Thread: EV general discussion

Again, not free, not cheap, not effective - at this stage.

By a significant factor.

The ginormous, massive, phenomenal (point made I reckon) amount of expenditure on infrastructure in the next few years will push power prices up by exponential amounts.

Not just the storage, the distribution networks, the balancing systems, the entire network is needing upgrade to handle this new ideal.

In summer, it’s not unreasonable for the block here (about 20 houses) to be drawing 10kwh each. That’s 200kwh without a single electric vehicle in sight.

The cheapest Tesla burns 18.8kWh/100km at best.
Using a Tesla supercharger that’s $9.78/100km or $7.00ish from a home source. That latter figure is more than 50% of my current diesel bill.
If I did a run to Adelaide and home where I needed Superchargers my fuel bill would be $85.00 and around 2 hours longer to complete the journey.

It would only be $109.00 using diesel and significantly quicker. Also not limited to a set route.

According to Carsguide - It’s $~32 to charge an 85kWh Tesla at the moment.
And that will not even get me 3/4 of the way in Summer. 3x Charges and I’m $96

Now add a similar vehicle to each household.
Assume full charge required.
That local battery storage is now required to throw out 2,300kWh of energy just for 20 homes.

Based on that Victoria’s “big 300MWh” battery could only power 2,600 homes for 1 night…. Compare how much real estate that thing takes up, where do the smaller equivalents even go . We would need to knock the 20th house down on the block just for the battery needed.

There are 18,000 homes in my Small city…
We need a battery 7 times the Vic one just for one night . And let’s not even talk about the plant up the road….

Originally Posted by Vern

Tariffs have dropped, then risen again, but as the feed in tariff rises, so does the consumption tariff. Shop around and you can get 17c feed in, but consumption goes up to around 36c, ideally you want enough pv to cover your daytime consumption needs, and if you can afford it, to charge a battery as well, then drain that whilst the sun isn't shining.

Correct, and an 85kw Tesla will make mince meat out of the 15kw battery on the wall

At $10k ish for a battery, to scale up 8 times, and then add an EV cost to the mix, for a max of 10 years use before replacement.

That’s one heck of a lot of coin.

Gee it's a pity when realism and facts get into a debate.

What happened to feelings and post modernism?(sarc)
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Gee it's a pity when realism and facts get into a debate.

What happened to feelings and post modernism?(sarc)
Regards PhilipA

...Venezuela?

Originally Posted by Vern

Exactly, its not that simple. How is a tradie supposed to charge the E-van from their solar and battery when they are out working in their E-van all day whilst the sun is shining on their home pv system?
As i said, they'll charge from the grid when they get home in the evening

Off peak power is useful and cheap

On a sour note my MG quirky car is refund/replace as still not giving anything like the range is was paid to do. Interesting as several others who have them get the promised range.

On a really weird EV note - the Tesla cyber truck apparently as a Solar roof option which just might add a tiny 15 miles or 24km if the sun was shining brightly.
Some very imaginative thought bubbles


Tesla Cybertruck will have solar roof option to add 15 miles of range per day - Electrek

While off peak power is cheap - it’s not as plentiful as you might think. There’s still a huge amount of off peak load - it actually rivals a hot day as far as power consumption goes.

When we put a town on generators for line maintenance (only from late Autumn to early Spring due to lighter loads) we might as an example run around 6 to 7MW at the start of the day - this will drop dramatically when the sun gets high in the sky and all the solar kicks in - sometimes this can actually kick out the gens on reverse power so we need to run load banks - but if you look at the load profile in the zone sub over those sort of days, the off peak at 11pm will hit 20MW for the same area - something we’d never be able to handle off portable gens, so we can never do overnight shutdowns - which a lot of customers request and think would be easier.

It’s certainly a time when most businesses aren’t using power but still 1000’s are using it for water heating. Adding car charging loads to this would soon start causing brown outs in the evenings.

The exact phase one supply authority manager used when we were discussing mass charging of EV’s was ‘Ain’t gunna happen - there’s not enough power by a long way’

The two bog standard wall plug charges use less power than your or my hot water or fridge when running so I don't see the issues some of you do.


I wonder about "Audi Entering Dakar Rally With This Mean-Looking Electrified SUV" RS Q E-Tron

"Audi is ditching Formula E and getting dirty again by announcing an electrified entry for the 2022 Dakar Rally. The image above is the first teaser of what to expect to see kicking up sand through the desert. Plus, the company is teasing a return to Le Mans. The Four Rings isn't yet offering much info on the rally vehicle's powertrain. It uses an electric drivetrain but has what the company calls an "energy converter" in the form of a turbocharged combustion engine. Going by this description, the setup seems to make the SUV a series hybrid with the gasoline-drinking powerplant functioning as a range extender for charging the batteries when necessary, rather than a pure EV.
The company says that "the aim is to permanently improve the performance of the electric drivetrain and the battery in the years to come," suggesting that this might not be a one-year effort of competing in the Dakar Rally. "The experience gained in this process should then be incorporated into the further development of future electrified production models," Audi says in this project's announcement." Audi Entering Dakar Rally With This Mean-Looking Electrified SUV

Audi say it is an EV. I assume its not a hybrid as suggested in the article ? wait and see I guess. My thoughts is they might use Hydrogen, What ever It will be entertaining

f0mmtdq1o1qbv7xd8rfu.jpg

Edit- it is a hybrid not a BEV for FCEV I think "Providing energy for the electric motor is a detuned 200kW version of the 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine in the brand's DTM touring car, which runs between 4500 and 6000rpm to serve as a generator to charge the bespoke 50kWh high-voltage battery." Link

That said we might get a surprise.

Standard chargers run say 8 amps all night to get an EV close to capacity - so at 11pm a system that’s around 80% capacity without all these chargers on is supposed to cope how?

I’m not anti EV - it ****es me off no end that people think this when I try and point out the physics of charging mass EV’s when I work every day with the grid all these people think will cope no dramas when it simply won’t.

It’s not my opinion, it’s not me being anti renewable or anti EV - it’s just the facts when you look at how the system works and understand it at a fundamental level not just what you can glean off the internet.

Science is the new frontier to hang it on so Engineers that design, build and maintain these systems - who believe me are looking for solutions - just get told we’re lying to the population. I just don’t get it - don’t believe me if you don’t want to but the facts don’t lie - there just isn’t enough power or a way of getting it to homes currently to charge EV’s on mass. Work out the energy potential of petrol, what the electrical equivalent is then work out how much power is needed to replace say half the petrol with electricity - the numbers may surprise you.

Not having a go at anyone in particular but the numbers simply don’t add up - no system in the WORLD can cope with mass EV charging without an expenditure an order of magnitude higher that what is being spent - and no one will accept power prices in the dollars per KWh so what’s the solution?

I don’t know but everyone having EV’s isn’t it. There’s just not enough money to go around to make this work.