Ive just found this...
http://www.meetup.com/CafeSci-Basingstoke/events/88689552/
looks interesting...
http://www.meetup.com/CafeSci-Basingstoke/events/88689552/
looks interesting...
Any Hampshire owners up for a bit of a laugh?
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Will they are offer free charging for EV's. 
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I don't suppose free charging will be available... they don't sound pro EV. Sounds to me like they are out to trash the idea of EVs for the long term. If any EV driver can attend this event then perhaps we should and bring a degree of reality to the proceedings. I suspect that it will be pushing the ideas of:
- the grid will overload
- all the lithium in the world will be used up
- where would we all charge?
etc
We all know these are red herrings that the media and any academic that wants to make headlines drag out whenever EVs are discussed.
I don't think I can attend... it is too far from Plymouth... but it would be great if some real EV owners were there to give people the correct info.
Perwhaps comeone who does attend could report back and let us know how the evening went.
- the grid will overload
- all the lithium in the world will be used up
- where would we all charge?
etc
We all know these are red herrings that the media and any academic that wants to make headlines drag out whenever EVs are discussed.
I don't think I can attend... it is too far from Plymouth... but it would be great if some real EV owners were there to give people the correct info.
Perwhaps comeone who does attend could report back and let us know how the evening went.
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Was Hoping it was a 'reverse psych' title to pull in a crowd then to convince them the power grid needs localised EV battery power storage... (as Denmark is investigating.) but it could easily be a 'the world does not have enough lithium' or a 'The network cant take the load' talk, has anyone asked?
Looks Like the speakers have academic backgrounds, in Electrical power systems and... Meteorology?
Looks Like the speakers have academic backgrounds, in Electrical power systems and... Meteorology?
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Yes, I hadn't thought of that... I'd be surprised. Most of the academics I have ever heard talk on the subject are against.Parax said:
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If you want to know what the talk will be like, this may give a bit of a clue from an earlier talk of the same title by one of the same people:
http://rooksheathscience.wordpress.com/2012/06/
http://rooksheathscience.wordpress.com/2012/06/
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thanks for that link Duncan
Oh I'm so gutted I cant make it this will be fun! 85kWh so anyone challenging this will have fun, quick show of hands of EV owners, and a quick call out of kWh from each, again with the 10 hours to charge. oh so many opportunities...
And to finish with use hydrogen instead, is the icing on the cake.. because making hydrogen without grid electricity is just how easy?
main problem with hydrogen is volume. energy density per litre is rubbish. (only density per kg is good).
Does anyone have one of those portable projector phones for putting some real information on the screen??
perhaps a few slides showing National Grid energy usage in daytime verses overnight grid capacity.
I'm really sad I can't make it...
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahhahahahahahahahaha hahhahahahahahhahahahahahhaha hahhahahahhahahahhahahahhahaha hahhahahahahhahahahahaha hahahahhahahhahahaha Ow it hurts hahahahahhahahaha hahhahahahahhahaha hahahhahahhahaahhahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahhaaha ahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhaha hahahahhahahahahahhahaha hhahahahahhaha please someone make it stop hahahahaha hhahahahahahha hahhahahahhaahhahahhahaha hahhahahhahahahahhaha.
Oh I'm so gutted I cant make it this will be fun! 85kWh so anyone challenging this will have fun, quick show of hands of EV owners, and a quick call out of kWh from each, again with the 10 hours to charge. oh so many opportunities...
And to finish with use hydrogen instead, is the icing on the cake.. because making hydrogen without grid electricity is just how easy?
main problem with hydrogen is volume. energy density per litre is rubbish. (only density per kg is good).
Does anyone have one of those portable projector phones for putting some real information on the screen??
perhaps a few slides showing National Grid energy usage in daytime verses overnight grid capacity.
I'm really sad I can't make it...
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On the one hand I would certainly love to be there but on the other I have to look at how confrontations such as this has gone in the past... who does the public believe? Academics with credentials or a bunch of EV drivers out to protect their considerable investment?Parax said:
I know it isn't like that but that is how people will see it I am sure. The academics always win this argument in public because the public are mostly pretty anti-EV and the academics support their scepticsm. My views on this are pretty clear... debunking academics in this way won't work.
Talking to people after in the bar is by far the bestter way to go... more pleasurable too
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Just a bounce of this thread. It's tomorrow.
Who is definitely going then?
If you are going, I think the claims you need to prepare for are:
- Hydrogen is the answer. Probably claimed to be made through some algae/biological approach because people are waking up to electrolysis and gas reformation being too inefficient.
- Synthetic hydrocarbons.
- The grid can't handle X million EVs.
- Long tailpipe.
- Overall dust to dust emissions from EV manufacture are worse.
- That now debunked Norwegian study about EV resource use (with the 1 tonne electric motors!)
- EV's and PHEVs aren't selling.
I have done a first order comparison with the Honda FCX Clarity and the bigger Tesla Model S (attached). Guess what wins.
You need to tackle head on the infrastructure question. ITM Power are a well known hydrogen electrolyser company. Their £730k containerised in-situ electrolyser can only generate 100 kg/day, enough hydrogen for under 24 refills of the FCX Clarity, requiring 116 kW non-stop power. It even needs £36k of annual servicing. So that is over 10x the capital cost of an EV rapid charger install and the servicing alone would pay for a new rapid charger every year. Furthermore even with very favourable electricity costs the target pre-tax, net hydrogen cost price is comparable with diesel's retail price and they cannot compete with the cost of putting electricity directly into an EV.
http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/upda ... structure/
The reports below say hydrogen cannot be economically trucked in from off-site manufacture. It cannot be stored in a parked car for more than a couple of weeks without boil-off. It takes 25 minutes to pressurise a car to 10,000 PSI (the working pressure of modern H2 cars) which itself needs a lot of electricity and requires people to wait for as long as an EV rapid charge. In addition to electricity, it either takes large quantities of natural gas or large quantities of fresh water to make (see link below).
So hydrogen has some very difficult infrastructure problems to solve, whereas the infrastructure for EVs reaches every building in the developed world.
Since G W Bush put over $1bn into Hydrogen R&D a decade ago, we have been promised hydrogen vehicles in 2010, 2012, 2015 and recently the head of GM said it can't happen before the 2020s. Well, as the saying goes "hydrogen - the fuel of the future and always will be".
Fuel cells require an as-yet undiscovered breakthrough to get their cost down by an order of magnitude to market prices - whereas I can go and buy a car that reduces my emissions by more for £29,999 now - and I have.
This is a great paper on why hydrogen is a mirage - from fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel: http://www.fuelcellforum.com/reports/E21.pdf
And another article on the fundamental problems from Robert Zubrin who is an expert on in-situ hydrogen and methanol manufacturing for space missions: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati ... rogen-hoax
They also may bring up synthesised hydrogencarbons, such as the "petrol from air" crowd like Air Fuel Synthesis who were all over the press at the end of last year. Well, they require hydrogen first, before they add the carbons, so they make pure hydrogen manufacture look efficient. (Note, this technology may have use for aeroplanes and rockets which cannot readily go electric...)
From what limited data I could get out of them, it was possible to say this synthetic petrol requires around 2000 Wh/mile to fuel a Prius - 6x that of an EV and 2x hydrogen.
I have attached some of my boilerplate "fact sheets" that I send to anyone who parrots out the usual anti-EV stuff.
Also worth remembering typical trip and daily driving distances.
From http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php
So an ER-EV really only needs it's engine for a small percentage of trips at the top of that curve, and this is why fitting a fuel cell can never be economic for such infrequent use, all the other problems notwithstanding.
For what it's worth, I usually charge my Ampera overnight at 6 Amps (1.4kW), the minimum setting, and that is more than enough to cover over 300 miles a week. It's also very close to my calculation for all that is needed on the attached sheets. Nevertheless 6 Amps is far less than the daytime load of the house, so of course the local transformer can handle it. Even if 40 houses were charging 2 EVs at this rate, it would not be a problem for a 100 kVA pole-mount transformer (which normally serve fewer than 40 houses). I have reduced my petrol use by over 90% since getting this car. I like refilling at home and having a full charge every morning and I would not go back to the hydrogen filling station model where I am at the mercy of their pricing and availability.
The BMW i3 is likely to be even more efficient, with it's 90 mile EV range and small four stroke motorcycle-derived engine, which has more than enough power for 80 mph (see attached horsepower-velocity graph), it will be able to do close to 100% of trips on electricity.
The head of Renault predicted 10% of new car sales would be EV by 2020. That would mean that close to 2% of cars on the road in that year would be EV assuming stead growth between now and then. There is plenty of time to "smart" enable the grid to manage charging rates with this sort of growth.
There was a 2008 study published by BERR (now BIS) showing that dust-to-dust emissions from an EV were under 2/3s that of an ICE car: http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file48653.pdf
Even the attached chart on PHEV and BEV emissions from a German study shows they are better on the coal-heavy German grid.
Regarding sales, worldwide sales of the Volt/Ampera were 4x higher in 2012 than in 2011. Both the Volt, Ampera and Leaf outsell many more lauded models. The Volt is in the top half of GM's sales table. The Leaf sells twice as many cars as the Nissan GT-R, for example.
http://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2012/11/ ... s-ranking/
Who is definitely going then?
If you are going, I think the claims you need to prepare for are:
- Hydrogen is the answer. Probably claimed to be made through some algae/biological approach because people are waking up to electrolysis and gas reformation being too inefficient.
- Synthetic hydrocarbons.
- The grid can't handle X million EVs.
- Long tailpipe.
- Overall dust to dust emissions from EV manufacture are worse.
- That now debunked Norwegian study about EV resource use (with the 1 tonne electric motors!)
- EV's and PHEVs aren't selling.
I have done a first order comparison with the Honda FCX Clarity and the bigger Tesla Model S (attached). Guess what wins.
You need to tackle head on the infrastructure question. ITM Power are a well known hydrogen electrolyser company. Their £730k containerised in-situ electrolyser can only generate 100 kg/day, enough hydrogen for under 24 refills of the FCX Clarity, requiring 116 kW non-stop power. It even needs £36k of annual servicing. So that is over 10x the capital cost of an EV rapid charger install and the servicing alone would pay for a new rapid charger every year. Furthermore even with very favourable electricity costs the target pre-tax, net hydrogen cost price is comparable with diesel's retail price and they cannot compete with the cost of putting electricity directly into an EV.
http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/upda ... structure/
The reports below say hydrogen cannot be economically trucked in from off-site manufacture. It cannot be stored in a parked car for more than a couple of weeks without boil-off. It takes 25 minutes to pressurise a car to 10,000 PSI (the working pressure of modern H2 cars) which itself needs a lot of electricity and requires people to wait for as long as an EV rapid charge. In addition to electricity, it either takes large quantities of natural gas or large quantities of fresh water to make (see link below).
So hydrogen has some very difficult infrastructure problems to solve, whereas the infrastructure for EVs reaches every building in the developed world.
Since G W Bush put over $1bn into Hydrogen R&D a decade ago, we have been promised hydrogen vehicles in 2010, 2012, 2015 and recently the head of GM said it can't happen before the 2020s. Well, as the saying goes "hydrogen - the fuel of the future and always will be".
Fuel cells require an as-yet undiscovered breakthrough to get their cost down by an order of magnitude to market prices - whereas I can go and buy a car that reduces my emissions by more for £29,999 now - and I have.
This is a great paper on why hydrogen is a mirage - from fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel: http://www.fuelcellforum.com/reports/E21.pdf
And another article on the fundamental problems from Robert Zubrin who is an expert on in-situ hydrogen and methanol manufacturing for space missions: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati ... rogen-hoax
They also may bring up synthesised hydrogencarbons, such as the "petrol from air" crowd like Air Fuel Synthesis who were all over the press at the end of last year. Well, they require hydrogen first, before they add the carbons, so they make pure hydrogen manufacture look efficient. (Note, this technology may have use for aeroplanes and rockets which cannot readily go electric...)
From what limited data I could get out of them, it was possible to say this synthetic petrol requires around 2000 Wh/mile to fuel a Prius - 6x that of an EV and 2x hydrogen.
I have attached some of my boilerplate "fact sheets" that I send to anyone who parrots out the usual anti-EV stuff.
Also worth remembering typical trip and daily driving distances.
From http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php
So an ER-EV really only needs it's engine for a small percentage of trips at the top of that curve, and this is why fitting a fuel cell can never be economic for such infrequent use, all the other problems notwithstanding.
For what it's worth, I usually charge my Ampera overnight at 6 Amps (1.4kW), the minimum setting, and that is more than enough to cover over 300 miles a week. It's also very close to my calculation for all that is needed on the attached sheets. Nevertheless 6 Amps is far less than the daytime load of the house, so of course the local transformer can handle it. Even if 40 houses were charging 2 EVs at this rate, it would not be a problem for a 100 kVA pole-mount transformer (which normally serve fewer than 40 houses). I have reduced my petrol use by over 90% since getting this car. I like refilling at home and having a full charge every morning and I would not go back to the hydrogen filling station model where I am at the mercy of their pricing and availability.
The BMW i3 is likely to be even more efficient, with it's 90 mile EV range and small four stroke motorcycle-derived engine, which has more than enough power for 80 mph (see attached horsepower-velocity graph), it will be able to do close to 100% of trips on electricity.
The head of Renault predicted 10% of new car sales would be EV by 2020. That would mean that close to 2% of cars on the road in that year would be EV assuming stead growth between now and then. There is plenty of time to "smart" enable the grid to manage charging rates with this sort of growth.
There was a 2008 study published by BERR (now BIS) showing that dust-to-dust emissions from an EV were under 2/3s that of an ICE car: http://www.bis.gov.uk/files/file48653.pdf
Even the attached chart on PHEV and BEV emissions from a German study shows they are better on the coal-heavy German grid.
Regarding sales, worldwide sales of the Volt/Ampera were 4x higher in 2012 than in 2011. Both the Volt, Ampera and Leaf outsell many more lauded models. The Volt is in the top half of GM's sales table. The Leaf sells twice as many cars as the Nissan GT-R, for example.
http://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2012/11/ ... s-ranking/
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I am not expecting anything good to come out of this meeting. I hope I am wrong.
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David, just back from meeting a friend at Wisley, she went along to the thing in Basingstoke last night because she was interested, having been mightily impressed with my Ampera over the last few months! I prepped her with all the background info, including the wealth of info you provided above. She gave me a précis of the evening. Apparently there were about 40 people there, but only one EV driver when the audience were polled about that. She said that the premise that the presenter focussed on was not, in fact, that hydrogen was the way of the future, but the one about the grid not being able to handle 20 million electric cars. My friend said she didn't need my coaching to see the weakness of that argument. Quite a lot of questions from the audience apparently, all pretty sensible, and some questioning the numbers and basis of what was being presented. The presenter certainly didn't get it all her own way it seems, but the session was generally good natured. If you'd like more detail I can ask my friend to jot down anything more she can remember!
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Thanks for the feedback Mike. I'm also waiting for Robert Sharpe to post some further info (he sent me a summary but wants to post a full account himself). However he did say there were multiple EV drivers in the audience and some passionate pro-EV support in the Q&A.
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