Electric cars and the grid..... it has begun.

[willie.macleod]

If anyone wants proof the World has gone mad there is a scheme to lay the World's 3 longest undersea cables from Morocco to Britain. They will build a giant solar farm there.

It's all right, they're making the cables in Scotland. Good to see some form of useful industries returning. More cables going to be needed everywhere soon.

 

[knighty]

Its hard to see battery tech advancing enough.
The limitation is always going to be just how much energy they can compress into a battery small enough and light enough.

imagine what people were saying 10/20/30/40/50 years ago and how far we've come

no guarantee when it'll happen but battery tech should keep improving for a while yet


I'm no expert but looking at most tech, improvements tend to flatten off long before they stop/slow right down

battery improvements are still rolling in pretty steadily right now

 

[fizzy]

Why mad? It's always sunny in Morocco so a few square miles would produce huge amounts of power. Whack the voltage up and losses would be minimal, and you have power which is going to come online every single day on a predictable timetable. What would running it to Nigeria achieve? Apart from providing them with the same, but then, they have lots of sun too so they could do it themselves...

Minimal losses on 4000km cables?

 

[fizzy]

Why mad? It's always sunny in Morocco so a few square miles would produce huge amounts of power. Whack the voltage up and losses would be minimal, and you have power which is going to come online every single day on a predictable timetable. What would running it to Nigeria achieve? Apart from providing them with the same, but then, they have lots of sun too so they could do it themselves...

What about energy security?
What about power losses.
What about the cost?
For the same money we can have 8 Rolls Royce SMRs that will produce far more power and stop us being blackmailed by tin pot dictators.
Oh and they work at night!

 

[fizzy]

You may want to brush up on your geography...

View attachment 360913

Doh I meant Algeria
Even worse slip up for me as I have been to all the Arab countries

 

[GRW]

imagine what people were saying 10/20/30/40/50 years ago and how far we've come

no guarantee when it'll happen but battery tech should keep improving for a while yet


I'm no expert but looking at most tech, improvements tend to flatten off long before they stop/slow right down

battery improvements are still rolling in pretty steadily right now

I don't think battery tech has altered THAT significantly in the last 50-years. Ni-Cad has come and gone, and now we have Lithium - but the basic design, chemistry etc is essentially the same.
(We could say the same for the piston internal combustion engine also. Yes it's been refines, but it's still the same suck-squeeze-bang-blow system that ole Daimler would recognise - while most of the modern engine's complexity isn't doing much for its performance.

 

[cheb]

If it's not nuclear fizzy will condemn it as pointless, doesn't matter what it is.

 

[Kayos]

I always thought it took more power to produce hydrogen, than hydrogen itself actually contains?

It does, roughly 4kw to make enough hydrogen to produce 3kw.

The ideal solution is using solar to create the hydrogen then the inneficency is irrelevant as the energy is low cost

 

[fizzy]

If it's not nuclear fizzy will condemn it as pointless, doesn't matter what it is.

Not at all. Said it a million times. Find a sensible way to store the electricity wind would be great.
And solar closer to the equator.
I just want cheap leccy!

 

[julianthegypsy]

What about energy security?
What about power losses.
What about the cost?
For the same money we can have 8 Rolls Royce SMRs that will produce far more power and stop us being blackmailed by tin pot dictators.
Oh and they work at night!

We're being blackmailed by a tinpot dictator right now, in Moscow. As long as we import electricity we're vulnerable to some extent. Personally, the profit for Algeria would be significant and I doubt they'd want to risk losing it once it came on line, whereas Russia has bigger fish to fry and really isn't bothered, as we're seeing, and paying the price for now. I would have thought that once a solar farm has come on line, the ongoing costs must be very low too, to the extent that it might be worth investing in ways to store it, given that all that's needed is overnight storage.

 

[m_c]

It does, roughly 4kw to make enough hydrogen to produce 3kw.

The ideal solution is using solar to create the hydrogen then the inneficency is irrelevant as the energy is low cost

This is where hydrogen makes sense, use surplus electricity to produce hydrogen, which can then be used later.
It also has the benefit that you can produce the hydrogen on site, so you eliminate a lot of transport costs and risk.

 

[tigdlo]

Titanic was designed to cross the North Atlantic, Piper Bravo was designed to produce oil and gas safely, the Kursk was a submarine none of those worked out so well even though they were designed for it.

Designs and layers of protection get better all the time but most design have flaws weve not reached perfection yet, or each item would last forever or be totally recyclable with no harm to anything or anyone.

I'm not sure I get the point.

My comment may have been a little flippant but a Land Rover with a battery and motor isn't inherently unsuitable for wading but would need t be designed to do so, just like it's diesel counterpart. Ofcourse designs fail I'm sure there have been plenty of diesel Land Rovers have been designed to wade and still got water where it shouldn't be.

I suppose I could have said as long it is designed for it and the design doesn't fail then it would be fine....

 

[addjunkie]

I'm not sure I get the point.

My comment may have been a little flippant but a Land Rover with a battery and motor isn't inherently unsuitable for wading but would need t be designed to do so, just like it's diesel counterpart. Ofcourse designs fail I'm sure there have been plenty of diesel Land Rovers have been designed to wade and still got water where it shouldn't be.

I suppose I could have said as long it is designed for it and the design doesn't fail then it would be fine....

I do get your point, but as with everything designs evolve continuously as they are never perfect. Many things manufactured now have in built failures or we wouldnt keep buying the new version.
Landrover is a prime example. They corrode, but could have been made far better by galvanising. The newer ones will die due to electronic failure.

 

[fizzy]

We're being blackmailed by a tinpot dictator right now, in Moscow. As long as we import electricity we're vulnerable to some extent. Personally, the profit for Algeria would be significant and I doubt they'd want to risk losing it once it came on line, whereas Russia has bigger fish to fry and really isn't bothered, as we're seeing, and paying the price for now. I would have thought that once a solar farm has come on line, the ongoing costs must be very low too, to the extent that it might be worth investing in ways to store it, given that all that's needed is overnight storage.

Yes but don't forget the terrorism aspect - Arab countries are not the most stable sadly.

 

[fizzy]

This is where hydrogen makes sense, use surplus electricity to produce hydrogen, which can then be used later.
It also has the benefit that you can produce the hydrogen on site, so you eliminate a lot of transport costs and risk.

Hydrogen is a brilliant fuel - but using leccy to make it is very very inefficient!

 

[fizzy]

I remember in my Chemistry class at O level discussing with the teacher why they didn't use cheap night time electricity to make hydrogen. This was in about 1980. She though it was a brilliant idea at the time. She was a doctor in Chemistry. We sat together and did the sums. Sadly it made no sense then and still doesn't now. Much better to use the surplus to smelt aluminium or something.

 

[DAPPH]

Hydrogen is the ONLY environment way forward, the trouble with it is all the government realise how much money they will lose.
When we all fit mini DIY Hydrogen converter in the boots of cars and run them on rain water.

Now Sat Navs can be tracked & pinpoint you down to the nearest mtr it's likely you'll be charged for miles driven on public roads via Sat Nav signalling & credit card use as the journey progresses or you stop for a break .

People who think they can cheat / game the system ... are in for a massive shock , this type card charge set up is six or more years ahead of the wave . Hot wire it and you'll be caught within a few miles of getting on the road because of TMS CCTV type devices and all manner of vehicles having enforcement CCTV running to a super computer. that will direct numerous enforcers to you .

 

[DAPPH]

Possibly. What it won't do is generate enough hydrogen to power itself down the road as it takes more energy to split the water that is gained by burning it...

Just make bigger generators and store it dissolved in a safer lightweight chemical that will release it when needed ...... Think Dyson is heading into this area .

 

[Bullet2012]

If it's not nuclear fizzy will condemn it as pointless, doesn't matter what it is.

It’s ok Mr Soda Stream will go quiet once he reaches 10k

 

[DAPPH]

Its hard to see battery tech advancing enough.
The limitation is always going to be just how much energy they can compress into a battery small enough and light enough.

I believe the batteries already contain more energy density than its equivalent amount of TNT ( a sobering thought). When you think that you can Weld with as little as 20A... then what is in a battery pack under your backside takes on a whole different perspective!

The brilliance of the ICE is not it's efficiency (which is nowhere near what an electric motor can produce) - but that you do not need to carry the vast majority of the "fuel" it burns to make its power - because the majority of the fuel in the combustion process is the air around us..... where the battery needs to store and provide 100% of the energy.

Have any of you seen the single cylinder diesel injected small car with a massive fly wheel which I think it fires off every second of fourth revolution of the engine . Had one come chugging past me when I was in a layby in the Hartzs Mountains manyyears ago . it must have had a tremendous MPG . One of them converted to run on household produced methane would be an interesting journey as I saw single cy listers converted to rum on big bottle propane as water pumps way back in 1974 in Cyprus .