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UK National Grid to drain electric car batteries at times of peak demand.


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"Electric car owners will be called on to help Britain avoid an energy crunch as suppliers prepare tariffs allowing them to draw power from parked vehicles at times of low supply or high demand.

Cars which are charging on driveways are to be plugged into a system responsible for balancing the National Grid for the first time, in an experiment aimed at easing the burden on the country's creaking energy infrastructure.

It will lay the groundwork for a national rollout of the technology if successful, paving the way for millions of electric cars to act as a giant battery so that power supply is stable at times of low wind speeds after the transition to green energy.

In the trial, which will begin at some point from April to June, car owners will agree to allow the grid to draw power from their vehicles and release it as and when required. They will be paid for energy which the grid drains off.

The scheme is being run by the National Grid and domestic supplier Octopus Energy, which has recruited 135 households.

Claire Miller, director of technology and innovation at Octopus, said that plugging millions of electric cars into the grid would “enable us to do more with what we have”.

Ms Miller said: “This will demonstrate how you can send a signal from the National Grid control room to those vehicles and contribute to balancing the grid at times when it needs a bit more electricity, for instance at tea time when there is a lot of demand.

“Conversely, on a windy night when our wind turbines are generating electricity, we might also need a place to put energy.
“What we're doing is the first step on that journey. We are showing the energy industry what is possible.”


The plans go considerably further than existing trials of so-called vehicle-to-grid technology, in which a small number of households already sell surplus power from their vehicles' batteries back to the grid in the same way solar panel owners do but are not part of the balancing mechanism.

Julian Leslie, chief engineer at the network operator National Grid ESO, said they were working to ensure the network was fit for “a heavily renewables-driven” future.


He said the grid would always find ways to manage but added: “If we can get 10 million vehicles doing vehicle-to-grid, then fantastic.”


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/10/national-grid-drain-electric-car-batteries-times-peak-demand/

Hmm - So that's why they have been pushing the electric vehicle agenda recently also getting as many as possible onto smart  meters !

 

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I also read the article and couldn't help but feel it is 'pie in there sky' nonsense. The crux of the matter is that there won't be enough electricity in the future (there barely is now!!) All the windmills and  solar panels simply cannot supply enough, particularly at peak periods. The Government will, I feel sure, have to reign back on this 'green' agenda as it is getting more preposterous by the day. What next, cycle dynamo's contributing to the grid!! 

France is going back into nuclear, Finland has just completed a new nuclear plant and is building another and I wouldn't mind betting Germany returns to nuclear.  For me nuclear is the only answer. I can just see some irate motorist wanting to go for a ride only to find out the grid has nicked his electricity!!

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I suppose that charging more at peak times would mean that cheap electricity is available off peak, say after midnight. It would seem logical to make this availability automatic rather than having special accounts as they do in France, or has that been stopped?

Most folk could cut their lighting bills substantially by just turning off lights when not in use.

Does bitcoin uses electricity from the grid? If so, ban the bl**dy thing, whatever it is.

Perhaps electricity for charging cars could be made cheaper at night or more expensive at other moments to encourage folk to be sensible?

Out of interest both France and UK are investigating mini nuclear plants, based locally as being much cheaper and quicker to build and more practical than the current big ones. Rolls Royce taking the UK lead.

 

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This was a plan from some time back, although in the hands of a journalist and their need to start arguments to sell copy or click bate people only to publish the inverse later to repeat sales. Why cant they just get proper jobs?  Energy syorage will be a huge planning issue going forawrd, you can store a lot of energy on an old coal mining site.  They wont need to expensive Li-ion but can be a lower cost less mined material batteries of which plenty of companies are exploring. 

Cars sit still for around 90% of their time so usi g those at peak time means less power stations burning gas and very few on coal these days.

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9 hours ago, anotherbanana said:

I suppose that charging more at peak times would mean that cheap electricity is available off peak, say after midnight. It would seem logical to make this availability automatic rather than having special accounts as they do in France, or has that been stopped?

Most folk could cut their lighting bills substantially by just turning off lights when not in use.

Does bitcoin uses electricity from the grid? If so, ban the bl**dy thing, whatever it is.

Perhaps electricity for charging cars could be made cheaper at night or more expensive at other moments to encourage folk to be sensible?

Out of interest both France and UK are investigating mini nuclear plants, based locally as being much cheaper and quicker to build and more practical than the current big ones. Rolls Royce taking the UK lead.

 

Yesterday Macron announced the plan to build 14 new EPR2 reactors which when integrated into the current fleet of reactors, some of which will need replacing, will result in total of 6 more reactors than currently.

The EPR2 is a modularised version of the current standard EPR reactor.

He also announced the re-purchase by EDF of Alstom which was sold to General Electric in 2015, the sale of which he masterminded when he was Hollande's backroom wizzkid !   Oops !

(Alstom make the steam turbines that drive the electricity generators in nuclear power stations)

https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2022/02/11/emmanuel-macron-confirme-le-virage-pronucleaire-de-sa-strategie-energetique_6113213_3234.html

Impressive plans - it's the only way to go for energy security for France,  it makes the UK's plans of using your car battery to keep the lights on look desperate, shabby and cheapskate.

 

 

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"Does bitcoin uses electricity from the grid? If so, ban the bl**dy thing, whatever it is."

Worldwide it is estimated to use more electricity than the total consumption of some countries  (cannot find a figure for the UK). That is apart from the Ewaste it produces, not to mention depriving ordinary people like me of up to date GPUs without being totally scalpled ?.

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I can't speak for the sustainability of such an idea,   or whether it's scalable to national level,   but I can speak from experience on the small scale,   as last autumn we had PV and a Tesla Powerwall (house battery) installed.

Here in sunless Devon solar energy on its own is pretty useless,    too much for a house in summer (and pitifully low export price rate) and not nearly enough in the winter.   However,   the addition of a battery to the system transforms the situation,    as in summer the surplus is stored rather than exported,   and in winter you can instruct the battery to charge up at cheap rates overnight,   and then use the stored electricity to power the house during the day.

I am a vice-signaller rather than the more fashionable counterpart,   and I installed the system to save money rather than in an attempt to be Green.    And indeed,   paying 5.5 p per kWh rather than 25 p is saving us a great deal.    There are also tariffs (to get back on topic) where the supplier takes control of your Powerwall to smooth the demands of the grid,   and for which you get a favourable rate for both import and export,   although we haven't gone down that avenue.

I can see that if even half the houses in Britain had a battery of this sort then the peak demand at 16.00 - 20.00 would be greatly reduced,   but I'm not sure whether I think the overall "Green" equation would stack up after taking into account the use of Lithium etc for building,   and eventually disposing,  of the batteries.   As a vice-signaller I leave that to others,   but from my own selfish point of view I'm saving a shedload of money.

My gripe with the Greens is that they are screaming "disaster" at all times and bouncing politicians into making short term and scientifically stupid choices.    Few politicians know anything about science,   and sadly the same can be said even more strongly about most Greens.    Green on the surface,   and pure Red underneath the skin.   What we need is a mix of solutions,   not a headlong rush in one particular direction.    Balancing the grid is a useful part of that,   but we need reliable quick-start up power sources as well.     Shutting nuclear powerstations - and indeed coal ones - to satisfy a few hysterical Greens isn't the solution,   not until we have other sources in place.    Yes we need to get on and build those sources,   and Macron is absolutely right on nuclear,    but a bit more thought and reason,   rather than screaming slogans,   wouldn't go amiss.

Incidentally,    amusing to see - after all that little creep Macron's threats to cut off power to Britain - that the interconnector (what's left of it after the fire damage) is being used this winter to keep the lights on in France,  not the other way round.

 

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It is doubtful going forward that lithium will feature in stationary batteries. That was Tesla's eary stuff, now they are using LFP and home storage is likely to be a different chemistry again. For those that think the UK plan is shabby and cheap, I hope France doesn't plan a wonderful new power station in your back yard! Yes we need a mix of both going forward but reducing the number and the cost and the impact can only be a good thing.

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3 hours ago, Teapot1 said:

It is doubtful going forward that lithium will feature in stationary batteries. That was Tesla's eary stuff, now they are using LFP and home storage is likely to be a different chemistry again. For those that think the UK plan is shabby and cheap, I hope France doesn't plan a wonderful new power station in your back yard! Yes we need a mix of both going forward but reducing the number and the cost and the impact can only be a good thing.

 "I hope France doesn't plan a wonderful new power station in your back yard! "

Better that than hundreds of useless windmills going round and round!

Seriously, what's not to like, or what is your irrational fear based on?

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2080918,1.6212111,3a,75y,357.47h,87.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCiR6H73805-E_o0RJdIYRA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

In this image (hopefully!) you can see Sizewell B power station in the background behind the beach cafe.

I used to ride there with a motorcycle club a couple of times a year, park the bike in the car park behind the cafe, switch off, remove helmet and listen.

No noise at all - no smells - no steam or smoke.

One member of the club was a graduate level engineer there - mechanical not nuclear- and we used to take the mickey about him glowing in the dark etc and he used to reply that you are safer here than anywhere due to the amount of monitoring and safety systems operating.

 He also said If there is a fire in a conventional power station you might get a few lines in the local paper, if someone gets blistered fingers from some paint stripper in a nuclear power station it's all over the national news and TV. 

They do a storming full english breakfast in that cafe if you are in the area!

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12 hours ago, anotherbanana said:

Perhaps the NG might plug into the brains of the anti- vaxxers who have spread the virus round and about in the name of a mythological choice. Ooops, maybe not as perhaps not enough there to power a newt!

You realise that fully vaccinated and boosted individuals can and do get infected and spread the virus?

Vaccines do an excellent job of preventing serious Covid illness and deaths, but are less good at stopping infections.

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14 hours ago, Teapot1 said:

It is doubtful going forward that lithium will feature in stationary batteries. That was Tesla's eary stuff, now they are using LFP and home storage is likely to be a different chemistry again. For those that think the UK plan is shabby and cheap, I hope France doesn't plan a wonderful new power station in your back yard! Yes we need a mix of both going forward but reducing the number and the cost and the impact can only be a good thing.

I wonder if I am almost alone in thinking that this car battery feeding into the national grid idea is beyond ridiculous. To my mind it is the thoughts of a child fantasising without any real thought as to how or even if it can be accomplished. It seems any idea, no matter how stupid, is jumped on by gullible people wanting a 'miracle'! There are countless ideas out there ranging through 'windmills, bio fuels, solar, tidal schemes and many others none of which go anywhere near solving the energy crisis. Grid supply from cars is the latest ridiculous idea and which, incidentally, no one has said where the electricity will come from in the first place to charge all the car batteries!!. 

France is being dragged back into nuclear because it is the only clean and reliable source of energy available. We don't see the 'bogyman,' propaganda anymore about how bad nuclear is because even politicians can now see that pandering to the 'eco-warriors' is going to bring disaster. Nuclear is the only way in my view and I strongly suspect Germany regrets going down the knee jerk route of shutting them down. European countries are returning to the fold i.e; Nuclear. The sooner it is done the better.

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2 hours ago, Ken said:

I wonder if I am almost alone in thinking that this car battery feeding into the national grid idea is beyond ridiculous. To my mind it is the thoughts of a child fantasising without any real thought as to how or even if it can be accomplished. It seems any idea, no matter how stupid, is jumped on by gullible people wanting a 'miracle'! There are countless ideas out there ranging through 'windmills, bio fuels, solar, tidal schemes and many others none of which go anywhere near solving the energy crisis. Grid supply from cars is the latest ridiculous idea and which, incidentally, no one has said where the electricity will come from in the first place to charge all the car batteries!!. 

France is being dragged back into nuclear because it is the only clean and reliable source of energy available. We don't see the 'bogyman,' propaganda anymore about how bad nuclear is because even politicians can now see that pandering to the 'eco-warriors' is going to bring disaster. Nuclear is the only way in my view and I strongly suspect Germany regrets going down the knee jerk route of shutting them down. European countries are returning to the fold i.e; Nuclear. The sooner it is done the better.

No Ken, I don't believe you are alone, bound to be lots more old men who think as you do. The electricity is generated during off peak times such as overnight to then be utilised during peak times. Such as the Octopus agile tariff that alows people with PV solar and batteries to sell their electricity back to the grid when the price is preferential and buy electricty to recharge batteries when lower cost overnight as their needs require. Some may call it intelligent use of resources. This can be near instantaneous use of available electricity to iron out peaks as opposed to powering up a power station when not really required. Several times last year the grid paid people on these systems to take the electricity so EV' were charged and credits added to their accounts.  Not saying we wont have nuclear to provide the bulk but at present the UK uses a lot of gas to produce electricity although when the weather is favorable about 45% of the UK is powered from renewables. Several times last year the grid was entirely powered renewable electricity.I get these notifications from signing up to the national grid website and looking at the phone app. Just checked an currently the UK is running on 62% renewable and 17% nuclear, gas and others making up the difference.

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I don't know if you read my post Ken,   but certainly I think there is SOME validity in the idea of using storage batteries (not necessarily electric car batteries) to smooth out demand.     Suppose ten million homes could have batteries installed (let's come back to how the cost would be borne),   that's half the homes in Britain.     If each of them were normally demanding 1 kW between 17.00 and 20.00 and the fact that they each now had a battery that had charged up earlier in the day, meaning that they were self-sufficent during those hours,   we would at a stroke be removing 10 million x 1000 W from the national demand.    That is 10 million kW,   or 10 gigawatts.     Demand in Britain at its evening peak is about 40 GW and at its lowest during the night is about 25 GW.   So - and this is not even with the batteries discharging to the grid at peak times,   merely powering the houses that have them - the new peak evening demand would be only a little higher than the night time minimum demand,   a huge improvement to the current situation,   meaning that inefficient and polluting power stations might not be needed to fill in the bumps in consumption.

 

Now it's a whole different discussion as to how this could be financed or achieved,   but the point I'm trying to make is that it is technically feasible.    Others on here have mentioned the improvements that we may - I repeat may - see in battery technology;   I'm not expecting any breakthroughs,   but capacity and efficiency are gradually improving,   and although costs are up at the moment it might be expected that once the post pandemic supply problems die down the costs may again start sliding,   albeit gradually.

 

I hasten to add that I'm a great believer in countries becoming energy-self-secure,  we only have to look East to see what a mess we've got ourselves into.    But there are all sorts of things we can do,   including sensible use of batteries,   and we should be encouraging the best brains to work on these things as a matter of urgency.    Yes we need new power stations,   but we can also do sensible and reasonable things to smooth out demand.    What we certainly shouldn't be doing is allowing Green zealots,   many of them who seem to be anything but honourable - bouncing non-scientific politicians into costly inefficient knee-jerk reactions.

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10 hours ago, Teapot1 said:

It is not an irrational fear, yes compared to filthy conventional power stations much better. Do we still dump the waste at the bottom of the oceans? The phenominal cost of building them and decommissioning at the end? 

Once again your irrational assumptions are emphasised.

You need to read what is actually going on with regard to radioactive waste recycling and disposal.

https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radioactive-waste-in-france

The cost of nuclear generated electrical power compared to renewables is cheaper, because with nuclear it is not necessary to provide an equivalent backup power source which has to be despatchable when the wind fails or clouds cover the sun, which means that the backup power source has to be kept running and hot but ready to deliver - it's called "spinning reserve".  So every gigawatt of renewable power needs a gigawatt of non-renewable backup power running in the background!

 

 

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2 hours ago, Harnser said:

Once again your irrational assumptions are emphasised.

You need to read what is actually going on with regard to radioactive waste recycling and disposal.

https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radioactive-waste-in-france

The cost of nuclear generated electrical power compared to renewables is cheaper, because with nuclear it is not necessary to provide an equivalent backup power source which has to be despatchable when the wind fails or clouds cover the sun, which means that the backup power source has to be kept running and hot but ready to deliver - it's called "spinning reserve".  So every gigawatt of renewable power needs a gigawatt of non-renewable backup power running in the background!

 

 

Thank you, you saw my question marks, that was indicating I wanted a response and the link showed how efficient

the nuclear power is in france and how well they recycled some of the components.

The worrying bit is the 200 grams of long lived waste per person. Thats a 300 year half life and stored in caves and old mine workings. 67 million people in france x 200 grams is still quite a lot yes, 13,400,000 kg of long lived waste, per year.

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2 hours ago, Martin963 said:

I don't know if you read my post Ken,   but certainly I think there is SOME validity in the idea of using storage batteries (not necessarily electric car batteries) to smooth out demand.     Suppose ten million homes could have batteries installed (let's come back to how the cost would be borne),   that's half the homes in Britain.     If each of them were normally demanding 1 kW between 17.00 and 20.00 and the fact that they each now had a battery that had charged up earlier in the day, meaning that they were self-sufficent during those hours,   we would at a stroke be removing 10 million x 1000 W from the national demand.    That is 10 million kW,   or 10 gigawatts.     Demand in Britain at its evening peak is about 40 GW and at its lowest during the night is about 25 GW.   So - and this is not even with the batteries discharging to the grid at peak times,   merely powering the houses that have them - the new peak evening demand would be only a little higher than the night time minimum demand,   a huge improvement to the current situation,   meaning that inefficient and polluting power stations might not be needed to fill in the bumps in consumption.

 

Now it's a whole different discussion as to how this could be financed or achieved,   but the point I'm trying to make is that it is technically feasible.    Others on here have mentioned the improvements that we may - I repeat may - see in battery technology;   I'm not expecting any breakthroughs,   but capacity and efficiency are gradually improving,   and although costs are up at the moment it might be expected that once the post pandemic supply problems die down the costs may again start sliding,   albeit gradually.

 

I hasten to add that I'm a great believer in countries becoming energy-self-secure,  we only have to look East to see what a mess we've got ourselves into.    But there are all sorts of things we can do,   including sensible use of batteries,   and we should be encouraging the best brains to work on these things as a matter of urgency.    Yes we need new power stations,   but we can also do sensible and reasonable things to smooth out demand.    What we certainly shouldn't be doing is allowing Green zealots,   many of them who seem to be anything but honourable - bouncing non-scientific politicians into costly inefficient knee-jerk reactions.

Yes, I did read your post and excellent it was too but , isn't there always a but? Patently the power needed to run a country isn't going to come from batteries. I understand completely that, off peak electricity, batteries, windmills and crossed fingers all contribute to the grid and some people even appear to get a small rebate! The fact does remain that all of the alternatives only contribute  a fraction of what is needed as a continuous and reliable supply. 

You mention cost but don't mention what to do with all these batteries at life end, please don't say recycle them! The cost of all of this 'green agenda' is beyond incredible! Each new and 'helpful' alternative is just adding to cost and unreliability. I'm afraid I'm a committed nuclear supporter and if their were enough stations so called green alternatives, with all of their cost and production problems simply wouldn't be needed. I do , also understand, despite 'being old' (not your words) that research and innovation should be carried out but not to the detriment of a constant and reliable source of energy i.e. nuclear and that is what is happening. Individuals are generating power and all power to their elbow but obviously it isn't viable on a grand scale. A country needs something a lot more than batteries and off peak electricity I'm afraid.

 

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2 minutes ago, Ken said:

with

 

3 minutes ago, Ken said:

what to do with all these batteries at life end, please don't say recycle

Why not, does it not suit your argument? They will be recycled. Facilities already exist but the bloody batteries are lasting longer than expected so not very busy. If we dont recycle them I suppose we could store them next to the long lived nuclear waste. 

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