OT: Electric cars actually burn fossil fuels

[The Natural Philosopher]

What you and others neglect is the studies that showed that really it all makes bugger all difference to the climate.

Who benefits from electric cars and high fuel prices? Rich people

[The Natural Philosopher]

You do realise that battery packs are there to stabilise the grid against frequency fluctuations and have absolutely zero impact on loss of generating capacity at night or on calm days.

If you look at the fine print at best there is a total of 2GWh of storage there.

About 45 minutes hours of a nuclear power stations output Dinorwig has 9.1 GWh

It can be a power station for about 3 hours during the evening peak.

Its all hand wavy virtue signalling shit for ArtStudents™ who Cant Do Sums

[The Natural Philosopher]

As my BIL - a PhD Geologist once remarked when I asked why he didn't trumpet his findings on paleological climate change (which completely contradicted the modern narrative) ...

"I am a public sector worker, I am employed by the government".

[The Natural Philosopher]

Steam powered aircraft are possible too

As are man powered helicopters

I am sure all it takes is a few million of public money to make them ubiquitous Or perhaps the European Court of Human Rights could repeal the laws of physics on the grounds that they are simply unfair.

[Fredxx]

No, they should have advocated investment in nuclear. We could have become not only self-sufficient in power but also zero'd the burning of carbon for energy.

[The Nomad]

^ this!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Precisely. The fact that the greens refuse to balance the very tiny real risks of nuclear with the alleged existential threat of CO2 induced climate change immediately shows you that whatever is now behind the green movement, its not concern for carbon emissions.

It looks far more like a profiteering excuse to gain state monopolies on energy.

Or a way to destroy Western civilisation.

[invalid unparseable]

as are most meteorologists.

[invalid unparseable]

Our comments on scientists giving their employers what they want went by them.

Car companies too are in favor of EV's as they can make more money from them.

[Paul]

Battery packs also allow them to swing power imported from other power companies.

For example, if there's a problem supporting the 8AM peak in the morning, and the solar array at that hour is not producing, they can import power the night before and charge up the battery as desired, for the amount of consumption between 8AM and 9AM.

The battery pack, rather than being a ten day store, is an arbitrage vehicle for reducing the bill to consumers. That was one of the results from the Australian (tiny) one. It makes a difference to spot pricing and strategies for such.

And the battery is roughly sized for a 24-hour operating cycle. So they could collect the array power during the day, and play it back at night. It's a "non-cheating" solar implementation, not something you see very often. So rather than being an Art Student implementation, that's a "minimum table stakes" implementation that does not depend on other grid elements to "hold it up".

If you had the money, that's how you'd build every last one of them. Then you can saturate the grid with them if you want (which nobody wants, because of the ten day problem).

As a kid, the longest period of cloudy weather I've experienced was 30 days. It rained every f****ng day for a month. The whole family was depressed. Not at all pleasant. I doubt a power system will ever be prepared with storage for that.

What they've done is a lot better than just building a giant solar farm, and expecting phase angles on base load equipment to "deal with it". The generator has different capabilities on leading and lagging, and in one direction there's only about 5 degrees of phase angle before the generator starts to overheat. They cannot correct every grid sin, using the generators. With the battery pack, they can absorb all the output if they want, into the battery. Until the battery is full of course. There's an assumption when you own a setup like that, that you have good weather prediction and load prediction capabilities. You have to be able to accurately plan 24 hours in advance, for a 24 hour system (only capable of managing power for the current day).

If you had that much storage for every Art Student power source, you'd be laughing. It would almost work. Almost. The guy running the system wouldn't have nearly as much hair loss as they do now.

Paul

[whisky-dave]

That's the whole point of it. Charge to up batteries and dischargeb them when needed, cars are just one way of doing this.

[whisky-dave]

Common sense went out of fashion years ago.

[Commander Kinsey]

But it's zero of that magic carbon stuff they seem to hate.

[whisky-dave]

Petrol componaies aren't though and it;s one of the things that disinsentifies the sale of EVs , while EVs might cost more there's more backhanders to forecourt sales staff to keep selling petrol cars especailly in the USA. It;s the 'petrol' componies that train the staff too and hence their lack of knolodge regarding EVs. Also the lack of trained EV mechanics isn't helping matters.

[Commander Kinsey]

It's better to make a decision on each thing rather than pick the closest person to your ideals. Sure, there's a lot of stupid people about, but at least this way people would have a say in everything. Even if there were 50 parties to choose from there would never be one that agrees with you on every point.

[Paul]

You don't have to use a car for everything.

You could commute with an e-bike, and not even pedal.

But nobody is going to do that.

You don't have to haul 8000 pounds of automobile around, just to go to work. An e-bike could be a lot less consumptive.

This one for example, the pedals are arranged so they're almost impossible to use. The pedals makes the vehicle "compliant" with some rule or rules. But it's really just an electric dirt bike (without the dirt bike noise). Range in eco mode of 120km. Likely a lot less in practice. 50km/hr. 2kw (peak) motor, doesn't say what max continuous power is. Whereas "legal" e-bikes are 250 watts.

And if you want seriously disturbed, there's stuff like this.

https://luxe.digital/lifestyle/cars/best-electric-motorcycles/ Price: $38,888 Engine power: 12 kW – 16 Hp Top speed: 350 km/h – 218 mph <=== Acceleration: 0-100 km/h – 0-60 mph 2.2 sec <=== Range: 260 km – 160 miles Website:

The pricing of the dirt bike one, tells you there's no reason for the others to be that highly priced. The Harley on that page, isn't all that good.

I think the same may be true of BEVs. There's no particular reason their price has to "exactly match" an ICE vehicle. There must be some differences in material cost.

Paul

[rbowman]

I'd go so far to say the majority of the people are not capable of critical thought. Majorities win.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No only to those who *read* the real studies.

[Paul]

Well, at least please do not be using OLD studies.

The battery factory at Tesla, has a new process for making cells that no longer needs ovens to bake the materials. A fuel consuming step has been removed. (That's why Tesla bought Maxwell, to get the patent.) There are also solid state batteries on the horizon, which don't use the electrolyte the current design uses, but it remains to be seen where such cells can be used. There still needs to be reliability and lifecycle testing of those. Not just accelerated testing.

I'm hoping that some day, the declining price of lithium cells will be passed on to consumers.

Paul

[Commander Kinsey]

Read my lips, I don't care. I wasn't stupid enough to buy a house right on sea level.