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And nearly three years late.
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Our average electricity unit cost is about 8.5p per unit, quite lucky a we have 2 EVs and a heat pump and regularly use over 100kwh a day..
I am only mildly interested in your using an EV as a standby battery, but wondering how you get through 100 units a day. Admittedly there are only two living in this bungalow, but we don't even clock up 100 in a week (usually 70 to 80), including the output from our 9 solar panels.
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We use 65-80 a week (family of three making no effort). We have gas heating but an electric oven. My wife works from home, as do I two days a week.
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We use about 10kw a day of electricity. However I assume the 100kw a day includes gas. At this time of year that’s about what we use too. We have a gas hob which is negligible but the gas central heating is heavy if you look at the kw figure on the bill.
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We use about 100kwh a day on gas. Mind you, it's quite warm in here.
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We use about 10kw a day of electricity. However I assume the 100kw a day includes gas. At this time of year that’s about what we use too. We have a gas hob which is negligible but the gas central heating is heavy if you look at the kw figure on the bill.
That may be one way to rationalise the 100kw, but difficult to see how much of it could be stored in a Leaf battery :-).
In Kwh terms we seem to use about 8 times as much gas as leccy - 16Mwh last year, or just over 300 a week.. SWMBO invested in an induction hob a few years back, so gas is only for heating and hot water (and not much of that).
Edited by Andrew-T on 13/01/2025 at 23:14
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We use about 9kwh electricity a day mainly for lighting, cooking and appliances. It is fairly constant summer or winter. Rate is currently 23p kwh.
Gas consumption is ~60kwh per day in winter for heating and hot water, falling to ~10kwh a day in summer months for hot water only. Current rate is 6p kwh.
Our cars are both petrol so no electrical draw there.
Total consumption at ~70kwh per day (winter) would be feasible as 2 average EVs would have a max capacity of ~100kwh. Most consumption would be at a cheap rate with an occasional need on very cold days for electricity at normal rates or with high EV use.
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Many occasional EV users do not have a full on high speed 7KW +.hour charger. They can partially charge each night at 2.7KW/hour.
Connecting them is going to be pointless..and the dumb - and cheap chargers they have - will be unsuitable as one way only.
So new chargers needed.
And then many power cables are 40 years old ..Concentrated demand at night or day will expose the weaknesses in cabling. We had thirty years of occasional winter blackouts due to such issues.
So likely to be cities only with large concentrations of users - well that excludes flats and houses with no off street charging..-, etc. Or 40% of population
Not nearly as simple as it looks, lots of practical difficulties not yet resolved,Remember charging at commercial sites means electricity is at least twice the price of domestic electricity - this negating ALL the savings of an EV.
(55-125p/KWH vs home charging on standard tariff 23p or so - or special Octopus rates 8.5p )
So no-one charging at a commercial site will want to be part of such a scheme as it will cost them money - which would be obvious if anyone thought about it...
Madness.
Edited by madf on 14/01/2025 at 10:38
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Here's some petrolhead man maths to justify my 20mpg 'electric' car. In July 2011 I invested £10665 in a 14 panel solar array. By March 2019 I'd got my money back. In May 2014 I invested £12,000 in a durable 'forever' car, a 2005 Audi W12 sport quattro. It now does fewer than 2000 miles a year. I'm now getting over £2000 a year (tax free, inflation linked) for my electricity (approx 3 megawatts p.a.) which is more than enough to buy its fuel and oil. The Feed in Tariff contract runs till 2036....and I'm hoping both I and the car do too.
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
Yes but - it's irrelevant to the UK - Norway is globally unique having ideal terrain for cheap hydro-electric power, ideal climate for cheap hydro-electric power, low population - none of which apply in the UK.
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
Yes but - it's irrelevant to the UK - Norway is globally unique having ideal terrain for cheap hydro-electric power, ideal climate for cheap hydro-electric power, low population - none of which apply in the UK.
Don't forget they also have lots of money from using their north sea gas reserves wisely instead of wasting it all like we did.
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
Yes but - it's irrelevant to the UK - Norway is globally unique having ideal terrain for cheap hydro-electric power, ideal climate for cheap hydro-electric power, low population - none of which apply in the UK.
The UK does have the ideal locations for wind power though
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
Yes but - it's irrelevant to the UK - Norway is globally unique having ideal terrain for cheap hydro-electric power, ideal climate for cheap hydro-electric power, low population - none of which apply in the UK.
The UK does have the ideal locations for wind power though
Wind isn't reliable, the energy production stops when the wind drops - like solar energy production stops at night - in Norway they could also build pumped storage, we have a couple in the UK but there's no more suitable places here.
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Wind isn't reliable, the energy production stops when the wind drops - like solar energy production stops at night - in Norway they could also build pumped storage, we have a couple in the UK but there's no more suitable places here.
The whole point of using wind to charge a battery is that wind does not need to be reliable.
The wind only needs to blow for long enough occasionally to put sufficient charge into the battery. If "long enough" is 1 day in 3, or 4 hours out of 24, that's fine.
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Wind isn't reliable, the energy production stops when the wind drops - like solar energy production stops at night - in Norway they could also build pumped storage, we have a couple in the UK but there's no more suitable places here.
The whole point of using wind to charge a battery is that wind does not need to be reliable.
The wind only needs to blow for long enough occasionally to put sufficient charge into the battery. If "long enough" is 1 day in 3, or 4 hours out of 24, that's fine.
That's why I mentioned pumped storage - the amount of battery storage at present is minimal.
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In the recent cold - ie -8C days here - electricity demand was c 45GW.
It was basically wind power a maximum of 2GW and 23GW by Gas..(yes simplified)
For no wind power for a day we need storage of say 23GW for 24 hours a day , three or d days in total,
That is : roughly 1,932GW hours of storage
The largest Battery storage system in the UK is 100MW (Lakeshire Energy Park ) costing roughly £70M
WE would require 19,320 of those to store that amount of energy.
AT £70M each, cost =£1,352,400M or £11,352.4B or £11.35 Trillion Please check my sums...
The words "financially impossible" spring to mind.. Let alone physically impossible.
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This should be seen in the context of a 20-25 plan, not something feasible next year.
In the recent cold - ie -8C days here - electricity demand was c 45GW.
It was basically wind power a maximum of 2GW and 23GW by Gas..(yes simplified)
For no wind power for a day we need storage of say 23GW for 24 hours a day , three or d days in total,
That is : roughly 1,932GW hours of storage
Let's go with your estimate - although it is unclear whether 45GW is maximum demand or average demand with night time significantly less. It also assumes there is no surplus gas capacity for when the wind is not blowing.
The largest Battery storage system in the UK is 100MW (Lakeshire Energy Park ) costing roughly £70M
WE would require 19,320 of those to store that amount of energy.
AT £70M each, cost =£1,352,400M or £11,352.4B or £11.35 Trillion Please check my sums...
An extra "1" seems to have crept in to your calculations - £11352.4bn should be £1352.4bn = £1.35 trillion.. A small number makes a big difference!!
The words "financially impossible" spring to mind.. Let alone physically impossible.
£1.35tn is ~50% of annual UK GDP. Clearly impossible in a single year - but over (say) 20 years is entirely feasible. 1000 battery storage systems at £70m a time = £70bn pa.
Other thoughts
- Rather than battery systems as back up, some could be gas fired and run up only when required - not "net zero" but close to it. Much cheaper.
- The cost of battery back up will likely fall significantly due to (a) economies of scale, and (b) possibly new battery technologies
- In 20 years there will be ~30m EVs in the UK. Average battery capacity of 60kwh + V2G would give 1800GWh largely covering the gap. This is unrealistic course - but assuming 20kwh per EV would be 600Gwh - a large part (~30%) of the shortfall.
Edited by Terry W on 15/01/2025 at 15:29
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If we're going to try and do maths around this, can we at least use the right units? Watt measure instantaneous energy use, watt hours measure energy volume.
So, something running at one kilowatt for an hour has used 1kwh of energy. It gets somewhat .confusing just using watts for everything.
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Another thought - there's a barn door obvious other way of storing surplus wind energy apart from recharging batteries and pumping water up a hill. Instead of the ludicrous 'constraint payments' for surplus production, use it to make hydrogen for either use in vehicles or to feed into the gas pipeline network.
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Another thought - there's a barn door obvious other way of storing surplus wind energy apart from recharging batteries and pumping water up a hill. Instead of the ludicrous 'constraint payments' for surplus production, use it to make hydrogen for either use in vehicles or to feed into the gas pipeline network.
Slight problem there in that burning rates for hydrogen and methane natural gas are so different the burners need to be different.
You may not remember that when we changed from coal gas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide) the gas boards sent technicians to each house to change burners in cookers etc.before switching the supply, area by area.
Coal gas Bunsen burners won't work properly with methane, either, all had to be replaced in labs.
Edited by galileo on 15/01/2025 at 18:31
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In the middle of all this, here's what's happening in Norway:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg52543v6rmo
".....88.9% of new cars sold in the country last year were EVs, , externalup from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
In some months sales of fully electric cars were as high as 98%, as new petrol or diesel car purchases almost fizzled out."
Yes but - it's irrelevant to the UK - Norway is globally unique having ideal terrain for cheap hydro-electric power, ideal climate for cheap hydro-electric power, low population - none of which apply in the UK.
The UK does have the ideal locations for wind power though
Wind isn't reliable, the energy production stops when the wind drops - like solar energy production stops at night - in Norway they could also build pumped storage, we have a couple in the UK but there's no more suitable places here.
So we need more ways of storing the power (battery/converting electric to Hydrogen and then using that when required)/having a larger base load of electricity via more nuclear power stations/importing more from overseas. There are lots of ways to do things - we just need the government to want to do it and to invest in it.
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