EV (electric vehicle) News and Discussion

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#1891623 27-Oct-2017 23:45

paulchinnz:

@PhantomNVD - I was also confused about how tree planting ensures the electricity grid runs entirely from renewables.

However, looks like that sentence is a list of things to do for the govt i.e. "...hoping to make the nation greener by: 1) planting 100 million trees each year, 2) ensuring the electricity grid runs entirely from renewable energy, and 3) spending more money on cycle ways and rail transport."

The trees soak up carbon dioxide for decades. So they help balance emissions. As long as you don't burn then, the CO2 remains locked up. Make chairs and tables and build houses.

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Aredwood

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#1891637 28-Oct-2017 01:21

Linuxluver:

That's their problem. I'll look after my emissions and vote for people who will make dirty power generatoros look after theirs if they won't do it without being compelled to. In the meantime, I don't give them any money.

I'm definitely not going to be held hostqage by people who fail to act on this problem. I'm coming for them politically.

If your peaktime demand is more than your baseload demand. Almost certainly, your peak electricity usage will be both generated by fossil fuel generation. And you will indirectly be providing income to the owners of that fossil generation.

A simple scenario - It is peak demand time, and all available renewable generation is already operating at max output. You then switch on an electric stove / charge an EV / take a shower using electric hot water that is not ripple controlled etc. (There is lots of electric hot water in Auckland which is not ripple controlled). The only way to meet that demand is for a fossil fuelled power station to increase it's output. And since that power station generated more electricity - It's owner will get paid more. Sometimes the marginal generator will be gas, sometimes coal, but there will be times when the marginal generator will be a diesel generator. This applies no matter which power retail company you purchase electricity from - Including the ones that claim to only supply 100% renewable electricity. The only way to get guaranteed 100% renewable electricity, is to only get power from a private grid. That has only renewable generation connected to it, and which is completely separate from the national grid. Anything else is only a form of accounting.

Diesel generators are also the cheapest form of large scale generation to construct. And they can be varied between 0 and full output extremely quickly. You can plan around being able to use their generation months in advance. As well as being able to be installed close to major demand. Meaning they are perfect for supplying peak load. Of course diesel generators are also the most expensive to run. But you will probably only need to get approx 1% of your electricity needs from diesel. So the power retail companies just increase their prices by 1% or so to cover those costs. Cheap renewable power is being used to subsidise polluting diesel power.

Now imagine if you are paying direct wholesale prices from say Flick Electric, Or you are on a pricing plan which is based on your peak demand. Using peak time diesel power is suddenly very expensive. Even those people who couldn't care less about the environment, and who think that global warming is a scam. Will be reducing their pollution from peak time electricity use. Because If they don't reduce their peak usage. It hits them directly in their wallet.

kingdragonfly: From AP News

https://apnews.com/21e3acc76ad94061a686644d5f8ee00a/New-Zealand-aims-to-go-green-with-electricity,-tree-planting

"New Zealand’s incoming government is hoping to make the nation greener by planting 100 million trees each year, ensuring the electricity grid runs entirely from renewable energy, and spending more money on cycle ways and rail transport."

Excellent news that the government wants 100% renewable generation. Next question - how much is this going to cost and who should pay for it? We could build lots of extra renewable generation - But the Resource Management Act makes building renewable generation really expensive. Yet labour + Green voters won't agree to scrapping the RMA. But if we just increase power prices to pay for it. Low income voters, who are the main group who vote labour. Will definitely kick up a stink at the first suggestion of higher power prices. As well as providing political capital to National. Do we instead spend megabucks on govt subsidies of electricity generation, which will take away money that could have instead been spent on health, education, building more houses etc. And rich people will also get cheaper power anyway. What should we do?

And this is why charging different prices based on time of use /direct wholesale pricing / capacity charges / mandatory direct load management. (mix of all options would be the best). Will give the lowest overall cost of delivering a 100% renewable electricity grid. While helping to enshure that the costs accurately reflect how much people get charged.

Renewable generation is extremely expensive to construct. And even then can often only be constructed in certain locations. But your operating costs are also very, very cheap. And most renewable generation is at the mercy of the weather. So you often can't guarantee how much power your renewable generation will be producing even 1/2 an hour in the future. Let alone on a date and time that is months in the future. - Mostly for solar and wind, but partly applies to hydro as well. So peak demand management and other forms of load management quickly become by far the cheapest way of getting 100% renewable generation.

Although some large scale backup fossil fuelled generation will be needed to provide "dry year" backup to hydro generation. Recommissioning the other 2 Huntly coal generators will be the cheapest way of doing this (bringing Huntly coal generation capacity back to 1000MW). With proper management, Huntly coal generation would only need to be started once every 3-5 years. So would be a cheap form of insurance against not only dry years, but also a major earthquake destroying the Cook Straight cable, or a large South Island hydro station.

Sorry to bring politics into this - but unfortunately, power prices and electricity policy are always politically heated subjects. So it is difficult to do policy analysis without bringing politics into it. And for the record - I do support 100% renewable generation - under normal weather conditions. I would love to also say 100% renewable even during major dry years, but that would be crazy expensive to do, while also still providing reliable power. If you cannot maintain a reliable power supply, people will start demanding more fossil fueled generation - just look at what happened in Australia.

MarkH67

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#1891649 28-Oct-2017 07:20

Aredwood:

If your peaktime demand is more than your baseload demand. Almost certainly, your peak electricity usage will be both generated by fossil fuel generation. And you will indirectly be providing income to the owners of that fossil generation.

And that is why we need more hydro!

With hydro you can open up floodgates to spin up more turbines to increase electricity output. Solar & wind lack this ability to increase output for peak load, they help with base load which is useful but hydro is best for peak load.

Hydro has minimal impact on the environment, only affecting one small area. In comparison, burning fossil fuels have a global impact by raising CO₂ levels for the entire planet.

Gas powered electricity generation is popular because it is easy to turn up the heat to increase output and it is cleaner burning than coal. But gas is still a hydrocarbon and burning it still releases CO₂ which still adds to global climate change. If we want NZ to close down the gas fired power generators then we need to build more hydro dams.

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#1891675 28-Oct-2017 10:38

Here's Transpower's grid map. Seems to have some redundancy built in, except for the submarine cable between north and south islands.

https://www.transpower.co.nz/sites/default/files/plain-page/attachments/transmission-map-nz.pdf

PhantomNVD

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#1891757 28-Oct-2017 11:12

Please can we kee this about EVs directly?

Here’s a thread for the generation/ Carbon Footprint discussion:
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=224002&page_no=1#1891756

RUKI

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#1891870 28-Oct-2017 14:33

As of yesterday few Nissan e-NV200 with my "tutoring and coaching" and a little bit of TLC have started communicating in English and 7 other European languages :-) (That is Instrument Cluster, aka Speedo, aka OdoMeter)

Menu is twice as deep vs Leaf and gives much more options.

Coach (people mover) version of e-NV200 is quite nice.

FYI: e-NV200 can be scanned by LeafSpy the same way as Leaf and the Pro version allows to clear error codes (aka DTC)

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Linuxluver

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#1891885 28-Oct-2017 16:06

Aredwood:

Linuxluver:

That's their problem. I'll look after my emissions and vote for people who will make dirty power generatoros look after theirs if they won't do it without being compelled to. In the meantime, I don't give them any money.

I'm definitely not going to be held hostqage by people who fail to act on this problem. I'm coming for them politically.

If your peaktime demand is more than your baseload demand. Almost certainly, your peak electricity usage will be both generated by fossil fuel generation. And you will indirectly be providing income to the owners of that fossil generation.

....lots of great stuff removed....but I think the answer will be to store more off-peak power for use at peak...and remove the need for additional generation by burning things. We might not get there next year or the year after or the year after that, but we definitely can work to narrow the gap and eventually eliminate it.

Who pays for it? That gets back to my view we should average the cost across everyone in NZ....perhaps with steps for heavy / industrial users that give them some incentive to store power for their own use.

You seem to vested in the present model of fragmented providers around the country with major variation y region due to different population densities.......based on your past posts. Correct me if wrong there.

I'd rather see private profit removed entirely as a waste of money...and if there is to be a "profit" it goes toward infrastructure build and any remaining goes back to the users via a nationwide co-op ultimately vested in power users.

I've been in Adelaide the past week. They privatised their power supply 30 years ago. So their private power provider did what any private business would do and created a situation of scarcity which drove prices up. They have the most expensive power in Australia, they tell me.

I fully expected it as that IS what happens when you privatise infrastructure.

At the same time, people should be offered incentives to install solar / wind and a battery backup. If just 250K homes did this, we'd have more power than we know what do with and wouldn't have to burn anything. Even better, as the need to refine oil declines we can recover some of the huge amount of electricity needed to refine oil. If the Tiawai Point smelter closes down.....the South Island will have loads of electricity.

Electric cars are just a part of that much wider picture......

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RUKI

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#1891933 28-Oct-2017 18:32

Just uploaded video of our yesterday conversion:

e-NV200 Menu in English - Video

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Batman

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#1893030 31-Oct-2017 11:17

Toshiba is making a new battery for Mitsi and Honda.

Linuxluver

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#1895355 4-Nov-2017 22:18

Electric cars are cleaner than diesel cars - cradle to grave - even if they only use power generated by coal.

So that takes care of the worst-case scenario.

What many articles claiming otherwise usually fail to mention is the gigawatts of electricity used in refining oil.....to use in ICE (internal combustion engine) cars, which then creates even more emissions.

Elon Muck has said several times there won't be any power shortages because of EVs thanks to the huge amount of power that can be saved by refining less oil.

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ANglEAUT

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#1895744 5-Nov-2017 23:21

Has anybody read Electric Car Drivers: Desires, Demands & Who They Are from cleantechnica.com? Well, more like the free first thirty pages?

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Linuxluver

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#1895784 6-Nov-2017 09:05

IcI:

Has anybody read Electric Car Drivers: Desires, Demands & Who They Are from cleantechnica.com? Well, more like the free first thirty pages?

No..... and the whole report is US$500?

Is it worth reading the first 30 pages? Most people would just want an affordable car with enough range that also charges quickly.......or they would just buy a Tesla and have that already (except for the affordable bit).

Anything else? :-)

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MikeAqua

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#1895816 6-Nov-2017 10:14

Linuxluver:

Is it worth reading the first 30 pages? Most people would just want an affordable car with enough range that also charges quickly.......or they would just buy a Tesla and have that already (except for the affordable bit).

That would tip me over on our small car. Total cost of ownership is still too high and range is still too low. I'm sure by the time I replace the Mazda in ten years or so, all those issues will have been addressed.

Tesla is still too expensive. I'm not in that end of the car market (regardless of energy source) and probably never will be. If I was, Tesla would fall short of my build quality expectations.

Two weeks ago I took the opportunity to check out the Tesla show room in Honolulu. The show room is fantastic, you walk past at night and the cars literally sparkle. But when you get up close build quality/finish is not congruent with the premium brand positioning or the price tag.

Mike

Linuxluver

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#1895851 6-Nov-2017 10:45

MikeAqua:

Linuxluver:

Is it worth reading the first 30 pages? Most people would just want an affordable car with enough range that also charges quickly.......or they would just buy a Tesla and have that already (except for the affordable bit).

That would tip me over on our small car. Total cost of ownership is still too high and range is still too low. I'm sure by the time I replace the Mazda in ten years or so, all those issues will have been addressed.

Tesla is still too expensive. I'm not in that end of the car market (regardless of energy source) and probably never will be. If I was, Tesla would fall short of my build quality expectations.

Two weeks ago I took the opportunity to check out the Tesla show room in Honolulu. The show room is fantastic, you walk past at night and the cars literally sparkle. But when you get up close build quality/finish is not congruent with the premium brand positioning or the price tag.

I'm pretty much in the same boat....though I'll stretch to a Tesla Model 3 at about $70k when the time comes. Though I have to say the new VW e-Golf with 400km range looks like hard to go past. But the Tesla 120kw charging capability holds me back. As for range.....well.....It's old news that my 200km range 30kWh LEAF is able to take me anywhere in NZ in a timely fashion provided the fast charger network is there....and it's more 'there' every week that passes. I've also learned that the fastest way to get anywhere is a 5-8 minute fast charge every 45 mins. You barely have time to check the time.....and you're off.

That may well be how this goes. Modest electric cars with 40kWh batteries that can go 250km....and anywhere further well enough with only the longest trips (1000km+) requiring a significant (15% additional) element of charging time....which is effectively reduced by longer trips requiring significant breaks on the way regardless.

The new 2018 Nissan LEAF may be that sweet spot.

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MarkH67

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#1895998 6-Nov-2017 13:40

Linuxluver:

The new 2018 Nissan LEAF may be that sweet spot.

I see the 40kWh battery as a interim capacity, the 60kWh comes out the next year and I think within a couple more years will become the capacity on the base model.

But if the 40kWh Leaf had come out a couple of years back and there were currently second hand ones at a reasonable price then I could see many people being willing to buy one.

I was talking to a friend on Saturday and he is starting to look into EVs. His wife drives 100km to work and 100km back again 5 days a week - 1,000km total per week! I suggested talking to the people that look after the carpark to see if a power socket could be made available. If she could charge at home, drive to work and then charge there while working and drive home again, that would be totally doable on a 24kWh Leaf.

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