Car problems due to lockdown

Good posts @Kristen and @Fat Controller

Sorry to contradict but battery storage is already in use, has been for a couple of years and is ramping up fast. They look like metal ship's containers, stuffed with batteries that sit alongside solar panel farms, Also since the 1980s we have Dinorwig which is a pumped storage station in Wales. It's well worth a visit by the way as it's an amazing feat of engineering. Water is pumped up to the top of the mountain at night using capacity that would otherwise be discarded. Then whenever there is a sudden surge in demand the sluice is opened and water powers turbines on the way down, it has a capacity of 9Gwh and can be brought online in a matter of minutes.

Grid capacity has been reduced to match the reduced demand over the last few years. Conventional power stations are gradually being turned off, last year for the very first time in over a hundred years we switched off all the coal fired stations for a week. As a country I feel proud about that, renewables are taking over and are already being used to keep the frequency within tolerance, so I don't see it as being a headache.

Agreed but a good start has been made, in London, some 20 miles of very deep tunnels are already dug and are now being fitted with high voltage cables to power kerbside chargers across the capital:
London Power Tunnels | National Grid ET

That's Ok if you are in London, we need similar schemes all over the UK.

I had a test drive when they first came out and it was both slow and ugly. The latest model is still ugly but much nippier and has a decent range too, I wouldn't mind having one. Secondhand Leaf prices have actually been going up the last two years because they make an excellent second 'shopper' car, they cost next to nothing to run and the worry about battery life has been unfounded.

I see where you are coming from, but from my brief EV relationship they are not as expensive to run as you might think. My new BMW i3 was about £360/month to lease, no upfront costs (i.e. no deposit) and includes insurance and 'free' electric and maintenance. It was a rolling month by month deal (because I was on a short term contract and I needed something for commuting), if you go for a 3 or 4 year PCP it will be substantially less. I did the sums when I leased the EV and a comparable ICE car was more expensive month by month even though the ICE was about 10K cheaper to buy outright.

To get a more suitable bigger family car the Korean models are not much more than my little BMW i3, when I come to replace my ICE in two years it will be one of those.

 

OK, let me qualify on the battery technology - battery tech for the grid to be sustainable for any length of time is a non-starter, unless of course we have huge battery farms and even then there is the problem of harmonising that power with the grid (batteries store DC, the grid needs AC at 50Hz or thereabouts to remain stable.

I have visited Cruachan power station which is a pumped storage facility, and it has turbines the same as those I described earlier.

Regarding the lease of your BMW i3, that does seem quite cheap which makes me suspect it was on some sort of business tariff - as you know, I recently switched cars, and looked at electrics and hybrids and they were prohibitively expensive. That may be that I was in the 2-3 year old vehicle arena, so the deals were different, but I did look at some new deals also and could not find anything sensible money wise, and there remained the fact that if I was tying myself to a car for £300+ per month, I at least wanted to like the thing (and no disrespect, but I couldn't like the i3 less if I tried)

 

Don't get @CanadianLori started on 'time metering'!

Whoops! I've done it now!

 

As most of you know, I'm not very technical but I saw plans a couple of years ago for something of a similar idea but using pressurised air. This was designed to use underground chambers (preferably utilising old coal, gas and oil mines) to use excess natural energy electrical production to power compressors. These would compress air into the underground chambers and when there is the need for extra electricity the compressed air would be released to power generating turbines.

 

This old thread seems appropriate for a laugh.

Problems With An Automatic Car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

It was a personal tariff, this is the company I used:
Get a Practical Renault Zoe R110 Monthly Car Subscription · Evezy
They have hiked up their prices recently so the cheapest now is a Zoe for £339.

I would not recommend it either! Having a test drive around town vs spending 6 months with it are two very different things. Around town and most of my commute were very enjoyable. To improve kWh it is very light and has skinny low rolling resistance tyres, these were the biggest problem for me as the slightest bit of windy weather it gets blown around like a 1950s Austin on crossplys. The suicide doors are very impractical and unnecessarily expensive to manufacture. It has very little boot space and it is only a 4 seater so apart from it's good looks it doesn't have much going for it as a family car.

 

Exactly my point. This is one of the main reasons they want to roll out smart metering and have us all get used to smart appliances, because 'they' want the ability to switch them off when they are struggling for capacity in the grid. Harmless for the most part - switching a freezer off for 20 mins or so is not really going to do much harm (to be fair, they spend large chunks of their life pretty much in an off state anyway), however it is the principle that we should be kicking back at. What is the next move - switching your heating off for an hour because although not at your desired temperature, your house is at 20º and it has been mandated that this is sufficient?

Again, this all feeds back into more and more control being taken over our personal lives at the same time as us being forced to pay for the pleasure - - what gives people the right to essentially decide how we run portions of our private lives? It is another example of the elites patting the scum on the head and saying "it is for your own good - - you'll thank us for it really" just before raping their bank balance again. The really astonishing thing is that people cannot seem to see why this has led to people like Trump being elected.

Oh, and for the record we do actually make quite a lot in this country - from cars to plane parts, cosmetics and chemicals. We used to make a lot more, but that dwindled thanks to big corp greed and grants from the EU to move production away - a whole different thread, but a trend that we absolutely must reverse.

The theory makes sense, however I would be concerned about pumping pressurised air into those underground chambers; holding a liquid, even under pressure, is one thing but holding a gas is a whole different bag of monkeys. Pumped storage is a proven technology and whilst currently it has been the preserve of mountainous areas because they offer a bit of help thanks to their geology, there is absolutely no reason why we couldn't either construct more of them in similar locations or indeed create the conditions required in other locations. Indeed, this could be done in conjunction with better waterway management in general, and even storm drains and oversized lower reservoirs at the power stations to handle flood waters in storms.

Again, the age old problem of this country would pop up though - we would argue about it for thirty years, make a start on doing it and then somebody would come along and change the plan just after work had started.

 

That is still not terrible in terms of a monthly payment for a new car - the issue is that it is a car that nobody wants. The only one that would even remotely get consideration out of that bunch would be the Hyundai - Get an excellent Hyundai IONIQ Car Subscription · Evezy - but at £419 a month, it is a hell of a lot of money; worse still, it has a real world range of 120 miles; that is fine for commuting for the most part, but throw anything more at it and you are stuffed. The Tesla Model 3 SR+ is a slightly more sensible option, but still has a bit of a rubbish range (220 miles) and is £799 per month! For balance, I am sitting in a fully loaded Jaguar XF that will do over 500 miles on a tankful of motion lotion, is costing me just over £300 a month as a used buy, with 20,000 miles on the clock. To be fair, even that was more than I wanted to pay initially, but things like condition, mileage, spec and so on all fed in. Diesel costs (pre world madness!) were around £60 to £80 per month. Even assuming the running costs of a Ioniq or Model 3 would be around £15 -£20 per month, I am still cheaper running the Jag.

The other point that is often body-swerved with electric cars is the battery liability - when you are the first owner, or leasing the car, you don't care because you don't have to. What happens when these cars really start to come through on the used market? What of the battery liability for second or third owners, because they are not cheap. Even the lease contracts on electric buses, coaches, vans and so on all have some sort of clauses in them relating to battery liability - you must not do more than a certain number of miles before charging each day, and the battery liability is covered in the cost of the lease; even the LT's (Borismasters) that you see trundling around London have their battery liability covered by TfL (they own the buses, operators just lease them) because the bus operators wouldn't touch them with a barge pole under any other circumstances, such is the cost of the batteries.

What happens when that Ioniq reaches 7 years old and Mr Smith finds that it needs a new battery..... do you really see anyone dropping £4k or so on a new battery (accepted they may get cheaper, but not likely to drop by a huge amount), because I don't. I see 7 or 8 year old cars getting scrapped and causing even more of an environmental headache.

 

My brother-in-law owns a gas company that does exactly that! They store gas in underground caverns. I'm guessing that it would also be under pressure otherwise it would be too awkward to get out again. Although it may not be as much pressure as may be needed to drive a turbine.

 

Interesting - what gas is it? I presume that it is not air, in which case it begs the question if it liquefies when put under pressure and is being stored in its liquid form?

Its a good way of storing up energy (assuming of course we can produce sufficient surplus), and I can't see why it couldn't be put to a high enough pressure to drive a turbine; I'd imagine the bulk of the grunt needed would be to start the blighter spinning, once that is achieved all you are looking for is enough pressure to keep it going.

We need to consider all of these sort of things in making improvements to the way we use and store energy. I am feeling as though I am coming across as being very 'anti' in this thread, and it is not the case at all, at least when it comes to the technologies; what I am against is things being mandated/dictated without any joined up thinking, often at the cost of those who can afford it least, and being driven by those who don't care what it costs because they are loaded and "I'm alright Jack"