Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Time for Electric Power?

That's good to hear Jays! I think your concerns about the environmental impact of uncontrolled extractive industries regarding not only Cobalt but also Lithium and other components are well-founded, and it's important to keep the pressure up to get them to clean up their act.

But although it's true to say that the EV industry is not as green as it could be, it's still not as bad as the fossil fuel industry, and of course what's killing us at the moment are the local emissions in cities and overall greenhouse gas productions.

As we used to say when I was consulting, it's all about draining the swamp vs shooting the alligators, you have to balance priorities, and right now I believe we need to scale back our use of fossil fuels.

I understand because of the increased demand for electricity, that the distribution network is now running hot and before too long will need massive infrastructure investment to cope. It will be interesting to see who foots that bill................................................... and the climate impact of putting that infrastructure in place.

Energy production comes with a massive environmental impact, it will be interesting to see the environmental impact of the new generating facilities and their payback period. It used to take the first 25 years of the electricity output from a coal fired power station just to pay back the energy used in its construction ignoring the climate impact.............................steel and cement production are not environmentally friendly.

At last count there was 10,000 personnel onsite at Bridgwater in the relatively early stages of construction of the new EDF funded power station, it is enormous and I was used to seeing all the various Sizewell constructions but this is one big mother.
Still it'll keep a few PP3 cars topped up..

We have farming friends that have done quite nicely thank you very much as a result of selling crap land off to them.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'running hot'? The purpose of the National Grid is to ensure that the 400kV Transmission Network and the 14 Distribution Networks are constantly in balance, riding a fine line between demand and supply to within a few Hz (Too much demand and the frequency drops, too much supply and it rises), so the network can always said to be 'running hot' in the sense that there's no benefit in having excess capacity.

What's important of course is the grid's ability to respond to unforeseen spikes, and there are several strategies in place which act to adjust that.

Firstly of course there are the infrastructure and generation improvements, which are constantly ongoing.

Then we have demand response activities, whereby industries that can quickly reduce or increase their consumption participate with the Grid to help balance supply and demand.

Next there are the small-scale generators. Typically these are commercial or industrial enterprises with generators and/or batteries that can be quickly spun up when required.

And of course there are the Virtual Power plant aggregators allowing small generators to participate in the wholesale market to combine their offerings into traceable block.

Before retirement I worked in the electricity supply industry for over 12 years and I can assure you and everyone else that the idea that we are going to somehow run out of electricity if we switch to EVs is a patent nonsense. Bot the National Grid Company, the generators, the supply companies, and the DNOs are investing billions in ensuring our future ability to meet demand.

One very interesting source of information on this is the National Grid's Strategy site

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/future-energy-scenarios

I'm not trying to pretend that everything is rosy and we won't hit any problems at all, but the idea that we're facing collapse due to EVs is more than a bit fanciful.

The article did not specify what it meant by running hot, it left the reader with the impression that it was close to maximum capacity and would require massive infrastructure investment to handle future demand levels. Obviously as demand for electricity grows and has to replace fossil fuels for powering cars, domestic home heating etc. are we putting too much faith on electricity being the answer. When perhaps we could clean up fossil fuels far more and introduce far more carbon capture schemes, thereby not throwing away much of the investment in fossil fuel energy generation. This in no way is intended as a having a go at EV's etc.

I hope there is much more investment in alternative schemes eg Norway's Longship project to carbon capture and store it underground in the now defunct oil fields under the sea bed may be part of the answer

I came over to Jersey to work for the electricity company, I was chatting to an old acquaintance who introduced me to a new planning engineer, a recent UK recruit, and reckoned that, at least in the in the South, the UK are going to have big challenges in supporting the EV infrastructure particularly the Ultra High speed chargers.

(A year later I had a new supply run in 400 metres across the field, coincidently it was speced by the same lady. The builder said that it was the thickest cable they had ever laid to a domestic premise. Last Month when I was discussing the possibility of moving to an ASHP with the Electricity Companies "green evangelist" he said. at 100 amps I was on the cusp of having insufficient supply.)

I purchased a 268kW photovoltaic system two years ago and based on its performance over that time will add another 300kW next year. With current low interest rates and clever financing structure this is requiring very little financial input and after 7 years it will be cash generative all the way. I suspect that more businesses that have a good sq footage of roof and a reasonable level of demand will go down this route. We have increased output of the business whilst taking less from the traditional electricity infrastructure.

It is also conceivable that as more employees drive EV's, providing a charging capability at work could well be part of a benefits package that some staff would want to access and would assist with issues with lack of capability to charge at home.

Brian,

In the recent fishing dispute over French access etc...the issue was raised about France being the main supplier of electricity to Jersey and potentially cutting off supplies to Jersey. Are those newspaper reports correct and what is happening (if anything) to Jersey to become more self sufficient/reduce reliance on France. It's an issue that will come up for the UK after 2026 over EU access to fishing grounds, with the EU members already suggesting reliance on European electricity supplies may be dependant upon fishing access.

Then there's the further complication of the interconnector with Ireland which uses upto 10% of UK capacity travelling as I understand it both ways subject to demand.. Ireland is building a new interconnector with France, leaving questions over the UK interconnector.

Very interesting times ahead with some key decision points that may materially impact the UK's capacity in the very near future

John, Jersey, by statute has to have sufficient generation power to meet its own needs, so the threat to cut off supplies would not have affected continuity of power here. We are self sufficient in generation capacity, although I had not realised that we had de-commissioned our steam turbines some years back and are now reliant on gas-turbines and diesel sets. The cost of running this sort of kit would have been significant of course.

In view of Brexit, there had been idle talk here to try and move from reliance of trade with the UK. But this idea of trade with France was damaged by the appalling Sabre rattling of the French politicians threatening to cut off supply, but also by the near continuous disruption to the St Malo / St Helier sea route by French industrial action and surprisingly, St Malo is not actually a freight port and would have problems handling the 100,000 tons of stuff that comes in from the UK.

The fishing dispute was bought to a head by Brexit but predated that by many years. it is a complex topic but one that goes back to the "Grainville Bay Agreement" This gave the right to license French boats to fish Jersey waters to the Normandy authorities, these authorities also receiving the revenue from those licenses! This has now changed and we issue the licenses, but are still currently in a state of flux. For example Jersey fishermen are not allowed to fish for Bream in the Jersey Bream spawning area, the French are, and do. However the fact that French fishing boats landing Jersey fish, do not have to have the catch vetted for health, but the Jersey boats landing their Jersey fish do, is down to Brexit. Odd really as were never members of the EU. Some cynics may say that it is a revenge act, but far from me...

In the UK, 100A is the maximum you can have on a single-phase supply, which is what they give to domestic addresses. This enables you to draw 24Kw, which is a flippin' massive amount for a house to use. To go higher you need a 3-phase supply and a commercial contract. I believe in some countries (Germany?) it's much more common to have 3-phase to domestic properties.

I don't actually believe this is that much of a problem though, since the vast majority of EV charging would be overnight. The effect will be to bring the night time base load on the grid much more in line with that of the day time, so if anything it makes it easier for capacity planning as the required load would be more predictable.

The overwhelming majority of EVs will not need to be fully charged every night, most would probably only need topping up every few days. If we take the average 30miles per day and a rule of thumb of 30kWh/100 miles, then for an EV that was plugged in every night a smart charger would only need to bung in around 10 KWh in over say a 10-hour period, which would be no problem for a domestic house supply to cope with. I have a 16A socket in the garage that can support a 3.6kW charger so in theory an EV in the average pattern of use would be charged in 3 hours. A bit of smarts in the controller synced to the smart meter could easily cope with scheduling that charge time to do it when there's lower demand on the grid.

In theory, the south of the UK has got slightly more of a problem because of transmission losses (most of the generation is in the north) but that's taken care of by the grid and the transmission charges. There is however a political/commercial risk in that when we decided to privatise the network we sold nearly all of it to foreign companies, and it's the Chinese who operate the distribution network in the south east. I see that as being a far greater risk to us than the technical challenges of being able to deliver a few more kWh to people's homes.