Electric Vehicles - Impact on electrical network. Survey of vehicle uptake.

There is some public data that allows us to consider
" the assertion that CO2 released in the countryside is captured by local vegetation to any extent "


In this PDF, while not the latest,  page 7 has some figures for CO2 absorbed per hectare for varying types of vegetation that I imagine are a good starting point.



Of course you do need quite a lot of forest and even more bush or grassland per car, as even a newish one emits 100 to 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer (see here), so at say 100km per hour, that is pushing a little over 10kg per car per hour, so about a hectare (a square of 100m by 100m ) of bushland cleans up the emissions equivalent to one car in motion, or perhaps 10 cars per hectare of dense forest.


It maybe that over the year the equivalent CO2 to the emissions of one farms tractors and so on are more or less mopped up by the crops grown on the same farm.

Is the CO2 from a motorway full of cars cleaned up by the grass verge beside ?  Sadly, no... nothing like it in fact.


Mike.

I agree.  I have now been using  Nissan Leaf since December.  Being retired, I don't commute any more (hurrah) but it would do the 45 mile round trip that I used to do very comfortably and easily get recharged overnight.  I get around 3.5m/kWh.  At 16p/kWh, that's 4.6 p/mile. If you put your foot down it's noticeably less - you won't get 3.5m/kWh at a steady 70mph on the motorway.

Now the summer's here, I try to charge the car during the day and so use the solar PV.  The Type 2 charger, plugged into a 13A socket, doesn't actually pull 13A - it charges at the rate of about 2.5kW (interestingly it's constantly changing slightly, according to my power meter.  I don't know why.)  So if the sun's shining it's free as it generates more than 2.5kW.  I'm a participant in (a guinea pig for) the Powerloop project and should soon have a Quasar 26A bi-directional DC charger/discharger as Powerloop is a V2G experiment (Octopus, UK Power Networks and others).  There's been a delay getting the G100 device approved to ensure that there is no possibility of the house putting 26A (from the EV) +16A (from the solar PV) back into the mains at the same time.  I accept a fixed price tariff for the sake of the experiment .My hunch is that the network could handle 10A in most houses overnight - not nearly as bad as the storage heaters many used to have.  I plan to install a heat pump shortly - but this house is atypical and I only need a little one ~2kW.

This is a couple of months old and is looking at the prices for public charging of EVs. There is wide variation and obviously all cost more than charging at home. The most expensive London ones apparently include the parking fee ?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/cars/article-9269563/The-electric-car-public-charging-lottery-revealed.html


(Sorry Zoomup if I am breaking your Daily Mail monopoly ? )

If you can recharge using solar then it will definitely be cheaper to use electricity on short trips around town.  However, for long motorway 70 mph travelling you will need to waste time recharging the battery and pay extra for the electric boost making it more convenient to use the hybrid IC engine.

The governments idea of going all electric is unsustainable for heavy duty vehicles like lorries and long distance journeys, I think... 

They should however promote the use of electric vehicles in built up areas and encourage the use of small hybrid vehicles on motorways.

Helios. thanks for that summary, very interesting. I will take a look at the petrol vs EV in more depth, maybe, as you say, the 1.0 litre efficient petrol is not so bad for the environment.


I am looking at what car to buy and I posted on an ev channel on facebook to find out more. I noticed many have a religious type belief in EVs. Very passionate, this is not a bad thing. Maybe this is needed to get things moving, it can override issues like logic of charging.


In the UK the focus seems to be on getting infrastructure to the most densely used/populated areas. ie cities, motorways. I can understand from the business need perspective, you want most clients. BUT as a user I want the infrastructure to be solid and reliable on the west coast of Wales or in the North East...some of the destination spots. The idea of only one or two charge points of say 50KW or more at a destination (if you are lucky). Fills me with a concern of driving there and finding either broken, no phone reception or having to queue. I get the impression that the core backbone of the UK is getting there in terms of service stations and is not an issue. It feels like the infrastructure is lagging the cars themselves ....(which are great to drive if a bit heavier and too expensive).


In the not so distant future every hotel and B&B will have chargers, perhaps 'off peak' energy demand will become a daytime second as all these cars get plugged in every night for their top up.


Perhaps fast chargers could be encouraged at tourist destinations, which inevitably are seasonal, local tourist boards step in please. Obviously we need to get rid of any need for a phone signal to charge or an app, simplify, any credit/debit card should do. Standards of connectors needs to be sorted too. I admire the early adopters and enthusiasts....would be nice if the infrastructure was ahead of he cars rather than vice-versa.

I can see that a standard 3 phase 100 amp industrial supply at a service station would charge a car battery up by 70kWh in an hour.  Thus if motorway service stations had  typically10 charging units they could charge 10 cars fully or 20 cars every half hour with a 35 kWh boost which is what most families would need.

But lorries and heavy goods vehicles are impossible to charge quickly; as lorry drivers must keep moving??