Electric Cars - the discussion continues.

[spacesailor]

"The EV is the most versatile vehicle when it comes to fuel"

 

The fuel isn't much good when in a convoy of off road campers & caravans, (say Boulia / plenty hwy,/ Fraser island, or most inland remote areas), You can't put a EV recharge in a "spare can of fuel" When a "Gray Nomads Toyota / Nissan tow car has run out of charge.

 

Maybe when the NRMA has converted its "Roadside assist" trucks to carry a giant battery, to get us out of the sheet, we can say EV are good,

 

BUT

 

when are we going to get a FULL offroad 4X4 EV.

 

Only two makers are in the race for offroad towing at present, ( unmodified) the rest are a long way behind, Even my Mitsubishi's are told, Don't follow, park up & hitch a ride, with the big ones.(when in their convoy)

 

spacesailor

 

 

[octave]

BMW to buy cobalt for EV batteries from Australia and Morocco

Yes, I saw that. It seems to me that we should be looking for new opportunities.

 

Australia's SEA Electric has taken multiple orders for its 2500Nm EV truck - techAU

 

 

[spacesailor]

"operating ranges of up to 350km (220 miles), removing any chance of ‘range angst’ for operators."

 

I'VE Range Angst with my 450 klm range. Always looking at that fuel gauge & the next sero.

 

That's why most serious offroaders have installed Longrange tanks.

 

Some can span a thousand klms between sevo refills.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[octave]

when are we going to get a FULL offroad 4X4 EV.

Now

 

 

 

Space the point different vehicle within the IC range are not all equally suited to all situations. I would not drive my Ford Focus off road because it is not suited to that. No one is saying that we are going to get rid of all ICs You are making the point that EVs are not at this point in time suited to EVERY type of use, therefore they are of no use.

 

 

[octave]

"operating ranges of up to 350km (220 miles), removing any chance of ‘range angst’ for operators."I'VE Range Angst with my 450 klm range. Always looking at that fuel gauge & the next sero.

 

That's why most serious offroaders have installed Longrange tanks.

 

Some can span a thousand klms between sevo refills.

 

spacesailor

Understood but this argument also applies to my IC Ford Focus. You buy the vehicle that suits your needs. It would be ridiculous for me to tell you what your needs are and.........

 

 

[Litespeed]

You also cant tell this later generation that the new clean coal power station can actually be way cleaner than what we have now and would be a good stop gap until something better comes along but no...we are all evil masters and should die a dirty death because we are older than 45

As someone older than 45 but with kids, I would agree. Anyone who blindly says we must build new coal mines or power stations claiming they are clean, and no viable options exist would be either......

 

Blinded by ideology...

 

A environmental vandal...

 

Prepared to impoverish the future for the present...

 

Have a extremely poor understanding of economics, even if just free market capitalism.

 

Or to paraphrase, Evil.

 

Sorry mate but that's the way I see and the facts standup.

 

No bank, even ones just pure profit driven is prepared to lend to build a new coal mine or power station. Why? They know a station is a 30-40 year investment. Coal power is now the dearest energy we have and that is with plants that are already paid off. Other renewable power is now cheaper installed including new storage systems. Why would a bank lend for a asset they know will never make a return, they consider them a stranded asset. Ie, a soon to be extinct power source. On pure economic grounds it is a bad idea. On environmental and social grounds a disaster.

 

The only way it can happen is if the government lends or gives away the money and forces the public to buy the power at high cost for 40 years.

 

That would be a public subsidy including excess power cost of a minimum $100 billion over the life of the station. So in reality it would be the most expensive power plant in the history of the country if not the world. And that is without the environmental costs of the mine to dig it up and burn it.

 

So if you think its a great idea, you better get a used to been called names by others.

 

 

[red750]

As has been stated a number of times in this thread, there are horses for courses. There will be a need for some IC vehicles for the foreseeable future. Heavy haulage, road trains, etc, as well as outback vehicle hundreds of km's from anywhere. But the majority of vehicles targeted for replacement are those choking metropolitan roads.

 

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Melbourne Perth Sydney

 

Quite often these vehicles are barely crawling along or even stationary, burning up fuel, and belching toxic emissions. When electric vehicles come to a standstill, their motor(s) stop.The target is for 50% EV's and then only for NEW car sales. No plan (yet) to remove existing IC vehicles. This means that phasing out IC altogether is a long way off, definitely not in my lifetime, and I guess even my kids lifetime. (My eldest two are over 45.)

 

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[red750]

Just mentioned on the news there are proposals to increase the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne to 22 lanes. Think of all the emissions.

 

 

[facthunter]

That's why the Euro cars engines stop when you do.. Most of these cars have one person in them. which is inefficient. Nev

 

 

[Litespeed]

Just mentioned on the news there are proposals to increase the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne to 22 lanes. Think of all the emissions.

What a genius idea, build a 22 lane carpark and I bet it will be a private job with the public paying huge fees forever.

 

 

[red750]

Just mentioned on the news there are proposals to increase the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne to 22 lanes. Think of all the emissions.

That includes both directions plus on/off ramps all together.

 

 

[Litespeed]

Yes I know, all carparks have entry and exit points.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...Read the whole article not just a bit of it..he makes some compelling arguements and also stated some facts that I was not aware of...probably because I am not out there doing what he does.

https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/?fbclid=IwAR0xShYoG1-LrhL-_08e3QTYHZoWm6MHcEPFzSKH1Pxl73qxjq3sspb_hlU

Interesting point of view, Mark. His environmental analysis is based on the American experience; much of it doesn't apply to this country. His claims about the problems of disposing of used solar panels is out of date.

 

 

[coljones]

where is the power coming from to charge your batteries COALthat lying shorten on the cancer scheme it is all free NOW

 

you sheep better start asking your idiot leader what is the COST his con on climate change it HAS not been costed

 

about 90% or more off the power you are using tonight is from COAL

 

I am waiting for the vilification of my opinion neil

I'm not sure your rants ever reach the giddy heights of an opinion.

 

 

[coljones]

Very encouraging news, Octave.Electric vehicles are certainly in the news, but the LNP might find it easy to exploit ignorance about their potential. Tonight's local TV news showed lots of people didn't think EVs would be viable in rural areas for decades to come. Limited range and lack of recharging stations was a common complaint.

 

Another colossal furfey: there's a shortage of qualified maintainers. Ignoring the fact that EVs are simple and likely to require little maintenance.

and it is doubtful that the vast majority of cars travel more than 50km/day, on average. tradies go to a job and stay there, driving around cuts into profits. Couriers and buses travel further but are well within cooee of a recharge station or battery exchange. There are some, maybe a few in the country who would travel more than 200km/day. These outliers are the ones who need diesel but would be a small minority.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

"

 

Blinded by ideology...

 

A environmental vandal...

 

Prepared to impoverish the future for the present...

 

Have a extremely poor understanding of economics, even if just free market capitalism.

 

Or to paraphrase, Evil."

 

I am none of those by the way I am a realist not a pesimist..my point is that as our population is continually growing at a unsustainable rate for our current infrastructure and there are many power outages now well certainly down south there is how do you propose we solve the power issue for the next 30 to 40 years without spending trillions of dollars into green tech to keep the lights on ?

 

Qld is feeding our power generation down south by huge amounts..remembering that I was involved in the electricity generation and distribution here in a former life.....so I still have many friends in that industry and at AEMO who do all this selling and distributing for the national grid

 

We are running out of baseload power in a very big hurry and I dont see any solutions currently that will suffice...as I said in that post its a stopgap the clean coal power until a better solution can come into play

 

There is NO storage even anywhere near developed or proposed that can carry over the night time usage....you maybe able after spending so much money its mind boggling to supply what is needed every single minute of the day in sunlight not to mention the physical space to do this and the hardware to convert the DC into AC for transmission of this power all over the place like it is now. How much power you have to generate if you had that storage capability to use what you need during the day AND store for the overnight usage it just a unbelievable situation...I really dont think you grasp the amount of numbers we are talking about they have so many zeros on the end of that KW number.

 

Add say another 500,000 EV onto that list and the energy required to charge all of those EV..throw that onto the top of what we already are using.....lets face it most EV will be charged overnight so where is all our storage capacity during that time to charge from a "green source".

 

EV are a great thing and will be fantastic ...in the future when the tech can catch up but as I said drag this thread back out in 10 years or even 20 and lets see where we actually are.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Kyle is spot on. There is nothing wrong with the aspiration, electric vehicles will happen, but the alarmists will destroy ( I don’t use that word lightly) our current fossil-fuel-based society by imposing impossible targets.

 

 

[octave]

EV are a great thing and will be fantastic ...in the future when the tech can catch up but as I said drag this thread back out in 10 years or even 20 and lets see where we actually are.

Yes let's see how adoption goes over the next 10 years, Australia is starting from a low base. China is aggressively pursuing EV and Norway is already at 50% of new cars being EV. The targets we are talking about are pretty modest and the timescale long. I see EV adoption only increasing. But as you say we shall see.

 

 

[nomadpete]

One small point about infrastructure, Kyle.

 

In recent years, the grid suffered a phase problem. Mostly as a result of reactive load resulting from large scale consumer uptake of home air conditioners.

 

To solve this problem, Grid operators installed semiconductor power factor correction (MVar compensators) at strategic points in the grid. These things were developed, manufactured and installed in a relatively short timeframe. They have water cooled SCRs the size of dinner plates. Capable of thousands of amps at high voltage. It would not take all that much development to use such technology to manufacture Megawatt inverters, and I would be surprised if such are not already under way.

 

My point being that the infrastructure is more easily changed nowadays. Sure, we need more generation capability, which takes longer to build. But changes are happening. Our systems are evolving. And so far they have evolved just in time to meet demand.

 

 

[red750]

One of the problems with EV is that there is no standardised power plug. Not all recharge points can charge all cars. A Tesla plug will not charge a Nissan Leaf, for example. It's like VHS vs Betamax or SD memory cards vs XD. Which one will suffer. When you go to a servo, all petrol nozzles fit in the petrol filler (diesel are different for a purpose). Which plug will survive, or will recharge points have to have multiple outlets?

 

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[kgwilson]

It is the evolution of electricity distribution from huge fossil fueled remote stations sent by massive power lines to massive sub stations & then to the consumer, to renewable energy produced everywhere, stored locally and used locally. The large wind and solar farms are a continuance of the centralised energy philosophy albeit with storage attached but distributed systems will supplement this massively.

 

In my community about half the houses have solar panels and most of what is generated goes into the grid. I have a 2kW system installed 5 years ago. We use as much as possible when the sun shines (aircon, dishwasher, vacuum, washing machine, dryer etc) & still half of my power goes into the grid. My peak and shoulder usage is less than half of my off peak usage (TV, lights, fridge, freezer etc). 2kW is tiny nowadays but if the extra generation was stored & used later I would only need the grid for 4kWh per day. My average daily production is 12 kWh in Summer & 9 kWh in Winter. So if I add another 2 kW capacity to my solar system I could be self sufficient and still have excess capacity about half of the time.

 

Most installations these days are 5-6 kW and many people are installing their own batteries. A local community battery would be charged up during the day & used at night by all of those connected. There are plenty of these systems being implemented around the world but they scare the crap out of power companies which is unsurprising. Just a few years ago it was illegal to install a stand alone system if grid power was available. The change is evolutionary and it continues with an ever quickening pace.

 

 

[kgwilson]

One of the problems with EV is that there is no standardised power plug. Not all recharge points can charge all cars. A Tesla plug will not charge a Nissan Leaf, for example. It's like VHS vs Betamax or SD memory cards vs XD. Which one will suffer. When you go to a servo, all petrol nozzles fit in the petrol filler (diesel are different for a purpose). Which plug will survive, or will recharge points have to have multiple outlets?

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These will all become redundant as the super charging stations come on line and the cars have an on board DC converter. In the meantime someone will produce adaptors just like you have when travelling overseas to run your electrical stuff with an Aus/NZ plug.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Talking about powerfactor correction the distribution and generation authorities have always done PF correction. There are large capacitor banks installed for just that purpose and have been ever since I was a apprentice back in the late 1970's. More of them have been installed...well that is up here in Qld not sure about you mexicans south of the border. Our grid has always been far more robust than any other. The solar feed into the grid is causing major issues though and is costing a lot to alieviate it

 

Case in point is right outside my house. Energex installed a 200KVA pole transformer just for the purpose of handling the reverse power (for a better word that is easier to understand for non electrical people). The normal transformer around the road is a 300kva it can only pass that amount of energy and more it will overheat and crap itself eventually. There is so much solar in our area what happens during the day is that solar power generation doesnt disappear it goes out to the grid on youe low voltage connection and gets inverted up to the 11kv back out to the distribution mains. A transformer passes it both ways so there is more going back out to the grid than 300kva so the transformer is stressed. The installed the 200kva about 500 mtrs away for it...outside my house to deliver that backfeed into the grid as well so it unloads the 300kva around the road...so now we have 2 transformers and its not for the download of power to the grid its for the upload.

 

Now this is daytime NOT nightime..at night of course its totally different all that power is being fed from the grid back into the houses. I have lived here now 15 years and I can tell you that all the houses in my street do NOT have any form of battery attached and from my driving around the area I have not seen any batteries at all externally..thats not to say they are not there of course but the amount of them around would be very very small

 

I can tell you now I am not spending 10k on a crappy bank of batteries that is max rated for 2.5kw only output or there abouts at any one time..yes it maybe a 10kw bank but thats all it can deliver....a kettle is 1200 watts thats 1.2kw....Also the time that battery lasts has to be taken into account...most forget that batteries have a cycle time usually 3000 or a bit more cycles in them. 3000 days (as they get cycled every day) is 8 years and then batteries start falling off in what they can deliver in their capacity it doesnt take long to look at the figures to see you need a crap load more of batteries......to run my house I need a heap more capacity. It is no where near cut and dried at all this argument...people need to look behind all of the hype and actually look at what it takes to run the system and all the other problems associated with it all. There are so many factors involved that people are not told or they dont know or dont want to know because its great to jump on this new tech bandwagon.

 

I am a realist about it all and we do have to change but that rate of change can not be at the speed that all these new age people seem to want or expect

 

 

[nomadpete]

Agreed, the rate of change is too fast for comfort.

 

BTW, cap banks are much simpler than active MVar compensators. But, as you say, there is a lot more 'behind the scenes' stuff happening, to keep our grid stable. I only left that workplace a couple of years ago.

 

I do think that the price of battery assist has come down to the point where there will be more punters taking up the option. This will relieve the grid of the problem, as those consumers won't be feeding back into the grid.

 

And it's no longer difficult to get a 'home' 6kw inverter - it has become the current standard size and it would supply my home.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"This will relieve the grid of the problem, as those consumers won't be feeding back into the grid."

 

Then maybe the pollies will let households go "stand-alone" off-grid, Relieving the grid of supplying that house until it has it's own breakdown, & connects back to a supplier.

 

spacesailor