lol-lol

Well something is going on a global scale. French rivers drying up so the power station cannot function properly etc and causing EDF to effectively go bankrupt and be bailed out by French taxpayers.

Such a shame garages, used as garages to put cars in as in many houses in the States for example, when an EV charged in a garage, where the whole car including battery pack, could emerge all toastie from the garage and the range would probably be 20 or 30% more than what we see of a car charged outside in the cold on the drive. Needs more tech to keep the battery warm when it is getting charged and ready to go out on the road. We learn that a decade ago on our Bluecars.

It is an evolving story. Standing charges being much higher has not hit yet. Octopus say they will continue with a 4% discount on those standing charges. I have not got enough solar panels yet, prices are plummeting and certainly plan to get another half dozen or dozen in the next few weeks, prices might fall further and will wait for the Equilux on March 17th. Waiting for better solar panels ie with efficiency two to three times current should occur in the next year or two. Battery storage costs falling quickly to so need to complete y current 5 kWh storage and need to get up to the `12 to 24 kWh mark. My EV is not V2G and it is lithium ion rather than LFP so not suited to using as a power bank. New Renault 5 looks good for that but that will not be produced in RHD until next year. Sad fast of being not one of those EU countries that drive on the right and get cheaper cars that get to market first. Left is right and right is wrong.

The rate for power in the house look very good for single daily rate but the dual rates ie cheap night time rates work out much cheaper overall. Those of us who have night time rates, usually much less than 10p per kWh use more than half of our lecky during the cheap night time rate, something like 60/40 for me but others are even better than that so may average unit per kWh was 18p per kWh. Can do much better I think. Using my EV Zoe I reckon it cost about the same as my ICE Arkana which I have a fuel card for so fuel cost around 30p a litre and a litre takes me about 12 miles so both are around 2.5p per mile energy costs but next week and next month changes, after the Budget and energy cap changes the difference is likely to be pronounced as lecky running costs get back down towards 2 p mile and fuel costs might go up a few percent in the budget but also the frozen personal allowances increasingly push things in to the higher rates of tax so fuel might start costing be 60p a litre unless a do even more tax avoidance, which I will probably so as I am close to retirement and should lob money in to pension and draw it out next year avoiding income tax and NI, only logical. Any reason you are not going to multi-rate tariff, time shifting that difficult to do George ?

Oddly BREXIT does not come in to electricity supply even though it is an item that is declared for imports and exports oddly enough, thank God zero rated for customs duties. The UK trades with with France big time with electricity in real time with the flow via the Interconnectors so the UK covers their peak times and visa versa. Some other EU countries we now buy electricity off ie Denmark with its massive wind energy usage and Norway with its hydro etc, both 1.4 GW connectors. Now I hear we are going to lay a interconnector to Morocco, that is one long wire, to get as much as 3.6 GWs from the sunshine soaked country. All good and great for increasingly cheap and reliable supply. No duty due either, yet, perhaps an attractive future revenue stream like excise duty on fuel at 58p per litre, plus VAT at 20%. Taxing would only encourage more self micro-generation and storage of cheap time lecky. Bar stewards.

No sensible person pay those rates unless one is desperate for a quick top up charge and if one does then it would just be for a few KWhs. Company drivers might where it is going back to the company and they are reclaiming the 20% VAT presumably. I did put a 67p per kWh for about 19 kWh so it cost me £13 put a cannot imagine paying much more than that for a boost from 33% to 73% to get me home rocking along at 75 mph indicated rather than needing to drive at 60 indicated mph to do the 70 miles home. I just have so much credit in my Octopus account from Referrals, Spin the Wheel and those pay you back ten fold sessions at tea times when I use little to no energy it is getting embarrassing how much I am in credit. Paying £130 a month for lecky for a 4 bedroom detached house and for charging an EV during the low 9 p a kWh time period is just so economic !!

Do not think such matters have been tested in court. We had a bit of an issue on my estate, as many places have, due to climate change and poorish construction of the supplies of electricity and comms conduits to the house ie collapsed pipe tunnels severing the lecky and or comms the electricity board took supply off my electricity supply to feed my neighbours house. Obviously before the meter so I was not paying for it and it was like that for days, looked very messy. I don't see how Revenue could control such a neighbourly supply of power to the next door EV. The 5% VAT is being paid. Easily safely done to my two neighbours and would not even be a trip hazard to the Postie as the lead would go across lawns and if the car is parked net to the lawn would not be across the path to the front door though I see some posties walking across the lawns and hopping over the low wall on one side just to avoid a 10M walkaround. Unenforceable I reckon.

So many questions come up and challenges of governments to maintain revenues streams. I am not it is fully recognised how profitable and easy it will become for individual to store, sell and gift electrical energy to others and therefore circumvent the supply companies, or optimise the buying time from them to minimise costs to individuals. Examples of this: - About half of houses in my road appear to have at least one EV charger. It now costs about a grand to get a new EV charger but how about neighbours renting out use of their chargers usage to neighbours. Not that using a granny cable can be quite good and very cheap start to charging EVs. Charging ones home batteries when cheap, charging the car and with increasing V2G cars one can take that power and gift it to family and friends when visiting. Eventually avoiding having main power delivered in to the house and saving the exorbitant Standing Charge and just topping up ones electrical storage in the home battery when one fills up at a cheap TESLA or other charging network and using ones vehicle to take it home. Effectively using the car battery, or a portable home battery like from Allpowers, Ecoflow etc and bring the power home and save having the £200 a year electricity Standing charge. We will see in the budget on Wednesday what Jeremy the Hunt will do keep the coffers topping up, a penny or two on fuel duty, but electricity is just to evasive to tax. Any rise in VAT on home supplies will just spur more solar and home batteries to make us of cheap night time lecky so UK government will get even less revenue from that and look to raise it elsewhere.

I think I would not use a high performance lithium ion car battery unless it was out of the car and only being used as a static battery. Lithium iron phosphate different matter as much more capable of thousands of charge and discharge cycles. My company, which I ceased being a part of yesterday but battery division goes on, its Lithium metal polyamide batteries, which are solid state are good for thousands of cycles but should be kept cooking at 50C or so. Lithium Iron Phosphate seem the answer at the moment ie do not mind being charge to 100% repeatedly, do not suffer as much deg per cycle of charge/recharge and aer cheaper. got to be worthwhile though, 50p a kWh but back in to the grid at least I reckon ie double money plus !

There is a Chademo to CCS-adapter, which some firms have devised, not sure how efficient or power handling or all te details but it is around. LEAF downfall was more about Rapidgate due to having no active cooling in large part I suspect. Despite that I really wanted one ie the 64 kWh battery size one which they could not supply and there was a question as to whether it would have a heat pump or not, 2021 models were suppose to get the heat pump as standard but this was the time of parts shortages. I did not get heated seats with my top of the range Zoe so had to fit aftermarket ones. The home batteries i to know the revenue I get from supplying the grid far outweighs the battery damage ie batteries only ahve 1 to 4 thousands charges in them so I want to making a few quid on every supply back to the grid.

Electric vehicles will crush fossil cars on price as lithium and battery prices fall ...the world’s largest EV battery maker recently announcing it’s on track to cut battery costs in half this year, new research suggests the decline in EV prices may by happening faster than thought. Analysts think ICE (internal combustion engine) car makers are in for a rude shock, as EV prices come in below existing petrol and diesel models at the lower end of the market. ........Because key minerals needed for LFP battery production are cheap: Lithium, iron, aluminum, graphite and copper. None are rare, all are commodity items and easily sourced from ethical supply sources. Even the lithium is cheaper as it uses lithium carbonate, rather than lithium hydroxide.”

I did no know that, thanks.

Ukraine is grain of course, and nice seaside holiday locations in Crimea and some other Black Sea resorts but also fertiliser I gather from the news. Lack of fertiliser could could cause crop shortages in many other countries. Much of the push of Green Energy is coming from individual and some very large businesses as well as the EU which still seems keen to pursue that agenda. Carbon tax to come quite soon for all imports including the UK despite the Trade Cooperation agreement UK has with the EU. EU has stopped much of the EV subsidies but they are not needed any more but still the move to ween off Russia natural gas and any Russia products even if refined in another country. This things seem to be happening due to Green tech just getting massively better year on year whether that is wind turbines, solar panels, heat pumps or EVs.

Heathrow is in the ULEZ zone so all us staff who work at LHR have considered the car we use to get to work. The massive amount of vehicles doing pickup from the cargo centre are rapidly changing over to EVs which siut the journeys better anyways ie pickup from the various airline sheds and drop off at multiple freight forwarders remote transit sheds. Getting the passenger to change is happening at a pace and we should continue to see improvements in air quality barring the oil nails of cars that are permitted to drive on the M25 which there is no tight control of and we need to get rid of those cars through scrappage scheme.

Disappointed if 22 kW not a UK option. Planning to pop from Worcester to Cardiff, which is about 90 miles, the to Caldicot to see an offspring and they have 22 kW Dragon AC charger for not too expensive with the Octoverse RFID card, just wanted to try them and chuck in 4 Kwh which should only take about 12 minutes just as a test. I have come across 16 kW AC chargers too which I have used, free when using the restaurant. Cannot recall any 43 kW AC but my Zoe can only use up to 22 kW and only afew Zoes are the QC43 kW AC versions. I like AC as the cost is always much lower in my experience.

Sadly the nom I had numerous DSGs, the rather poor 6 speed wet DSG and the good in my experience, others have had very bad experiences, the 7 speed dry clutch box which I had in twin charge and probably my favourite Skoda of the dozen I had the mark 2 1.8 TSI L&K with the 7k red line that was so quick, 160 hp my arse, 0-60 in a nidge over 7s, still pulling well at 135 mph. 7 speed Renault DSG the same gear stick layout but lack tiptronic sideways but then one uses the paddles. 3 seconds on the right up shift paddle to switch from auto to manual change, happy days for max acceleration. Just peaved Mercs and other markets get the 160hp instead of the 140 hp I have to settle for. Will chip to 180 hp I gather but it wheel spins now so not too much point, needs better tyres than the Kuhmos it was fitted in Korea with. Love the gearbox but like the DSG it does getting excited after a spirited run and takes so time to settle back to relaxed driving. Damn the learnt driving feature.

I love it. Especially the baguette holder. Only negative I have heard is that Renault are dropping the on board charger down from my 22 kWs I have in the Zoe to a 11 kW, everything else I have heard so far is great. I presume the 40 kWh Urban/city version is going to be an LFP battery which is a plus and I think it will still be OK for longish journeys, hopefully all models have seat adjust up and down which is the Zoe's achilles heal in not having it, not great for car journeys over 2 hours I find. Faster DC charging than Zoe, 150 hp motor option. My Zoe shows over 150 hp in the digital TFT screen so hopefully most powerful R5 will show over 165 hp. Be nice if they can be chipped but then on fairly warn tyres my Zoe would oft spin up, better now I have the A grip Toyos on there. Greater range and a host of new features. Just needs some good finance deals, which Renault did for the Clio etech, and I think Renault will be adding even more to their profitability. Same we are not going to see it for a year or so. Dacia Spring will tempt many, as in Europe (13k Euros in Germany !!) and it will be big along many other Dacia and Renault vehicles. Dacia and Renault, the new Skoda/VAG. Do still like the Cupra stuff mind you.

I would expect the panels to be set early in the day and then left most of the day with the troops fairly far away. Most Western countries have done their fighting at night as we have superior night vision equipment. Weaponry is evolving as even as far back as the Falklands the onboard laser, original used for targeting, was found to be quite useful for blind the enemy. Now we have Dragonfire which is being used in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Needs more power as 30 kWs is too slow to destroy incoming drone, needs to be more like the Israeli 100 kW system used in Iron Dome so it can fry an incoming missile in a fraction of a second or no more than a second or two rather than 10-ish that Dragonfire is allegedly taking. The future is mainly in energy weapons. Good ofd fashion material strength sometimes has a place, like with the Icelandic boats beating up the RN ships is Cod war. The Russian have a good history of improvising and we should be using all the laterally thinking we can. Ukraine recently lost a city to the Russian advance and with Russia doubling it military budget and with its economy growing 3% last year, unlike some of the Western countries, the Western forces need to think smart which history has time and time again showed UK Generals are very bad at and it has taken new blood, clever civilians to win the wars. I expect both electric vehicles and electro-magentic weapons to continue to take over from using oil powered vehicles and weapons hurling lumps of steel, or uranium, at each other. If the West starts using nuclear material Russia has said it will also start using nuclear material in the weapons it uses and that will not be good either.

Not yet. Almost every other form of transportation is moving rapidly to battery and electric propulsion. Motor bikes, about 300m now, car production 100m a year, vans massively transitioning, trucks undergoing take up to but need 1 MW chargers so will take a while, Ferries, went on one in Norway during the summer, fantastic. Just aeroplanes and big ships to go. Ships are transitioning to LNG from diesel before going electric probably not for a decade or so but eventually. Army, Navy and airforce will be integrating batteries in to their portfolio. Already have them for drones of course carrying surveillance and increasingly explosive too. How long has the tank got left before consigned to history books when it can be destroyed by a large cheap drone ?

Like the Yemen drones solar panels are cheap as chip now ie less than £30 for a 100w panel, place them 10m a part on a tree lines and even the Russians would not be able to take out thousand of panels cost effectively. You can get thousands of panels on each big truck. I imagine solar is keeping thousands alive in Gaza now thank Allah, Budda, God and Jehovah for cheap solar.

Why not ? Fuel can be harder to get than sun shine or wind or even a hand cranked generator. Get a few marines together and tell then first one to 5 kWh wins and the will be cranking like mad. Bit more of a challenge to make some diesel. Lecky is versatile, hydrocarbons not so much. Cannot use diesel in a petrol car or visa versa.

Might have missed a word out there as I am, apparently, a champagne socialist as socialist are not allowed to be paid more than the national average wage, currently £28k the UK stats office say. Personally I am more cider than champagne but thought I would add the C bit b4 someone else does.

What an absolute peach of a car. Renault got so many things right on this model. Got to order it with the baguette holder.

China has a massive demographic issue, thanks to the one child policy and other policies. ITs population could half in a lifetime. So they need and apparently are already building human shaped robots to work on their car production lines. The Chinese already have numerous advantages in making cars ie the material like Lithium, the battery manufacturing, advanced manufacturing processes like giga-presses. And now robots that will work almost 24 hrs, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. As a socialist I do wonder how wealth will be shared amongst the Chinese people ? We will need robot maintenance crews etc but how many staff, one day a week, month and will that get automated too ? Times a changing.

This graph does not worry you then ? If it is not ice then it is in the sea and that is a problem. Unless you are Aquaman.