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  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,284 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    90km, that is WAY off!

    Article about the research here:

    "But for now, EV drivers start to reap the climate benefits after driving their car for a year or so, according to Bieker. That’s when the car passes the threshold when the emissions that it saves by running on cleaner electricity make it a better option for the climate than a traditional car."

    "Lifetime emissions for an EV in Europe are between 66 and 69 percent lower compared to that of a gas-guzzling vehicle, the analysis found."

    Keep in mind Ireland has one of the cleaner grids.

    Also keep in mind we are just talking about greenhouse gases here. This doesn't talk about ICE cars pumping out horrible cancer causing PM and NOX emissions, that should be good enough on it's own to go EV.

    Here is the actual report:

    https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-jul2021



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,545 ✭✭✭✭josip


    I'm sorry, but the objectivity of any article that uses terms such as 'gas guzzling' is highly questionable.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,284 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    That is just the comment of the journalist who wrote an article/summary about the study for a general audience tech website. I also provided the link to the actual study done by well respected scientists who don't say "gas guzzling".

    There have been multiple studies and published papers now by world renowned scientists and organisations, all who have found that same.

    Are you going to read the actual study and do you have any evidence that this and the other studies are wrong?



  • Posts: 25,611 ✭✭✭✭ Kaiden Melodic Catfish


    Yeah I had a glance at the study and it estimates 2.7 tonnes of CO2 in a small car's batteries. Given that I put out about 60g per km (taking the best efficiency for and ID3 which I bet isn't as close to reality as my little shitbox's stated figures) more than someone charging from the grid it'll take roughly 2,700,000/60 or 45k km (4 year) for me to catch up to an EV in CO2 terms. By which time I'll be driving something else anyway. :P And my LPG burner is probably as clean as some of the power plants in terms of particulates. :P I just have the (genuine, believe it or not) concern that companies are playing on customers' ignorance and really aren't doing all they could in terms of efficiency. The ID3 seems to be the equivalent for the Golf but weighs 33-40% more and it's not down to the batteries, it's down to design. At the same time it irks me that my car really should be available in ~38kWh form for around €20k. :P

    2-way charging is an essential feature that should really be mandated. Diesel should've been gone years ago but look like they'll hang on along with petrol til the hammer falls. Battery tech will evolve and we could see full paradigm shifts in terms of density. However banking on that wouldn't be wise. Regulation ain't the answer to everything but incentives for companies to ensure reusing and re-purposing batteries after 12-15 years for home storage and the like should be already on the way.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,284 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    If you are driving a smaller “**** box” car, then you shouldn’t be comparing it to an ID.3, which would be a bigger class of car. You should compare like to like. Maybe a Zoe is closer to your car or one of the many **** box EV’s in China.

    actually those EV’s in China sounds what you are looking for, 10k to 15k eco box EV cars. Cheap and cheerful. They will likely start to turn up here eventually.

    comparing an id.3 to a golf is tricky. Yes, externally it is similar sized (strictly speaking a little larger), but internally it has the space of a Passat. The benefits of underfloor batteries and no engine. Ground up, EVs are basically shifting an entire class in size.

    making the point that you will likely buy a new car after 4 years is silly. It isn’t like your old car gets crushed after 4 years! You sell it on and will continue for probably more then a decade. If an ICE car that means it will continue polluting for the next decade, if an EV that means it will be saving carbon emissions for the next decade and actually getting even cleaner as the grid gets cleaner and we head to 70% renewables.

    also you seem to be ignoring the cancer causing pm and box emissions that your ice car is causing.

    to be honest you seem to be too wrapped up in your own personal experience, then the bigger picture of the need to decarbonise.

    yes EV’s are more expensive at the moment, though if you have a long commute, typically the fuel savings will more then pay for the difference and even more, as many people in the EV forum will tell you. Of course you may not drive enough to gain that benefit. But even then, it is expected that even the upfront price of EV’s will match ICE cars by 2025. Add the fuel cost savings to that and they will be a no brainier.

    But the big picture, is that overall EV’s are a vast improvement over ICE cars in terms of both pm/nox emissions and carbon emissions and will only get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,757 ✭✭✭Apogee


    Industry sources estimate the total cost of the required investment at more than €5.5 billion should Offshore Wind go ahead with the plans. The company intends to build a wind farm capable of generating 1,000 mega watts of electricity at full capacity off Greystones, Co Wicklow, close to Dublin, where demand for energy is strongest.


    Offshore Wind has also earmarked a site off Blackwater, Co Wexford for a floating wind farm with the capacity to produce 1,500 mega watts of electricity.




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    People in general, and in particular in Ireland be it government or joe public have no idea how dangerous NOX and PM are to basically everything earth that breaths. It’s the old adage if you can’t see it it doesn’t exist, it’s the Irish way.

    Every time I read in my local paper the public and therefore politicians up in arms about wind turbines causing infra sound or the solar farm is blinding the cattle I think about if only they knew that the emissions from their cars and open fires are actuality slowly killing you.



  • Registered Users Posts: 971 ✭✭✭bob mcbob




  • Posts: 0 Gwen Damaged Pita


    I really love these tidal turbines, they are so predictable. Sadly the biggest issue is there are so few places suitable for them worldwide.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,761 ✭✭✭antoinolachtnai


    680 tonnes is a lot of metal to keep in the water to supply 2 MW of power! No doubt they will be able to improve on that.

    I don't think there would be any big restriction on locating these things, there is a lot of fast flowing water in the world. This design doesn't appear to need water of a certain depth as previous concepts did.

    The most immediate application of something like this would be to provide power to an outlying coastal community or island. It might be competitive with the ship-borne nuclear plants we discussed before.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 13,545 ✭✭✭✭josip


    But the cost of repair must be prohibitive if anything in the tidal turbine breaks?

    I'm assuming they have to be towed to a dock somewhere to get fixed.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,757 ✭✭✭Apogee


     

    An Irish-Spanish joint venture is planning three offshore electricity generating fields that will cost up to €6.5 billion on the basis of industry estimates.

    Local player DP Energy is joining forces with Spanish giant Iberdrola to build three offshore wind farms around the Irish coast with capacity to generate 3,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity.

    DP and Iberdrola intend to build two floating wind farms off the Cork/Waterford and Clare/Kerry coasts, and a third fixed wind plant in the Irish Sea off counties Wicklow and Wexford. Each will be capable of generating 1,000mw of electricity at full capacity, which DP estimates is enough energy to power about a million homes.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,761 ✭✭✭antoinolachtnai


    If you can tow it to a dock it’s pretty handy to repair compared to repairing something that is permanently fixed to the seabed.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight




  • Registered Users Posts: 226 ✭✭specialbyte


    I really hope we do complete the widespread commerical deployment of either tidal or wave energy. Though I'm skeptical it will happen.

    The commerical strength of wind and solar is so strong that I suspect the majority of renewables will continue to come from those sources. The dominance of wind in Ireland will likely suck up most investment capital from direct competitors like tidal or wave. One of the big benefits for tidal and wave, over wind and solar, is that they could generate electricity when both wind and solar aren't generating to help even out the intermittency problems through diversification.

    However, I'm not sure the development pace of tidal or wave is moving fast enough to beat out the competitor that also solves that problem with a different approach: grid-scale battery technology. While grid-scale battery tech is also in the early phases of commerical rollout like tidal, it seems to have far more money and resources behind it. Grid-scale battery tech is benefiting from a lot of the existing massive R&D base that exists for battery technology in other fields like EVs.

    I'm very curious who will win that race.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,284 Mod ✭✭✭✭bk


    “Grid-scale battery tech is benefiting from a lot of the existing massive R&D base that exists for battery technology in other fields like EVs.”

    This is the massive advantage battery tech have, they are applicable to so many different fields and these fields are so valuable.

    Lithium ion tech mostly started out in consumer electronics, smartphones, tables, laptops that has obviously been a massive market over the past 15 years that really drove this tech. Then the EV manufacturers like Tesla leveraged the same tech in their cars and have scaled it up to the next level. As a result we are seeing the same tech starting to turn up in products like the Tesla power wall and even grid scale applications.

    it is proving difficult for competing technologies to compete with this scale of research and development investment, plus production at a massive scale and the resulting reduction in costs.

    Hydrogen tech is suffering from this badly. Obviously it has no place in consumer electronics and now it looks like it has been pushed completely out of cars, leaving only heavier vehicles and grid applications. But even there it is struggling with how fast the battery tech is coming along and dropping in price and starting to be pushed out of those too. Each market it is pushed out of means less money available for investment and less scale of production, hurting it further.

    It will be really interesting to see how this all plays out over the next twenty years.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    ESB plans green hydrogen storage project off Cork coast

    The green hydrogen project at Kinsale Head could store the equivalent of 10pc of Ireland’s annual electricity consumption.

    ESB and energy company DCarbonX are planning to develop a large-scale green hydrogen storage project off the coast of Co Cork, with the aim of transforming the recently decommissioned Kinsale Head gas field in the Celtic Sea.


    The project has the potential to store up to 3TWh of green hydrogen and hydrogen carriers, which is enough to power around 10pc of Ireland’s current annual electricity consumption.

    https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/esb-dcarbonx-green-hydrogen-storage-kinsale-cork



  • Registered Users Posts: 18,054 ✭✭✭✭namloc1980




  • Registered Users Posts: 188 ✭✭Repo101


    Solar will be gone in 15-20 years. The energy density is too low. Similar for wind which has negative environmental impacts on animals, specifically birds.

    If people want everyone to be driving electric cars then we have to talk about nuclear otherwise it's nothing more than a pipe dream.

    Even Electric cars are hardly worth cheering about with the toxic batteries that are required for storage. As usual the people leading the charge on climate change are only interested in short term fixes that create more problems for future generations.

    The people pushing low density solutions are living in fantasy land and need to get real.



  • Moderators, Education Moderators Posts: 26,398 Mod ✭✭✭✭Peregrine


    The Business Post has been doing some really good reporting on this recently.

    Eirgrid said it was hopeful that gas plants at Huntstown in Dublin and Whitegate in Cork, which have been down for most of the year, could be back up and running in time for winter peak demand.


    However, the Business Post understands the repair of the two damaged gas plants in time is not guaranteed, and the grid operator is now looking at a “Plan C”, which includes telling large energy users to run on their own on-site emergency generators for periods of time this winter, and ensuring every available power station is drafted in to provide energy.

    https://www.businesspost.ie/energy/blackouts-loom-this-winter-as-emergency-plan-is-abandoned-f5281ae2



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  • Registered Users Posts: 9,859 ✭✭✭tom1ie


    The finances don’t stack up if you drive an already paid for ICE (in my case a dirty diesel), but then have to take out a loan to get an EV.

    I do a lot of mileage, but the fuel savings are wiped out by the repayments on the loan I didn’t have while driving the diesel.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,859 ✭✭✭tom1ie


    I wonder is it anything to do with huntstown being out of action?



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    ”Environmental impacts on birds”, should we exterminate cats so and shur if we get rid of wind turbines and cats all the birds have to worry about is drowning in oil slicks.

    You seem to have this notion that all ICE vehicles don’t use rare metals in there construction not to mind the constant need to dig up dead fish and dinosaurs to make them go. Refining of fossil fuels also uses rare metals like cobalt etc,

    The Stone Age didn’t end for the lack of stone!



  • Registered Users Posts: 188 ✭✭Repo101


    Why not address the point which is that low density energy solutions are a fad and nothing else? Wind and solar won't power electric vehicles in this country. Replacing one bad solution with another is FF/FG type groupthink.

    You seem upset, probably from carcinogenics leaking off your solar panel.... If you want to live in la la land and believe that solar/wind is the future then more power to you, precious.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,757 ✭✭✭Apogee


    Is the gas pipeline network from Kinsale connected to existing gas-powered electricity stations?



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,077 ✭✭✭gjim



    Is this a parody? It's like hearing the views of someone who's woken from a 1980s coma.

    To help you catch up, here's what's happened since you were away:

    Nuclear has been in the decline for the last 4 decades. It now provides less than half the share of electricity globally as it did at its peak in the mid 1980s. Nearly every nuclear energy company that existed in the 1980s has gone bust.

    Solar energy has been growing exponentially for nearly 2 decades. Growth has accelerated in the last decade and now averages between 25% to 35% a year. Prices have dropped 95% in the last 10 years.

    In 2021, for the price of one KWh generated by nuclear fission, you can get 5 KWh of solar electricity. The default for all private investment in generation is now renewables. Except for natural gas, all thermal generation (coal, nuclear) is pretty much dead because none can compete on price with renewables.

    In 2020, 80% of all new generation capacity globally was renewable - while only 2 nuclear reactors were added globally (in China) while overall nuclear output continued its long term trend by declining by 3% globally.

    Renewables now provide 38% of the electricity consumed in Europe and 25% in the USA - up from the single digit percentages when you last studied the electricity generation markets.

    Buying off-peak renewable electricity, storing it in batteries and selling it back at peak time is now cheaper than burning natural gas.

    PS. Energy density is an attribute of energy storage technologies, not electricity generation. The attributes of generation you might be interested in learning about are capacity factors, LCOE, LACE, fuel costs, etc.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,508 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Look up desertec to see how little area is needed for solar.

    Now halve those areas because solar panel efficiency has improved that much in the meantime. Unlike nuclear.

    Or you could have floating panels, we have plenty of lakes and estuaries.


    RSPB is mad into renewables. Domestic cats kill orders of magnitude more birds and things like eye spots and infrasound can warn birds away.


    Nuclear is a one trick pony. It can provide somewhat reliable baseload at twice the market price. Demand shedding and insulation grants would be way cheaper. In the grand scheme of things changing from incandescent bulbs to LED's has saved more demand than nuclear ever produced. It's not even funny that those making the big decisions will have safely retired before nuclear is built and paid for.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,580 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    Cats kill common birds around human habitation - wind turbines kill large rare birds like Vultures, Cranes etc and displace them from already shrinking habitats. You comparison with oil use is also ridiculous given that wind energy needs constant back from fossil fuels



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  • Moderators, Education Moderators Posts: 26,398 Mod ✭✭✭✭Peregrine


    I find it absolutely hilarious that a nuclear proponent would dive straight into arguments about toxicity and not wanting to "create more problems for future generations".

    I have a steady supply of glass houses for you to throw stones out of if you're interested.



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