Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[izzy]

Somebody worked out that if Victoria, Australia, went fully EV we'd need an additional 10 GW 24h a day to charge them. That's several large power stations, or if you prefer, 60 kW of solar panels per household, ie 12 times the typical installation. +storage+it won't work in winter.

"somebody worked out"? Who were they and what were the numbers they used? i mean that has agenda all over it doncha think?

quite apart from the benefit side that @subcritical explains being totally ignored, and the idea that everybody would suddenly go electric overnight instead of it being realistic like over about 10 years. It's like someone in 2010 'working out' what'd happen to the Internet if everybody started streaming 4K movies

[Just_a_fan]

Somebody worked out that if Victoria, Australia, went fully EV we'd need an additional 10 GW 24h a day to charge them. That's several large power stations, or if you prefer, 60 kW of solar panels per household, ie 12 times the typical installation. +storage+it won't work in winter.

So 21,000 acres of PV (120W/M2) in a state of 56 million acres...in the wettest mainland state of Oz. Hardly the end of the world. And it's not like Oz doesn't have millions of acres of sun-soaked wasteland lying around, does it?

Entirely doable if one wanted to. And that's the biggy - if.

How's the PM and his close relationship with coal doing these days?

[strad]

You guys are just trying to bait me.

[Ferry]

or if you prefer, 60 kW of solar panels per household,

Wow! Then you need a very big house, I guess. 60 kWp will produce roughly 60.000 kWh/year. You can drive an BEV 300.000 km with that much energy. @ 100 km/h that amounts to 3000 hours/year, or 8+ hours every day. Something is wrong with your math. Or maybe mine (?)
I have room for about 6 kWp on my roof. My household uses 16.000 kWh/year, including 2 BEVs driving a total of 30.000 km.
PS. Unfortunately I don't know much about Victoria, living nearly at the opposite side of the globe

[mem]

hi
many people predict Graphene-based batteries will be in use by major cell phone companies by 2021 do you think its doable that soon? can the technology transfer to auto industry say by 2025?

[Big Tea]

hi
many people predict Graphene-based batteries will be in use by major cell phone companies by 2021 do you think its doable that soon? can the technology transfer to auto industry say by 2025?

There seems to be much ado about solid state batteries (J.B.Goodenough) lately and if they are even half the advance promised seem set to change the world.

[Greg Locock]

Yeah, fair call on the 10 GW, one 2 GW station would do.

>> km=68000e6 % driven per year in Victoria
km = 6.8000e+010
>> miles=km/1.6
miles = 4.2500e+010
>> Wh=miles*300
Wh = 1.2750e+013
>> GWh=Wh/1e9
GWh = 12750
>> GWhperhour=GWh/365/24 %number of 1 GW power stations need 24/7/365
GWhperhour = 1.4555

The cost of hooking up remote pV facilities is more than the cost of building them.

[XRayF1]

Somebody worked out that if Victoria, Australia, went fully EV we'd need an additional 10 GW 24h a day to charge them. That's several large power stations, or if you prefer, 60 kW of solar panels per household, ie 12 times the typical installation. +storage+it won't work in winter.

So 21,000 acres of PV (120W/M2) in a state of 56 million acres...in the wettest mainland state of Oz. Hardly the end of the world. And it's not like Oz doesn't have millions of acres of sun-soaked wasteland lying around, does it?

Entirely doable if one wanted to. And that's the biggy - if.

How's the PM and his close relationship with coal doing these days?

Upfront, I am no Aussie, I live in Austria.

However as a principle, the challenge lies not in converting the energy to power to your socket, but in storing it.
Even in Australia there will be a time of the day when solar will not be able to provide much to the total demand of electric vehicles (due to the Sun going down and dimishing efficiency of the solar panels, and other factors), hence you need to release it from 'a storage'.
As there is no silver bullet, you would need vast storage capacity even for a rather small city, if each of them rely totally on power.
So, if you cannot do it centrally provided by your power company, the politician's general approach is to have the invidual pay for it.
Thus some incentives given, at least in Europe.

I have a modest house and am currently considering putting a 5kWp system in my roof, as I simply do not have more space.
But the majority of the costs, even if I only want to store a fraction of the solar energy, are the batteries.
This is the Achilles Heel. At least to me.

XR

[Just_a_fan]

But the majority of the costs, even if I only want to store a fraction of the solar energy, are the batteries.
This is the Achilles Heel. At least to me.

XR

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek, to be honest. It doesn't need to be PV or wind etc. It could be nuclear just as easily. Ironically, Australia has the world's largest resource of uranium. It's all exported as Australia doesn't have any nuclear power generation these days, other than a research reactor.

But PV in sunny countries is a useful resource. The UK is notoriously sunny, hardly ever rains or has cloudy skies (more tongue-in-cheek) and has about 13GW of installed capacity, which is coincidentally the same as the installed capacity in Australia.

As for storage, well the main reason for increasing installed capacity is to charge EVs. Most of these will be sitting idle during the day as the owners are at work etc. So they can be charged during the day when the sun is shining. Sure, that's not the whole story, but it's a step away from relying solely on fossil fuels.

[Greg Locock]

In winter the expected output from a 5 kW system that will give 788 kWh per month in summer falls to 209, that is 25% of the summer output. Worse than that it is not reliably 7 kWh per day, it is not uncommon to have one strong day followed by 3 weak days. There are those who claim the wind is always blowing somewhere to compensate for this, well, actually at least in South Australia I have seen ZERO output from their wind turbines. It is windy somewhere but the cost of those long extension leads soon adds up.

So, if you want a pV/wind based system it costs you: the plant cost itself, the cost of the wires, and the cost of whatever backup you need or storage. It ends up as very expensive 'free' power.

[Just_a_fan]

It ends up as very expensive 'free' power.

Did someone claim it was free power? Must have missed that...

[izzy]

Yeah, fair call on the 10 GW, one 2 GW station would do.

>> km=68000e6 % driven per year in Victoria
km = 6.8000e+010
>> miles=km/1.6
miles = 4.2500e+010
>> Wh=miles*300
Wh = 1.2750e+013
>> GWh=Wh/1e9
GWh = 12750
>> GWhperhour=GWh/365/24 %number of 1 GW power stations need 24/7/365
GWhperhour = 1.4555

The cost of hooking up remote pV facilities is more than the cost of building them.

i think 300Wh/mile is too high, already Model3 is generally more like 140Wh/km=224Wh/M, for example https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads ... km.125793/ and it's only going to get better

[djos]

In winter the expected output from a 5 kW system that will give 788 kWh per month in summer falls to 209, that is 25% of the summer output. Worse than that it is not reliably 7 kWh per day, it is not uncommon to have one strong day followed by 3 weak days.

My 5.4kW system in Melbourne (much worse weather than Adelaide) still averages 10.2 kWh's p/d over the worst winter month (July). In the Summer (Jan) it averages 32.9 kWh's p/d.

There are those who claim the wind is always blowing somewhere to compensate for this, well, actually at least in South Australia I have seen ZERO output from their wind turbines. It is windy somewhere but the cost of those long extension leads soon adds up.

That's why offshore wind farms are gaining traction, this form of wind generation is extremely stable and can almost be considered baseload.

[Cold Fussion]

That's why offshore wind farms are gaining traction, this form of wind generation is extremely stable and can almost be considered baseload.

I went looking for capacity factors for offshore wind farms and found these (I have not looked at the site reliability at all):

https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore- ... ty-factors
https://energynumbers.info/capacity-fac ... wind-farms

It seems the expectation for a modern offshore windfarm, atleast in the UK or Denmark is between 40-50%. For comparison I think hydro in Tasmania operates around a 60% capacity factor. If there is a viable business case to generate 3GW from a solar PV plant in the Northern Territory and export it 4000km away to Singapore, then I am fairly certain it's possible for this to be viable in Australia, if only the country wasn't run by complete morons.

[Greg Locock]

If by 'viable' you mean massively subsidized, then yes, the solar to Singapore is viable.

djos My 5.4kW system in Melbourne (much worse weather than Adelaide) still averages 10.2 kWh's p/d over the worst winter month (July). In the Summer (Jan) it averages 32.9 kWh's p/d.

Wow, that's a big step up from my 5 kW system. Ah hang on, those were the modelled numbers I gave you for the design, last year I averaged 18% better than that at 7032.5 kWh for the year. So my 7 kWh/d is equivalent to 7*1.18*5.4/5, 9 kWh/day.