I'm on Octopus Agile in the last week you'd have difficulty charging an EV on an average of much under 20p/kwh which is my point.
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UK switching to electric vehicles discussion
- Thread starter MattA7
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So why are you claiming that Octopus are, to quote you, in it to ‘lock in customers for much higher rates and profits in the years to come’, when if you are a customer a) you’d know you aren’t locked in long term and b) surely you’d avoid choosing a supplier that used such tactics.
The reality is that overnight demand is much lower. Yes I’m sure there are some individual nights when Octopus make a loss, but it doesn’t matter if they are making a profit the other 320 nights.
pdq
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I'm on Ovo charge anytime which charges 7.35p/kwh. I plug in when I get home, tell the app I want the car ready and it decides when to start in order to be ready in time. Seems to work very well.
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So, you could switch to Go or Intelligent Go tomorrow, and then switch back to Agile innlaye spring next year when generally agile pricing is lower.
You aren't "locked in". You're choosing not to do anything about it.
I had a look on I am Kate and set it to show the figures for the last 7 days. Fossil fuels only supplied 39.7% of the UK's needs. Renewables provided 24.2% - I don't call that negligible to be honest.
(Picture shows the "Generation by Type" percentages for electricity generation in the UK. Fossil fuels 39.7%, renewables 24.2% and other sources 22.2%.)
I don’t think that necessarily disproves @paul1609 ’s point. If you look at today renewables are only 10.3%, fossil is up at 47.8%
Looking at the generation graph for the week renewables have been trending down since Thursday.
busspotter1
On Moderation
Nuclear is the way to go!
Yeah, I don't have much skin in the game, just wanted to point out that nearly 25% of all our needs on a rather dull autumnal week isn't really 'negligible'.
(Some people include nuclear and biomass in the renewables figure, which would then be even higher.)
Peter Sarf
Established Member
All I know is that recently the bus routes 312 (100%) and 119 (approx 80%) have reverted to diesel.
With the 312 I was led to believe that it was failing batteries.
I saw the same person today and he says yes that average £100k per bus comes from the engineers.
Also we worked out that for the 312 it has perhaps been a life of 8 years.
So that means the batteries have cost £12,500 per year over their usable life. Now we can hope that battery tech has improved and perhaps these were like a Nissan Leaf so the new batteries will undoubtedly last longer. We could hope the old batteries were dirt cheap so a like for like comparison on cost is not possible. If the old batteries only cost £50k (obviously more than a car considering the weight of a bus) then they have depreciated at £6,250 per year assuming it is eight years of use. I would say the true cost is somewhere in between £12,500 and £6,250 pa. I would also assume the new batteries would last longer.
As I have said before I just hope we are letting the battery technology mature rather than rushing in and discrediting the effort to de-carbonise. The backlash might make our current haste counter-productive. It does not look as good as one would hope looking back and I hope most will look forward and ignore the past.
Now for the 119 I ask - why has that switched back to diesel ?.
I hope it is because a more suitable route has been found. Or even perhaps they are all stopped for (minor) modifications.
Crickey.
Well it has occurred to me in the past that we are becoming more dependent on electricity and at the same time reducing our easier (dirty) way of generating it. The use of petrol/diesel has allowed us to stock up on power (fuel in the tank) more readily than can be achieved with an EV.
I agree that means drivers have to think differently but personally I like to fill up knowing that I have less reason to worry about range. Instead it is a bit like when I hire a van in that I am trying to hand it back with the same amount of fuel as I started (gone are the days when the hire company gave it to you with a full tank and expected it back full). So now we are hoping to charge just enough to get home so we can charge cheaply. After all it is new technology and costs tend to come down. So I will wait and see.
I hope that long term the costs of charging in a public place do reduce so the above is not a consideration. But I find myself worrying that the cost of home charging might instead rise. Why - because we are getting more and more dependent on electricity. It is the cleanest form of energy BUT all our eggs are ending up in the one basket.
Not sure how we ecologically get round the above eggs in one basket unless something like Hydrogen Fuel, generated from microbes in a tank in the back garden, comes along.
But I suppose the attraction of solar panels and wind turbine for the home will become greater.
Risk is waiting to see might mean watching demand for domestic generating equipment go through the roof and therefore costs of the installation rising !.
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johncrossley
Established Member
What is so special about those routes? Why don't you look at the overall picture? You are focussing very closely on one very narrow area.
You can easily see when a particular bus has been last used on bustimes.org. The electric buses commonly used on 119 are also used on the 264. As you can see, with a couple of exceptions, they have all been in service on routes 119 or 264 within the last day or 2 days.
philosopher
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In the short to medium term, we are going to have rely on imports and gas power during lengthy of periods of gloomy weather with low wind. It does unfortunately mean that I suspect a lot of gas fired power plants will have to be kept as backup power plants for weather patterns like this.
Dynamic pricing could also be used. A day where a lot of renewable electricity is being generated, such as a sunny windy day in summer, electricity would be very cheap, however a day like today would have expensive electricity. Those with electric cars would be strongly incentivised to charge up their cars on the sunny windy days. However this I reckon would be very unpopular.
Harpers Tate
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Depending on which retail provider, and on which tariff the domestic supply is, dynamic pricing aready exists.
notverydeep
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Electric buses will have a much higher utilisation than an electric car. A London route might have a peak vehicle requirement of 10 and 7 or 8 of these will be in use for the entire traffic day (say 0500 to 0030 the following morning) with the other 2 or 3 used for 6 to 8 hours of peaks / peak shoulders with maybe a spare on depot. And this operation will be start to stop all the time, except for fairly brief layovers. I would imagine this use case will be much harder on batteries than (say) eight years of a 30 to 40 minute commute with a few longer journeys. It would be interesting to understand what battery life, particularly of batteries that date back to the 'early Nissan Leaf' period of EV operation might have been expected that early in the rollout of electric buses.
LYradial
Member
Let us look at the real picture at this moment.
57.4% from gas
11.1% genuine renewable
11% imports, fossil renewable coal, who knows
7% biomass imported and shipped from Canada by diesel transport
12.9% nuclear.
nuclear, biomass, lmports, are they green?
57.4% from gas
11.1% genuine renewable
11% imports, fossil renewable coal, who knows
7% biomass imported and shipped from Canada by diesel transport
12.9% nuclear.
nuclear, biomass, lmports, are they green?
philosopher
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Most of the imports are from France, which generates most of its electricity from nuclear and Norway, which generates most of its electricity from hydroelectricity. So most imports will be low carbon.
I didn't know that gas is such a high proportion. Has that gone up a lot in recent years?
The overall proportion of generation by fossil fuels has fallen, the past year average is only 27.9%. But it's still required as a backstop whenever the weather conditions are unfavourable for renewables, like we have currently. Now the coal plants have been turned off, gas is effectively the only one left to provide that capacity.
And when it gets colder and the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining????
johncrossley
Established Member
He said gas.
LYradial
Member
Don’t worry, the government has a master plan, something about rolling two hour power cuts if I remember correctly
Harpers Tate
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I think I'd tend to trust those who manage the grid to know more about its ability, than a bunch of (what appear to be) scaremongering naysayers, whoever, and wherever they are.
Indeed. But we don't have an infinite number of gas power stations. When all are in full operation, and assuming none are out of use for maintenance etc, what happens if demand exceeds capacity. Yes, there are interconnectors, but when we need a lot of electricity because it is cold, Europe is probably cold as well and consuming a lot of electricity, so is there any left to export via the interconnectors?
Peter Sarf
Established Member
I have only been looking at the bus routes under my nose - the one I use (119) and the first one I saw switch to electric (312).What is so special about those routes? Why don't you look at the overall picture? You are focussing very closely on one very narrow area.
You can easily see when a particular bus has been last used on bustimes.org. The electric buses commonly used on 119 are also used on the 264. As you can see, with a couple of exceptions, they have all been in service on routes 119 or 264 within the last day or 2 days.
From what you say it seems the electric buses on my local route (119) must have migrated to the 264 route - my hunch is that is a flatter route ?.
There seems to be a newer version of the electric bus I was familiar with on the 119 route now appearing on the 64 (which is quite a hilly route).
I cannot find the 64 route on the list but I suppose it might be a different company ?.
Any clues as to where the electric buses from the 312 route have gone/done ?.
Makes me think. If I had an electric car I would be using it so infrequently I might end up charging on the cheap and then discharging back to the grid before I need to use it. The incentive might be that the car is making me money !. That is a complicated scenario but I do tend to buy supplies of food/drink based on price rather then when I need them anyway. Trouble is I do not fancy checking the weather forecast (possibly long range) and trying to plan my car use around it. I prefer the car to be there ready for when I need it but then avoid use where I can. Ideally I would mainly use the car in the sunnier part of the year - quite possible because I vaguely make an effort to avoid car use in the winter so as to avoid road salt (easier for a leisure traveller like me compared to a commuter).
That is a good point. The batteries in a bus must be working a lot harder than for a car. Maybe not much scope for anything other than fast charging.
For lorries I suspect the load is heavier so more batteries required but perhaps scope for slower charging compared to buses on a night bus route.
If I remember correctly using gas to generate electricity is a new thing. I am sure it was not done last century and is why the cost of gas has risen.
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I assume I am one of the naysayers, but I prefer to be called a realist. There is only a finite supply of gas fuelled electricity, and the balance is usually made up of wind and solar power. But these are not 100% reliable - the wind does not always blow, and the sun does not always shine. I'm not sure, but I would expect demand to exceed gas fuelled electricity supply. Then what happens?
[I noted above that, yes, there are interconnectors, but when we need a lot of electricity because it is cold, Europe is probably cold as well and consuming a lot of electricity, so is there any left to export via the interconnectors?]
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Depends what you mean by "new". You can generate electricity using anything that burns - the way it works in most cases* is to burn it to turn water into steam then to run that through turbines. Even nuclear works that way.
* Except very odd edge cases like hydrogen fuel cells.
Edit: also gas turbines.
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Peter Sarf
Established Member
I think the new use is gas turbines to generate electricity. Istr the advantage was that they could be brought on stream quite quickly when demand peaks (in the time it takes to start a jet engine ?).
Thinking a bit more that means something we have for coping with sudden peaks is actually getting relied on for general power generation.
Back on the subject of power stations getting their heat from something other then good old king coal !.
Some power stations were converted to burn oil - I have lost track of whether they are still in use ?.
Of course some could be burning gas to make steam.
And even oil has been used to generate electricity by not steam turbine means - via a diesel engine. I think Copenhagen had one of the largest diesel engines in the world generating its electricity back in the 1950s (very roughly).
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johncrossley
Established Member
Presumably they don't have enough electric buses for one of those routes but too many for just one route, hence they both run with a mix of electric and diesel.
The 64 buses are from a different manufacturer.
These buses are not currently in service.
Wikipedia reckons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_natural_gas_power_stations_in_the_United_Kingdom
There's also the nuclear plants and the interconnectors providing perhaps another 10GW.
Peak demand is around 40GW, so in principle you fire them all up and you can cope. In practice there's always going to be some down for maintenance etc. so you'd never achieve that capacity.
At which point you start load-shedding. Large industrial users have agreements with the grid to turn off during periods of high demand. As noted by another poster there is a contingency plan where residential properties would be turned off for 3 hour blocks, but that has never needed to be implemented.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, CCGT (closed cycle gas turbine, if I recall) is relatively new, I forgot about that.
No, it has gone down, and considersbly. The poster was giving the generation mix at that precise time this morning. You could quite easily pick another time - such as 15 April this year when gas had a share of 6% for the whole day, and less than 2% at certain times of the day.
Well, it didn’t happen last year in the depths of winter with still, gloomy days. Losing Ratcliffe has been more than offset by the commissoning of the Viking Link interconnector with Denmark, and more windpower (even on still days, wind does generate, and every new turbine raises the amount wind provides).
And yes, when we need to import there is almost always spare for our european suppliers to export.
The other thing that has expanded rapidly in the last couple of years is grid scale battery storage. There is now well over 4GW of it on line, with more being commissioned every week (it will be at least 5GW by early next year), compared to 2 GW 2 years ago. This is helping time shift demand into the overnight period, and also has helped out when major suppliers go off line, as they did a gew weeks ago when the Norway interconnector tripped.