Batteries may be a far from perfect solution, but at least they make no fixed requirements on fuel supply.

Apart from the power station needing that fuel

Renewable couldn't even cover the power used at the moment, never mind if each house suddenly got a 16A or 3 phase to charge the car.

Not at all - I'm saying that of your four items, the "outcarbon" one is a red herring; as and when carbon emissions from electrical generation matter, we will change the economics to fix it. Whether that means nuclear power, price rises to encourage conservation, more renewables, some surprise technology managing to scale from lab demo to grid, I can't tell - I'm not a futurologist. What's more, we can fix the grid's emissions far more easily than we can fix individual cars; it's more about political willpower than practicality.

The other three matter - current electric cars can't even match the worst Skoda has to offer on each of range, fuelling time and acceleration, and they need to beat Skoda's current line up on at least one of those three to be in consideration, and on two of those three to be a genuine mass-market technology. You could just get away with outranging anything else if you also took advantage of electric motors to get better poor-weather and offroad traction than the best 4x4s today, but they're not going to be mass-market until they're comparable to an ICE car, and they're completely uncompetitive if they don't beat you on one of the three.

You still haven't shown how you're going to change the laws of physics in order to significantly improve the efficiency of power transmission and storage; your plans for room temperature superconducting materials are awaited with interest.

We could just decide that CO2 really isn't actually much of an issue, if it does even cause climate change (or rather additional climate change - which ironically could be stabilising the climate as much as exaggerating any change), if we just decided to embrace it instead of declaring it harmful, adapted instead of futilely tried to stop it! But then of course there wouldn't be a trillion pound 'market' literally created out of thin air, and a reason to massively tax us and restrict our freedoms.

Exactly; "environ mentalist" origanisations exist in order to sell guilt to the middle and upper classes; unfortunately the politicians have actually bought it this time!

Cost and apart from looking dog-ugly, the Pug would have a better range if it was even remotely aerodynamic! F1 cars aren't lok and sleek for a good reason, why waste so much energy pushing against a brick wall of air??

Well, this proves one thing; Buster knows nothing about aerodynamics. I'll bet that the Pugly Ion has a cD somewhere under 0.3, but F1 cars tend to run in about cD of 1.0.

You still haven't shown how you're going to change the laws of physics in order to significantly improve the efficiency of power transmission and storage; your plans for room temperature superconducting materials are awaited with interest.

You haven't shown that a major change to the laws of physics is needed; an obvious change would be to increase the voltages in use on the grid, as transmission losses are proportional to current, not power. A second obvious change would be to switch from rapid spinup of relatively (compared to base load plant) inefficient gas turbines to cover peak load to a mix of load shedding and storage batteries. Neither of these are worth doing today, because the politicians are happy to let electricity generation spew CO2 into the atmosphere, rather than raise the price of electricity to cover the costs of reducing CO2 emissions.

You're also choosing to ignore carbon capture technologies; the hope is that it will be possible for a fixed installation (e.g. a power station, but not a car) to avoid emitting the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. While some of the CCT ideas are clearly bonkers (e.g. liquefying CO2 and pumping it underground, hoping it stays there), others are less so (using captured CO2 to aid agricultural plant growth near a power plant), and might work long-term. They can't be implemented

Note that one trick a decent electric car (i.e. not this one, as it doesn't have the range as it is) brings to the table is an ability to only charge from base load supply, and to help cover peak load by partially discharging the battery back into the grid as needed. If it had a full-charge range of (say) 600 miles, I could permit it to use 400 miles worth of charge as smoothing for the grid. The grid then gets the efficiency gains of not having to dump base load power overnight, and not having to spin up as much of its inefficient peak load plant during the day, bringing the CO2 emissions per km down without any changes to power generation, and with only minor changes to transmission (allowing everyone on the same substation to draw from people's electric cars instead of from the grid when load levels increase).

You haven't shown that a major change to the laws of physics is needed; an obvious change would be to increase the voltages in use on the grid, as transmission losses are proportional to current, not power. A second obvious change would be to switch from rapid spinup of relatively (compared to base load plant) inefficient gas turbines to cover peak load to a mix of load shedding and storage batteries. Neither of these are worth doing today, because the politicians are happy to let electricity generation spew CO2 into the atmosphere, rather than raise the price of electricity to cover the costs of reducing CO2 emissions.

You're also choosing to ignore carbon capture technologies; the hope is that it will be possible for a fixed installation (e.g. a power station, but not a car) to avoid emitting the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. While some of the CCT ideas are clearly bonkers (e.g. liquefying CO2 and pumping it underground, hoping it stays there), others are less so (using captured CO2 to aid agricultural plant growth near a power plant), and might work long-term. They can't be implemented

Note that one trick a decent electric car (i.e. not this one, as it doesn't have the range as it is) brings to the table is an ability to only charge from base load supply, and to help cover peak load by partially discharging the battery back into the grid as needed. If it had a full-charge range of (say) 600 miles, I could permit it to use 400 miles worth of charge as smoothing for the grid. The grid then gets the efficiency gains of not having to dump base load power overnight, and not having to spin up as much of its inefficient peak load plant during the day, bringing the CO2 emissions per km down without any changes to power generation, and with only minor changes to transmission (allowing everyone on the same substation to draw from people's electric cars instead of from the grid when load levels increase).

Having made super conducting and super magnetic compounds first hand, I can tell you they need to be really cold to work.

To reduce the transmission losses from the power stations to the local sub stations to a significantly smaller amount would require some major expense.

Since they are already running at v high voltage and lower current on the main wires, then transforming that down to 240V at a local substation, that leaves super-conduction as one of the few options:

1) Use current super conductors and pump liquid nitrogen down every major power cable to keep it cold.

- The cost of the materials and huge cost of the liquid nitrogen pumping and compression to get it cold again mean this would be madly expensive.

Even if this was done you'd need to have huge capacity increases

2) Magic up some room temperature super conductor.

i) They don't exist yet (if ever)

ii) Their superconductivity will vary with the weather(temps) so you'd still need to accept a degree of loss.

So on to batteries, these are hugely inefficient, because to store in a battery you need to have DC power which would mean transforming the AC to DC and back to AC before it could be used on the grid. These loses make the transmission losses look small and it's why they don't use batteries today as that would be a lot easier than keeping every power station on load at the right time.

Carbon capture, actually some places already do this for the agriculture. There is a place that processes sugar beet, which produces a lot of excess heat and CO2. This is pumped directly into a greenhouse full of tomatoes to help them grow all year round. I saw a programme that stated this work very well.

While your efficiency gains from a car doing "charge on base, put back on peak demand" are possible, the fact is that again it has to go AC to DC to AC again, which doesn't help.

That plus if a car has a 600 mile range, then the charging would be less of an issue as you could do it one day a week and stager the supply to special 16A or 3Phase supplies. Extra days = extra bills to pay for the infrastructure.

As for leccy costs not going up to pay for green issues... have you looked at a recent leccy bill and seen the cost. Lots of that is to pay for other peoples feed in for solar panels.

Edited 2 August, 201114 yr by cheezemonkhai

/\ - What he said!

To reduce the transmission losses from the power stations to the local sub stations to a significantly smaller amount would require some major expense.

Since they are already running at v high voltage and lower current on the main wires, then transforming that down to 240V at a local substation, that leaves super-conduction as one of the few options:

So on to batteries, these are hugely inefficient, because to store in a battery you need to have DC power which would mean transforming the AC to DC and back to AC before it could be used on the grid. These loses make the transmission losses look small and it's why they don't use batteries today as that would be a lot easier than keeping every power station on load at the right time.

Carbon capture, actually some places already do this for the agriculture. There is a place that processes sugar beet, which produces a lot of excess heat and CO2. This is pumped directly into a greenhouse full of tomatoes to help them grow all year round. I saw a programme that stated this work very well.

As for leccy costs not going up to pay for green issues... have you looked at a recent leccy bill and seen the cost. Lots of that is to pay for other peoples feed in for solar panels.

For a variety of reasons, we don't run the grid at the highest voltages we can; we could uprate the 400kV network to 800kV, quartering transmission losses (P=V²R) if they're significant. However, National Grid's figures are that only around 10% of grid power production is lost; taking the 160 g/km figure, even superconductors all the way to the home would only reduce it to 135 g/km or so.

AC to DC to AC is nowadays an efficient process, with IGBTs making it possible to build AC->DC->AC converters that are more efficient than transformers as used today throughout the grid. They're more expensive to buy up-front, though - and with today's wholesale natural gas prices, the cost of storing power in (for example) a molten salt battery makes it cheaper to emit carbon than to store base load and release at peak times. We already do limited storage, using pumped hydropower, but we have reached the limits of that within the UK, absent major geoengineering efforts. Note also that with current AC->DC->AC converters, it's possible to run HVDC plant that's more efficient than HVAC plant of the same voltage; again, for a significant capital investment (so needs political willpower if it's to happen), we could go to a higher voltage (800kVDC on the current 400kVAC cabling), and reduce transmission losses.

Carbon capture is currently done on a very small scale - to my knowledge, no power plant of more than 100MW currently uses carbon capture. However, if CC becomes viable for large plants, we can reduce carbon emissions by the grid much more easily than we can reduce carbon emissions by small-scale power generators. It's also simpler to substitute one generation plant type for another on a grid scale, if a breakthrough happens in generation technology. And, of course, if we did manage 100% carbon capture (even sticking with fossil fuelled plants), the iOn's CO2/km figure becomes 0g/km including the grid.

I've looked at my leccy bill recently, as it happens; diesel is slightly more per unit (one litre diesel at 100% efficiency is 10 to 11 units of electricity, depending on the temperature at which you measure your litre of diesel's energy content). A litre of diesel costs me 139.9p, while one unit of electricity costs me 12.8p, making electricty about equivalent to diesel at 135p/l - assuming I had a 100% efficient way to convert the two around.

The question then is what is the efficiency of the iOn at converting electricity in to motion out? A diesel car is typically around 30% efficient, while an oil power plant is typically around 60% - so if the electric car is 50% efficient (energy in at house demarc to useful work done by the car), diesel is priced at slightly more than electricity. Of course, it's easy to determine empirically if the numbers are reasonable - my Superb gets around 160 g/km CO2, so the iOn should cost around £10 (the diesel cost of 100 miles in my Superb) for every 100 miles done, assuming diesel and electricity are the same price per g/km CO2. That implies that the iOn will typically get 20 miles per charge, not the 100 claimed by Peugeot, at the claimed price of £2/charge. If real-world drivers get 33 miles per charge, they're spending £6 to get the same CO2 emissions as I get from £10 of fuel, which would imply that electricity is almost half the price it should be; if they get the claimed 100 mile range, electricity should cost 5 times what it does to make it the same price per g/km CO2 as diesel. Either that, or the claim that the iOn is 160 g/km CO2 once you include the grid is assuming that most people only get 20 miles on a charge that is "supposed" to last 100 miles.

Once again, this is not to suggest that the iOn is any good - it fails on range, performance, comfort, dealer confidence in its reliability, and many other metrics. However, beating it up on the one metric where (if politicians wanted it fixed), it could be made to win without changing the car isn't sensible.

Yes renewables is what's needed but NIMBYS don't like wind power (idiots!) so what's really is on the agenda are lots of nuclear stations. They have just let a £150 million earth moving contract for Hinckley Point C nuclear power station so they must have got planing approval last week - surely? Personally Ii can't stick NIMBYS. I would have not worries at all if a wind turbine was placed not far from us.

Edited 2 August, 201114 yr by Newera

Yes renewables is what's needed but NIMBYS don't like wind power (idiots!) so what's really is on the agenda are lots of nuclear stations. They have just let a £150 million earth moving contract for Hinckley Point C nuclear power station so they must have got planing approval last week - surely? Personally Ii can't stick NIMBYS. I would have not worries at all if a wind turbine was placed not far from us.

Wind power is a joke and most turbines never pay for each themselves in terms of carbon as the amount of energy required to maintain and build one is more than the amount saved when it's running at the target efficiency (usually about 50% although it's been strongly suggested that it's closer to half this by some studies). Don't even get started on the effect they have on UK security listening posts or wildlife!

Think of all the metal, gears, oil, copper wire to connect them all into a grid and the concrete base. Plus the other effects. Sorry, but IMHO wind is a waste of time for that.

Now water wheels in rivers or a hydro barrage across the severn would have been a good idea and are proven technology.

More geothermal would make sense for local heating.

Rather than using huge cooling towers, maybe excess heat from power generation would be well used to heat streets and paths, keeping the temperature consistent and reducing wear, plus reducing the cost of snow clearing. They can also heat local swimming pools by a heat exchanger from this and I remember seeing it done in Germany.

So Nuclear isn't ideal, but it's great for base demand with renewable topping it up. Then that gives a 25-50 year window to get renewables right, without being a slave to gas/oil prices and without brownouts.

Edited 7 August, 201114 yr by cheezemonkhai

Trouble is nuclear waste: the Mini stores programme to deal with it until x y and z works out what to do with the waste and where to store it long term because nobody really wants that in their back yard do they? Maybe there will be the third generation stop gap storage methodology for waste. Yet councils near Sellafield have bravely stepped forward with their crap geology for a long term repository plus the £1 billion on maintenance (code for asset management)at Sellafield over the next 15 years. Perhaps Cornwall would be better. NIMBYs take note. It makes me sigh and I have writing this. Good luck our kids.

Edited 2 August, 201114 yr by Newera

I do agree there are better places for a long term geographically stable store.

Other option is we could reprocess the fuel and start using reactors that can run on reprocessed fuel or start making our own nukes again rather than buying them in.

Yes renewables is what's needed but NIMBYS don't like wind power (idiots!) so what's really is on the agenda are lots of nuclear stations. They have just let a £150 million earth moving contract for Hinckley Point C nuclear power station so they must have got planing approval last week - surely? Personally Ii can't stick NIMBYS. I would have not worries at all if a wind turbine was placed not far from us.

I live near a micro-generation turbine, and since it was installed, my neighbourhood has become a noticably noiser place. It is the source of the noise. Point made?

Yes renewables is what's needed but NIMBYS don't like wind power (idiots!) so what's really is on the agenda are lots of nuclear stations. They have just let a £150 million earth moving contract for Hinckley Point C nuclear power station so they must have got planing approval last week - surely? Personally Ii can't stick NIMBYS. I would have not worries at all if a wind turbine was placed not far from us.

Wind's not a particularly good power source for two big reasons; unpredictability of supply, and noise issues. It's worthwhile in areas that already have problems with damage caused by high winds, as it can both prevent damage (by draining power from the storms), and be a power source at the same time (so people trapped in their homes by high winds can watch telly, boil kettles etc), but it's not a panacea - and it's an appalling microgeneration choice due to the noise problems.

Solar has more potential, but solar panels are expensive, and you still face the storage problem for night time; a side benefit from solar microgeneration is that the buildings you mount panels to aren't going to heat up as much in summer, reducing grid load by letting people reduce their aircon power usage.

We've pretty much reached our limits for hydro; no more suitable places in the UK. We might be able to do something with geothermal, but that's a high risk proposition (we've not gone hunting for suitable sites). Tidal power's not yet proven to work, so not yet a contender.

In the short term, nuclear is it for low emission power generation; in the medium term, we should be able to come up with some form of carbon capture tech for stationary power plants, ideally something that can recycle the waste products back into usable fuel (like the algal pools being trialled, which need CO2 rich air, sewage and sunlight, and produce clean water and oily algae that you can harvest for diesel - which you might then reuse in an oil-fuelled power plant to get more electricity at peak times).

Good points guys. I am not obsessed with windmills. Just anti NIMBYs. We ALL have to do our bit.

Edited 5 August, 201114 yr by Newera

Yes renewables is what's needed but NIMBYS don't like wind power (idiots!) so what's really is on the agenda are lots of nuclear stations. They have just let a £150 million earth moving contract for Hinckley Point C nuclear power station so they must have got planing approval last week - surely? Personally Ii can't stick NIMBYS. I would have not worries at all if a wind turbine was placed not far from us.

I don't think there is PP at the momnet but there was a extensive planning inquiry in the late 80s that said there was no reason not to build a PWR Hinkley C a la Sizewell B. Has anything changed in the interim? Providing that the reactor technology becomes licenced, working at risk at Hinkley C is probably the lowest risk way of getting the ball rolling on new build.

Good points guys. I am not obsessed with windmills. Just anti NIMBYs. We ALL have to do our bit.

Biggest thing the average person on this forum could do to reduce CO2 emissions is to never take their cars above 55mph, and try to keep to the lowest speed in the highest gear they have that doesn't cause the engine to labour. There are huge downsides to this, including journey time, comfort, stress caused to other drivers etc. Indeed, this is likely to have a bigger effect than windmills everywhere they're possibly feasible would.

I see somebody mentioned the "feed in tariffs" for solar panels. Did you know that the majority of the power companies systems will not actually take the "excess" electricity produced by these systems back into to the grid because their "domestic" systems are not capable of handling the power input.

I am not 100% sure of this but it was brought up at a "social Housing" renewable energies forum i recently attended in the Northeast of UK.

I see somebody mentioned the "feed in tariffs" for solar panels. Did you know that the majority of the power companies systems will not actually take the "excess" electricity produced by these systems back into to the grid because their "domestic" systems are not capable of handling the power input.

I am not 100% sure of this but it was brought up at a "social Housing" renewable energies forum i recently attended in the Northeast of UK.

Not all systems can feed back to the grid, you have you buy the feed in kit as an optional extra usually.

If it was a sensible price I'd buy one. 100miles is more than enough for me to commute to work.

I've a garage with a power point it can use over night.

But £20k over 4yr rental! No 'kin way.