Electricity bills !

[Blatman]

8 hours ago, corsechris said:

My solution would be renewables but base load covered by nuclear, a mix of large plants as well as plenty of SMRs spread about the place for resilience and responsiveness.

 

Ideally, surplus renewables would be stored in something better than batteries. Gravity, salt, even converting to hydrogen despite it being horribly inefficient. Better than turning off the turbines and paying folk to NOT generate power. Madness.

 

Burning stuff is last resort.

 

But, I've no 'skin in the game' the saying goes. I'll be dead soon enough and have no "legacy" to worry about.

 

Exactly what the BBC article covered today and there was little fault to be found in the argument, and at the same time little comfort either.

 

I appreciate the issues with hydrogen are getting it unstuck from whatever it is attached to and then storing it so it doesn't go boom (bit like petrol really...). My simple view is that almost everything used for energy production and energy use, especially rare earth metals and minerals, is finite. Hydrogen is for all intents and purposes, limitless and fantastically energy dense, like almost 3 times more energy dense than petrol. It MUST happen...

 

8 hours ago, Captain Colonial said:

The problem here is that we always “do” the wrong thing, because it’s cheap, simple, and quick.  The process goes like this in business and in government:

 

1) We must do something 

2) This is something!

3) Therefore we must do this 

 

Which also proves that dogs are cats:

 

1) My dog is domesticated and has four legs and a tail

2) Cats are domesticated and have four legs and a tail!

3) Therefore my dog is a cat

 

Singing from the same hymn sheet  

[corsechris]

I used to be optimistic about hydrogen as an energy carrier. Less so now. Yes, it has high energy density by mass, but low by volume (1/4 that of petrol for example). That doesn’t necessarily matter too much depending on what it’s being used for, but we’ve seen what it means for cars, and that doesn’t work well with current technology, leading to short lifespans for storage vessels and a range of practical issues. 
 

Hydrogen is very difficult to contain. There were some promising ideas around binding hydrogen in solid substrates like hydrides, but like so many promising ideas, it is yet to materialise in any practical scalable form.

 

But worst of all is the sheer inefficiency of using it. People cry we don’t have the grid capacity for 100% BEVs. True, but it isn’t impossibly short, around 40-50% more. Hydrogen production at scale means adding the round trip costs, which are significant. 1 ton of hydrogen needs about 50MWh to electrolyse, and contains around 30MWh of energy…..assuming 100% conversion efficiency. Current fuel cells are around 60% so overall, we’d need to at least double grid capacity. 
 

And then we have transportation to consider. Another fixable issue, of course, but it still needs doing. 

 

Hydrogen will have a place, and if we ever manage to get fusion to work then we should have lots of cheap power to make it practical, but there are huge hurdles in the way.

 

Finite resources isn’t just a problem for batteries. I’d argue we’ve already gone too far on the population front.

 

But, all the negatives aside, I hope smart people are working on it, because we really can’t carry on the way we are. 

[Euan Hoosearmy]

Here's the economic problem with "green" hydrogen.... (from here) - by economic, I mean, why going down this path won't bring cheap energy.

 

"How much overbuild of sun/wind generation capacity would be required to produce the “green” hydrogen?

 

Truly breathtaking amounts of incremental solar panels and/or wind turbines would be required to make enough “green” hydrogen to become a meaningful factor in backing up a grid mainly powered by the sun and wind. The Seeking Alpha piece has calculations of how much nameplate solar panel capacity it would take to produce enough “green” hydrogen to power just one small size (288 MW) GE turbine generator.

 

The answer is, the solar nameplate capacity to do the job would be close to ten times the capacity of the plant that would use the hydrogen: “Consider the widely deployed GE 9F.04 gas turbine, which produces 288 MW of power. With 100% hydrogen fuel, GE states that this turbine would use about 9.3 million CF or 22,400 kg of hydrogen per hour. With an 80% efficient electrolysis energy cost of 49.3 kWh/kg, producing that one hour supply of hydrogen would require 1,104 MWh of power for electrolysis.

 

To generate the hydrogen to run the turbine for 12 hours (~ dusk to dawn) would require 12 x 1,104 MWh, or 13.2 GWh. Given a typical 20% solar capacity factor, that would require about 2.6 GW of solar nameplate capacity dedicated to generating the hydrogen to fuel this 288 MW generator overnight.” Given the tremendous losses in the process of making the hydrogen and then converting it back into electricity, it is almost impossible to conceive that this process could ever be cost competitive with just burning natural gas."

 

Just to give an idea of how big a 2.6GW solar farm would be - I found this:  At that rate we'll run out of land....

 

[corsechris]

I think we need to accept that green is never going to mean 'cheap'. But, you have to decide what 'cheap' means. Only very recently have we started to even contemplate the costs of our impact on the environment....and still there are lots of influential sorts who choose to deny it, in public at least. Plus of course the huge vested interest that is the oil producing nations and cartels who have no interest in anything changing.

 

I recall thinking to myself some 50 years ago in a chemistry lesson that burning the stuff we rely on so much for so many things was a pretty stupid idea.

 

I lost hope in this one ever coming to fruition, but fusion power could save us from ourselves. With enough cheap & clean electricity we can do most of the hard stuff for little cost. But, fusion has been 10 years away for the past 50 years.

 

Beamed power is another Sci-Fi dream that could in theory save us. Sadly, nobody is looking at that with any intent and given the world we live in, it would be a massively vulnerable from attack by bad actors.

 

To quote the fictional Scott..."you can'na change the laws o' physics"

 

Depressing, isn't it.

 

eta. I forgot that other staple, Thorium reactors. Another '10 years from now' magical solution that sadly will probably not deliver. That said, there is Copenhagen Atomics https://www.copenhagenatomics.com  What, if anything, practical comes from this, time will tell.

[Blatman]

On 11/06/2025 at 08:08, corsechris said:

But worst of all is the sheer inefficiency of using it. People cry we don’t have the grid capacity for 100% BEV

The grid is the least of our worries...

There are 10 streets within a 5 minute walk of the family home in nort London. There is an average of 100 dwellings pr street (50 each side) , the vast majority without driveways and a significant proportion with more than one vehicle. 

I beieve the "cuurent" (sorry...) plan to "help" with vehicle charging is to have a charge point in every lamp post. In each of these streets there is an average of 10 - 12 lamp posts. So where exactly do we charge the battery powered vehicles that need to plug in?

There must be hundreds of thousands of streets like this in the UK, equating to millions of vehilces that will never have a dedicated charge point. I guess the argument will go that we don't have dedicated parking spaces at the local shopping centre either. I get it and maybe this point is irrelevant but I think most of us like having our cars full of jiuce at home rather than a cab ride away. I don't leave my car at the petrol station once I've filled it up. If we all did that there'd be no room to fill up... OK that might qualify as a bit of reducto ad absurdum...

I also tend to think of Guy Martins programme "Fastest Electric Car". Made a few years ago now, but... he grabbed the latest (at the time) electric vehilce and drove from Grimsby to JoG and back to see how much it cost and how long it took. I can't remember the costs because I was struck the time it took. 26 hours.

I regularly drive FAR in excess of the best EV range for work and as we know, motorway driving kills range in an EV. To turn what is an acceptable eight hour "travel day" in to two, or maybe even three days is not practical. I have to take stuff with me so taking the train is out. I could ship the stuff ahead of time but when going to a breakdown (much of my work is breakdowns of critical business infrastructure) that is not practical either. I have to arrive at the door, with the gear in the vehicle within the SLA. In an electric vehicle I'd be in for one or two nights in hotel(s) before arriving at site. Business costs, and therefore all other costs including inflation etc will suffer in this scenario. EV's are a non-sustainable solution for an awful lot of perfectly sensible and legitimate reasons. That's not to say climate change isn't legitimate of course, and like most people I reflect on how I personally migth be impacted because that's one of the few things I know about. BUT journey times measured in days not hours, even on our small island, is an obvious problem and for countries and continents that rely heavily on road transport because of the efficiency and convenmience door-to-door transport brings, EV transport that relies on external power from a charging point is a non starter...

[Euan Hoosearmy]

Just going back to my last point about the size of the solar farm required - I needed to see how big 14000 acres is... if my maths is correct (excuse mix of measurements) it's about 7.5km x 7.5km... which if you need to see graphically is roughly the box around Guildford here.....  That's for ONE 288MW turbine that (dodgy maths again) could power something around 200,000 to 250,000 houses. 3-5 Guildford sized towns.

 

[Captain Colonial]

1 hour ago, Euan Hoosearmy said:

Just going back to my last point about the size of the solar farm required - I needed to see how big 14000 acres is... if my maths is correct (excuse mix of measurements) it's about 7.5km x 7.5km... which if you need to see graphically is roughly the box around Guildford here.....  That's for ONE 288MW turbine that (dodgy maths again) could power something around 200,000 to 250,000 houses. 3-5 Guildford sized towns.

 

 

There are those who say replacing Guildford with that might be an improvement.

 

/not me, of course

//although Coventry might work

///or Luton

[p k]

Living on a 1980s housing estate 2.3.4. bedrooms mostly with drives for 1 or 2 cars does not help with off street charging either , all the semi detached houses and some detached   in the estate are being refused permission to connect  7Kw chargers as the houses are wired in a system referred to as loop through . a cable from the road goes to house a and is then looped inside the houses to house b .

The connection is deemed unsuitable for two chargers so a new cable has to be run from the road to house b before either can be allowed a charger .

Speaking to the survey engineer he also mentioned that when gas boilers are banned that a lot of streets will have to be completely rewired with larger underground cables and feeds to individual houses upgraded  to cope with heat pumps , chargers and more electric cookers and showers.  He also mentioned that they are getting more requests for three phase to cope with bigger heat pumps and a couple for larger chargers   

[corsechris]

4 hours ago, Blatman said:

....EV transport that relies on external power from a charging point is a non starter...

 

Norway doesn't appear to agree with that assessment.

 

A typical EV may not suit YOU, but they could suit a lot of other folk. Average daily mileage in the UK is still only 20 miles. 20 Miles!!  Motorway warriors need not apply, although plenty do have BEV and manage just fine.

 

The Guy Martin thing was a clear expose on the lack of charging infrastructure and how that impacts long trips. Not BEV ability to do long journeys in reasonable time periods.

 

Plenty of real-world evidence that a BEV can do long trips (1000km) in sensible times (9 hours), including charging. The caveat being that there is adequate charging infrastructure. If you like spreadsheets, have look here:

 

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzvvWJHrBS82echMVJH37kwgjE/edit?gid=15442336#gid=15442336

 

The reference is an ICE that did the trip in 8:35, the next best was a Mirai at 8:40, using hydrogen. Kind of impressed he was able to refuel it tbh. After that, lots of BEVs starting at 8:55 without using battery swapping. Technology & chemistry moves on at pace as well.

 

Although it seems like nothing more than a gimmick to appease the "I can refuel my car in 2 minutes and absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I often stop for a pee when refuelling" brigade, BYD have introduced 1MW charging that can add 249 miles in 5 minutes. I spent that long trying to persuade 17l into the tank of the Westy this morning. The chance of building thousands of 1MW chargers is minimal though, and the strain on batteries can't be good.

 

Looped house supplies have been a problem long before EV came along. Electric showers can be 10.5kW, an electric oven & hob, similar. Maximum load on a single phase EVSE is 7.2kW - the difference is that a car will be charging for hours, not a few minutes. It's also highly likely that a car will be charging at cheap rate, so I'm not convinced about the arguments against installing EVSE to looped premises myself, particularly if you add some intelligence to the EVSE so it can throttle back if other demands require it.

 

To address the 'rare earth metals' issue, lots of manufacturers are now adopting LFP chemistry rather than NMC. LFP has some issues, though most can be dealt with easily enough.

 

And, all the above against a backdrop of increasingly complex, expensive and unreliable ICE, mainly due to emissions regulations.

 

 

Again, BEV isn't a perfect one size fits all solution. Neither is hydrogen, even if we dismiss the fact it can't be produced in volume at the moment. Fuel cells and hydrogen storage tanks have finite lifespans the same as batteries & ICE do. 

 

None of the complaints about any of the ICE alternatives mean we shouldn't try to make best use of them.....but we won't, because we are stupid, venal  and selfish.

 

 

[Kit Car Electronics and Essex AO]

14 minutes ago, corsechris said:

 

Norway doesn't appear to agree with that assessment.

 

A typical EV may not suit YOU, but they could suit a lot of other folk. Average daily mileage in the UK is still only 20 miles. 20 Miles!!  Motorway warriors need not apply, although plenty do have BEV and manage just fine.

 

The Guy Martin thing was a clear expose on the lack of charging infrastructure and how that impacts long trips. Not BEV ability to do long journeys in reasonable time periods.

 

Plenty of real-world evidence that a BEV can do long trips (1000km) in sensible times (9 hours), including charging. The caveat being that there is adequate charging infrastructure. If you like spreadsheets, have look here:

 

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzvvWJHrBS82echMVJH37kwgjE/edit?gid=15442336#gid=15442336

 

The reference is an ICE that did the trip in 8:35, the next best was a Mirai at 8:40, using hydrogen. Kind of impressed he was able to refuel it tbh. After that, lots of BEVs starting at 8:55 without using battery swapping. Technology & chemistry moves on at pace as well.

 

Although it seems like nothing more than a gimmick to appease the "I can refuel my car in 2 minutes and absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I often stop for a pee when refuelling" brigade, BYD have introduced 1MW charging that can add 249 miles in 5 minutes. I spent that long trying to persuade 17l into the tank of the Westy this morning. The chance of building thousands of 1MW chargers is minimal though, and the strain on batteries can't be good.

 

Looped house supplies have been a problem long before EV came along. Electric showers can be 10.5kW, an electric oven & hob, similar. Maximum load on a single phase EVSE is 7.2kW - the difference is that a car will be charging for hours, not a few minutes. It's also highly likely that a car will be charging at cheap rate, so I'm not convinced about the arguments against installing EVSE to looped premises myself, particularly if you add some intelligence to the EVSE so it can throttle back if other demands require it.

 

To address the 'rare earth metals' issue, lots of manufacturers are now adopting LFP chemistry rather than NMC. LFP has some issues, though most can be dealt with easily enough.

 

And, all the above against a backdrop of increasingly complex, expensive and unreliable ICE, mainly due to emissions regulations.

 

 

Again, BEV isn't a perfect one size fits all solution. Neither is hydrogen, even if we dismiss the fact it can't be produced in volume at the moment. Fuel cells and hydrogen storage tanks have finite lifespans the same as batteries & ICE do. 

 

None of the complaints about any of the ICE alternatives mean we shouldn't try to make best use of them.....but we won't, because we are stupid, venal  and selfish.

 

 

 

I wish there was a stronger 'like button', I couldn't agree more! As you say, many people can very successfully charge at home for daily use with 3kW, never mind 7.2kW.

 

I've driven big distances even in poor aero EVs (think Transit sized) and it's far more about the infrastructure, trip planning and technology aids than fundamental limitations of the EV itself in most cases - and that's improving monthly, not yearly.

[corsechris]

18 minutes ago, Kit Car Electronics and Essex AO said:

 

I wish there was a stronger 'like button', I couldn't agree more! As you say, many people can very successfully charge at home for daily use with 3kW, never mind 7.2kW.

 

I've driven big distances even in poor aero EVs (think Transit sized) and it's far more about the infrastructure, trip planning and technology aids than fundamental limitations of the EV itself in most cases - and that's improving monthly, not yearly.

 

Appreciate the 'support' Mike. I'm not an EV evangelist - I get they don't suit everyone but I was starting to think there wasn't anyone here who had even tried an EV. I only recently went EV myself for the daily driver. Previously I had a PHEV which convinced me that a full EV would do me just fine. I confess to a huge sigh of relief when the PHEV was gone. No more obscenely over complicated ICE to fret about. I'm perfectly happy with the Zetec in the Westy and the Busso in the Midlana (until it sells) for my ICE fix.  For the daily drive, I'm more than happy with the quiet, comfortable, nippy (4.2 to 60) acceptable range (300 real world miles) car I recently bought. And I bought it used, not new, and intend keeping it a long time, so I didn't even get the buyers remorse I got with the PHEV, despite keeping that over 8 years.

[Stuart]

Is Norway a fair comparison?  1.3 times the size of the UK with only 5.5m population. Lots of cheaper hydro-electric power too - c. 13p per kwh. Awash with North Sea oil cash not busted like we are. 

[Kit Car Electronics and Essex AO]

Not as much fun as a Westie in the mountains perhaps, but 300hp E-Transits at 2000m altitude are a very surreal experience honestly!

[corsechris]

22 minutes ago, Stuart said:

Is Norway a fair comparison?  1.3 times the size of the UK with only 5.5m population. Lots of cheaper hydro-electric power too - c. 13p per kwh. Awash with North Sea oil cash not busted like we are. 

The assertion was that BEV was useless as transport, no argument about costs, demographics etc.

 

I pay 7p kWh when I pay anything at all. Most of the time I run on solar. When I don’t I run on stored cheap rate. 
 

I’d love to have a quiet word with those responsible for giving away our oil wealth though. We should have a bl**** massive sovereign wealth fund. Instead, we have a bl**** massive debt and a small bunch of obscenely rich a********s. 

[Blatman]

7 hours ago, corsechris said:

The assertion was that BEV was useless as transport, no argument about costs, demographics etc.

The assertion was, and still is that for people who do more than "commute", and there are plenty of us, and (a point which perhaps I failed to make as clear as I wanted) where road transport infrastructre is the only option for the journey, EV's are a non starter. Perhaps non-starter was a bit harsh. Definitely a compromise that needs careful thought.

I did also say it was about me and my use case as that is all I have direct experience of. As I say, there are plenty of us driving far in excess of the double charge range of an EV quite a lot of the time. EV's turn those journeys into a potentially costly affair in both "fuel" and time.

 

Not sure I agree with ICE engines being more unreliable, the Ford Eco-Bang notwithstanding (wet belts? Really, Mr Ford?)