Things that p*** you off/bug you/annoy you

[losh1971]

But I suggest that you don’t let your anti-green ideologies lead you down a path of high cost of living.

Again you make assumptions that are incorrect.

 

[Immortality]

He bought it to save the clutch on BT. Those big hills are hard..... on the clutch.

 

[losh1971]

I agree a PV system would save money over the long-term. However, an EV as a supplementary vehicle has no cost savings other than petrol.

 

[AirStrike]

Is that a serious question or a rhetorical question?

If it is a serious question, let me run the numbers for you (I love numbers!).

I’ll base these on Australia, and Melbourne, but you can adjust them to your own area.

The average mileage for a car in Australia is 13,272 km per year.
EVs average energy consumption is 17 kWh/100 km

So the average EV will need 2,256 kWh per year.

In Melbourne, we have a PV factor of 3.6. This means that a 1 kW (dc) of PV panels will produce 3.6 kWh per day (on average over the whole year).

So, it would take a 1.7 kW PV system to cover the energy used by an EV. That’s about 5 panels. So, if we had 5 extra panels installed (or 6 if we want to cover any recharging losses) for each EV, we have the generation part covered. It doesn’t cover the grid (or time shifting) bit, or the fast charging bit, but it does cover the energy generation.

But fast charging is really only applicable for long distance drives. Average ‘run about’ driving will probably be covered by slow recharging at home.

This is all based on being retired and sitting at home during the day why the car charges.
Most people are at work and would charge at night, which unless you're Albo, solar doesn't work.

 

[Skylarking]

Yup, but after that roast is cooked and some welding done most of us humans spend about 8 hours sleeping as does a good majority of the population and the power demand on the grid drops quite substantially and is a great time to charge that EV.

That would be ok for most who aren’t or don’t want to be off grid. But not all sleep early and some car guys have been known to disappear into their man cave using power and not going to bed until very late.

If you want to be off grid and also charge your car at home, where most would be done at night, then a car that acts as the home battery just won’t work.

Ultra fast charging isn't great for battery life, better off using slower overnight charge to keep that battery in tip top shape.

True with current battery tech but hopefully that problem will be cracked as it will make the whole electric ecosystem (homes, cars, charge stations, distribution networks, etc) work much better than is currently the case with fast-charge batteries scattered everywhere…

But my view that we’ll be saving the world by using electricity, nah, won’t happen… we’ll breed like rabbits and over populate the world consuming it’s resources until we pooch screw the planet whatever tech we use. By then if we’ve gotten onto another world, we’ll start the process again and cook up that world given enough time

 

[Immortality]

A off grid system would have a dedicated battery system and is a different proposition to most users.

There are always exceptions and I love how the anti EV crowd seems to be laser focused on those.

 

[chrisp]

Using a car battery to power a house during evenings sounds great in principle but a car battery is needed for driving range while a house battery is needed to power home appliances. These two tasks are contradictory in nature.

It’s very much like Wivenhoe dam in Brisbane which operates as flood mitigation dam and a water storage dam where both contradictory tasks must be managed. And we know how well it was managed back in 2011 when parts of Brisbane were flooded because the spillways were opened to protect the dam from failure… This problem occurred because the authorities wanted to keep more water in the dam for water usage purposes against the contradictory requirements of flood mitigation. Thus there was too much water in the dam when the heavens opened and the only recourse available to management had was to open the flood gates which made the flooding worse (in the built up area that was supposed to be protected by the dam

So, EV as home battery; your wife wants to cook a roast while also throwing on a load of washing during the hot evening where the ac is on full blast and the son wants to weld up some stuff in the garage but you want to take the car on a drive to a mates place and help him tow his VF commodore restoration project to a business some 100km away for that all important acid body dipping in prep for body restoration Ah the problems of managing EV battery levels and home and car usage with all the competing needs for modern life

In future when I take the plunge, I‘d prefer my EV to be a light daily runabout while my home solar has its own battery system that is independent of my car. That way if the home system is sized correctly, all modern tasks including the home can be independent of the shitfuckery that some power business may want to foist on me… And my smelly dino driven beast can be used for those rarer longer trips until the EV battery tech and recharging infrastructure catches up to my needs/wants (with ultra fast charge and commonly available charge stations everywhere). Then the dino driven beast will retire to museum duties (which in reality it’s already doing atm)

That’s fair enough.

I tend to run numbers on my household costs (yep, I have an excel spreadsheet!). I run scenarios from time to time planning out where my next bang-for-bucks spend lies. As part of that I run the idea of installing a battery. So far, I just haven’t been able to make the economics of a (house) battery work financially. It was close to borderline the last time I checked, but not ‘there’ economically. It might work environmentally, but I’m not flushed with money, so I try the spend carefully and wisely as possible.

So, briefly, my thinking has been along the following lines… I could go out and buy a PowerWall 2 for about $15,000 and it'll give me 13 kWh of storage. Much as you have pointed out, it would help, but it wouldn’t really run my household overnight if any major energy drains are happening (heating, cooling, cooking). However, If I purchased an EV at $60,000 and it has a 60 kWh battery (slightly better bangs-for-bucks kWh per $ than a Power Wall 2), I have four times the capacity - so 8 hours instead of ‘2 hours’), plus I have a car that can be used as a second car. Yes, I know it’s not exactly comparing apples with apples.

But look at it from a different angle. Perhaps my wife needs a new car (call it $25,000) and I was for some reason really wanting a PowerWall 2 (call it $15,000), then buying that $60,000 EV is only a $20,000 stretch above the cost of those two combined - and I get four times the storage. That amount of storage is getting in to the ‘run the house’ category if there is a power outage (which is rare). But more importantly, I have a usable second car that costs minimal to run, and a ‘house battery’ that has some serious usable capacity.

 

[Skylarking]

A off grid system would have a dedicated battery system and is a different proposition to most users.

There are always exceptions and I love how the anti EV crowd seems to be laser focused on those.

I’m not anti electric or anti EV.

I just don’t believe it’s a planet saving solution as the problem is unbridled population growth and resource consumption and sadly as a species we can’t even solve business’ designed obsolescence strategies (because greed).

 

[Immortality]

Can't disagree with that (sadly).

 

[losh1971]

Well my argument has been all along that for 1000s of people EV ownership will cost more than an ICE vehicle would. EV technology has a long way to come before we can eliminate the need for ICE vehicles but there has been two or three people harping on how our ICE car days are numbered. Now while this may be true it's many years away and highly unlikely to happen in my lifetime which these same couple of members seem to argue will happen.