Random EV thoughts.....

Thought you meant a nuclear powered ferry for a minute, might be a tad extreme 😂

There will always be the economics at play. Even if we can get renewable energy unlimited, that is not free to produce and transport. Electrolysis is going to produce H2 with an efficiency of around 70%, meaning a quarter of the electric energy is lost just to produce H2. Then depending on the type of propulsion you're working with some average of 50% efficiency to convert the H2 into mechanical energy (i.e. movement). This makes the whole process electric -> chemical->mechanical at least twice more expensive assuming an efficiency of 70 -80 % electric ->mechanical. It is hard to believe that a commercial entity will go for that at scale.

but lets put some numbers in

The big danger is that the hydrogen will never be green as it has to compete with the other hydrogen production methods which are high polluters. I don't take into account the costs of transport and distribute H2. Currently 96% of H2 is gray, read pollutes, the rest is there just to muddle the waters, to give us something to speak of.

Plenty of nuclear powered aircraft carriers out there so nuclear powered ferries or container ships is surely possible?

Hinkley C is closer to Dublin than Belmullet yet there is a wierd phobia about mentioning a nuclear power station in Ireland.

The Brits are going mad building them at the moment while we dither with unreliable wind.

The point is the UK are diversifying their energy supply whereas we seem to be going with wind, then import nuclear while pretending not to be using nuclear.

We need a broad mix but if you mention nuclear all the usual answers get bandied about.

Play to what resources we have would be my opinion

Wind, solar, pumped hydro, biogas for peak power and biomass for winter heating

We don't have uranium, any spent fuel or radioactive waste disposal facilities or any expertise in nuclear

Leave it to the countries that know what they're doing and just buy energy when we need it

Yeah but we need special handling and storage, and because we don't have that we'd need to pay another country to deal with our nuclear waste. Given the political sensitivity of this, it would likely be very expensive

Like I said, leave it to the French and the British and just invest into interconnectors so we can buy energy when needed and sell wind energy when we have excess

Seems a much better solution for Ireland IMO

Well said @AndyBoBandy. An Taoiseach was spot on when he said wind is Ireland's oil nearly a year ago. Not much has happened since though unfortunately.

Ha, glad you asked. I did some sums a year or two ago and €15 billion would provide over 300% of Ireland's then total national electricity use (about 1000 turbines I think). This is from memory, but someone can quickly confirm if that's ballpark or not. These were the biggest turbines commercially available at the time, iirc 16MW and they have a load factor in Ireland of about 50%, so they produce on average 8MW each (24/7/365)

That was the cost of installing the turbines, not including the cost of connecting them to the grid. Which is also substantial. And not including the cost of further massive interconnectors we would need to trade our wind electricity with other countries. Which is even more substantial. But you see these figures spread over 10-20 years are really not all that much if you think about the reward lying ahead.

Wind is by far the cheapest form of electricity production. Even in countries that have a lot less wind than Ireland. We could do with a tonne of PV too, Ireland is better for PV than most people think. I produced 31kWh today myself. More than enough for all my electricity needs for 24h, and I put a good bit into the car and into the hot water tank and I heated the house with electricity all day (while it was literally only just a few degrees above freezing). I live in a modest semi-detached house in an estate in a Dublin suburb.

Not quite there @liamog! And you need to talk to my wife, she's forever complaining it's only a starter home that we are still living in 😁

For many years, the Tesla Model S and Model X were the best selling EVs in the Netherlands!

Talking around 2015 / 2016 here. You'd simply have more chance to see a Ferrari than a Tesla in Ireland and over there, you'd literally see one every minute driving on any motorway.

on the topic of generation - wouldnt wave generation from the sea be our best bet? tides come in and go out every day.. so if you can harness that you dont need to worry about no wind days or cloudy days?

i just skipped through it but would be good to know if he left at 100% (assume he did?) and why he stuck to ESB when ionity are much better for high speed charging, that said the charging curve on the mustang looks to be pretty poor.

be great to get a summary at the end of the soc leaving, and charge taken in various locations and how long it took.

Yes he fully charged at home before heading off. I only skippe through it myself, but I caught that bit 😂

Tbh, Mark knows his EVs pretty well now. It wouldn't be too hard to make that trip even in a Mach E with just one charge (while you were having dinner, so not losing much time). If that was really very important to you. But I guess most people doing that sort of distance regularly either don't have an EV yet or if their time is very important to them, they'd get a Tesla, as they simply need the least number of minutes spent charging per 100km driven and can charge among the fastest of all of them in the most convenient and reliable way (supercharger - always working, never queues)

he would have been wrecked regardless, the fact it was an ev added an hour to his trip, its not as if he would have skipped out of his outlander phev fresh as a daisy now is it ;)

anyway he added probably 30 or 40 of those minutes needlessly by using ESB, deliberately.