Going electric

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Going electric

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... driving home after an evening out in winter, only to have a thick fog descend, crawling back up the mountain at walking pace, blowers, lights wipers all on full, wondering if the battery will hold out another 3 kilometres?

Ahh... but we won't be driving our electric cars by then.

Won't need wipers, or headlights.

Besides, the self-driving car will have already decided that it would have run out of power before arrival, and booked you in to a motel instead.

Of course it'll probably only choose one that sponsors adverts on it's chosen search engine.
 
No, the LIDAR will have failed to spot the herd of wild boar crossing the road due to backscatter from the fog and we'll still finish up walking home.
 
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Solar roadways + wireless charging would be a great combination. Let the roads soak up the suns energy during the day and keep cars charged as they drive over it, perfect! Of course, solar roadways are (currently) prohibitively expensive (about €2m for a 1km stretch of single carriageway) and wireless charging is still in its infancy with mobiles, so will take a long time to reach vehicular levels. But it's a nice dream.
 
Solar roadways + wireless charging would be a great combination. Let the roads soak up the suns energy during the day and keep cars charged as they drive over it, perfect! Of course, solar roadways are (currently) prohibitively expensive (about €2m for a 1km stretch of single carriageway) and wireless charging is still in its infancy with mobiles, so will take a long time to reach vehicular levels. But it's a nice dream.

1/ How does the light get to the road through the cars?
2/ I don't want to sit in the electromagnetic field from the wireless charger.


Robert G8RPI.
 
Even on a busy motorway, most of the road is uncovered for the majority of the day. If every A and M road in the UK (approx 50,000 km) was converted (will never happen, but worth mentioning) that would generate approx 21,000,000 MWh (based figures from this article) - that's a lot! As for sitting in the field, I don't see why you would have to. The field could be configured to only extend a certain range from the road, which would cover the distance from road to floor of car and no further. Sure that relies on all cars' floors being roughly the same distance from the road, so no high-riding 4x4s, lowered cars would work but the occupants would be in the field.

As I said though, it's a pipe dream, where's the profit in essentially free electricity?
 
To add to the solar road, here are some figures,


A typical 1m2 solar panel with 5 hoursexposure gives 1000W on a sunny day (typical home installation website figures). With a active road width of say 6m that’s 6kW per metre per day so 13m of road would charge a Tesla S or 76 cars per km. Sounds great, BUT that 1000W figure assumes a clean panel aligned with the sun on a bright sunny day. Alignment and cleanliness are critical so you will probably get no more than 200W so that’s 65m for our Tesla or 15 cars per km. BUT UK averages about 1500h of sun a year so only 4.1h per day average and that does not allow for shadows etc, so say 2.5h a day useable. So 130m required for the Tesla, 7.5 cars per km (total both directions) and don’t bother in the winter. I've also assumed lossless wireless charging.


Robert G8RPI.
 
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... driving home after an evening out in winter, only to have a thick fog descend, crawling back up the mountain at walking pace, blowers, lights wipers all on full, wondering if the battery will hold out another 3 kilometres?



I've given this some thought as although my commute is short, it as also steep and prone to bad weather in winter/road closures due to flooding in summer.

Lighting and heating don't have to be anywhere near as high draw as they are in a conventional car. Led headlamps and tail lights and all of a sudden you have o where near the power required for conventional units. Also heating doesn't have to be used, you can use a heat pump instead which is far more efficient (Nissan do on leafs after 2014) . So while they will they an impact on range it can be reduced a lot. Creeping along in bad weather otherwise wouldn't use much in terms of motive force either you would assume unless it was deep snow


We've all been there in a petrol car, looking at what seemed a nice safe quarter of a tank and realising that it's going to have to last until the road re opens and it's very cold outside. But in an electric car idle time losses can be very small indeed if it was designed correctly.
 
There are so many questions with the broad statement "ban petrol and diesel new car sales by 2040" What about hybrids? Plug in only? If non-plug in how big does the battery & motor have to be? What about other ICE fuels Alcohol, LPG or hydrogen?


More importantly where is the power going to come from?
There are 36 million cars on the road in the UK. If half of those are electric (in 2040) and need a 20kW charge each night (a Tesla S is 60-80kW for full charge, my short work commute would see 8kW in a Leaf) That's 0.02MW x 18,000,000 = 360,000 MW. The current UK generation capacity is 347,000MW! A large nuclear reactor generates 500 MW so even allowing for a factor of 3 (not all cars will be charged at the same time and some daytime capacity can be used, but some plants will be down for maintenance) we would need 240 new nuclear power plants. I don't see those on the long term plan!


Robert G8RPI.


Loving your maths (some of it is right but I swear you make things up) a large nuclear power station does not produce 500MW, truth is that unless you're talking about magnox plants built in the 60s more modern stations are much more powerful, sizewell B for example is over 1200MW and the new Hinckley Point plant is supposed to be over 3000MW.

Current maximum capacity of the UK grid is 85GW it's just we usually tick along at about 35GW usage (we can also import from all those lovely nuclear stations in France.)

Yep 35million cars on the road give or take and if 15 million needed charging all at once then this would put a big drain on the system, except most people don't need a full charge every night, so may only need a few hours. Plug them all in at the same time and you're going to need 300GW of power well over the current capacity, but would only equate to 80-90 hinkley points, that's not going to happen but more and more people are installing home solar and battery technology is growing so in years to come much of the power will be produced by private dwellings and huge solar farms as well as wind farms one wind turbine will charge over 100 cars. A lot can happen in 23 years you can put up a lot of solar panels and windmills in that time.
 
Loving your maths (some of it is right but I swear you make things up) a large nuclear power station does not produce 500MW, truth is that unless you're talking about magnox plants built in the 60s more modern stations are much more powerful, sizewell B for example is over 1200MW and the new Hinckley Point plant is supposed to be over 3000MW.

Current maximum capacity of the UK grid is 85GW it's just we usually tick along at about 35GW usage (we can also import from all those lovely nuclear stations in France.)

Yep 35million cars on the road give or take and if 15 million needed charging all at once then this would put a big drain on the system, except most people don't need a full charge every night, so may only need a few hours. Plug them all in at the same time and you're going to need 300GW of power well over the current capacity, but would only equate to 80-90 hinkley points, that's not going to happen but more and more people are installing home solar and battery technology is growing so in years to come much of the power will be produced by private dwellings and huge solar farms as well as wind farms one wind turbine will charge over 100 cars. A lot can happen in 23 years you can put up a lot of solar panels and windmills in that time.

Hi Andy,
My total generation figure was a google search so could well be wrong. The 500MW nuclear figure is one reactor and allows for utilisation factors But you are right the new Hinkley is much bigger.
However you look at it adding an extra 300 odd GW in 23 years would be a challenge. Capacity is dropping at the moment as old stations are decommissioned.
There is an interesting book on the subject called "A cubic mile of oil" by Ripudaman Malhotra.

Robert G8RPI.
 
I've given this some thought as although my commute is short, it as also steep and prone to bad weather in winter/road closures due to flooding in summer.

Lighting and heating don't have to be anywhere near as high draw as they are in a conventional car. Led headlamps and tail lights and all of a sudden you have o where near the power required for conventional units. Also heating doesn't have to be used, you can use a heat pump instead which is far more efficient (Nissan do on leafs after 2014) . So while they will they an impact on range it can be reduced a lot. Creeping along in bad weather otherwise wouldn't use much in terms of motive force either you would assume unless it was deep snow


We've all been there in a petrol car, looking at what seemed a nice safe quarter of a tank and realising that it's going to have to last until the road re opens and it's very cold outside. But in an electric car idle time losses can be very small indeed if it was designed correctly.

Agreed that electric cars can and will be far more economical in their use of 'non motive' energy than cars of today, or yesterday, I was being less than completely serious in my post.

I was also being kind to the electric car though, I could have easily, as you did, invoked a blizzard rather than thick fog.

It does add an interesting complication to winter driving though, as unless range improves significantly, it may no longer be possible to keep the 'tank' 3/4 full. I don't see my OH accepting 'hang on dear, let's just plug in for 15 minutes for a top-up' when it's cold and blowing, though I suppose the car could have been charging at the resturant.

I think that our car usage will have to adapt to the new technology, rather than the other way around, and that will be hard.
 
Hi Andy,
My total generation figure was a google search so could well be wrong. The 500MW nuclear figure is one reactor and allows for utilisation factors But you are right the new Hinkley is much bigger.
However you look at it adding an extra 300 odd GW in 23 years would be a challenge. Capacity is dropping at the moment as old stations are decommissioned.
There is an interesting book on the subject called "A cubic mile of oil" by Ripudaman Malhotra.

Robert G8RPI.

Our consumtion of electricity has dropped over the years which is why there is still massive unused capacity in the system, despite the media always saying there is a crisis of power production. Some information I found on Wikipedia about U.K. Wind power suggests than in just 8 years we've gone from 1.5% wind power to now over 11% of our power coming from the wind. We have a massive increase in the amount of power from solar sources over the same period, so if we carried on building at the current rate you could argue that 40% of our power could come from wind power alone by 2040, not accounting for solar sources new power stations and other types of renewables. Yes we would need a massive increase in capacity to power all those cars but if the choice is building infrastructure or fumes and emissions, it makes sense to build.

I suppose the real point is to stop plucking figures out of the air.
 
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Agreed that electric cars can and will be far more economical in their use of 'non motive' energy than cars of today, or yesterday, I was being less than completely serious in my post.

I was also being kind to the electric car though, I could have easily, as you did, invoked a blizzard rather than thick fog.

It does add an interesting complication to winter driving though, as unless range improves significantly, it may no longer be possible to keep the 'tank' 3/4 full. I don't see my OH accepting 'hang on dear, let's just plug in for 15 minutes for a top-up' when it's cold and blowing, though I suppose the car could have been charging at the resturant.

I think that our car usage will have to adapt to the new technology, rather than the other way around, and that will be hard.


There are all sorts of winter possible complications. For example if you live on a road that doesn't get gritted (so most estates or back streets) where are you going to charge it if you can't get it back to a cable length from the house?

Then as happened during winter storms last year, what happens if you come home from work to a power cut and leave the next day before power has been restored?

I imagine car use will become a lot more collective as time goes on, I.e. there will be a lot of them on charge somewhere and you'll pay for use of a charged one, drop it off when you are done.

Or it could drive itself back...if self drive works.
 
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I imagine car use will become a lot more collective as time goes on, I.e. there will be a lot of them on charge somewhere and you'll pay for use of a charged one, drop it off when you are done.

Or it could drive itself back...if self drive works.

This is one option that a lot of people have talked of, basically pay as you go, the car does all the driving. The new tesla model 3 has the option of full self driving capabilities, to the extent that you can call it to your location with your smart phone and it will navigate on its own from the parking space to you, and can go and park its self, and has the ability to navigate its self through complex road and motorway junctions at speed with no input from the driver.

So the view is that in the future you hail down as car, tell it where you want to go, it takes you and then carries on it's journey with the next person and when it needs to it can take its self off to charge.
 
There are all sorts of winter possible complications. For example if you live on a road that doesn't get gritted (so most estates or back streets) where are you going to charge it if you can't get it back to a cable length from the house?

Then as happened during winter storms last year, what happens if you come home from work to a power cut and leave the next day before power has been restored?

I imagine car use will become a lot more collective as time goes on, I.e. there will be a lot of them on charge somewhere and you'll pay for use of a charged one, drop it off when you are done.

Or it could drive itself back...if self drive works.

I hadn't even thought about trailing cables... not something that you encounter so much in the UK, but here we have snowploughs, that could be fun.

Actually winter starts could be an improvement, as the car can heat itself while still on mains.

As already mentioned, the people who design, legislate and promote electric cars live in houses with drives and garages, commute short distances and don't necessarially think about the whole 'supply chain' required to implement their decisions.

I don't think electric cars are a bad thing, we do need to move away from the internal combustion engine, but I think there are more than a few things that need to be worked out first.
 
I don't think electric cars are a bad thing, we do need to move away from the internal combustion engine, but I think there are more than a few things that need to be worked out first.

Definitely while I'm generally positive about it there are a lot of issues to overcome. But the same could be said of the internal combustion engine 110 years ago. It's an interesting time at the very least although I do believe it will also herald the true white goods appliance car. Which to me is a shame but I doubt anyone other than the population of car forums would actually be that bothered.
 
Our consumtion of electricity has dropped over the years which is why there is still massive unused capacity in the system, despite the media always saying there is a crisis of power production. Some information I found on Wikipedia about U.K. Wind power suggests than in just 8 years we've gone from 1.5% wind power to now over 11% of our power coming from the wind. We have a massive increase in the amount of power from solar sources over the same period, so if we carried on building at the current rate you could argue that 40% of our power could come from wind power alone by 2040, not accounting for solar sources new power stations and other types of renewables. Yes we would need a massive increase in capacity to power all those cars but if the choice is building infrastructure or fumes and emissions, it makes sense to build.

I suppose the real point is to stop plucking figures out of the air.


I went back to the PC I used for my figures and looked at the history. I misread a table entry for 347TWh production as 347GW capacity
redface.gif
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I've edited my post. It does raise the point that the distribution system can't handle 350GW either so that needs an upgrade. There would also be a version of the "TV AD Surge" (back when ITV first came on the generating stations had problems with regular surges in demand. Lots of people were getting up during the adverts and putting the kettle on all at the same time) where people will get home and plug the car in all at the same time. There might need to be some kind of smart negotiation where the car tells the charger how much it needs (and owner when they need the car) and the charger negotiates with the supplier for when and how much power it can have.


Robert G8RPI.
 
The reality here is it is a huge step change.. but over a 20 year period..
Look at power/ economy gains in ICE tech since the 80'S
Not to mention PCs and MOBILE communication tech.

If the currently poor plug ins double their
EFFICIENCY.
and double their storage capacity
( should be less than 10 years away..but still cheaply mass produced)


The generating requirement will be reasonably achieveable
 
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