EV Charging

[AndyRKett]

@AndyRKett
No point in getting on your high horse and making new statements just because you were called out on a completely untrue statement "3kw electric heaters in each room.


Show me a heating device that puts out 3kW of heat for 300W of input power.

I forgot we are not allowed to discuss things in the world of Robert, we have to make all statements in advance and then have nothing more to add so that Robert can sit and pull them all apart because he is OOOOh so clever….

Go back and look what I said.

In essence the comparison was that we would use a 3000kw heater (electrical power) in the past, these days that same room might only need 300w of electrical input to heat to the same degree, as stated, I did not elaborate fully on what that meant but use your imagination I’m not saying there is some magical fan heater pushing out 3Kw of heat for only 300w of electrical power being put in.
See my statement above about a 1200w heater barely able to warm anything right in front of it.
Then there are improvements in insulation of every part of modern houses,

The discussion is the grid can’t cope… but we used to use far more power than we do now and in the last 20-30 year the capacity of the grid has reduced as demand has reduced.

The point here and the point you missed as you where too busy hiding behind your calculator which anyone with half a brain will also realise that the grid can also expand to provide more power if the demand is there to need it, but as with all economics the cost of electricity depends on the demand and no one is going to flood the market with cheap electricity to provide for electric cars 20 years from now that no one is driving at the moment. If the demand was suddenly there, (and there is never going to be a sudden 30M electric car demand for electricity) As proven with the old nuclear stations (when in the 50s there was an explosion in demand for electricity) infrastructure can be built very quickly, it’s expanding at the moment with work going on all over the country. Taking a snapshot of the grid right now and saying it can’t produce enough energy for 30M cars is quite simply stupid and idiotic

As always Robert you’re creating strawman arguments to attack and make yourself feel big.

 

[g8rpi]

No. My original post was that the statements on the National Grid site someone linked to do not add up. 6.2GW is not enough to charge a significant number of EVs. They also ignored that capacity is reducing an demand will also increase due to restrictions on new gas and oil heating.

Robert G8RPI.

 

[AndyRKett]

6.2GW is not enough to charge a significant number of EVs.

Have you been on the sauce ??


Taking everything out of any context 6.2Gw is a huge amount, it’s 6 nuclear power stations and more the. 6 times what we can bring in on the cross channel supply from the continent !!! It’s certainly enough to charge a “significant” number of EV’s.

Not a few hundred or thousand we are talking enough to charge millions of EV’s, and you tell me to get off my high horse !!

 

[g8rpi]

Have you been on the sauce ??


Taking everything out of any context 6.2Gw is a huge amount, it’s 6 nuclear power stations and more the. 6 times what we can bring in on the cross channel supply from the continent !!! It’s certainly enough to charge a “significant” number of EV’s.

Not a few hundred or thousand we are talking enough to charge millions of EV’s, and you tell me to get off my high horse !!

You are wrong. Six point 2 Gigawatt (6.2x10^9) is enough to power 282,000 (rounded up) 22kW (22x10^3) chargers of the type typically used in domestic installations (32A 3 Phase). That's less than a third of a millon not millions.

Even for a "13A" single phase 2.4 kW plug-in charger (that takes about 1.5 days to charge a mid range Tesla or 17h for basic Leaf) it only amounts to 2.6 millon chargers.
For Superchargers (V2) at 150kW it's only 41,000 (currently 624 in UK so already using 1.5% of capacity). Yes I know the V3 has storage, but that is only time shifting, it does not change the overall capacity.


Put another way 6.2GW x 24H = 148.8 GWh per day. At 4m/kWh (good condition driving average figure) thats roughly 37,000,000 miles per day TOTAL for the UK not including transmission and charging losses. For a just 20 mile commute (both ways) that's 1.8 million cars.
Total mileage for a year is 37,000,000 x 365 = 13,500 millon miles. At the average 10k miles per year per car that is 1.35 millon cars.

Total UK car mileage in UK was 254,000 millon in 2017 So electric capacity is just over 5%.


If 10% of UK cars (3.2millon) were electric we would be limited to about 4200 MILES A YEAR per car for 6.2GW supply capacity.
Note that it is actually impossible unless there were two times as many cars so one was charging while the other was being driven.


WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH ELECTRICAL CAPACITY TO REPLACE MORE THAN ABOUT 5% OF CURRENT CAR USAGE


Robert G8RPI.

 

[AndyRKett]

Again “taking everything else out of context” that mean not making assumptions that every house in the uk is going to have a 22kw 3 phase charger installed, because you know what? They aren’t!

Also not every person plugs in their car at the same time, something that keeps being highlighted time and time again. But let’s assume we are talking about an average single day. Not every car plugged into the grid at any given moment will be charging. Some will be waiting for a down turn in demand and reduction in cost or not scheduled to charge till a certain time, some will be charging but again maybe not at full capacity for a number of reasons and most people have a single phase 7kw charger outside there house because they don’t have 3 phases to the property…..

Now do your maths taking that into account exactly and precisely modelling it accurately not just idiotically assuming everyone who has an electric car will plug it in every day and then charge them all day at a high rate of charge

If someone did have a higher capacity charger then that meant the car chargers quicker meaning there is more space on the network for other cars in that day to also charge, slower charging rates taking longer means the available power has to be split amongst them.
So if it takes 6 hours to charge an electric car to full in an average day you could charge 4 of the same car at the same rate.

Now even with your own maths (which I’ve not been bothered to check it’s probably about what I had surmised) you’ve proved my statement right that 6.2GW is enough to power chargers “millions” of charger (therefore charge millions of cars) in a single day, it’s actually irrelevant that it’s taken 17 hrs to do so. No one asked the capacity of the battery or set a time in which the car had to charge, but I stand by my statement that 6.2GW is a huge amount of power and plenty enough to charge millions of electric cars. (And I didn’t spend any time doing any maths !!)

Now the only other thing I want to clarify is where this 6.2GW keeps coming from. As right now at 1800 on a week day evening when everyone gets in from work whacks the Tv on puts the kettle on, plugs there phone in or electric car if they have one, kids turn on the computer to do home work and people are cooking on there electric cookers even right now there is still way more than 10Gw of free capacity in the grid using sites that track national grid capacity and that’s not taking into account the reserves I understand there is something like ?85GW total capacity if everything was switched on to provide power and right now we’re using as a nation 55GW

You can get you’re little calculator out and tell me how many electric cars 30GW of power could charge and then try and argue again that there is not enough capacity to replace more than 5% of cars to electric. And again bare in mind your current, completely illogical thinking ‘that every car that’s replaced is then on charge all of the time every day’ just doesn’t apply.

And just one final point to highlight the stupidity of your little strawman arguments, if it takes 1.5 days to charge a tesla and you’re charging that Tesla all day every day putting that demand on the grid the when is anyone actually using the car? And therefore why the hell does it need charging if no one is using it. If you can wait 1.5 days for your car to charge then clearly you don’t need it every day and don’t have to charge it every day.

 

[g8rpi]

Read my post,
The National Grids declared available spare capacity (not mine) is not enough to run "millons" of chargers for EVs.

Of course every home won't have one, there is not enough capacity. Not even for a 2.4kW "granny" charger. There is only about 215W excess power per household available. Thats 4.95kWh / 17 miles if you charge for 23h and use the car for 1h.


Simply put, If 10% of current cars were electric and the available spare electical supply capacity was spread between them so the 6.2GW excess was used 24 hours a day then at a realistic 3.5 miles per kWh the average mileage would be limited to about 3600 miles per year. That is not enough for most users nd the availbale spare capcity will never all be used even with "smart" charging.
I'm done.

Robert G8RPI.

 

[AndyRKett]

I'm done.

Of course you are Robert, as always you pluck figures from the air, create arguments no one is making, tap away on your little calculator irrelevant numbers that don’t apply in the real world, make yourself look stupid, then bow out when when you realise you’ve shown yourself up.

Only in your world would 6 1000Mw nuclear power stations worth of power not be enough to charge a “significant” number of electric cars that’s the ultimate idiotic argument you made here, everything else your waffling on about is to try and dig yourself out of that hole.

We only have 6 active nuclear power stations in the country at the moment all producing just a bit over 1000Mw each. So you’re saying (let’s take half that) if the UKs opened 3 nuclear power stations tomorrow, or even two of the massive new Hinkley point power stations currently being build that would not be “significant” in terms of how many electric cars is would charge.

With all your calculations what you forget time and time again is ‘t’

A car with a 60kw battery charging at 22kw reaches full charge at which point it has to be used to then need charging again, it’s not going to take 24 hours to charge but if it did it still needs to be used. Even taking 12 hours to charge at 22kw through some horribly inefficient charger that means there is still capacity to charge 2 cars in a 24 he period. Even stupidly exaggerated numbers like this do not reflect the way people charge or use cars, people charge it once, it takes a lot less than 12 hrs to charge 1 car at 22kw and then could spend days or more than a week using that car before charging is needed again. In which time dozens more cars can be charged.

There is plenty of power for a very significant number of electric cars to be added to the network even now!

 

[g8rpi]

No such thing as a 60kw battery or even a 60kW battery :bang::bang:
You clearly have no idea of the units and quantities involved.

Don't complain about my accurate calculations when it is you who are pulling "millions" out of thin air.

Show me how many cars you think can do the UK average of 10,000 miles a year on 6.2GW of power available for charging. Show your calculations.


Robert G8RPI.

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

No such thing as a 60kw battery or even a 60kW battery :bang::bang:
You clearly have no idea of the units and quantities involved.

Stop being pedantic and the grammar nazi equiv of unit expression. You know exactly what is meant! It’s not need and clearly shows you’re starting to clutch at straws over your claims which appear to have little to no factual basis to back them up!

I’ve already given up and you’re now getting as bad as the anti EV morons commenting on sponsored FB adverts for EVs spouting their nonsense.

Again and again you seem to the recycling the same stuff which doesn’t stick as yet again people are having to remind you not EVERY ev will be plugged in and charging at exactly the same time.

Likewise the higher output the charger the shorter period they’ll be placing a demand on the grid as they finish a vehicles charge cycle a lot quicker!

 

[AndyRKett]

:doh:

I should have heeded the words or Mark Twain

“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

OK so I can see I am going to have to break this down into really simple terms. I have had to go back and see where you even came up with this 6.2Gw figure from

Oh and BTW it makes this ...

No such thing as a 60kw battery or even a 60kW battery :bang::bang:
You clearly have no idea of the units and quantities involved.

absolutely priceless.

Honestly I hope your bosses are not watching this and I hope I never have to fly a plane where you've had anything to do with designing the power management.

So.... [rolls sleeves up]

60KW, - 60KWh you knew exactly what I meant, typo on a phone screen maybe even auto-correct who knows what ever the priceless thing about it is the 'h' relates to 't' time which is what I keep telling you to factor into your calculations, but you cannot see your mistake.

lets look at where you got your 6.2GW number from by looking at the article, which until now I had not read but once I did, my god did I have a good laugh.

Don't complain about my accurate calculations when it is you who are pulling "millions" out of thin air.

This may come back to haunt you here.

the article https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted

Enough capacity exists
With the first of these, the energy element, the most demand for electricity we’ve had in recent years in the UK was for 62GW in 2002. Since then, due to improved energy efficiency such as the installation of solar panels, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16 per cent. Even if the impossible happened and we all switched to EVs overnight, we think demand would only increase by around 10 per cent. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002 and this is well within the range of manageable load fluctuation.

so at some unspecified point in 2002, the national grid experienced a peek (instantaneous demand) for power of 62GW that is to say at a single moment 62GW of power where being drawn from the grid. this is not GWh, this is instantaneous power consumption (keep reading I will explain)

There is then no link drawn to say that if the peak demand raised by 10% that would power all the electric cars in the UK, 6.2 would be a figure you plucked out of thin air making a very random assumption.

Now assuming there was something like 6.2GW increase in demand across the whole UK this is not 6.2GWh, this is 6.2GW per second,
that's is for anyone bored enough to read this 1 watt = 1joule per second, If you plugged in 30million electric cars for 1 second no you're not going to get very far there is going to be a big bang somewhere (think ALF the tv series from the 80s).

But as you pointed out above car batteries are not 60kW they are 60kW/h

so all your maths is being based on 6.2GW per second, not per hour

6GW is basically the output of 6 x Chernobyl reactor four (the one which blew up) sized nuclear reactors being turned on all in 1 second.

It is also about the same amount of power you'd get from one large inshore wind turbine in a year, or a couple of smaller ones.

So if demand went up by 6.2GW that is not per hour that is per second there are a lot of seconds in a year.

The mistake I made here was being lead by your ridiculous math's.

The final point here is that article does not say anything about demand increasing by 6.2GW/s it says peak demand in 2002 reached 62GW, and that they expect if every single car in the UK changed to electric power in an instant over night which would be impossible. then they would expect the demand on the grid to increase by 10% that is to say there is a certain demand placed on the national grid each year and it does not state not an increase on demand of 6.2GW in a single second, and it is taking into account that cars don't charge rate there range in KW/s. OK so 6.2GW is not going to charge "millions" of cars at once, but is ample to keep millions of cars charged in the course of the year.

But that's not what the article says. The article talks about an increase of demand on the entire network in the course of a year if demand increase 10% something like over 300TWh (2014 figure) per year, then the grid could cope.

How many electric cars can you charge on 30TWh per Year ?? oh and that was 300TW used we wasted about 35TW in losses across the network.

just to reiterate your point

You clearly have no idea of the units and quantities involved.

oh and ---> :bang::bang:

Go get busy with that little calculator of yours.

 

[AndyRKett]

Show me how many cars you think can do the UK average of 10,000 miles a year on 6.2GW of power available for charging. Show your calculations.

So 6.2GW(/s) most electric cars seem to do about 4miles per KWh so you can do the working out, maybe 700 miles of charge being generated every second ?

22Bn miles of charge per year?? 10,000 miles would be enough for 220K cars to do a full 10,000 miles each. There is Eye Airfield in Suffolk not far from where I live. They have 4 Wind turbines that produce a combined 12.4GWh per year (rather conveniently) So your calculation is based on the grid needing 2 x small-ish Windmills to charge all the UK's electric cars.

that's a "Significant number" my mistakes being made on your initial comments surrounding the article I had not read. Clearly in a 12 month period the national grid supplies more than 62GW, earlier at peak we were using 55GW, right now its more like 25GW and that means right now there is 30GW capacity from the peak or 37GW from the 2002 peak the highest demand there has ever been, that's not being used....

How many electric cars could be on charge right now and still only just meet the peek demand from earlier on?

The fact that you thought the uk only used 62GW a year and that a "10%" in that article meant that every EV in the UK could be charged on 6.2GW is so hilarious Mr Chartered Engineer.

Doc Brown's Delorean used 1.21GW and there are over 100 Deloreans in the UK so clearly using Robert MAtHS the UK must use more than 100GW !

 

[g8rpi]

I did not come up with 6.2GW of excess capacity to charge cars, the National Grid did in a link posted by somone else.
220,000 cars is not "millions".

You think the NG figures did not include wind?

"They have 4 Wind turbines that produce a combined 12.4GWh per year (rather conveniently) So your calculation is based on the grid needing 2 x small-ish Windmills to charge all the UK's electric cars."

Now you are just talking rubbish and showing you don't know the difference between POWER and ENERGY.

You need 550GWh to allow 220,000 cars to do 10,000 miles a year each at 4 m/kWh. A more realistic 3.5m/kWh needs 628GWh so about Two hundred of your smallish (sounds like 1MW rated at 33%) turbines, not 2.


And since you bring it up, yes I am a professional engineer and actually happen to be working on future energy needs as part of my day job at the moment.

Robert G8RPI.

 

[g8rpi]

Stop being pedantic and the grammar nazi equiv of unit expression. You know exactly what is meant! It’s not need and clearly shows you’re starting to clutch at straws over your claims which appear to have little to no factual basis to back them up!

I’ve already given up and you’re now getting as bad as the anti EV morons commenting on sponsored FB adverts for EVs spouting their nonsense.

Again and again you seem to the recycling the same stuff which doesn’t stick as yet again people are having to remind you not EVERY ev will be plugged in and charging at exactly the same time.

Likewise the higher output the charger the shorter period they’ll be placing a demand on the grid as they finish a vehicles charge cycle a lot quicker!

I'm not being pedantic or a "grammar nazi". AndyRKett clearly does not know the difference between power and energy. This is illustrated by his post after yours where he compares the NG figure of 6.2GW with 12.4GWh per year to suggest that two (approx 1MW rated, as usual while he accuses me of pulling figures out of thin air he does not give a reference) small wind turbines could run the current UK fleet of 220,000 electric cars for 10,000 miles each per year.

This is orders of magnitude out. Even the roughest calulaton shows that 2MW (approx 2700HP) gives 9W (0.012HP) per car averaged over the 10,000 miles.

Yes I've been repedaative but only to counter his nosense.

Robert G8RPI.

 

[AndyRKett]

I see you’ve not bothered to read anything I’ve said, and what you’ve have read you’ve still not understood anything.

I'm not being pedantic or a "grammar nazi". AndyRKett clearly does not know the difference between power and energy.

This is exactly the problem you’re having here, you don’t seem to realise 6.2GW firstly was never an accurate figure to work from because that was an instance of peek demand in 2002.

What it reads like is you think the whole country for the whole of 2002 only used 62GW and that in itself doesn’t make any sense because that’s still not GWhs

Demand goes up and down through the day at around 6pm yesterday the uk was using 55GW then later on that had dropped to 25GW. That’s not all of the electricity that the county is using in any given year, month, week, day, or hour. That is Watt/s and the
Level of draw has to be maintained for an hour to get a GWh figure. So if demand went up from 62GW by 10% for just one hour there are still another 8759 hours in the year.

Your being repetitive and intransigent because you either really can’t see how big you’ve screwed this up or you can see what a massive balls up you’ve made but are sticking to your guns hoping it’s too complicated for other people to work out. I’d like to think it’s the latter but am more inclined to consider you just don’t see the massive error you’ve made.

 

[AndyRKett]

How to do maths

I have a PC that’s plugged into a power socket that logs the power use. Right now is it drawing 200W and that is the instantaneously figure.

If I leave it on for an hour it has used 200Wh of electricity.
If I leave it on all year (8760hours) then it has used 200Wh x 8760 = 1752,000watts or 1752KWh or 1.752MWh in 12 months.

I pay about 14p per KWh or unit, so it’s about £245 to run that computer for the year.

If I turn off the computer the instantaneous demand on the grid goes down by 200W but if the computer breaks and I throw it away the demand on the grid goes down by 1.752MWh per year.


Timmy has a computer that uses 6.2GW when it’s plugged in, (some sort of crazy super computer) work out his a annual cost of electricity @14p per KWh

 

[g8rpi]

A. I did not propose the 6.2GW as what is available for charging EV, that was the Natonal Grid from a link by MEP. My comment was it is not enough.

B. Generation capacity has gone down, not up.
C. There are no errors in my calculations

D. You are avoiding addressing your own errors and going off on a tangent as a diversion or trolling.

 

[AndyRKett]

A. I did not propose the 6.2GW as what is available for charging EV, that was the Natonal Grid from a link by MEP. My comment was it is not enough.

C. There are no errors in my calculations

You took an article that said that in a moment of peak demand the uk was using 62GW and separately in the article stated that if every car in the uk switched to electric, it would see a 10% increase in grid demand.

And you thought that meant they where saying every car in the UK would therefore be charged on 6.2GW… not even GWhs

The article never said every car in the uk could charge on 6.2GW that number was never mentions and it was your maths that came up with that figure.

My error was to take your GW figure and convert it to an actual figure that electric cars charge in which is Watts/t
So to address my mistake, I mistakenly thought you knew what you were talking about without reading the article.
Right now the entire country is drawing 35GW that’s running every home 30 million of them business and factory in the country right now. and powering more than 200,000 electric cars already registered on the road, it’s powering the refineries making petrol and diesel for all the current cars on the road And you think a 5th of that is not a significant amount of power?



You’ve then ranted and raved about that all the way through this and not only making yourself look like an utter idiot in the process, completely unable to admit your mistake, which as a chartered engineer you should know better, because as a chartered engineer you have a “duty to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct including openness, fairness, honesty and integrity.” You never display and Ounce of integrity on this forum when challenged about anything, and in this instance there are a number of other issues around “accuracy and rigour” I’m sure there is probably something in there about not doing anything to damage the reputation of the engineering council.

You won’t and absolutely cannot admit in this instance how much you’ve screwed up, because you’ve got a massive chip on your shoulder and can’t accept to be wrong in any situation, I’m going to guess that it’s just you don’t like me pointing out your errors but if it was any other junior engineer for example who tried to point out your mistake at work, When you work with aircraft systems and you bedded down then like you are now, because you cannot accept someone telling you, that your wrong? Than that poses a very serious risk to the safety of anyone on a aircraft that uses anything you’ve designed/worked on, and poses a massive problem to the reputation of the company you work for which you have made public in a multitude of places all over the Internet !!

 

[g8rpi]

I have no problem with saying when I'm wrong. I've done it several times on this forum. Infact I'm pro-active about doing so, it's part of aviation culture.

 

[AndyRKett]

I have no problem with saying when I'm wrong. I've done it several times on this forum. Infact I'm pro-active about doing so, it's part of aviation culture.

I can't think of an instance when you admitted a mistake?

Every time you have been, and let's face it, it's not a rare occurrence, I've never known you once to admit your mistake.

But regardless of any other occasion, in this very instance everyone can see you plucked a figure from thin air having misread the article, you thought every in the UK, if electric could be charged from 6.2GW you derived from a figure from 2002.
Forgetting that time is also a factor in energy production and the 62GW figure was an instantaneous number, you seemed to think this was all the electricity the UK uses in a year.
You then proceeded to do a whole host of engineering math's to say that 6.2GW could only charge a hand full of cars, forgetting that that was GW/s and not GWhs, berated me for not knowing anything about the figures involved, and now while its plane for everyone to see refuse to admit the massive error you made all while boasting about being an engineer charged with planning the future of energy use.

Way to go with your honesty and integrity.

The same honesty and integrity you exercised when you repeatedly slapped me with forum infractions because I have a link to my YouTube channel in my signature. But no..... you seem like a real genuine kinda guy.

 

[g8rpi]

Post #39 of this thread
" poor use of granny charger I admit."

Robert G8RPI.