Big progress in Battery technology.

[t-tony]

There has been major improvement in battery technology for Electric powered vehicles announced both by China and the USA.

An end to range anxiety? New electric car battery can charge in five minutes

Tony

ps. Still not sure where all the Electricity will be coming from to charge them though?

 

[gookah]

He works for Tamiya....

 

[Redline]

There have been a number of technical changes in the anode/cathodes in Lithium Ion batteries over recent years resulting in incremental improvements, but this, if true (and even half as promising as stated) is a big step change.

The major limiting factor is that we only have single phase supplies into our homes. Technology could then be used to spread out the demand across chargers while still providing quick fast charge. Everyone charging from 12:30am would kill the grid. Spreading out demand on local networks would enable the spare overnight generating capacity to be shared and maximised. It will be a complex problem but one that can be solved. Needs an integrated approach.
Also, providing local storage will have an impact, but, at the cost of having more batteries.

Guy over the road had three phase installed a few weeks ago to charge his new EV - a Jaguar i-Pace. It is blisteringly fast and silent compared to his old V8 RR.

 

[Delk]

I worked for the power company on a small island for years. It was interesting to watch the rise and fall in the demand. Weekday schedule was about as expected with a peak around 3 to 4 in the afternoon when the sun was out and everyone had the AC on. Weekends were a different story. The peak was Sunday evening and it was very close to the weekday high. Since businesses were closed this was purely down to everyone getting home turning on the AC and cooking Sunday dinner.

If everyone uses a bit of power to charger cars at the same time it adds up to a lot of juice.

 

[D R Oldfield]

the electricity network is on its knees know out in the sticks South cumbria at this time of the year its running at 95% of its capacity especially between the hours 4 and 8pm and thats before we taken in to account all the newly installed electric heating , cooking appliances etc

 

[Redline]

I worked in telecoms for many years monitoring, reporting and managing calls through and between networks on a real time basis. Traffic load was entirely predictable throughout the day and by day of week, all with the exception of the moment when Margaret Thatcher resigned - at that moment networks went white hot in seconds. The same happened on the internet when 9/11 happened.

There has to be massively increased integration between demand and supply sides. Industries need to get together and develop solutions so that increased demand can result in managed load-shedding of high capacity loads such a car charging. It has been talked about. If offered in conjunction with much better usage cost rates, people will accept it - grudgingly. Both technical and cultural issues need to be addressed. If it doesn't happen, then the generators and suppliers will simply impose their own unilateral controls to choke off demand - in just the same way as telecoms networks do (or did) for his call volumes and events. It is CNI after all. The distribution networks aren't quickly going to upgrade their 11kV local networks that have probably been written down over decades. They will simply ration local demand best they see fit to protect the core.

 

[D R Oldfield]

You can see the rationing taken place as my role in the water industry were we get notices of what called a triad period when the cost of electricity is increased by 20x of the triad time frame so we put as much of the plants on diesel generation to reduce the cost to the company

 

[gookah]

For those that might not be aware, a little background info.

National Grid utilisation, is heavily abused at certain times of the day. These peak periods of demand are between 5pm and 6pm Monday-Friday, when many people turn on their kettles, electric cookers, TV’s and electric showers after coming home from work.
It is exacerbated further during the winter, when daylight ends earlier, meaning the UK’s Solar generation has stopped, and more lights are being turned on also.


Currently, certain size business users such as where I work, are ‘encouraged’ by the electricity providers to reduce electricity usage during these Peak Demand periods.
They know exactly how much we are using at different times of the day, as our consumption is billed half hourly, with the meters recording our demand from the grid.
This ‘encouragement’ takes the form of a large increase in our electricity prices during these times, and a further winter levy (Triad Charges) placed on our annual bill which is calculated from our actual usage on certain winter days typically around 5:30pm.
To that end, our work electricity bills have a Triad charge levy of an extra £26,000 on the bills each year.


To mitigate this, and also to create greener credentials for our business I have had installed at our site, the UK's 4th largest roof mount solar array (13,860 panels 3.8MW peak,) and also a 1MWhr Tesla Battery storage as below,

We currently charge up the batteries using solar (alongside powering our site) and then run off batteries between 4:30pm and 6:30pm during winter to avoid the Triad charges, and then use the batteries in summer for frequency balancing services to the Grid, because batteries are a very stable form of maintaining the 50Hz frequency the grid has to guarantee. The Grid switch on and off our batteries remotely as they require, via an aggregator.

We actually only use 550kW peak at our site, but have the capability of generating 3,200kW on the sunniest days. All that excess goes back to the grid, and at weekend we use 50kW with the remainder going to the Grid,.
We also have 12 EV fast charging points on site and anyone that plugs in, gets electric for free.

However, the government have now removed Feed-in Tariffs and reduced the FFR payments, so these installs are not as financially viable as before. We need more of these, not less, because EV demand is only going to increase.

What will be next (and is already in trials) is plugging in your car when you get in, not to charge it, but to run your shower, cooker, kettle at 5:30pm, as the car will have a 30kW battery available. Then you will charge the car later in the evening, or through the night.
Makes you wonder why domestic Smart meters are being installed?
I point you back to half-hour billing. In future just like at work, you will be 'encouraged' to run your house off a car, or standalone house battery, or pay the high price of electricity at that time of day. might be 5-10 years away, but it's coming.
Apologies for the epic write-up.

 

[t-tony]

For those that might not be aware, a little background info.

National Grid utilisation, is heavily abused at certain times of the day. These peak periods of demand are between 5pm and 6pm Monday-Friday, when many people turn on their kettles, electric cookers, TV’s and electric showers after coming home from work.
It is exacerbated further during the winter, when daylight ends earlier, meaning the UK’s Solar generation has stopped, and more lights are being turned on also.


Currently, certain size business users such as where I work, are ‘encouraged’ by the electricity providers to reduce electricity usage during these Peak Demand periods.
They know exactly how much we are using at different times of the day, as our consumption is billed half hourly, with the meters recording our demand from the grid.
This ‘encouragement’ takes the form of a large increase in our electricity prices during these times, and a further winter levy (Triad Charges) placed on our annual bill which is calculated from our actual usage on certain winter days typically around 5:30pm.
To that end, our work electricity bills have a Triad charge levy of an extra £26,000 on the bills each year.


To mitigate this, and also to create greener credentials for our business I have had installed at our site, the UK's 4th largest roof mount solar array (13,860 panels 3.8MW peak,) and also a 1MWhr Tesla Battery storage as below,

View attachment 169489


View attachment 169491


We currently charge up the batteries using solar (alongside powering our site) and then run off batteries between 4:30pm and 6:30pm during winter to avoid the Triad charges, and then use the batteries in summer for frequency balancing services to the Grid, because batteries are a very stable form of maintaining the 50Hz frequency the grid has to guarantee. The Grid switch on and off our batteries remotely as they require, via an aggregator.

We actually only use 550kW peak at our site, but have the capability of generating 3,200kW on the sunniest days. All that excess goes back to the grid, and at weekend we use 50kW with the remainder going to the Grid,.
We also have 12 EV fast charging points on site and anyone that plugs in, gets electric for free.

However, the government have now removed Feed-in Tariffs and reduced the FFR payments, so these installs are not as financially viable as before. We need more of these, not less, because EV demand is only going to increase.

What will be next (and is already in trials) is plugging in your car when you get in, not to charge it, but to run your shower, cooker, kettle at 5:30pm, as the car will have a 30kW battery available. Then you will charge the car later in the evening, or through the night.
Makes you wonder why domestic Smart meters are being installed?
I point you back to half-hour billing. In future just like at work, you will be 'encouraged' to run your house off a car, or standalone house battery, or pay the high price of electricity at that time of day. might be 5-10 years away, but it's coming.
Apologies for the epic write-up.

Interesting Pete, thank you. So have the solar panels paid for themselves yet, or if not, how long will it take for that to happen?

Tony.

 

[gookah]

Actually it is a 6.5 year payback, but we did not buy them we entered into a PPA (power purchase agreement)

Guinness (yes drinks) actually paid £4m for the install, They get the feed in tariff (the last tranche of when it was available), we pay them a reduced rate for the electric we use from the panels, at 5 pence per kWhr as opposed to 15 pence from the grid, they get the payment from the grid for the exported leftovers.
They also pay for maintenance, and we own them after 20 years and then get free electric and the export payment after then.

Without FIT payment, the payback is in excess of 30 years, so now no-one is doing large scale installs on rooves anymore.

 

[t-tony]

Thank you for that mate, it is interesting stuff. We're constantly amazed at why they don't utilize Solar much more than they do in Florida. Only in recent years have we seen large(ish) solar farms appear alongside some of the highways over there.

Tony.

 

[Redline]

For those that might not be aware, a little background info.

National Grid utilisation, is heavily abused at certain times of the day. These peak periods of demand are between 5pm and 6pm Monday-Friday, when many people turn on their kettles, electric cookers, TV’s and electric showers after coming home from work.
It is exacerbated further during the winter, when daylight ends earlier, meaning the UK’s Solar generation has stopped, and more lights are being turned on also.


Currently, certain size business users such as where I work, are ‘encouraged’ by the electricity providers to reduce electricity usage during these Peak Demand periods.
They know exactly how much we are using at different times of the day, as our consumption is billed half hourly, with the meters recording our demand from the grid.
This ‘encouragement’ takes the form of a large increase in our electricity prices during these times, and a further winter levy (Triad Charges) placed on our annual bill which is calculated from our actual usage on certain winter days typically around 5:30pm.
To that end, our work electricity bills have a Triad charge levy of an extra £26,000 on the bills each year.


To mitigate this, and also to create greener credentials for our business I have had installed at our site, the UK's 4th largest roof mount solar array (13,860 panels 3.8MW peak,) and also a 1MWhr Tesla Battery storage as below,

View attachment 169489


View attachment 169491


We currently charge up the batteries using solar (alongside powering our site) and then run off batteries between 4:30pm and 6:30pm during winter to avoid the Triad charges, and then use the batteries in summer for frequency balancing services to the Grid, because batteries are a very stable form of maintaining the 50Hz frequency the grid has to guarantee. The Grid switch on and off our batteries remotely as they require, via an aggregator.

We actually only use 550kW peak at our site, but have the capability of generating 3,200kW on the sunniest days. All that excess goes back to the grid, and at weekend we use 50kW with the remainder going to the Grid,.
We also have 12 EV fast charging points on site and anyone that plugs in, gets electric for free.

However, the government have now removed Feed-in Tariffs and reduced the FFR payments, so these installs are not as financially viable as before. We need more of these, not less, because EV demand is only going to increase.

What will be next (and is already in trials) is plugging in your car when you get in, not to charge it, but to run your shower, cooker, kettle at 5:30pm, as the car will have a 30kW battery available. Then you will charge the car later in the evening, or through the night.
Makes you wonder why domestic Smart meters are being installed?
I point you back to half-hour billing. In future just like at work, you will be 'encouraged' to run your house off a car, or standalone house battery, or pay the high price of electricity at that time of day. might be 5-10 years away, but it's coming.
Apologies for the epic write-up.

Pete,

That's a forward looking organisation. I wonder what the investment and payback is.
Agree about the feeding tariffs - they need to be enough to get businesses to invest.

The funny thing is we've just been off supply for an hour. Oh for those Tesla's