying high explosives nearly as long as we've had airpl anes. They don't weigh so much and don't cause many problems. A reactor i s very hard to make safe and light. We had a choice of the crew getting a lethal dose of radiation or the plane flying when you get down to it. It d idn't take too many PhDs to see that one coming.
h considering.
easy, even now.
Uh, because it was a problem that obviously could not be solved.
ts. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will be buying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much cheaper to operate.
aste dump in the meantime. We had half a century to set one up, and nobody has managed to get around the "not in my back yard" problem yet.
Yes, all nuclear power has disposal issues, but thorium produces much less of it.
it does now when it finally takes over supply most of our energy (1% to 10
0% is two factors of ten scaling up in production volume, and each factor o f ten can be expected to halve the unit cost - as it has for the two previo us ten-fold scale-ups).
No, solar is not "a lot cheaper", it is about on parity currently unless yo u are in a location that has much more than average sunshine. I am central , east coast US and a large solar farm is going in near here, about 30 mile s from the nuclear reactor. Uranium powered nuclear is becoming too expens ive to build. They estimate $19 billion for a new reactor like the ones th ey are currently using. Then there is the cost of frequent refueling.
Thorium would be much cheaper than running Uranium reactors. While running the reactors are safer. There will be much less waste to dispose of. The waste is much harder to weaponize, even for a dirty bomb. What's not to l ike?
t that's do-able.
end most of the time parked) could serve the purpose when there got to be e nough of them.
There are two problems with this idea. The first is that the car batteries would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the sto re/use cycle can be done. The other is the fact that with self-driving car s (which will become the norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a poi ntless exercise and Johnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference. The n they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usage a nd/or generation.
What the paper probably didn't point out is that with most charging taking place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed over the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
There are so many ways to optimize transportation that we don't take very s eriously. I was in Manhattan a few years ago and I had no idea just how ma ny people got to town on buses! There is a lane that is exclusively buses and it must carry 10's of thousands of people per hour (my estimate is 18,0
00 = 50 per bus, 10 sec intervals - wikipedia says 62,000 in 4 hours or a bout 15,500/hr). I was very impressed with that. When we try, we can do i ntelligent things.
electrical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, being an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
eplace in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 p eople.
ot the least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
think it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nucle ar power. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it cou ld provide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weap ons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible be cause some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airpl anes. The research was done and then ignored.
ted.
ead to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
the advantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly isn't any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space travel project - Project Orion.
much less in a war plane) is not a good idea???
ad idea.
planes. They don't weigh so much and don't cause many problems. A reactor is very hard to make safe and light. We had a choice of the crew getting a lethal dose of radiation or the plane flying when you get down to it. It didn't take too many PhDs to see that one coming.
Nuclear reactors can be pretty light - the minimum critical mass of plutoni um is about 5 kilograms, and 15 kilograms for U-235.
Making them safe is does involve adding more mass, and putting the crew qui te a long way away from the reactor.
The paper studies did suggest that the crew could be kept far enough away f rom the reactor to keep their radiation dose well below lethal levels.
rth considering.
at easy, even now.
The problem was - in fact - soluble, but the solution wasn't attractive or practical, though it does seem to have been practicable.
ults. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will b e buying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much cheap er to operate.
waste dump in the meantime. We had half a century to set one up, and nobod y has managed to get around the "not in my back yard" problem yet.
s of it.
But still quite enough to need careful storage for some 200,000 years. We s till haven't got any repositories for uranium reactor waste, so producing l ess of something that we still can't store safely isn't all that much of an advantage.
at it does now when it finally takes over supply most of our energy (1% to
100% is two factors of ten scaling up in production volume, and each factor of ten can be expected to halve the unit cost - as it has for the two prev ious ten-fold scale-ups).
you are in a location that has much more than average sunshine.
Solar power is currently at parity with electricity generated by burning fo ssil carbon. Nuclear power isn't.
, about 30 miles from the nuclear reactor. Uranium powered nuclear is beco ming too expensive to build. They estimate $19 billion for a new reactor l ike the ones they are currently using. Then there is the cost of frequent refueling.
ng the reactors are safer. There will be much less waste to dispose of. T he waste is much harder to weaponize, even for a dirty bomb. What's not to like?
The cost of safely disposing of nuclear waste isn't yet figured into the co st of nuclear power, and the fact that the thorium cycle only produces 20% of the waste that a uranium reactor would doesn't mean that waste dsiposalb e isn't going to be fatally expensive.
but that's do-able.
spend most of the time parked) could serve the purpose when there got to be enough of them.
es would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the s tore/use cycle can be done.
Nobody uses their car 24 hours a day. The implication is that all regular p arking lots will need to wired into the grid, but charging while parked is one of the advantages of electric vehicles.
norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a pointless exercise and John ny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference. Then they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usage and/or generation.
The morning and evening rush hours are busy, but the peak for solar generat ion is in the middle of the day, which isn't peak commuting.
g place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed ove r the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
If everybody is at work in the middle the day, the cars will be parked then , and can be re-charged then.
seriously. I was in Manhattan a few years ago and I had no idea just how many people got to town on buses! There is a lane that is exclusively buse s and it must carry 10's of thousands of people per hour (my estimate is 18 ,000 = 50 per bus, 10 sec intervals - wikipedia says 62,000 in 4 hours or about 15,500/hr). I was very impressed with that. When we try, we can do intelligent things.
Not very often. And car manufacturers have a habit of using their political clout to limit investment in public transport. And the fossil carbon extra ction industry is much happier with lots of people each having their own ca r and burning lots more fuel than they'd use if they took a bus or - even w orse - light rail.
electrical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Maybe the TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know what to tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US, being an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
eplace in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 p eople.
ot the least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
think it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nucle ar power. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reasons. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it cou ld provide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for weap ons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible be cause some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered airpl anes. The research was done and then ignored.
ted.
ead to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
the advantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainly isn't any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered space travel project - Project Orion.
much less in a war plane) is not a good idea???
ad idea.
planes. They don't weigh so much and don't cause many problems. A reactor is very hard to make safe and light. We had a choice of the crew getting a lethal dose of radiation or the plane flying when you get down to it. It didn't take too many PhDs to see that one coming.
rth considering.
at easy, even now.
ults. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will b e buying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much cheap er to operate.
waste dump in the meantime. We had half a century to set one up, and nobod y has managed to get around the "not in my back yard" problem yet.
s of it.
at it does now when it finally takes over supply most of our energy (1% to
100% is two factors of ten scaling up in production volume, and each factor of ten can be expected to halve the unit cost - as it has for the two prev ious ten-fold scale-ups).
you are in a location that has much more than average sunshine. I am centr al, east coast US and a large solar farm is going in near here, about 30 mi les from the nuclear reactor. Uranium powered nuclear is becoming too expe nsive to build. They estimate $19 billion for a new reactor like the ones they are currently using. Then there is the cost of frequent refueling.
ng the reactors are safer. There will be much less waste to dispose of. T he waste is much harder to weaponize, even for a dirty bomb. What's not to like?
because it can't be easily weaponized the military budgets isn't going to provide an unlimited budget to develop it. Who will be crazy enough to spend an insane amount of money on top of the already gigantic price of a n uclear power plant
Oh, not a flying reactor; a flying shock absorber, with a supply of propellant in the form of disposable one-shot pressure wave generators. Nuclear, fast-acting pressure wave generators, flung into position as needed.
Check out _Curve of Binding Energy_, by John McPhee, if you want more info.
he electrical grid. Maybe the UK shouldn't try to use electric cars. Mayb e the TVs and curling irons should be turned off as well.. I don't know wh at to tell you. Electric cars are advancing and making great strides now. I guess the UK might not have the same pollution problem we have in the US , being an island. The wind blows the air pollution away.
ireplace in the bigger cities. The Great Smog of 1952 in London killed 4000 people.
not the least of which is poisoning wells and rivers.
I think it is inevitable. I also think we need to research thorium for nuc lear power. Uranium is actually a very poor choice of fuel for many reason s. I believe it really is true that it was picked in the 50's because it c ould provide plutonium for weapons while thorium is very hard to use for we apons. The US did research on thorium reactors showing they were possible because some dimwit in the Air Force wanted to consider nuclear powered air planes. The research was done and then ignored.
itted.
lead to nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
t the advantages didn't outweigh the problems. Freeman Dyson - who certainl y isn't any kind of dimwit - worked on the even crazier nuclear-powered spa ce travel project - Project Orion.
(much less in a war plane) is not a good idea???
bad idea.
irplanes. They don't weigh so much and don't cause many problems. A react or is very hard to make safe and light. We had a choice of the crew gettin g a lethal dose of radiation or the plane flying when you get down to it. It didn't take too many PhDs to see that one coming.
nium is about 5 kilograms, and 15 kilograms for U-235.
uite a long way away from the reactor.
from the reactor to keep their radiation dose well below lethal levels.
Yes, that is certainly the criteria for safety I look for, it shouldn't jus t flat out kill you. Anything else like cancer, sloughing off skin, etc. i s not so important.
You talk about the mass of the reactant and ignore the rest of the steam en gine required. Standard heat engines are not so light for the energy neede d. Add the shielding and you have a pretty heavy bomber before you even ad d bombs.
I guess you just need to make it big enough... but no stealth version when it's larger than the spruce goose.
worth considering.
that easy, even now.
r practical, though it does seem to have been practicable.
That then makes it insoluble. Not being practical means there was no solut ion. This isn't a math problem. Practicality is everything!
esults. The Chinese seem interested. I expect in 15 or 20 years will will be buying our nuclear reactors from China because they will be so much che aper to operate.
ar waste dump in the meantime. We had half a century to set one up, and nob ody has managed to get around the "not in my back yard" problem yet.
ess of it.
still haven't got any repositories for uranium reactor waste, so producing less of something that we still can't store safely isn't all that much of an advantage.
You make no sense. When the alternative is making more, then making less * is* a big advantage. Nuclear is here to stay. We are finally building mor e of them too. Thorium is a better way to go than uranium and we have a *l ot* more of it too. While rare earth elements are not rare at all, uranium is relatively rare.
what it does now when it finally takes over supply most of our energy (1% t o 100% is two factors of ten scaling up in production volume, and each fact or of ten can be expected to halve the unit cost - as it has for the two pr evious ten-fold scale-ups).
s you are in a location that has much more than average sunshine.
fossil carbon. Nuclear power isn't.
It seems to be cheap enough. It is not orders of magnitude better. The co st of a solar watthour is not the cost of using solar in place of carbon or nuclear. You know that and are being disingenuous.
re, about 30 miles from the nuclear reactor. Uranium powered nuclear is be coming too expensive to build. They estimate $19 billion for a new reactor like the ones they are currently using. Then there is the cost of frequen t refueling.
ning the reactors are safer. There will be much less waste to dispose of. The waste is much harder to weaponize, even for a dirty bomb. What's not to like?
cost of nuclear power, and the fact that the thorium cycle only produces 20 % of the waste that a uranium reactor would doesn't mean that waste dsiposa lbe isn't going to be fatally expensive.
I like the way you argue points with hand waving. You present no relevant facts and wave your hands saying this can't be proved wrong!!!
, but that's do-able.
h spend most of the time parked) could serve the purpose when there got to be enough of them.
ries would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the store/use cycle can be done.
parking lots will need to wired into the grid, but charging while parked i s one of the advantages of electric vehicles.
You missed the point entirely. No one needs storage for a few hours. Stor age is needed for a time period on the order of half a day. There is a dai ly cycle of using energy with one or two peaks each day and a long minimum. If the car can't be counted on to be available through the minimum to cha rge up and at least one peak to provide the power, it won't do any good. E ven if it does get through the minimum and a peak, it then needs to charge again before being used for transport.
There are too many variables to make this work for anyone who uses the car regularly. This also ignores the wear on the batteries which are not so ch eap. I would never allow my car battery to be used for energy storage for the grid. It would be far too expensive for me.
he norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a pointless exercise and Jo hnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference. Then they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usage and/or generation.
ation is in the middle of the day, which isn't peak commuting.
So some cars can be charged during work hours, but then gets discharged par tly in evening rush and in morning rush. When does it get used with the gr id, evening peak? That means your batteries will be very depleted each day requiring a large charge each day rather than perhaps once a week. This w ill wear the battery out five or more times faster depending on the length of the commute.
I don't see this as workable unless the car owner is compensated. If that happens, why not just use batteries that are just for grid storage and not part of an expensive auto?
ing place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed o ver the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
en, and can be re-charged then.
That will require power at work for *everyone*... in other words some signi ficant investment. But that may be small change compared to the compensati on issue.
Maybe the compensation would be free electricity? You get to charge your c ar to the max each work day and use some fixed amount of it as your compens ation. The rest gets used for night use when no sun is shining. Still, I don't know if paying my electric bill is enough compensation for wearing ou t my battery in two years instead of 10.
ry seriously. I was in Manhattan a few years ago and I had no idea just ho w many people got to town on buses! There is a lane that is exclusively bu ses and it must carry 10's of thousands of people per hour (my estimate is
18,000 = 50 per bus, 10 sec intervals - wikipedia says 62,000 in 4 hours or about 15,500/hr). I was very impressed with that. When we try, we can do intelligent things.
al clout to limit investment in public transport. And the fossil carbon ext raction industry is much happier with lots of people each having their own car and burning lots more fuel than they'd use if they took a bus or - even worse - light rail.
Ultimately it isn't their choice. In the 50's we were ripe for the picking when it came to worshiping the auto. I think people see cars as transport ation more than status symbols now. Not everyone of course, but enough tha t we are buying smaller, gas efficient cars much more than back in the day. I know many people who would be happy with transportation being supplied by Johnny Cabs.
Don't have the answers to every question. That's why we need to do further research. Unlike the flying nuke plant, I don't think thorium power gener ation is an uncrackable nut. The Chinese are moving forward with it. They will be the new leaders in many fields and the US will be losing its domin ance.
s you are in a location that has much more than average sunshine. I am cen tral, east coast US and a large solar farm is going in near here, about 30 miles from the nuclear reactor. Uranium powered nuclear is becoming too ex pensive to build. They estimate $19 billion for a new reactor like the one s they are currently using. Then there is the cost of frequent refueling.
ning the reactors are safer. There will be much less waste to dispose of. The waste is much harder to weaponize, even for a dirty bomb. What's not to like?
nuclear power plant
Uh, a government? Insane? What number do you attach to the term, "insane" ?
Pity someone can't come up with a condenser for petrol/gas/diesel, then! ;-)
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Even Cursitor Doom should have been able to work out that the transitions b etween liquid water and steam in the boiler of a steam car the reversion ba ck from steam to water in the condenser were both reversible.
Petrol, gas and diesel all burn to water and carbon dioxide in the cylinder s of internal combustion engines (whence the name) and the process of getti ng those gases back together in a way that pulls out the oxygen and reconst ructs the original hydrocarbon takes a little more than simple air-cooling in a condenser.
It's possible that Cursitor Doom actually understood this and thought that he was making a joke, but one can't be sure ... He will, of course, claim that it was always intended to be a joke, but we don't have to believe that either.
es would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the s tore/use cycle can be done. The other is the fact that with self-driving c ars (which will become the norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a p ointless exercise and Johnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference. T hen they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usage and/or generation.
g place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed ove r the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power. ...
This is normally referred to as Vehicle to Grid or V2G.
The technique of using the batteries in electric cars is under serious deve lopment. As mentioned there are many hurdles to overcome. It would probably involve paying the car owner for the service to compensate for battery deg radation with the price changing with time of day and demand etc.
Although existing cars with fast charge capability could probably support V
2G without any hardware changes there aren't production cars that promote i t in the US.
ries would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the store/use cycle can be done. The other is the fact that with self-driving cars (which will become the norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a pointless exercise and Johnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference. Then they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usa ge and/or generation.
ing place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed o ver the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
velopment. As mentioned there are many hurdles to overcome. It would probab ly involve paying the car owner for the service to compensate for battery d egradation with the price changing with time of day and demand etc.
V2G without any hardware changes there aren't production cars that promote it in the US.
I will look at your link, thanks.
One other problem I see with V2G is consumer herd thinking. If a lot of us ers are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the national grid and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are getting ripped off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their cars from the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
To mitigate this either the users would need to be signed up to long term c ontracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the first place, o r the users won't own the cars in the first place! If the cars are owned b y a company and users only get to use them (not really the same as leasing where *YOU* are responsible for all maintenance and repairs) then the probl ems of longevity are on the company, not the user. This goes double for Jo hnny Cabs, but then the number of units drops significantly and the usage p attern changes so they are much less available to help the grid.
teries would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of t he store/use cycle can be done. The other is the fact that with self-drivi ng cars (which will become the norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will become a pointless exercise and Johnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preference . Then they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical u sage and/or generation.
aking place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distributed over the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
development. As mentioned there are many hurdles to overcome. It would prob ably involve paying the car owner for the service to compensate for battery degradation with the price changing with time of day and demand etc.
rt V2G without any hardware changes there aren't production cars that promo te it in the US.
users are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the national gri d and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are getting ripp ed off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their cars fr om the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
That's likely to be an expensive gesture.
The social media networks are starting to accept their responsibility to st op broadcasting fake news - though I won't accept that they are serious unt il Donald Trump loses access to Twitter.
contracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the first place, or the users won't own the cars in the first place!
The contract isn't ever likely to be so rigid that you can't make sure that your car is fully charged before you have to take off on a long trip.
The idea is that with millions of cars available to back up the grid, you c an let a significant portion off them skive off without losing enough capac ity to make a difference.
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points out that transportation absorbed 26.9% of the US energy budget in 20
09, which made it the biggest single sector.
Industrial use wasn't far behind at 21.78%. Residential use - at 11.26% - i s way behind. Commercial use, at 8.49% is even less.
Industrial use tends to be predictable and negotiable, so it isn't going to come from batteries and pumped storage overnight, though they may be used to smooth out generation peaks and and valleys during the day.
Since private cars are parked for 95% of the time their power handling capa city is twenty time bigger than their actual power consumption, which is im pressive.
atteries would need to be available on a 24/7 basis, otherwise only part of the store/use cycle can be done. The other is the fact that with self-dri ving cars (which will become the norm in 5 to 10 years) ownership will beco me a pointless exercise and Johnny Cabs will become the vehicle of preferen ce. Then they will mostly be in use during the majority of peak electrical usage and/or generation.
taking place over night, the power usage will become more evenly distribut ed over the course of a 24 hour cycle which is optimal for nuclear power.
s development. As mentioned there are many hurdles to overcome. It would pr obably involve paying the car owner for the service to compensate for batte ry degradation with the price changing with time of day and demand etc.
port V2G without any hardware changes there aren't production cars that pro mote it in the US.
f users are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the national g rid and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are getting ri pped off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their cars from the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
Not really. The battery in an electric car is very expensive. The car mak er only warranties it for 100k miles in the case of Tesla with expected uti lity of 300k miles. There's a lot of exposure for premature failure by let ting the power company drain your charge when they want. I can't think of a system of compensation that would give me assurance of not losing money o n the deal as well as having the vehicle ready to go when I want it.
You fail to understand that is already the big concern most people have wit h electric cars, the range and the added hassle of charging. I am willing to wait for charging when I am on a long trip. I don't want to be in the c ar for more than 4 hours anyway. But if I have a sudden need to drive 120 miles and there isn't the charge on the battery, it isn't a workable soluti on for me. I am certain many others will feel the same way.
This would be analogous to letting the electric company use the engine in y our car as a generator to run all night to help heat and light homes. Peop le will be very concerned about the longevity of the engine as well as the expense. But they won't be particularly worried about getting gas back in the tank because that only takes 10 minutes. In the electric car you also have that concern since it may take an extra half hour to several hours dep ending on the car you are driving.
stop broadcasting fake news - though I won't accept that they are serious u ntil Donald Trump loses access to Twitter.
rm contracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the first plac e, or the users won't own the cars in the first place!
at your car is fully charged before you have to take off on a long trip.
The first time someone is left without sufficient charge because they didn' t have a reservation, they will be ready to leave the program.
can let a significant portion off them skive off without losing enough cap acity to make a difference.
It still won't be enough to solve the solar generation vs demand problem.
2009, which made it the biggest single sector.
is way behind. Commercial use, at 8.49% is even less.
None of this is very relevant.
to come from batteries and pumped storage overnight, though they may be use d to smooth out generation peaks and and valleys during the day.
But with solar, it isn't the peaks as much as supply vs. demand. Demand go es through max and min, but production goes to zero half the day or more. I gave you some numbers to work with. Did you take a look at them? My hous e isn't even very large.
pacity is twenty time bigger than their actual power consumption, which is impressive.
Another meaningless number and a meaningless ratio.
The utility of car batteries isn't a matter of ratio. If they aren't avail able for most of the day they don't help solve the problem.
There is NOTHING better about car batteries than buying batteries for the p urpose. To say they are going wasted is like saying the gas in your tank i s just sitting there being wasted. Batteries may be recharged, but they al so have a useful lifespan and are consumed by use.
On Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 1:56:56 PM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wr ote:
:
of users are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the national grid and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are getting ripped off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their car s from the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
Perhaps it is now. As we get more electric cars on the road the usual econo mies of scale will make the batteries cheaper.
expected utility of 300k miles. There's a lot of exposure for premature f ailure by letting the power company drain your charge when they want.
The battery wouldn't be much use if the driver didn't drain it pretty frequ ently. Letting the power company drain roughly once a day will presumably d egrade it twice as fast as the driver would do by using the car every day, but the power company obviously has to pay the car owner for using the batt ery as grid back-up, so this isn't any kind of deal-breaker.
not losing money on the deal as well as having the vehicle ready to go whe n I want it.
You aren't in the business of devising compensation schemes. Somebody with skills in that area should be able to do better. And the power company woul dn't need to run the car battery flat for grid-back-up, and the extent to w hich it might run the battery down would be part of the compensation packag e - obviously if you let them take only a quarter of your charge you will g et half the compensation that you'd get if you let them take half - after a ll you'd only be offering half as much grid-back-up capacity.
ith electric cars, the range and the added hassle of charging. I am willin g to wait for charging when I am on a long trip. I don't want to be in the car for more than 4 hours anyway. But if I have a sudden need to drive 12
0 miles and there isn't the charge on the battery, it isn't a workable solu tion for me. I am certain many others will feel the same way.
I understand that perfectly. I haven't a clue why 120 miles would be a magi c number for you, but if that's your limit you will be able to negotiate wi th power supply company to limit their draw-down to always leave you 120 mi les worth of charge.
The whole point about the smart grid is that it can be smart about things l ike that.
your car as a generator to run all night to help heat and light homes.
Not remotely. Your car engine is a less efficient fuel to electricity conve rter than the turbines at the power station, so they would have to pay you lots more to cover the cost of the fuel you buy retail than they pay for th e fuel they buy on an industrial scale to burn in their carefully optimised plant.
as the expense.
Another point that makes it a really fatuous analogy.
because that only takes 10 minutes. In the electric car you also have tha t concern since it may take an extra half hour to several hours depending o n the car you are driving.
Unless you have access to a fast charger.
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o stop broadcasting fake news - though I won't accept that they are serious until Donald Trump loses access to Twitter.
term contracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the first pl ace, or the users won't own the cars in the first place!
that your car is fully charged before you have to take off on a long trip.
n't have a reservation, they will be ready to leave the program.
Probably. If that someone hadn't thought about what they had signed up for, they could get quite emotional.
People sign up for all sorts of things that they can't actually afford, and get cold feet when reality catches up with them. It's quite sad.
ou can let a significant portion off them skive off without losing enough c apacity to make a difference.
What makes you think that?
n 2009, which made it the biggest single sector.
- is way behind. Commercial use, at 8.49% is even less.
Cars were using up more that twice as much power in 2009 as the residential users who be using the back-up power. If most of those are cars battery dr iven electric cars (which is what's going to have to happen) the 95% of the cars that are parked could - on average - deliver 50 times as much power a s the residential users would be consuming. Obviously 95% of the cars aren' t going to be parked at peak commuting times, but the grid isn't going need to rely on back-up power for 100% of the residential load either.
If you can't see the relevance of this, you need to think a bit harder.
g to come from batteries and pumped storage overnight, though they may be u sed to smooth out generation peaks and and valleys during the day.
goes through max and min, but production goes to zero half the day or more. I gave you some numbers to work with. Did you take a look at them? My ho use isn't even very large.
You do insist on ignoring wind power and hydro-electric power.
capacity is twenty time bigger than their actual power consumption, which i s impressive.
If you can't see what it means, you need to think harder.
ilable for most of the day they don't help solve the problem.
Commuters take their car into work every morning , and park them in parking lots that are inevitably going to have let the cars hook up to the grid - for charging and discharging. In the evening the commuters drive their - pr esumably fully charged - cars home to park them at another place that's goi ng to connect them to the grid.
or the purpose. To say they are going wasted is like saying the gas in you r tank is just sitting there being wasted.
That's exactly right. You spent money to put gas in the tank when you could have left the money in the bank, earning interest. Much better to buy the gas shortly before you need it. You can do that with an electric car.
From the point of view of society as a whole, having two parallel sets of b atteries, one only used to store power for driving and the other only used to store power for grid back up, is a wasteful duplication.
Since the battery capacity embedded in the cars is a whole lot bigger than the battery capacity you'd need to buffer the grid, it's not a particularly gross extravagance, but since the charging network you'd want to have - to keep the electric cars fully charged - could double as the back-up grid it does make a lot of sense to use it that way and pass on the Elon Musk styl e grid batteries.
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After all, they do seem to be the same kind of batteries that Musk is putti ng in his cars.
consumed by use.
But you'd get paid to cover the extra use. Probably not all that much, beca use the total car battery capacity would be an order of magnitude bigger th an the grid would actually need
ot of users are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the nation al grid and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are gettin g ripped off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their c ars from the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
nomies of scale will make the batteries cheaper.
You are talking through your hat. Yes, they will get cheaper, but so will battery cells used solely for grid storage. The ones in the cars are packa ged to be optimal for car use where charging is fast, ideally 10 minutes li ke refueling with gas. The difference is no one cares if batteries for sol ar storage charge 10 times slower, they will still do the job perfectly.
The point is when you are optimizing, autos and grid storage are different. They will be optimized for different characteristics. No point in square pegs in round holes, specially when you have to pay someone for using them .
th expected utility of 300k miles. There's a lot of exposure for premature failure by letting the power company drain your charge when they want.
quently. Letting the power company drain roughly once a day will presumably degrade it twice as fast as the driver would do by using the car every day , but the power company obviously has to pay the car owner for using the ba ttery as grid back-up, so this isn't any kind of deal-breaker.
You repeatedly make statements that have no relevance to the discussion. O f course cars batteries have utility even if only driven once a week. I on ly use my truck once a week for a couple of days, then it sits for four day s or so. On the days I use it I need to drive significant miles. I would never sign up for such a battery destroying scheme.
of not losing money on the deal as well as having the vehicle ready to go w hen I want it.
h skills in that area should be able to do better. And the power company wo uldn't need to run the car battery flat for grid-back-up, and the extent to which it might run the battery down would be part of the compensation pack age - obviously if you let them take only a quarter of your charge you will get half the compensation that you'd get if you let them take half - after all you'd only be offering half as much grid-back-up capacity.
No, I'm not, but any scheme would be to the favor of the utility, not the c ar owner. There is no such thing as "fair" in this case. For the utility to want to use it with all the complications and lack of predictability, it would have to be cheaper than buying their own batteries. Then the car ow ner is not being compensated adequately. Classic zero sum gaming. The onl y reason why the car owner would enter the deal is if there is profit, not just compensation. The only reason the utility would enter the deal is for profit compared to owning their own batteries. They can't both win unless using the car battery were somehow cheaper than buying grid backup batteri es which would never be the case.
with electric cars, the range and the added hassle of charging. I am will ing to wait for charging when I am on a long trip. I don't want to be in t he car for more than 4 hours anyway. But if I have a sudden need to drive
120 miles and there isn't the charge on the battery, it isn't a workable so lution for me. I am certain many others will feel the same way.
gic number for you, but if that's your limit you will be able to negotiate with power supply company to limit their draw-down to always leave you 120 miles worth of charge.
Actually it is more because at the other end I need to do local travel. I drive once a week to another abode and then a day or two later drive back,
120 miles each way if no detours.
You still don't grasp the situation. No one is going to be happy with the uncertainty. Heck, there are a number here who don't like electric cars be cause they have to charge them at all rather than just fill up at the gas s tation. Losing the ability to just get in and drive with the only limitati on being the size of my battery is significant for most people. This plan will not be used by many and those that use it will be undependable in maki ng the car available for grid use. In particular, when there is a public a nything that affects the availability of cars for grid use the system will fall apart. Any sort of large scale calamity, weather, act of terror, eart hquake, etc will cause the system to rapidly fall apart because people will want their cars to be available to drive away from it. I am 3 miles from a nuke plant. When the siren goes off, I want to get in the car and go as far as I can. 120 miles might not find me a place to stay.
like that.
It can't cover all contingencies and when it fails, it will fail spectacula rly. There is no point when buying batteries for grid storage is just as c heap if not cheaper!
in your car as a generator to run all night to help heat and light homes.
verter than the turbines at the power station, so they would have to pay yo u lots more to cover the cost of the fuel you buy retail than they pay for the fuel they buy on an industrial scale to burn in their carefully optimis ed plant.
Totally irrelevant. The issues are the same. No cost advantage, lots of r isk to both parties and it requires a very complicated and potentially unre liable scheme to make it work.
l as the expense.
Ok, you will never accept any deficiency in your idea. People who pay a pr emium for an electric car will absolutely have concerns about the longevity of the battery when used for grid storage.
nk because that only takes 10 minutes. In the electric car you also have t hat concern since it may take an extra half hour to several hours depending on the car you are driving.
Sorry, they call it supercharging, but it is still some 10 times slower tha n filling with gas. I can't believe you don't even know the basics about c harging cars and are trying to discuss using the battery for grid storage. This is fundamental to the argument.
to stop broadcasting fake news - though I won't accept that they are serio us until Donald Trump loses access to Twitter.
g term contracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the first place, or the users won't own the cars in the first place!
e that your car is fully charged before you have to take off on a long trip .
idn't have a reservation, they will be ready to leave the program.
r, they could get quite emotional.
People is people. You can't change that.
nd get cold feet when reality catches up with them. It's quite sad.
And people often sign up for things that are bad deals as this would almost certainly be.
you can let a significant portion off them skive off without losing enough capacity to make a difference.
m.
in 2009, which made it the biggest single sector.
6% - is way behind. Commercial use, at 8.49% is even less.
al users who be using the back-up power. If most of those are cars battery driven electric cars (which is what's going to have to happen) the 95% of t he cars that are parked could - on average - deliver 50 times as much power as the residential users would be consuming. Obviously 95% of the cars are n't going to be parked at peak commuting times, but the grid isn't going ne ed to rely on back-up power for 100% of the residential load either.
Because the fundamental issue is not capacity, it is the economics. There is no advantage to the utility, there is no advantage to the car owner. Us ing the battery costs money, so an unused battery is not being wasted, it i s being preserved. Let the utility get their own batteries. They know wha t they need and can use or abuse them as they see fit without worrying abou t voiding the car owner's warranty.
ing to come from batteries and pumped storage overnight, though they may be used to smooth out generation peaks and and valleys during the day.
d goes through max and min, but production goes to zero half the day or mor e. I gave you some numbers to work with. Did you take a look at them? My house isn't even very large.
I'm not ignoring them, you brought solar into this conversation, that is th e source that needs to be averaged.
g capacity is twenty time bigger than their actual power consumption, which is impressive.
vailable for most of the day they don't help solve the problem.
ng lots that are inevitably going to have let the cars hook up to the grid
- for charging and discharging. In the evening the commuters drive their - presumably fully charged - cars home to park them at another place that's g oing to connect them to the grid.
for the purpose. To say they are going wasted is like saying the gas in y our tank is just sitting there being wasted.
ld have left the money in the bank, earning interest. Much better to buy th e gas shortly before you need it. You can do that with an electric car.
Lol!!! Now you are talking about the sunk capital of a tank of gas!!! You are so reaching in this discussion.
batteries, one only used to store power for driving and the other only use d to store power for grid back up, is a wasteful duplication.
BS, I am willing to bet that when all is considered, the utility companies won't enter into such programs unless they have a way to assure your car wi ll be available when *they* need it. Without that the entire system will c ollapse. Statistics won't be enough to cover all contingencies.
n the battery capacity you'd need to buffer the grid, it's not a particular ly gross extravagance, but since the charging network you'd want to have - to keep the electric cars fully charged - could double as the back-up grid it does make a lot of sense to use it that way and pass on the Elon Musk st yle grid batteries.
Why? There is no advantage. You talk about the cost to "society as a whol e" when there is no cost. Batteries are a consumable. I don't share a box of cornflakes with my neighbor because there is zero cost to society in us both having a box sitting on our shelves. Same with batteries. Any schem e is going to be very complex and disadvantageous to both.
ting in his cars.
There are many types of lead acid batteries optimized for many types of use s. The same will happen with Li-ion as markets develop. Right now it is a ll about getting the cost down. In 10 or 20 years when the costs are start ing to bottom out there will be many types of batteries optimized for diffe rent things, car use, solar storage and other things. In each case the low est cost will be found for that use. Grid storage will be optimized for pr ice more than fast charging so the cost can be lower than auto batteries wh ich will need to be charged as quickly as possible. You posted an article yourself about research in coated electrodes which allow much faster chargi ng times. The grid won't need this adaptation.
e consumed by use.
cause the total car battery capacity would be an order of magnitude bigger than the grid would actually need
So where is the PROFIT? People are Ferengi. There can't be profit to both parties.
lot of users are signed up letting their car batteries be part of the nati onal grid and a report or rumor or *worse* a viral tweet says they are gett ing ripped off and their batteries destroyed the herd may well unplug their cars from the program and in short notice the grid can be compromised.
conomies of scale will make the batteries cheaper.
l battery cells used solely for grid storage. The ones in the cars are pac kaged to be optimal for car use where charging is fast, ideally 10 minutes like refueling with gas. The difference is no one cares if batteries for s olar storage charge 10 times slower, they will still do the job perfectly.
But since batteries for solar storage charge will be produced in much lower volume, it may make more sense for the power generators to buy the cheaper batteries optimised for in-car use.
There is work on things like flow batteries that are designed for static ap plication, but it doesn't seem to have gone beyond prototypes, and they don 't seem to return significantly more of the stored charge.
t. They will be optimized for different characteristics. No point in squa re pegs in round holes, specially when you have to pay someone for using th em.
This only works if the optimisation gives you batteries which perform signi ficantly better in the different applications. That doens't seem to have ha ppened yet.
Pretty much all of electronics uses parts which were designed for some mass market application in rather different applications where they work well e nough that nobody is going to pay for the ASIC that might work a b\it bette r.
with expected utility of 300k miles. There's a lot of exposure for prematu re failure by letting the power company drain your charge when they want.
requently. Letting the power company drain roughly once a day will presumab ly degrade it twice as fast as the driver would do by using the car every d ay, but the power company obviously has to pay the car owner for using the battery as grid back-up, so this isn't any kind of deal-breaker.
Of course cars batteries have utility even if only driven once a week. I only use my truck once a week for a couple of days, then it sits for four d ays or so. On the days I use it I need to drive significant miles. I woul d never sign up for such a battery destroying scheme.
Your loss. A lot of human behavior is driven by irrational prejudice.
e of not losing money on the deal as well as having the vehicle ready to go when I want it.
ith skills in that area should be able to do better. And the power company wouldn't need to run the car battery flat for grid-back-up, and the extent to which it might run the battery down would be part of the compensation pa ckage - obviously if you let them take only a quarter of your charge you wi ll get half the compensation that you'd get if you let them take half - aft er all you'd only be offering half as much grid-back-up capacity.
car owner.
Any scheme that is going to be acceptable has to deliver value to both side s, otherwise neither side would take it up. This is elementary free market economics.
o use it with all the complications and lack of predictability, it would ha ve to be cheaper than buying their own batteries.
The "lack of predictablity" is largely wiped out by the huge numbers of ele ctric cars that are going to be lying around in the not-too-distant future.
When you have millions of parked cars to exploit, the proportion that are g oing to attached to a charging station at any one time is remarkably predic table, even if you don't know which of them is going to be parked at any on e time.
Nobody knows who is going to be using their telephone at any instant, but t he load on the telephone network is predictable enough that the telephone c ompanies can offer 99.9% accessibility with just four more lines than the w orse case peak load.
An assertion.
the deal is if there is profit, not just compensation. The only reason the utility would enter the deal is for profit compared to owning their own ba tteries. They can't both win unless using the car battery were somehow che aper than buying grid backup batteries which would never be the case.
Car batteries are going to be manufactured in much larger volumes - at leas t a factor of ten more and probably a factor of closer to one hundred - tha n specialised grid back-up batteries. As things now stand, specialised grid back-up batteries aren't going to be enough better for it pay the power ge nerators to buy them, rather than car batteries at something between a half and a quarter of the price per kilowatt-hour capacity.
Your "would never be the case" does ignore economies of scale.
ve with electric cars, the range and the added hassle of charging. I am wi lling to wait for charging when I am on a long trip. I don't want to be in the car for more than 4 hours anyway. But if I have a sudden need to driv e 120 miles and there isn't the charge on the battery, it isn't a workable solution for me. I am certain many others will feel the same way.
magic number for you, but if that's your limit you will be able to negotiat e with power supply company to limit their draw-down to always leave you 12
0 miles worth of charge.
I drive once a week to another abode and then a day or two later drive back , 120 miles each way if no detours.
Not a wildly popular mode of use. Some people do make a habit of going to t heir week-enders, but it would be the kind of predictable use that could ge t written into the contract with the power company.
Remember, the power company is going to write a huge number of these contra cts - all auto-negotiated by some kind of AI - and all that they need is en ough battery capacity somewhere at every instant when they might need to st ore or retrieve power.
e uncertainty.
Everybody wants the rest of the world to be totally predictable, but most s ane people have learned to accept that it isn't. They do buy insurance rath er than restricting their choices to the safest and most predictable option s.
ave to charge them at all rather than just fill up at the gas station.
Not having notice that they could could charge the car at home.
g the size of my battery is significant for most people.
The limitation would move to the proportion of their battery that they didn 't lease out to the power company. Some cars have much range than others on a single tank of gas. This isn't a widely advertised feature of the longer
-range cars.
dable in making the car available for grid use.
This is a prediction based on the way you imagine the system working, which doesn't strike me as a particularly accurate model.
ity of cars for grid use the system will fall apart.
That rather depends on how the contracts are written. One can imagine some kind of strike where lots of people unplug their cars from their regular ch argers, and only charge them at fast charging stations, but that isn't goin g to happen often, and might be seen a power-to-the-people feature, rather than any kind of bug.
c will cause the system to rapidly fall apart because people will want thei r cars to be available to drive away from it.
This does beg the question of where one might drive to in the event of a la rge scale calamity. The national grid is national
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so the cars would all have to drive off to Canada or Mexico (for which they wouldn't have the range. Any smaller calamity would only affect a proporti on of the country.
in the car and go as far as I can. 120 miles might not find me a place to stay.
Not a large sale calamity though.
gs like that.
larly.
It would take a very extensive calamity to drive it to failure, and any suc h calamity would be spectacular in its own right. You are talking about som ething like a re-run of the death of the dinosaurs.
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if not cheaper!
Specialised grid storage batteries aren't going to be produced in the same volume as electric car batteries, so they are unlikely to be cheaper, and e xploiting batteries that somebody else has bought is likely to be cheaper ( or at least less capital intensive) than buying more of them for your own e xclusive use.
e in your car as a generator to run all night to help heat and light homes.
onverter than the turbines at the power station, so they would have to pay you lots more to cover the cost of the fuel you buy retail than they pay fo r the fuel they buy on an industrial scale to burn in their carefully optim ised plant.
Nonsense.
mplicated and potentially unreliable scheme to make it work.
I just spelled out why using the internal combustion engine in a car to gen erate mains power was a much more expensive option that burning cheaper fue l in a power station.
Exploiting millions of electric car charging points to provide grid power s torage and back-up is obviously very complicated, in that it involves a lot of separate units, but it's just a huge chunk of distributed processing, w ith each element doing a straight-forward job.
It ought not to be all that difficult, and the fact that it is extensively distributed should make it remarkably reliable as a whole, through local bi ts will presumably break down from time to time and get automatically repor ted and manually fixed by an appropriately designed (and scaled) maintenanc e service.
ell as the expense.
Your fatuous analogy didn't high-light any obvious defect in the scheme, wh ich isn't remotely my idea.
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When I introduced the idea into this thread I credited it to
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which is where I first saw it, back in 2008.
ns about the longevity of the battery when used for grid storage.
But they will be paid for the loss of longevity, such as it might be.
tank because that only takes 10 minutes. In the electric car you also have that concern since it may take an extra half hour to several hours dependi ng on the car you are driving.
han filling with gas.
But not all that slow. When we tank up on motorways, we spend extra time on finding a toilet and buying a coffee - a Telsa charge wouldn't stretch tha t break enough to worry us.
e trying to discuss using the battery for grid storage. This is fundamenta l to the argument.
I knew enough to dig out the link to the Tesla Supercharger - that shows at least a basic grasp of what's involved.
ty to stop broadcasting fake news - though I won't accept that they are ser ious until Donald Trump loses access to Twitter.
ong term contracts which likely will deter many from signing on in the firs t place, or the users won't own the cars in the first place!
ure that your car is fully charged before you have to take off on a long tr ip.
didn't have a reservation, they will be ready to leave the program.
for, they could get quite emotional.
Some people are sillier than others. Civilisation keeps on working - though electing somebody as silly as Donald Trump as president makes this a more marginal proposition than I like.
and get cold feet when reality catches up with them. It's quite sad.
st certainly be.
Nobody has even produced a model contract yet, so your confidence is a trif le premature.
d, you can let a significant portion off them skive off without losing enou gh capacity to make a difference.
lem.
et in 2009, which made it the biggest single sector.
.26% - is way behind. Commercial use, at 8.49% is even less.
tial users who be using the back-up power. If most of those are cars batter y driven electric cars (which is what's going to have to happen) the 95% of the cars that are parked could - on average - deliver 50 times as much pow er as the residential users would be consuming. Obviously 95% of the cars a ren't going to be parked at peak commuting times, but the grid isn't going need to rely on back-up power for 100% of the residential load either.
e is no advantage to the utility,
Wrong. The utility doesn't have to invest in buying its own storage batteri es, and the land to stack them on.
Wrong. For the scheme to work, the car owner has to get paid by the utility to get access to car's battery when the car is at a charging station.
You seem to find it difficult to imagine that the car owner could be paid e nough to compensate for all the disadvantages you can see (and tend to exag gerate) but the scheme won't work if the majority of car owners think that they are getting a fair deal.
it is being preserved. Let the utility get their own batteries. They kno w what they need and can use or abuse them as they see fit without worrying about voiding the car owner's warranty.
An unused battery is an idle capital investment. For the car owner it makes sense to make money on it when he isn't using it, and it saves the utility companies from investing in batteries (and land to accommodate them).
You seem to be making the Soviet error of ignoring the cost of capital inve stment.
going to come from batteries and pumped storage overnight, though they may be used to smooth out generation peaks and and valleys during the day.
and goes through max and min, but production goes to zero half the day or m ore. I gave you some numbers to work with. Did you take a look at them? M y house isn't even very large.
the source that needs to be averaged.
Not every solar generation scheme. Thermal solar can dump heat into huge an d well insulated tanks of molten salts, which can have thermal time constan ts of days - perhaps weeks.
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The tanks of molten salt can boil steam and drive steam turbines around the clock, or at night only or whenever. It's a much cheaper power storage sch eme because the stored energy isn't converted to electricity before it is s tored.
Apparently it is already price competitive with fossil-carbon generators, i f only in favoured location (of which Australia has lots - pity about the c urrent administration).
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