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If West London electricity grid has already hit capacity, what about the ban on sales of new internal combustion cars from 2030, in just eight years time? It's

If West London electricity grid has already hit capacity, what about the ban on sales of new internal combustion cars from 2030, in just eight years time? It's not exactly "joined-up" thinking.

sph 4y ago
All politicians from now to the 2030s will be jumping on the "ban petrol cars" bandwagon because it will bring them a lot of votes, but it's an unrealistic goal we will never achieve and we will find ourselves in 10 years with no widespread electric network, a lot of broken promises and a even warmer Earth. As a climate change alarmist, I consider any "ban on X in < 20 years" promise as wishful thinking or a populist lie, which will eventually turn into a huge cash-grab and tax reliefs for their lobbyist friends that will have gotten into electric by then. I admire all those that still believe their favourite party will fight climate change.
- tpxl 4y ago
  As someone with similar concerns, how far do you think solar can take us? An average solar roof with ~10kWp of solar panels with a battery (an electric car?) should be enough to cover most of the needs of the house, leaving just the car as an external user. That, and with smart charging (ie off-peak) we could smooth the consumption curve, meaning we could use non-elastic generation (nuclear, ..?) more?
  - dbetteridge 4y ago
    Going to be much more challenging in Europe and cooler climates with less sunshine. Sunny places like Australia are having the problem of too much solar on the grid now and looking at community batteries and EV charging as ways to offset that and stabilise things.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      I'm at +45° north and it should work fine here (I'm basing all my assumptions on where I live). It most definitely wouldn't work in Sweden and Norway, but France and maybe even northern Germany should be fine?
      - vetinari 4y ago
        45N is basically northern Mediterranean; most of Europe does not have similar climate. It does not work fine even at 48N during november-february.
      - sanitycheck 4y ago
        I just did some quick calculations (which might be wrong, but maybe not by orders of magnitude) based on reported numbers on the internet. It seems that powering a medium sized air source heat pump purely on solar in a UK winter would require a £34K investment in solar panels, covering nearly 300 square metres. Not exactly viable per property in city-density housing.
        tpxl 4y ago
        City dense will never work since skyscrapers have ridiculously low roof amounts compared to the populace. Also, as far as heating goes, passive houses should need almost nothing for the winter (still need to heat water for showering, etc. though). E: Can you share your numbers? A 10kWp plant that I had in mind is ~50m^2 - 30x330kWp panels at about 1.6m^2 each, so did you mean you actually need a 60kWp plant?
        sanitycheck 4y ago
        Sorry, I didn't save the numbers.. But yeah, sounds right - based on reports that we can only expect 1/5th of the output per panel in winter. "Passive houses" are not going to happen in the UK for the vast majority of the population in my lifetime!
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Makes one to think how much of the solar capacity will end up simply unused during peaks. That is it is there, but the relays have disconnected it. As we simply will not have enough places to sink it all and for grid stability you can't produce more than you use...
      - implements 4y ago
        “PV Diverters” supposedly remedy that problem. They use current transformers to detect when the home’s solar supply is outstripping its demand, and then switch on power consuming devices like electric water heating / air conditioning so the power isn’t wasted.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
        Unfortunately one of the biggest technical problems with renewables is that we still lack an efficient way to deal with energy storage. It's still relatively expensive, inefficient, and creating waste. Maybe in 20-30 years you will be able to live in the winter using the energy produced during the summer and stored in batteries that are cheap and 100% recyclable, but it's not a reality yet.
        sph 4y ago
        20-30 years is optimistic IMHO. We're still a huge technological breakthrough in batteries away for large-scale, high-capacity energy storage to be viable. It might happen, but the technology still isn't there, yet we're going all in on renewables, especially in countries like Germany and Italy where nuclear is politically toxic.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    10kWp is not enough during winter (november-february) in most of Europe. It would be enough only if you heat by using something else (like gas), not heat pump.
- hgazx 4y ago
  Ban petrol cars is bringing votes from whom? I don’t know anybody who supports that.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    The vocal people on twitter and left-side of media? Actual voters really don't have much alternatives. At least not once they can vocalise and not get skewered by inclusive people.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    Look at country side in Eastern Europe. You think that people are driving around in cars made between 1990-2010 because they are fans of old tech? No they drive those cars, because they don't have money to buy something better. And those guys are going to support anyone who is going to oppose ICE ban, because for people living on country side it will be absolutely unaffordable to have BEV with range of their current old ICE car.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Why would people who drive 10-30 year old cars, and for whatever reason feel that they need an ICE car, vote against a ban on the sale of new ICE cars starting in a decade? That doesn't even begin to affect their purchases for 20-40 years and even then, it still doesn't ban plug-in hybrids, that will be their best options for 10 year old cars in about 10 years time anyway? It just makes no sense.
      - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        Because BEVs which they will eventually get will have range of +-50km, which is much less than their current ICE cars for much more money. Is it really that hard to grasp it?
        ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        > Is it really that hard to grasp it? Yes, it is. Are they intentionally not buying the second hand PHEVs Which will probably still be available to buy new at this point? Are they picking their cars at random? Or do they run some kind of rough calculation of expected running costs for their intended usage before they decide to buy it? If so then the ones that only need 50km daily range can buy the BEV and save on gas, and the other ones can buy the PHEVs and still save on gas, which will probably be pretty expensive since we're talking about the year 2040 at the minimum if they really need to get a car exactly 10 years old, rather than their usual limit of up to 30 year old cars. People happy with 30 yeor old cars will only start to have problems car shopping in the 2060s
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Climate change alarmists don't call themselves "climate change alarmists", that's what climate change deniers call people who don't deny climate change.
bluescrn 4y ago
I strongly suspect that ban will be delayed. There's still no serious effort to build large-scale public EV charging infrastructure. The ban on new petrol vehicles seems likely to result in more older (higher-emission) vehicles remaining on the road for longer, as EVs still remain 'toys for the wealthy', far too expensive for the working class (who rely on inexpensive used cars). It's unclear what the used EV market is going to look like longer-term in terms of pricing, degraded battery packs, and reduced range, and availability of repair/servicing for a vehicle that's now a 'tech product' full of software locks, that can only be repaired by authorised dealers, rather than by any skilled mechanic. It's also unclear how governments are going to tax EV users to recoup the huge amount of fuel tax lost from the switch to EVs...
- paulb73 4y ago
  The used market is what really concerns me with the EV market, when it comes to sustainability. My daughter will be driving in 2 years time and is adamant she won't drive something powered by fossil-fuels. However, what choice does she have? Any used EV will have a range of 50 miles, and that is after a full 8 hour charge. Fixing/replacing the battery will cost far more than the vehicle itself. More recent EVs 2nd-hand price is still higher than a new petrol-based one. I can't see how the market can support itself, without efforts to create batteries that can be recycled easily, but the manufacturers don't seem to have an interest in that.
  - Lutger 4y ago
    Where is your 50 miles number based on? Seems really far off to me.
    - paulb73 4y ago
      I was looking at old EVs, 10+ years old, that my daughter could afford herself for £3k - £5k. It might be that more recent cars retain their range better after 10 years, but then they may also retain their price.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
sdflhasjd 4y ago
It is possible that this kind of capacity planning already has considerations for EVs.
Mvandenbergh 4y ago
The impact of domestic chargers with smart charging enabled (now mandatory) on maximum demand after diversity is not very large because they almost always end up charging in the middle of the night. Public chargers have a much bigger impact because they need to run when the customer plugs in and not later. Heat pumps have a massive impact because they have no diversity (when my house is cold, so are all my neighbours and probably it was cold yesterday and will be tomorrow as well).
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  How most people can end up charging in the middle of the night, when 50% of people in EU are living in apartments, have no parking space and will be most probably using on Fast DC chargers?
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    Wait, where do these theoretical people park their car then? Either they have a parking spot which a charger can be installed at, or they don’t have a parking spot at all, and presumably just drive around endlessly?
  - Mvandenbergh 4y ago
    This story is specifically about West London, which is not the EU but I'll grant you has similar settlement patterns. More than two thirds of car owners in the UK have access to off-street parking. Many people who do not have such access don't have a car in the first place. This part of outer West London is particularly suburban, I would expect that number to be even higher there. I would also expect a very substantial number of slow lamp-post chargers suitable for over-night charging to be installed instead of DC fast chargers.
drumhead 4y ago
The deadline for petrol cars is unrealistic, we dont have the generating capacity or the infrastructure to deal with that many electric vehicles and I dont know if we ever will. Hydrogen is looking like a better alternative right now.
Andys 4y ago
Electric cars are the problem but maybe also the solution, since they can be configured to feed power back into the grid at peak times (and peak spikes is the limiting factor)
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Well, I can already tell you that most of people are not going to participate, because it would take more cycles from already cycle limited battery.
  - Andys 4y ago
    Supplying the grid with say, 6kW for 1 hour during a peak load event, would only dent an EV battery by about 10% of total charge. And thats only needed on some days of the year. Only a tiny % of total vehicles would be needed to be connected to work together mimicking one gas peaker plant. And you can get paid to do it.

If West London electricity grid has already hit capacity, what about the ban on sales of new internal combustion cars from 2030, in just eight years time? It's not exactly "joined-up" thinking.

sph 4y ago

All politicians from now to the 2030s will be jumping on the "ban petrol cars" bandwagon because it will bring them a lot of votes, but it's an unrealistic goal we will never achieve and we will find ourselves in 10 years with no widespread electric network, a lot of broken promises and a even warmer Earth. As a climate change alarmist, I consider any "ban on X in < 20 years" promise as wishful thinking or a populist lie, which will eventually turn into a huge cash-grab and tax reliefs for their lobbyist friends that will have gotten into electric by then. I admire all those that still believe their favourite party will fight climate change.

tpxl 4y ago
As someone with similar concerns, how far do you think solar can take us? An average solar roof with ~10kWp of solar panels with a battery (an electric car?) should be enough to cover most of the needs of the house, leaving just the car as an external user. That, and with smart charging (ie off-peak) we could smooth the consumption curve, meaning we could use non-elastic generation (nuclear, ..?) more?
- dbetteridge 4y ago
  Going to be much more challenging in Europe and cooler climates with less sunshine. Sunny places like Australia are having the problem of too much solar on the grid now and looking at community batteries and EV charging as ways to offset that and stabilise things.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    I'm at +45° north and it should work fine here (I'm basing all my assumptions on where I live). It most definitely wouldn't work in Sweden and Norway, but France and maybe even northern Germany should be fine?
    - vetinari 4y ago
      45N is basically northern Mediterranean; most of Europe does not have similar climate. It does not work fine even at 48N during november-february.
    - sanitycheck 4y ago
      I just did some quick calculations (which might be wrong, but maybe not by orders of magnitude) based on reported numbers on the internet. It seems that powering a medium sized air source heat pump purely on solar in a UK winter would require a £34K investment in solar panels, covering nearly 300 square metres. Not exactly viable per property in city-density housing.
      - tpxl 4y ago
        City dense will never work since skyscrapers have ridiculously low roof amounts compared to the populace. Also, as far as heating goes, passive houses should need almost nothing for the winter (still need to heat water for showering, etc. though). E: Can you share your numbers? A 10kWp plant that I had in mind is ~50m^2 - 30x330kWp panels at about 1.6m^2 each, so did you mean you actually need a 60kWp plant?
        sanitycheck 4y ago
        Sorry, I didn't save the numbers.. But yeah, sounds right - based on reports that we can only expect 1/5th of the output per panel in winter. "Passive houses" are not going to happen in the UK for the vast majority of the population in my lifetime!
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Makes one to think how much of the solar capacity will end up simply unused during peaks. That is it is there, but the relays have disconnected it. As we simply will not have enough places to sink it all and for grid stability you can't produce more than you use...
    - implements 4y ago
      “PV Diverters” supposedly remedy that problem. They use current transformers to detect when the home’s solar supply is outstripping its demand, and then switch on power consuming devices like electric water heating / air conditioning so the power isn’t wasted.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
      Unfortunately one of the biggest technical problems with renewables is that we still lack an efficient way to deal with energy storage. It's still relatively expensive, inefficient, and creating waste. Maybe in 20-30 years you will be able to live in the winter using the energy produced during the summer and stored in batteries that are cheap and 100% recyclable, but it's not a reality yet.
      - sph 4y ago
        20-30 years is optimistic IMHO. We're still a huge technological breakthrough in batteries away for large-scale, high-capacity energy storage to be viable. It might happen, but the technology still isn't there, yet we're going all in on renewables, especially in countries like Germany and Italy where nuclear is politically toxic.
- vetinari 4y ago
  10kWp is not enough during winter (november-february) in most of Europe. It would be enough only if you heat by using something else (like gas), not heat pump.
hgazx 4y ago
Ban petrol cars is bringing votes from whom? I don’t know anybody who supports that.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  The vocal people on twitter and left-side of media? Actual voters really don't have much alternatives. At least not once they can vocalise and not get skewered by inclusive people.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Look at country side in Eastern Europe. You think that people are driving around in cars made between 1990-2010 because they are fans of old tech? No they drive those cars, because they don't have money to buy something better. And those guys are going to support anyone who is going to oppose ICE ban, because for people living on country side it will be absolutely unaffordable to have BEV with range of their current old ICE car.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Why would people who drive 10-30 year old cars, and for whatever reason feel that they need an ICE car, vote against a ban on the sale of new ICE cars starting in a decade? That doesn't even begin to affect their purchases for 20-40 years and even then, it still doesn't ban plug-in hybrids, that will be their best options for 10 year old cars in about 10 years time anyway? It just makes no sense.
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Because BEVs which they will eventually get will have range of +-50km, which is much less than their current ICE cars for much more money. Is it really that hard to grasp it?
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        > Is it really that hard to grasp it? Yes, it is. Are they intentionally not buying the second hand PHEVs Which will probably still be available to buy new at this point? Are they picking their cars at random? Or do they run some kind of rough calculation of expected running costs for their intended usage before they decide to buy it? If so then the ones that only need 50km daily range can buy the BEV and save on gas, and the other ones can buy the PHEVs and still save on gas, which will probably be pretty expensive since we're talking about the year 2040 at the minimum if they really need to get a car exactly 10 years old, rather than their usual limit of up to 30 year old cars. People happy with 30 yeor old cars will only start to have problems car shopping in the 2060s
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Climate change alarmists don't call themselves "climate change alarmists", that's what climate change deniers call people who don't deny climate change.

bluescrn 4y ago

I strongly suspect that ban will be delayed. There's still no serious effort to build large-scale public EV charging infrastructure. The ban on new petrol vehicles seems likely to result in more older (higher-emission) vehicles remaining on the road for longer, as EVs still remain 'toys for the wealthy', far too expensive for the working class (who rely on inexpensive used cars). It's unclear what the used EV market is going to look like longer-term in terms of pricing, degraded battery packs, and reduced range, and availability of repair/servicing for a vehicle that's now a 'tech product' full of software locks, that can only be repaired by authorised dealers, rather than by any skilled mechanic. It's also unclear how governments are going to tax EV users to recoup the huge amount of fuel tax lost from the switch to EVs...

paulb73 4y ago
The used market is what really concerns me with the EV market, when it comes to sustainability. My daughter will be driving in 2 years time and is adamant she won't drive something powered by fossil-fuels. However, what choice does she have? Any used EV will have a range of 50 miles, and that is after a full 8 hour charge. Fixing/replacing the battery will cost far more than the vehicle itself. More recent EVs 2nd-hand price is still higher than a new petrol-based one. I can't see how the market can support itself, without efforts to create batteries that can be recycled easily, but the manufacturers don't seem to have an interest in that.
- Lutger 4y ago
  Where is your 50 miles number based on? Seems really far off to me.
  - paulb73 4y ago
    I was looking at old EVs, 10+ years old, that my daughter could afford herself for £3k - £5k. It might be that more recent cars retain their range better after 10 years, but then they may also retain their price.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago

sdflhasjd 4y ago

It is possible that this kind of capacity planning already has considerations for EVs.

Mvandenbergh 4y ago

The impact of domestic chargers with smart charging enabled (now mandatory) on maximum demand after diversity is not very large because they almost always end up charging in the middle of the night. Public chargers have a much bigger impact because they need to run when the customer plugs in and not later. Heat pumps have a massive impact because they have no diversity (when my house is cold, so are all my neighbours and probably it was cold yesterday and will be tomorrow as well).

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
How most people can end up charging in the middle of the night, when 50% of people in EU are living in apartments, have no parking space and will be most probably using on Fast DC chargers?
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Wait, where do these theoretical people park their car then? Either they have a parking spot which a charger can be installed at, or they don’t have a parking spot at all, and presumably just drive around endlessly?
- Mvandenbergh 4y ago
  This story is specifically about West London, which is not the EU but I'll grant you has similar settlement patterns. More than two thirds of car owners in the UK have access to off-street parking. Many people who do not have such access don't have a car in the first place. This part of outer West London is particularly suburban, I would expect that number to be even higher there. I would also expect a very substantial number of slow lamp-post chargers suitable for over-night charging to be installed instead of DC fast chargers.

drumhead 4y ago

The deadline for petrol cars is unrealistic, we dont have the generating capacity or the infrastructure to deal with that many electric vehicles and I dont know if we ever will. Hydrogen is looking like a better alternative right now.

Andys 4y ago

Electric cars are the problem but maybe also the solution, since they can be configured to feed power back into the grid at peak times (and peak spikes is the limiting factor)

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Well, I can already tell you that most of people are not going to participate, because it would take more cycles from already cycle limited battery.
- Andys 4y ago
  Supplying the grid with say, 6kW for 1 hour during a peak load event, would only dent an EV battery by about 10% of total charge. And thats only needed on some days of the year. Only a tiny % of total vehicles would be needed to be connected to work together mimicking one gas peaker plant. And you can get paid to do it.