Energy infrastructure

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483557#Comment_118483557

Well according to this article (behind pw) you can also use your EV for domestic electricity consumption. Charge up at night when prices are low then release back into home at peak demand (and peak prices)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bidirectional-charging-using-electric-car-battery-to-power-home-5jxrvnfb6

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483557#Comment_118483557

You said 'invest' - to me that would be buying shares in a technically stupid, but subsidy sensible, solar panel power company. Those will be milking it. For individuals, solar PV makes sense in Australia, but here the payback period looks to me to be over a decade. There seems to be a basic problem with the longevity of highly stressed voltage converting electronics. Inverters have a high failure rate, so that 10-15 years would blow out further if they, or any other part of the system fails or needs any maintainance or € spending on it.

I have about a 50% failure rate in the LED bulbs I have purchased. The LEDs themselves have an incredibly long lifespan, but the stressed electronic components used to convert from high voltages to 3.6v don't and fail in less time than a halogen bulb usually lasts. My 'investment' in LED bulbs has been a total loss and when the LEDs fail, I am replacing them with halogens. The promise of multi decade logevity, and thus a liklihood of a cost saving eventually, is not one I have any faith in anymore.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483557#Comment_118483557

3) Get a couple of Dacia Sanderos (one of them Stepway for big trips) and use the €10k+ to run them on lovely cheap LPG. 😋

Environmentally I really hate that despite just starting to hit the mainstream they've gone so big with many EVs. Huge amount of carbon hidden in the bodywork and it's really unnecessary but hey, it's what the market wants. 😅

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484378#Comment_118484378

DIY wouldn't pass NCT or Insurance, I remember the 80s fad for putting diesel engines into petrol cars, was awful, noisy ,slow , waste of time,

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484475#Comment_118484475

"Trials by the supplier Ovo Energy suggested that households could save £420 a year." - that'll totally cover the cost of an ID.3 Life (h) €31.666, 58 kWh, 425 km;

It's not worth it on Irish tariffs until they get better or batteries get a lot cheaper to replace. Grant aided or second hand or batteries from a scrapped car might be a different proposition.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484452#Comment_118484452

Statista's numbers are wrong. I'd like to see the source of these numbers but they want me to sign up for $49 a month subscription.

BK is correct - the renewable number for 2020 was 43% (see https://www.eirgridgroup.com/newsroom/electricity-consumption-f/ for example). Actually Statista's number look like the 2018 figures?

Statista are sh*te by the way - this sort of mislabeling is very common - their stats are often poorly curated and labeled and they charge a fortune - admittedly they scrape a lot of data but they clearly don't do a lot of manual work on quality control. Ourworldindata is much much more trustworthy and is free.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484830#Comment_118484830

Statista's a bollocks. I've come across stuff where they're offset by a year and then just duplicate a value in the middle of the range and then it matches up. Though the best is when they use different sources for different years on the same graph.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483557#Comment_118483557

Throw the 50k off the mortgage and reduce your debt!

Danzy

I think paying off the mortgage is the big one at the moment, interest rates are crazy low and inflation is crazy high.

A bad combination.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484529#Comment_118484529

Your buying the wrong LED’s. I have most of the house done in LED spotlights for the last 10 years and have had to replace at most 2.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484859#Comment_118484859

You might be borrowing the €50,000 either by PCP for the car, or increased mortgage for the BER upgrade. Of course you might suggest just keep the old banger for a few more years and not spend on either option.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484883#Comment_118484883

Well if your borrowing that’s a different story.

I thought you meant you had 50k cash burning a hole in your pocket!

If you are borrowing the cheapest rate you will get would be to top up the mortgage but you are obviously increasing your debt even more.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484770#Comment_118484770

The retrofit is for the insulation and PV/battery, not the car.

Converting an ICE car to EV is not on because it would be very expensive and would be impossible to get it approved or to insure.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484876#Comment_118484876

Made in Germany,

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484529#Comment_118484529

Just buy the cheaper ones dumb ones that use a capacitor to reduce the current. Pound shop ones and special offers are peanuts compared to the cost of running an incandescent.

Dealz €1.50 gets you a 5.5W (40W equivalent) that will save one unit every 40 hours compared to a 30.5W halogen. At 20c/unit it will pay for itself in 300 hours. If you are working from home that might not be much more than a month.

If you are using 12V lighting with unregulated transformers then yes the LED bulbs will die young. This usually because with reduced load the voltage drifts up above 12V and I haven't come across any dumb bulbs for them. If you don't need dimming you might consider rewiring for GU10.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484904#Comment_118484904

Genuinely curious why some are saying an ICE car DIY converted to EV wouldn't get through NCT or get insurance.

Is there a history of rejection for this? Not saying it wouldn't happen, just some of you seem very sure so I'm wondering where that's coming from.

Asking also because I've seen some crazy amount of DIY work/modifications done on dozens of cars down through the years, all insured and passed NCT's with only 1 or 2 needing additional modifications to get through the NCT.

gjim

"If a person had €50,000 to invest - say, what would be the better way to invest - for the individual, and secondly for the planet?"

The framing of this question is all wrong - the two options do not deliver the same utility - the second option doesn't describe what the alternative to purchasing the EV is? I presume it's buying an ICE vehicle?

If they are actual options then they should deliver the same utility. For example:

Option 1 is: buy an EV (lower fuel and running costs) - don't insulate your home (higher heating costs) - pay for electricity from a utility (higher general electricity costs).

Option 2 is: buy an ICE vehicle (higher fuel and running costs) - insulate your home (lower heating costs) - install PV and battery (reduced electricity bills).

It's clear that both these options are not going to cost the same up-front so it doesn't make much sense to see which is the best "investment".

For what it's worth, my view would be:

• for the benefit of your own pocket and the environment, then next time you have to buy a car buy an EV.
• for the benefit of your own pocket and the environment, insulate your home as well as you can, regardless of whether plan to install PV/storage.
• hold off on the domestic PV/battery storage for now - collectively grid-scale PV and storage cost a fraction of the domestic version.

Sam Russell

I have about 100 led bulbs (most from IKEA at €1 each) and I have had one failure.

At one failure, I could not be bothered to even take it back. They come on instantly, unlike the CFL bulbs they replaced, and quite a few CFL bulbs failed.

I doubt that halogens would have a longer life, and they can be a fire hazard.

@cncoibui - I used the term 'invest' as covering spending a significant amount of a discretionary matter - one that is not essential, and only worthwhile if they is a real benefit. What term would you suggest?

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484974#Comment_118484974

Isn’t the problem that we are constantly buying new things instead of re using and fixing things to reduce the amount of the planets resources we are using?

cnocbui

They are 12v MR11 bulbs. apart from a couple electronic transformers, they are mostly iron core wire wound, which I would doubt have upward voltage drift unless the primary supply voltage supplied by the ESB is drifting by even larger margins. I checked, and the blown ones were wired to the iron transformers. It doesn't explain the mains voltage screw in that blew within 2 years in a bedside lamp I got for my son. I couldn't find an incandescent replacement, unfortunately, so had to cough up some ludicrous amount for an LED one from Tesco. Don't have a Pound shop where I shop and the parking cost near the one I know off some distance away, plus the petrol, wouldn't be worth it to buy one cheap bulb.

I am not interested in rewiring for GU10s. Some routes to supposed savings are false economies, like diesels before the Greens. I have no faith in LED GU10s lasting long enough to see a break even.

I have a son who has a high end gaming PC he's on for every waking hour and he runs a server as well that's on 24/7 and his friend is on a fairly hefty PC as well. LED bulbs are a meaningless and trivial distraction in comparrison to those electron gluttons. I did shut off the radiators in those rooms, which are always T-shirt warm.

RandomViewer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484959#Comment_118484959

Lot of stuff gets swapped out before the test, a slammed A4 on 20" rims isn't going to pass so it goes through with 17s and regular suspension, engine swap/total change of drive train is probably thousands in labour at an approved garage, Insurance company will walk away for a bald tyre, whole different drive train would be impossible,

Value of finished vehicle would also be an issue a 12 year old Mercedes with €15k of mods is still only going to be valued at a few grand.

bk

One of the best things I ever did was rip out the rubbish 12v transformers and MR16 bulbs and replace them with GU10 fittings and LED’s

The old MR16’s had my heart broken, replacing them about every 6 month! Haven’t had to replace a bulb in years now that they are all LEDs. Job wasn’t too difficult, took about 2 hours from them all.

I’m not an electrician but I suspect your 12v transformers aren’t rated for the low wattage of LEDs and that is what is killing them. I had that problem, with one dimmer switch that I hadn’t bothered to change and just used LEDs with it, it ended up killing the LEDs. I ended up replacing it with an LED rated dimmer switch and haven’t any problems since.

techman1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118485062#Comment_118485062

yes you are correct and that is the big scam, rather than continuing to run your petrol or diesel car until the end of its lifespan they are forcing you to buy a completely new and largely untested technology. That means dumping millions of perfectly good cars, dumping billions of euros worth of current car assembly production lines and then spending more billions installing new electric car assembly lines along with everything else.

All this stuff is leading to rampant inflation or "greenflation"

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118487235#Comment_118487235

Did you mean to post that here? This thread is about energy infrastructure and has nothing to do with cars

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483367#Comment_118483367

The results of the auction are in and they far exceed the forecast -

Seventeen projects covering a total of 7,000km2 have been chosen in the first such leasing round in a decade. They have a combined potential generating capacity of 25GW - well above the expected auction outcome of 10GW.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-60002110

Interestingly 60% of the new capacity will be thru floating windfarms

josip

"Interestingly 60% of the new capacity will be thru floating windfarms"

Especially so if your Board's name is bob mcbob 🙂

Markcheese

So the developers are paying for seabed rights to build or install turbines , are they then guarantee'd a grid access ?

And is there either a fixed strike price or a subsidie involved In That ? Do they get to sell what ever they produce into the grid ?

cnocbui

There has been a bit of chaos in Australia in the energy market with so many homes with rooftop solar producing so much feed in power, that the wholesale power cost drops so low during the day that large scale utilities can't compete. Some are shuttering spinning reserves well ahead of schedule leaving a potential problem for when the sun isn't shining.

I would have thought this incredible expansion of wind power will either bankrupt the state and taxpayers if the price is fixed and every watt has to be paid for, whether or not it can be used. California has for years been throwing away large amounts of surplus solar energy when production has exceeded demand.

Given the eagerness for adding so much capacity, I am fearful that everything generated is being bought by the taxpayer. If not, it would be a race to the bottom and wholesale prices on windy days would be uneconomic vs the investments.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/wind-power-risks-becoming-too-cheap-says-top-turbine-maker-2021-11-24/

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118490884#Comment_118490884

If I'm not mistaken, this is the whole reason for the push behind green hydrogen. Without it, you can't build enough renewables to give you 100% even on the worst days which means you need something to consume the surplus power when you over-produce

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118490673#Comment_118490673

I looked into this and I think I understand (at a high level) how it works. The developers have just paid for an option to develop a project in the areas where their bid won. Now they need to put detailed plans in place (including costs) and then bid for a CFD at one of the government auctions. if they win then they have an agreed price for the electricity and they are in a position to start developing the project including the planning approval process. Interestingly there is a different strike price for different technologies.

This blog is from the last auction (3) showing the process. Auction 4 has just started.

https://www.blog.renewableuk.com/post/cfdexplainer