Electric everything.

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ANTONISH
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Electric everything.

Post by ANTONISH »

The country is gradually embarking on a course of relying on electricity to deliver transport (e- vehicles) & domestic heating (heat pumps, electrically produced hydrogen).
Besides the infrastructure required for this we will need sufficient electrical generating capacity.

Without fossil fuels presumably this is going to be produced from increased Nuclear capacity - I don't see wind power being able to supply the increased capacity needed. I am in favour of nuclear power but I don't mind any non fossil fuel source.

I seem to remember - I haven't checked recently - that electricity currently provides about 20% of our energy needs.

Somehow I don't see people being able to drive cars in the same numbers when they are all electric.
Will the motoring populace - and they have great political influence accept that state of affairs?

There doesn't seem much effort by the government to get us to use low energy transport e.g cycling and walking - well proper provision would be a beginning.
Has any political party the will to bring in legislation to deal with the difficulties which are going to be encountered.?
At the moment there seems to be a wish list of things that would be nice to have.
axel_knutt
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by axel_knutt »

Electric cars can be charged at night, when there's bags of surplus capacity. If/when everyone switches to electric cars, we'll still be using less electricity than we did in 2002.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... les-busted

What intrigues me is where we're going to get plastics and tarmac etc from once we're no longer pumping oil for petrol.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Maillot Rouge
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Maillot Rouge »

Electric vehicles won’t take over in my lifetime.It is simply not viable.We might see more Ecars but everything else will stay as it is.
E-HGVs?
E-Ocean Liners?
E-Aeroplanes?
Not in this Century.Not viable.E-cars aren’t the future but merely a stepping stone to make it look like we’re doing something.It would be better to stay with petrol and diesel until a reliable long term replacement is found.
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

HGVs are viable, planes are harder - The baddest ships on the sea are already electric, have been for a long while.

And having said that planes aren't viable, China goes and announces a new plasma jet unit.


Of course one point is that we need only use 25% of the energy for heating, since heat pumps are easily capable of 400% efficiency, similarly ICE efficiency is atrocious, so the total energy usage for transport will go down as well.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
francovendee
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by francovendee »

I don't think heavy vehicles will ever be electric. Range will never be enough and bigger batteries mean less payload.
Hydrogen will be the fuel for large vehicles.
ANTONISH
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by ANTONISH »

[XAP]Bob wrote: 29 Jul 2021, 9:13pm HGVs are viable, planes are harder - The baddest ships on the sea are already electric, have been for a long while.

And having said that planes aren't viable, China goes and announces a new plasma jet unit.


Of course one point is that we need only use 25% of the energy for heating, since heat pumps are easily capable of 400% efficiency, similarly ICE efficiency is atrocious, so the total energy usage for transport will go down as well.
What do you mean by "baddest ships" ?
So far as I know the really large container ships and bulk carriers are still running on bunker fuel.

I'm not sure that 400% is attainable from a heat pump - maybe in theory from a ground source but air source which will be the most used type is about 300% at best.
The point I was trying top make is that the electrical energy input still has to be obtained from the grid whereas the energy for conventional central heating boilers is obtained from mainly gas (oil and solid fuel less so).
Thus we need to expand electrical capacity.
The same goes for electric vehicles - they may be more efficient but we will still need more electrical capacity to supply them.
Off peak will only alleviate the problem but when we have huge numbers of vehicles to charge there is still a capacity problem.
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Mick F
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Mick F »

axel_knutt wrote: 29 Jul 2021, 6:30pm What intrigues me is where we're going to get plastics and tarmac etc from once we're no longer pumping oil for petrol.
I've often mused over this.

What about paint, be it emulsion or gloss?
Cling film and packaging?
Computers?
Cable insulation?
Window frames?
Most our car is plastic. It's only the mechanical stuff and the body frame that are made from metal.

The list is endless, and it's all made from the by-product of petrol and diesel.
Mick F. Cornwall
Jdsk
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Jdsk »

Mick F wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 9:30am
axel_knutt wrote: 29 Jul 2021, 6:30pm What intrigues me is where we're going to get plastics and tarmac etc from once we're no longer pumping oil for petrol.
I've often mused over this.

What about paint, be it emulsion or gloss?
Cling film and packaging?
Computers?
Cable insulation?
Window frames?
Most our car is plastic. It's only the mechanical stuff and the body frame that are made from metal.

The list is endless, and it's all made from the by-product of petrol and diesel.
I don't understand the problem. We'll extract less oil from the ground. We'll still extract some. We'll use that to make many chemicals including plastics until better solutions are found.

Jonathan
Pebble
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Pebble »

Jdsk wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 9:35am
Mick F wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 9:30am
axel_knutt wrote: 29 Jul 2021, 6:30pm What intrigues me is where we're going to get plastics and tarmac etc from once we're no longer pumping oil for petrol.
I've often mused over this.

What about paint, be it emulsion or gloss?
Cling film and packaging?
Computers?
Cable insulation?
Window frames?
Most our car is plastic. It's only the mechanical stuff and the body frame that are made from metal.

The list is endless, and it's all made from the by-product of petrol and diesel.
I don't understand the problem. We'll extract less oil from the ground. We'll still extract some. We'll use that to make many chemicals including plastics until better solutions are found.

Jonathan
Whilst a plastic the carbon is locked up in that plastic, so providing we don't burn that plastic then we are not greatly adding to climate change.
The problems with plastic is our wastefulness with it, I'm sure we could continue extracting oil for making plastic without it being a major environmental problem (even better if we could recycle)
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Hellhound
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Hellhound »

francovendee wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 7:45am I don't think heavy vehicles will ever be electric. Range will never be enough and bigger batteries mean less payload.
Hydrogen will be the fuel for large vehicles.
OK so why not hydrogen for all vehicles?
Why are we being force fed EVs when it's obviously not going to work long term?I doubt we will ever have the infrastructure for EVs in the UK.What happens to all the batteries when EVs are phased out?
I'll be sticking to good old Diesel.
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NUKe
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by NUKe »

Electric cars are a not the long term Solution yes they are gaining traction. The green solutions are by far the shared infrastructure Korea already runs electric buses in Seoul. they charge at each bus stop from Induction coils. trains have been electric for years. The Swedish are trialling electric lorries on parts of there motorway network.

In terms of power generation it will be mix of renewables and nuclear Fission, but fusion is creeping ever closer to being commercially viable and that will be the game changer.
NUKe
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

ANTONISH wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 9:01am
[XAP]Bob wrote: 29 Jul 2021, 9:13pm HGVs are viable, planes are harder - The baddest ships on the sea are already electric, have been for a long while.

And having said that planes aren't viable, China goes and announces a new plasma jet unit.


Of course one point is that we need only use 25% of the energy for heating, since heat pumps are easily capable of 400% efficiency, similarly ICE efficiency is atrocious, so the total energy usage for transport will go down as well.
What do you mean by "baddest ships" ?
So far as I know the really large container ships and bulk carriers are still running on bunker fuel.

I'm not sure that 400% is attainable from a heat pump - maybe in theory from a ground source but air source which will be the most used type is about 300% at best.
The point I was trying top make is that the electrical energy input still has to be obtained from the grid whereas the energy for conventional central heating boilers is obtained from mainly gas (oil and solid fuel less so).
Thus we need to expand electrical capacity.
The same goes for electric vehicles - they may be more efficient but we will still need more electrical capacity to supply them.
Off peak will only alleviate the problem but when we have huge numbers of vehicles to charge there is still a capacity problem.

The baddest ships - are nuclear drive, with many of the largest ships being drive by electric thrust pods (however they are powered).
And the nuclear plants they use are inherently safe, since they are too small to melt down (which is one of the issues that early US reactors had, they employed people who were used to naval reactors).

With a 35 degree output (i.e. heating the house) and a zero degree outside temperature an ASHP should be getting closer to 500% than 400%
To get down to 300% you'd be looking at 50 degrees output, but remember that even that is a threefold reduction in energy needed.
The reason GSHP is "better" is that the "outside" temperature is close to invariant throughout the year.


The other thing that can, and should, happen is that buildings, particularly relatively new ones (basically any building with half decent insulation) can be used as thermal batteries - you don't need to heat the house in the hour before you come home - you can heat it at any time in advance of that, and the house will stay warm.

Given appropriate smarts that means the grid could easily balance the power draw across much more of the day.

I know of at least one person (stateside) who runs their AC overnight, and slightly over cools their home. It's a few degrees colder than maybe would be ideal in the morning, but they then don't run the AC at all until the next night. That is behaviour encouraged by simple Economy seven style pricing.
If you put something like the Octopus agile tariff into play then economics can shift load to balance it through the day. Indeed there is no reason why everyone's cheapest rate should be at the same time, you could easily smear that cheapest rate through the day for different customers.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Pebble
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by Pebble »

francovendee wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 7:45am I don't think heavy vehicles will ever be electric. Range will never be enough and bigger batteries mean less payload.
Hydrogen will be the fuel for large vehicles.
all new HGVs to be electric by 2040 in the UK -

It is feasable, but we will need better batteries.

Typical wagon uses about 50 gallon of diesel a day which is about 2270kwh, about 30% of that is lost converting it to drivable energy so lets say a wagon will need a 1600kwh battery, at 250wh per kg that would mean a 6.5 tonne battery.

I don't know how heavy an electric motor would be, but a big diesel and gearbox + fuel will be close to 3.5 tonne! I expect an electric motor be a lot lighter
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Electric everything.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

NUKe wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 10:17am Electric cars are a not the long term Solution yes they are gaining traction. The green solutions are by far the shared infrastructure Korea already runs electric buses in Seoul. they charge at each bus stop from Induction coils. trains have been electric for years. The Swedish are trialling electric lorries on parts of there motorway network.

In terms of power generation it will be mix of renewables and nuclear Fission, but fusion is creeping ever closer to being commercially viable and that will be the game changer.

Electric cars are absolutely the future.
I see the likelihood of a standardised aluminium air battery module (or preferably two) being put in certain models as an extreme range option.

Nuclear fusion is key, we need to do what the medical industry did when it renamed NMR scanners.

We can't have Nuclear Magnetic Resonance 'cos nuclear... so we call them Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners instead :roll:
We need a marketing name for a specific small reactor technology - because there are ~150 really easy locations to put them, where the likely demand is significant, and there is already good grid connections, and a low number of residents to be all nimby about it (motorway service stations).
Power and heat the buildings, provide locally produced hydrogen, as well as direct charging of vehicles and supply back to the grid. All from something the size of a single shipping container.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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[XAP]Bob
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Joined: 26 Sep 2008, 4:12pm

Re: Electric everything.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Pebble wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 10:27am
francovendee wrote: 30 Jul 2021, 7:45am I don't think heavy vehicles will ever be electric. Range will never be enough and bigger batteries mean less payload.
Hydrogen will be the fuel for large vehicles.
all new HGVs to be electric by 2040 in the UK -

It is feasable, but we will need better batteries.

Typical wagon uses about 50 gallon of diesel a day which is about 2270kwh, about 30% of that is lost converting it to drivable energy so lets say a wagon will need a 1600kwh battery, at 250wh per kg that would mean a 6.5 tonne battery.

I don't know how heavy an electric motor would be, but a big diesel and gearbox + fuel will be close to 3.5 tonne! I expect an electric motor be a lot lighter
30% of that is lost? I think you mean 30% is used as drivable energy.
No internal combustion engine is close to 70% efficient... (HGVs might peak into the 40s)

30% efficiency leads to ~800kWh/day, and you're assuming that it all has to be charged in one hit - why not charge twice, after all a driver has to stop a couple of times anyway. The Tesla Semi chargers are ~1MW, so that would be less than an hour's charging for the whole day.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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