Electric cars - where does the electricity come from?

cj maxx

I didn't know that. A quick Google was all I did. Hopefully more work will be done.

What's a capacity factor? And why 24%

cj maxx

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118439398#Comment_118439398

Scotland is already at 100%, or as near as makes no difference, carbon neutral electricity when exports are taken into account, so yes it's Britain rather than Great Britain that needs to sort itself out.

NI is part of the Single Electricity Market. Wind power was over 100% of demand between 01:00 - 06:00 this morning.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118434393#Comment_118434393

Very considerable environmental damage. I worked at the site - one of if not the biggest construction sites in the Republic at the time. Huge pits excavated in which to dump the blanket bog excavated for the turbines. Big road infrastructure to build & service. There's no such thing as a free lunch, so proponents of EVs need to be very honest and face the fact that the solution may be better in the long run than ICE vehicles but EVs are equally a dirty industry.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118437930#Comment_118437930

It takes a lot of carbon to to build nuclear power stations with the concrete and mining and processing and enrichment.

There's 412 working at the moment. But there's also a large % that should be online that aren't. 93 were abandoned during construction, many/most of the 54 under construction are delayed years and there's 25 with long term outages.

So across the whole industry the reality is that 1 in 4 of the nuclear power plants where construction started aren't working. Alternative power sources had to be found and until very recently that was almost exclusively fossil fuel.

It's a huge carbon footprint made worse by draining funds from renewables.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118437519#Comment_118437519

Good news about the renewable energy. The more the merrier! It's an awful pity the government didn't get into it when it was still a thing of the future, and develop an industry designing and making the turbines!

That said, every kw generated here is less energy imported, so happy days!

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118438482#Comment_118438482

Wasn't there an experimental wave plant somewhere off Galway? I wonder if it is still going.

timsey tiger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118439905#Comment_118439905

So about enough peat to keep a peat fuel powered plant going for about half an hour.

timsey tiger

PeaSea

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431137#Comment_118431137

Given that most people drive their cars during the day and charge at night at home, unless they have a battery bank along with their solar power (still comparatively rare) they're still using the grid 100% to charge - yes ? Genuine question btw.

cj maxx

I know this isn't eco-friendly, but when I was a caddie I loved catching turf. Turning, clamping, Tae and sandwiches, bagging and the long long journey home in a trailer. Good Times 😀

cj maxx

Poor oul slain is rusted up now 😢

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118441442#Comment_118441442

I mentioned this point, but in fairness low demand at night-time allows a lot of the charge to come from the wind, and it is rarely still in Ireland.

electricus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118441442#Comment_118441442

surplus solar goes to the grid.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118440947#Comment_118440947

The geography of Galway Bay means the waves are 1/4 the height of the Atlantic so you can test before making it full size.

Capt'n Midnight

There are 13 power reactors in the UK. It's the middle of Winter and only 6 of them are currently running at "Nominal full load" The rest are either offline or running at reduced power, in the middle of f*cking Winter.

Don't count on nuclear powering electric cars.

electricus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118438014#Comment_118438014

To compare, the energy contained in 1 litre of petrol is close to 9kWh - multiply that by the number of litres a petrol car needs to drive 100km. Then add the 6kWh required to refine each litre of petrol.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118440990#Comment_118440990

What's that got to do with it? Bord na Mona raped this country for decades, stripped away many of our deep raised bogs, a lot of which was frittered away in inefficient power stations. And now when they've asset stripped the midlands, they're making a virtue out of going 'green' and erecting industrial wind turbines on the wastelands they've left behind. Not a fan.

magicbastarder

Not a fan.

correct - fans consume electricity to make wind, turbines 'consume' wind to make electricity.

sorry, couldn't help it.

riclad

I think the theory is if we switch to solar wind power or nuclear energy than electric cars will be good for the planet right now we rely on coal gas powered powered stations so the plan does not seem to be working or its too slow to have any effect on the problem of global warming Some states in America have to reduce land use growing crops because the amount of water they have is falling every year

Meanwhile anyone is welcome to go to Texas and setup a bitcoin mining farm which is a total waste energy

timsey tiger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118446019#Comment_118446019

So the extra damage done by the installing the wind turbines is practically zero given the current level of destruction.

What has it got to do with it, we have to get our energy from somewhere, none of that comes without environmental damage.

deirdremf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118456900#Comment_118456900

One of the interesting things about the pristine Irish landscape is that there is hardly a square foot of land in Ireland that has not been shaped in some way by human hand. A trip around the country will show you lazy beds in places no right-thinking person would ever choose to live, and other areas eroded away down to the bedrock due to having been first overgrazed to the bare soil by sheep.

A second point worth mentioning is that there is barely any area in the country that wasn't under ice until what is in geological terms a blink of an eye. Every blade of grass, every shrub or tree is growing on land that was a relatively short time ago frozen solid under hundreds of feet of ice.

In short there is very little natural about any aspect of the Irish landscape, and nothing at all 'eternal'.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118479864#Comment_118479864

You can also add the English rulers forr chopping down almost all of our old stand forest. We're one of the least forested nations in Europe because of it and yet at the same time one of the leas densly populated.

Much of Europe itself is completely 'manmade'. Save for parts of the far north, high mountains and the odd patch of forest, the rest has been pretty much entirely shaped by humans.

Freddie Mcinerney

What is the energy storage of Turlough Hill and potential for Silvermines?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118482918#Comment_118482918

Six hours at 292MW , there's four turbines so it's most efficient when turbines are at full load so multiples of 73MW. It also acts as the backup to cold boot the grid if all else fails.

2.4 million tonnes of water with a head of 285.75m ( compare that to any of the cranes / concrete blocks or wagons full of rocks , the cost of materials unless you are using waste mine tailing adds up very quickly - something like a vast open pit mine would have lots of scope for storage if you have sufficient height difference )

Silvermines would be something similar 360MW , 650,000MWh annual storage capacity ie. a minimum of 5 hours full load if used every day. They balance peak demand during late afternoon-evening to low demand overnight.

A few hours is not enough to run the country during dark doldrums but together there's enough to remove the need for 700MW of peaking plant most days and adsorb a little larger amount of renewables when there's a surplus.

Our grid can take 75% non-synchronous generation so each of these pumped storage stations on it's would allow an extra 1GW of renewables to be connected to the grid as they can act as storage, backup or synchronous condensers.

timsey tiger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483333#Comment_118483333

"synchronous condensers" what is this, something to do with keeping everything in phase?

electricus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483333#Comment_118483333

An interesing video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSgd-QhLHRI

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118484196#Comment_118484196

Yes. Frequency stability. The grid is currently accepting 75% non-synchronous generation mostly wind and interconnectors and a some battery. The other 25% can come from thermal generators or hydro or pumped storage or flywheels or other high inertia generators.

They are building one down at Moneypoint due to come on line later this year. It should pave the way to add another 1.4GW of offshore wind.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118483333#Comment_118483333

Thank You for the reply.

animalinside

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431137#Comment_118431137

The "efficiency" of an EV means how much of its electricity is converted to moving power. That is only a small part of the total amount of gasoline that is being converted to create the electricity in the first place. This is heavily diminished further by the storage and transfer of electricity - you are surely aware that it's a lot less energy-efficient to use a battery than to pull something directly off the mains.

Talking about wind energy and imagining it using wind energy is a red herring, the only thing you should be looking at is the AVERAGE emissions of electricity production by the grid.

Before asking "any more questions" maybe you should get the basics right yourself. Tired of people acting like they're experts on things they really know very little about.

EVs are a legitimate improvement on gasoline engines in terms of emissions because it still does turn out to have some improvement over the emissions of an engine when it's all calculated, but your post doesn't answer it at all.