the truth about electric cars

[@Lee]

8 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

@olddog True and he also a few 2 cylinder air cooled models to chose from as well. That F4 model however, although it only has the one bench seat, is in fact designed to seat 2 people.

 

That reminds me. Whatever happened to that (Nissan?) 1.5l two cylinder 400hp engine? I seem to remember it only weighing something like a sack of flour. 

 

Edit 3 cylinder. Did it go into full production? 

 

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/01/20140127-nissan.html

 

Edited 27 March by @Lee

[lol-lol]

2 hours ago, @Lee said:

 

That reminds me. Whatever happened to that (Nissan?) 1.5l two cylinder 400hp engine? I seem to remember it only weighing something like a sack of flour. 

Edit 3 cylinder. Did it go into full production?   https://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/01/20140127-nissan.html

 

 

Not as high a specific output as the Kawasaki H2R engine ....   

Engine type	Liquid-cooled, 4-stroke, in-line four with Supercharger
Compression ratio	8.3:1
Valve system	DOHC, 16 valves
Bore x stroke	76.0 x 55.0 mm
Displacement	998 cm³

Maximum power	228.0 kW {310 PS} / 14,000 rpm
Maximum power with RAM Air	240.0 kW {326 PS} / 14,000 rpm
Maximum torque	165.0 N•m {16.8 kgf•m} / 12,500 rpm

[lol-lol]

A great moment in UK history and for planet Earth as G7 UK produces more energy from renewables than fossil fuels and the line is quite steep heading to 50%, 55% and beyond.  Prices for electricity due to fall on Monday April 1st, no joke.  Even Ireland is celebrating UK success, they do get quite a bit of power supplied via the UK-Ireland interconnector.

 

Cheaper running for EVs for energy.  No road tax yet as VED for ICE cars goes up in the next few days.

Congrats to my niece, just passed her car test and going straight for an EV.   

 

https://www.irishnews.com/news/uk/uk-records-highest-ever-share-of-electricity-generation-by-renewables-NYUL7EFFCFJBTHQSQ333SEXFWI/    

 

Edited 29 March by lol-lol

[Stonekeeper]

3 hours ago, lol-lol said:

A great moment in UK history and for planet Earth as G7 UK produces more energy from renewables than fossil fuels and the line is quite steep heading to 50%, 55% and beyond.  Prices for electricity due to fall on Monday April 1st, no joke.  Even Ireland is celebrating UK success, they do get quite a bit of power supplied via the UK-Ireland interconnector.

 

Cheaper running for EVs for energy.  No road tax yet as VED for ICE cars goes up in the next few days.

Congrats to my niece, just passed her car test and going straight for an EV.   

 

https://www.irishnews.com/news/uk/uk-records-highest-ever-share-of-electricity-generation-by-renewables-NYUL7EFFCFJBTHQSQ333SEXFWI/    

 

 

 

It is interesting how the story says  "How the UK generates electricity"  a subtle twist or spin in the headings.

 

We import from Denmark for some wind

 

"A quarterly record was also set for offshore wind generation in the last three months of 2023, which was “largely driven by the 0.8 GW in new capacity,”

 

 

"Construction on Viking Link, National Grid’s sixth interconnector, commenced in 2019, involving more than four million working hours.

Initially operating at 800MW capacity, it will gradually scale up to its full 1.4GW potential over the coming months."

 

 

https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/01/02/national-grid-activates-worlds-longest-land-and-subsea-interconnector/

 

Nuclear also comes from France

 

 

It is fantastic to be able to have renewable energy but for the story to claim that we generate it ourselves in the bits people will quote is mis-leading.

 

The UK uses more energy from renewables than fossil fuel

 

"National Grid is already looking ahead, having announced joint plans with TenneT for a new 1.8GW interconnector named LionLink between the UK and The Netherlands.

This second link between the countries is anticipated to be operational in the early 2030s."

Edited 29 March by Stonekeeper

[Graham Butcher]

There is a massive solar farm on the edge of Chelmsford that is being built and it looks like there is a fairly large battery storage bank also being installed there. 

[Stonekeeper]

5 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

There is a massive solar farm on the edge of Chelmsford that is being built and it looks like there is a fairly large battery storage bank also being installed there. 

 

 

100 acre is reported to produce 0.02gw and the Government suggest 20gw is possible, that appears to work out to 100,000 acres which is 75,600 football pitches, so i imagine we will see a lot more around the Country

[Winston_Woof]

100,000 acres is 158 sq miles which apparently is approx the size of the Isle of Wight

[Stonekeeper]

4 minutes ago, Winston_Woof said:

100,000 acres is 158 sq miles which apparently is approx the size of the Isle of Wight

 

 

Good idea

[Ootohere]

An article popped up on my phone.

 

'One-in-five-pure-electric-vehicles on UK roads is a Tesla.'

 

200,000 Tesla delivered to UK customers in 10 years. 

 

(They will not all be on UK roads, there will be scrapped and exported, but it will be near enough if the DVLA can actually say how many registered in the UK, doubt they know how many in the UK though.)

[Stonekeeper]

13 minutes ago, Rooted said:

An article popped up on my phone.

 

'One-in-five-pure-electric-vehicles on UK roads is a Tesla.'

 

200,000 Tesla delivered to UK customers in 10 years. 

 

(They will not all be on UK roads, there will be scrapped and exported, but it will be near enough if the DVLA can actually say how many registered in the UK, doubt they know how many in the UK though.)

 

https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/make/tesla

 

[J.R.]

2 hours ago, Stonekeeper said:

We import from Denmark for some wind

 

Transporting wind by air or sea for another country to generate electricity, has the world gone mad? 🥴

 

Maybe that is what those sail powered cargo ships are for, they can be propelled by it whilst collecting and storing it. 💡

 

I have heard of Food Miles, now we have Wind Miles!

Edited 29 March by J.R.

[Ootohere]

@Stonekeeper  That would be very useful if we had the numbers up to next week and the end of 2 quarters since that figure.

Anyway the delivered 200,000 supposedly. 

[Stonekeeper]

3 minutes ago, Rooted said:

@Stonekeeper  That would be very useful if we had the numbers up to next week and the end of 2 quarters since that figure.

Anyway the delivered 200,000 supposedly. 

 

An additional 13k per quarter would not be an unreasonable guesstimate.

 

Or the article could have seen those figures and rounded it up?

 

[Graham Butcher]

28 minutes ago, Rooted said:

An article popped up on my phone.

 

'One-in-five-pure-electric-vehicles on UK roads is a Tesla.'

 

200,000 Tesla delivered to UK customers in 10 years. 

 

(They will not all be on UK roads, there will be scrapped and exported, but it will be near enough if the DVLA can actually say how many registered in the UK, doubt they know how many in the UK though.)

Well one thing is certain, there does seem to be more Tesla in Chelmsford area than any other electric car. I put that down to the fact that they have about 10 chargers on site at the dealers, which is about the same number of "public" chargers for other makes. 

Edited 29 March by Graham Butcher

[lol-lol]

3 hours ago, Stonekeeper said:

It is interesting how the story says  "How the UK generates electricity"  a subtle twist or spin in the headings.

We import from Denmark for some wind

"A quarterly record was also set for offshore wind generation in the last three months of 2023, which was “largely driven by the 0.8 GW in new capacity,”

"Construction on Viking Link, National Grid’s sixth interconnector, commenced in 2019, involving more than four million working hours.

Initially operating at 800MW capacity, it will gradually scale up to its full 1.4GW potential over the coming months."

https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/01/02/national-grid-activates-worlds-longest-land-and-subsea-interconnector/Nuclear also comes from France

It is fantastic to be able to have renewable energy but for the story to claim that we generate it ourselves in the bits people will quote is mis-leading.

The UK uses more energy from renewables than fossil fuel

"National Grid is already looking ahead, having announced joint plans with TenneT for a new 1.8GW interconnector named LionLink between the UK and The Netherlands.

This second link between the countries is anticipated to be operational in the early 2030s."

 

Indeed a bit loose with language.  UK runs at 40 to 45 GWs at busy times, if it hits 50 GWs we are at risk of brown outs in some places.  For all the big increases in population The Grid is not increasing but actually decreasing what it distributes.  The figures do not so the increasing amount of microgeneration of power, individuals and business own solar and eve other generation ie a bit of wind or whatever.

 

Some interconnectors are quite bi-directional.  France we have power going one way and then an hour later going the other way.  In my industry that still requires customs declarations believe it or not.  Norway has more power than it needs for itself ie it has hydro as well as solar and wind so it is really meant to be in one direction but if needs were there presumably it could go the other way.

 

Talk now is of new intercontinental interconnectors ie Morocco to UK and also America to Europe so that the tea time peaks can be supplied by territories that are in night mode.  We can expect the whole Northern Hemisphere to be interconnected at some point in some people's lifetime.  Clearly losses are quite small even across thousands of kilometers at these high voltages.

   

[lol-lol]

2 hours ago, Stonekeeper said:

 

 

100 acre is reported to produce 0.02gw and the Government suggest 20gw is possible, that appears to work out to 100,000 acres which is 75,600 football pitches, so i imagine we will see a lot more around the Country

 

We are looking forward to solar panels jumping up in efficiency from their current 22% to around 50% with some new tech coming down the wire so to speak so land usage will not be so much of an issue but replacing old solar panels with newer much higher efficiency ones and I would like to see more Sun tracking arrays as this can improve energy output by about 40% and one can go upwards instead of using more land. 

 

I think there will be lots of jobs upgrading the solar farm sites with the above improvements.

 

[Graham Butcher]

17 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

We are looking forward to solar panels jumping up in efficiency from their current 22% to around 50% with some new tech coming down the wire so to speak so land usage will not be so much of an issue but replacing old solar panels with newer much higher efficiency ones and I would like to see more Sun tracking arrays as this can improve energy output by about 40% and one can go upwards instead of using more land. 

 

I think there will be lots of jobs upgrading the solar farm sites with the above improvements.

 

Going upwards is good as the land beneath them might be more usable then. The site I mentioned earlier are all low to the ground and seem to be close to each other so the land between them is also not usable. 

[Ootohere]

@Graham Butcher Was it productive arable farm land before the Solar Farm went up?

 

What is under them, bare earth, weeds, or is it maybe grass? 

Are there no sheep down your way?

 

Lots of land owners in the UK / England are paid not to farm land. 

Get the wild flowers growing under the Solar panels and habitats for many many creatures. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 29 March by Rooted

[Graham Butcher]

14 minutes ago, Rooted said:

@Graham Butcher Was it productive arable farm land before the Solar Farm went up?

 

What is under them, bare earth, weeds, or is it maybe grass? 

Are there no sheep down your way?

 

Lots of land owners in the UK / England are paid not to farm land. 

Get the wild flowers growing under the Solar panels and habitats for many many creatures. 

Indeed it was good arable land before and also had a farm shop. 

 

Have you not seen the TV news with farmers protesting in tractors outside the HOC that they are being prevented from growing crops to feed the people?  Also the site is under construction so sheep may well be put there later, but man cannot live by sheep alone, and I personally hate lamb. 

Edited 29 March by Graham Butcher

[Ootohere]

^^^ Are you having a laugh.     It is not all about you and your food choices, or fuels for your car or home. Or England. 

The country has so many Slipper Farmers.  KC3 and other Royals, NT, and many syndicates.

They get billions to not produce food.

 

 People are growing crops for burning in Bio-mass, or for other products non edible.

 

 

As to in Solar Farms, there can be Free Ranch Chickens.  Turkeys even. 

 

Yes i see the farmers on the news, Fuel costs, Super Markets ripping them off, the Government treating them badly.

 

PS

Water Companies in the South should maybe be investing not only in the Water but generating the electricity to run their facilities. 

More Wind and Solar on the large areas that they already have the control over. 

 

 

 

 

Edited 29 March by Rooted

[Graham Butcher]

How about this idea for better use of the land, indeed they could be used even as fences so solar could be installed in loads of locations where it currently is not.

 

 

[Graham Butcher]

The Longfield Solar Farm is currently at the landscaping stage where they are planting hedges etc to screen it from the massive housing estate being built across the road from it where my son lives. It just of the new link road to the right of the new bridge and quirky roundabouts mentioned in the video and there is already a substation at Bull's Lodge and another just a few hundred feet from it next to the rail station being build to serve that massive new estate.

 

 

 

[Ootohere]

Maybe not in Chelmsford but all around the UK there is building on Green belt land / farm land / Countryside rather than on Brown Field sites, 

then those that get these homes / properties have issues with Solar Farms or battery storage or pylons to provide power to these properties. 

 

Funny how they can not see the wood for the trees, or the trees no longer there. 

 

Happily they will have the Electricity generated hundreds of miles away and they want the electricity they use to arrive underground.

& They will want a cheap tariffs.

Edited 29 March by Rooted

[Stonekeeper]

42 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

The Longfield Solar Farm is currently at the landscaping stage where they are planting hedges etc to screen it from the massive housing estate being built across the road from it where my son lives. It just of the new link road to the right of the new bridge and quirky roundabouts mentioned in the video and there is already a substation at Bull's Lodge and another just a few hundred feet from it next to the rail station being build to serve that massive new estate.

 

 

 

 

We have been waiting 34 years (so far) for a road

 

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/24212008.link-road-plan-m6-m61-leaves-farmer-limbo/

[Graham Butcher]

@Rootedyes and we need trees to convert the CO2 from ICE into oxygen for all those numpties to breathe. Everybody wants the power but how do they expect it be delivered without pylons etc 🙄