Electric cars.

Ironically the conversion to gas power has been the cause of the UKs largest single reduction in CO2, since burning methane produces half the CO2 burning carbon does. We have a good wind resource we have been slowly (and more rapidly) utilising but I am confident it is going to hit a brick wall very soon;

There is a strange economic phenomenon that people often miss, the effect of indirect subsidy through competitive undercutting. Because wind powers construction cost is, in itself, fairly cheap, when the wind is blowing it can sell for significantly under what every other power plant sells for: the result is that wind gets utilised and every other power source has to wind down in the meantime because they cant sell. However, because these sources are still necessary for when the wind doesnt blow, their cost has to get increasingly pushed into smaller and smaller sale periods. The result is the other variable energy sources (gas, biofuel, oil) have their prices increase inversely proportional to winds expansion.

Percent of Wind; %W, Percent of Gas, %G, Gas cost and sale, cG, sG
%G=1-%W
sG=cG/%G = cG/1-%W.

This is only true if we consider fuel cost to be elastic: if Gas isnt being burned, their main cost dissapears, but the cost of gas is also mostly variable depending on how much is being mined: actually digging it out of the ground is dirt cheap, its the transport, equipment and so on that makes the cost. The yanks have proven again that the more gas you mine, the cheaper it becomes; but only if you mine it yourself, rather than purchasing it from the international market, which changes depending on everyones consumption.

Still, we can see from the ball park formula, as wind increases to greater proportions, the cost of gas will skyrocket. still, we arent that close to this period.

This can be seen as a subsidy, since wind wouldnt be paying for the time that the wind isnt blowing: if Wind was to pay for itself totally (as it will have to as the proportion of wind increases) it would need large battery stores and massive overproduction (i calculated using UK data the cheapest method would be about 180-220% total production (to generate 1 mw constant you need 1.8-2.2 mw of installed capacity) and 4-6 days of batteries: in effect, the price of wind, BEFORE batteries, would have to roughly double. This figure may go down with bigger european interconnectors but not that much, the claim that "it is always windy somewhere" isnt totally false, since this is generally the case, but misses that, sometimes, often more than once a year, it isnt windy anywhere. If you compare british and french wind on Gridwatch.templar.co.uk you can see various periods where this is true. I Suspect the cheapest battery tech will be hydrogen being burnt in... converted Gas power plants. And since theyre all getting on in age now, we will have to start building new gas power plants, on the price budget of wind.
That said, it will still be cheaper than burning gas because the price of hydrogen electrolysers seems to be very very low. To counter, since itll be second hand energy, the cost of electricity for these periods will increase by 1/efficiency which is about 70%. To counter counter, this probably wont be more than 20% of run time for maybe then 15% increased cost. Id need to look at my sheets to figure out that figure.

 

As my energy bill in winter is mostly about gas they can do what they like with electricity, it wont make much difference to the majority of people.
Looking at the price for 1 kwh of gas and one kwh of electricity there is no comparison price wise, I'm sticking with gas.

 

The rest of my post is more conspiratorial: there is, imo, clearly misinformation in favour of wind going on in a lot of research being handed to the government.

This website which comes up on page 1 of searches shows the blatantly suspicious behaviour of these advocates:
Analysis: Record-low price for UK offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas - Carbon Brief
Wind is 9x lower than gas! Using the peak gas crisis prices... scroll down to their 2nd graph for a good laugh.

Another:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...5/electricity-generation-cost-report-2020.pdf
page 25 for a graph
Official government paid research, showing gas to be clearly uncompetitive to wind in 2020... provided you use the most favourable capacity factors for wind and introduce a carbon tax that already eclipses 100% of the actual costs of gas plants, and is expected to double by 2050. Here too the graphs are suspect, using similar colours for fuel and "carbon". This was fixed in the 2023 paper when they used a fuel price altered by global fuel crisis.

Strange too that they decide to exclude nuclear on every paper beyond 2016 where the last calculation was made, discussing scale economics on wind and solar but not nuclear beyond an initial projection. Lets look at the enormously overbudget Hinkley C so far;
Wiki quotes EDF claiming 32.7£ billion final cost estimate, perhaps itll go higher though. Covid was a bad delay.
60 year lifespan (though it could last for 100 with good care and a refurbishment, if we bother to in 60 years though).
Estimated 1.5 billion MWh over lifetime, 25 million MWh per year.
construction estimate of of 22£/MWh. This is a little bit lower than the gov. estimates for wind and solar construction price.

Here was EDFs estimates, which dont align for some reason, perhaps the 32 billion includes some other factors like loan prepayments or something.

EDF's attribution of cost elements in price
Element £/MWh Percent of price
Construction risk premium 35, 38%
Other financing costs 26, 29%
Operation & maintenance costs 19.5, 21%
Capital cost 11, 12%
Total electricity price 92.5​

Note that insurance, loan interest and so on is 67% of the strike price. That said, they originally asked for much more and reduced it upon another reactor being commissioned.
If we include EDFs estimates, the graph looks like this:


So for a reactor without benefit of economy of scale, it still outcompetes projected future wind and solar... provided the bank does something with the gigantic freeloading cash injection it gets, which im sure it will.

To me, this seems like a real sweet deal and it becomes very peculiar as to why more nuclear isnt being produced; is it just that no private company, which we are relying on, can afford the upfront cost? EDF is french state owned, after all.

Even more depressing; Fusions total global research budget, over its entire post-bomb lifetime, has been about 7 billion £ in todays cash. not even enough for a single small fission reactor. really sad, and again deeply suspicious: perhaps lobbying from a certain trillion dollar industry is to blame.

For fission, some of the other claims about its problems have also already been solved, years ago: we and the yanks proved in the 80s its possible to just transmute as much fissile uranium or plutonium as you want for very little investment, allowing existing 238 supplies to last for billions of years. The yanks also came up with a nifty design to transmute the harder to isolate isotopes to make for easier seperation via centrifuges, so decomissioning expired fuel on site would be doable. Modern alchemy. Integral fast reactor - Wikipedia
It got cancelled because digging uranium out of the ground was cheaper at the time.

 

Oh, and theres another factor; considering we have to build truly enormous quantities of energy production, newer boilers, new grid systems, we might as well add on district heating systems using the waste nuclear heat production, which would reduce the cost of nuclear per mwh again by half. if we do do that, its a no brainer, but you gotta convince everybody to have their radiator plugged into a hot water mains.

 

Thats right, according to a motoring mag, the 2024 target for manufacturers is 22% electric vehicles, or "they risk a fine of £15K per car sold outside that allowance" so that mag expects some very big discounts if thier sales drop below that.
2023 electric sales estimated at 16%

 

Yes, nuclear reactors are the way to go. Having a mucky muck from Atomic Energy as a best friend for years, and knowing he was the head of the department that controlled the safety of everything from a simple screw to storate, I know our small Candu reactors are pretty much the safest in the world. My friend used to get letters from scientists around the world asking for him to consult on their projects. He turned down Russia... When I worked at Atomic Energy, it was interesting to know about all of the little reactors parked in hospitals which quietly produce medical isotopes and such. And there has never been an issue with them.

And small reactors that can be linked to local power grids would be wonderful. All electric cars over here don't make sense. Hybrids, according to some owners I've talked to, are really quite good now for those who need to be on the road longer than 200 miles in the dead of winter. Urban folk just going shopping could survive with one of those however to go on vacation anywhere would require renting something with long range capability.

 

They interviewed some people at a charging station the other night and most there said they were doing OK with electric cars.
One woman said it's the best thing she ever did as she could travel for miles and not have to bother going to a service station to fill up.
Not sure what planet she was from.
I guess she mostly charges at home.

 

Its down to how much they cost to make, I cant see any manufacturer selling cars at a loss just to avoid government fines.

 

It's not just the cost of making an electric car and what the manufactures markup is, you also have to take in to consideration the dealers markup.

A report in the states found that some dealers markups were up to 15% more than the MSRP. Dealers had responded by saying that bulk of their profits tends to come from after sales but with electric cars being cheaper to maintain, they were putting on a higher markup on new cars to offset this.

Tesla have cut the cost's of their cars over the last 15 months, most of the factories don't have unions, plus most people purchasing a Tesla car have been doing it online, which they have to travel to a storage depot to collect it, no dealers to make a markup.

 

You also have to take into account VAT and car tax, so the government are their own worst enemy when it comes to boosting new car sales.

 

These new subsidy rules that the likes of the US and France have now imposed will result in fewer electric vehicles qualifying for subsidies.

I read somewhere that 34 electric car models in the US qualified for the full state subsidy in 2023, that now has dropped to 20 models that qualify for full subsidies.

Fewer Electric Vehicles Will Qualify for Federal Tax Credits in 2024

The French have done the same, the Dacia Spring EV has been one of the cheapest electric cars in the EU since 2021, with a starting price of roughly €20,000 in France excluding the state subsidy, which could bring the car down to €13,000 if you qualified for the full subsidy. Now with the French's tough stance on where the car is assembled and where the minerals are mined for the battery, the "Dacia Spring" now does not qualify for any subsidies. Some of the cheaper EV's that were also some of the best sellers in France 2023 now don't qualify, you could say EV'S are becoming more expensive and will be even more difficult for those on lower incomes to afford one.

Some of the cheapest EV's and best sellers in France included the MG4 and other Chinese brands. The Model 3 Tesla which is the cheapest Tesla new on the road, the Dacia Spring etc etc, none of these cars now qualify for any subsidy.

There is a list below of the current electric cars in France that qualify for a subsidy, how many of those models would you put in the affordability bracket?

The 2024 ecological bonus: the list of the 53 electric cars concerned - Beev

 

We are in to mixed energy here in the USA. But remember to compare the small UK country to the USA, not a comparison. UK is the size of our Michigan.

 

The USA had wind turbines I believe before we did over here, lots more room for more turbines than in the UK, but admittedly I wouldn't like to see every piece of land disappear under turbines, but its all relative, we have a small country with comparatively high population density.
I think you could say we are into mixed energy over here as well, we still use lots of gas, just not much coal anymore.

One of the big arguments that we have over here is the greens wanting us to just turn off the fossil fuel tap tomorrow, and that is pretty unrealistic to say the least.

 

Considering the UK wanted all new car registrations to be fully electric by 2030 before backing down to 2035 then those figures look very poor.

Can you provide a link to where you get those figures, I copied and pasted your quote and when it took me to EVadoption I got a totally different set of forecasted figures. The site quotes that by 2030 for BEV and PHEV the forecast for 2030 is 4.7 million sales which gives a 29.5% share in the states. Which is correct?