Friday Reads – 1 November 2019

1. “Cars are Death machines”
   Err … possibly not, if only because of this excerpt from the article:
   Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have increased 41 percent since 2008
   Whereas here &, IIRC, acroess the rest of Europe … death rates are falling.
   As this graph shows
   Which in turn strongly suggests that the US is “doing it wrong”

2. TfL’s story about scary drivers is interesting, because there’s no technical remedy. Driving too fast for the conditions, despite being within the speed limit, isn’t detectable by camera. Nor are tailgating, harsh acceleration, or sudden sharp turns.

   Given that we can’t rely on design or technical solutions, we’re left with the option of a public information campaign. Over the years we’ve seen campaigns to change behaviour with varying degrees of success (Keep Britain Tidy, Clunk Click, Kick It Out, anti-smoking campaigns, etc.). A new campaign focused on safe driving could have considerable impact.

3. The New Statesman article on the ‘myth of green cars’ needs calling out.

   It makes some good points, then spoils it all by making a frankly ridiculous statement that “only 9 per cent of the UK’s energy comes from renewable or waste sources, according to recent figures”, carefully worded to imply that electric cars have questionable carbon credentials.

   The figures referenced are three years old, and conflate ‘energy’ use with electricity generation. Whilst it is true that 9% of total U.K. energy use in 2015/6 was from ‘renewable and waste sources’, the amount for electricity generation was approximately 45%: consisting of 19% renewable, 22% nuclear and another 4% or so of French imports which are overwhelming nuclear, i.e 45% of electricity then was effectively carbon free*

   The latest figures are better; latest Dept of Energy figures show that total energy use is approx 15% renewable / waste recovery, whilst as of today the past year’s electricity generation is well over 50% carbon free (32% renewable, 18% nuclear, around 5% French imports). (Figures for electricity generation taken from the excellent Drax Insights website).

   Shoddy journalism by the New Statesman.

   *Yes I know that all electricity generation has an embedded carbon cost, but then so does breathing.

4. However, in considering the question of electric car vs petrol/diesel car, the electric car has to be considered as marginal demand for electricity. The green(er) sources of electricity are all baseline sources. Except occasionally (and rarely at rush hour) all marginal supply (ie the stuff that is switched on or off depending on demand) is fossil fuel based. So in the short to medium term almost all extra demand due to increased usage of electric cars will require extra fossil fuel powered electricity. Only when green(er) sources of electricity supply all or almost all electricity, which will require battery (or other) storage that hasn’t been invented yet (at least not in a form that is economically viable) will electricity for electric cars be green.

   So in the short term, the question is how the losses between the generator and the car compare with the more efficient generation in power stations vs individual cars.

   And of course it is far easier to mitigate pollutants in power stations – and they may be in less sensitive areas.

   In the medium term there may be a chicken and egg situation – unless the demand is there the green supply and storage won’t be developed. And unless people buy electric cars there won’t be the funding to develop the ones that will be needed in the long term.

   But in the short term, I still regard the marketing of electric cars as being green as a con trick. (Hybrid cars that make the car more efficient in its use of petrol/diesel are a different matter altogether – as long as the production of the battery doesn’t use more carbon that the lifetime saving, which I suspect is also far from clear.)

5. “a car pulled out of a parking garage without looking ”

   Absolutely standard error. It was the driver, a human being, that didn’t look.

6. I agree that drivers need to be educated/shamed/whatever into driving more safely

   Pedestrians need to do their bit too. Not walking out without looking, because their eyes were glued to their phone.

7. @ML
   Cars don’t necessarily consume grid electricity at rush hour. They charge while stationary so consumption from the grid will tend towards off-peak hours (parked at home overnight). Some will of course charge during the day.

8. Andrew M – The problem with a campaign around safer driving practices is that whenever a survey of drivers asks “do you consider yourself a good driver” the majority mark themselves as ‘better than average’. They’ll be difficult to get through to, especially as the UK permits drivers to keep going until they’re 70 if they’re never banned. Although it would create issues I can see why some argue that everyone should be re-tested every ten years.

9. The development of Paris is fascinating as the historic city walls still have a major impact on development. If the Grand Paris project is successful in reducing or eliminating these barriers a different problem may arise. London is constrained by greenbelt and this is one of the reasons why there is pressure to build at higher densities (which automatically favours public transport and active modes). Paris has no such constraint and the hinterland surrounding it is at a lower density than the southeast beyond greenbelt. This is a recipe for urban sprawl and a dystopian future might see Grand Paris swallowing up the small towns in its hinterland with relatively low density development.

10. Overnight the generation mix is even more heavily fossil fuel than during the day, so marginal generation is even more certainly fossil fuel – for many years to come.

11. ‘The new research, carried out by YouGov, showed that of 524 people who have travelled as a passenger in a friend or family member’s car at least once a month, 61% felt uncomfortable about the speed they were driven.’
    Not terribly honest of TfL to commission a survey like that, with an obvious intended result, a small sample size and a highly misleading question – i.e. ‘have you ever felt uncomfortable’ becoming ‘car passengers often feel uncomfortable’.

12. 524 is hardly an unreasonable sample size and I don’t think the question is particularly misleading. It would certainly be wrong to conclude that 61% felt uncomfortable on every occasion but I don’t thin that that is what is being said.

13. A survey about what people feel, however accurate, can only show what people feel. It cannot show whether or not they are justified in that feeling.

14. @ML re: overnight generation mix

    Not so. The overnight electricity generation has a lower carbon output than in the day, with a continuing downward trend.

    Clearly there is no solar generation overnight, however solar actually contributes relatively little to the generation mix – on average 4 % of the annual total. Even on the sunniest days in mid June it is rare to get more than 10% of daily electricity demand from solar, with a peak in the middle of the day of around 25-30% – for a couple of hours.

    Other types of non-carbon electricity are more reliable. Nuclear, Hydro and Biomass plants are typically on line 24/7; add in French imports (nuclear) and between them they provide around half the U.K. overnight electricity supply. When the wind blows, the share increases significantly – last night wind contributed a further 25% of U.K. supply and it wasn’t particularly windy – output was 5-6GW which is about half what it was, on average, for the second week of October.

    On windy nights National Grid has to pay some wind farms to disconnect, as there isn’t the demand to take it. This happened a lot this summer and autumn. In such circumstances there is actually spare zero carbon electricity which could be made use of now, if there was the demand overnight.

    This is all before another 10GW of wind comes on line in the next 5 years or so (under construction or consented with contracts for generation agreed), which adds 50% to U.K. wind generation capacity. Add in new grid links to Norway and France that between them have the capacity to provide a further 2.5GW of near carbon free electricity (both come on line in the next 2 years), and our overnight generation mix will be consistently above 80% carbon free, with spare unused carbon free capacity most nights, plenty when it’s windy.

15. @SFD – presumably we don’t have (yet?) facilities for such things as pumped storage against peak demand? [I have no idea what the economics of that would be…]

16. Smart charging of electric cars is actually part of the plan to reduce the need for pumped hydro.

    If your car is plugged in for 8 hours every night you might consider accepting a cheaper price in exchange for the grid choosing when exactly the charge is delivered between 10pm and 6am.

    If you want a guaranteed supply as soon as you plug in, you’ll pay the same as you do now.

    To get even lower rates you might actually let your car feed the grid with power – e.g. when you get home at 6pm with 80% left in the battery you won’t care if it’s discharged to 50% before being refilled provided it saves you money (factoring in battery wear and tear) and it’s certain to be fully charged before you leave.

    Given that many new EVs have 200+ mile ranges there’s going to be a /lot/ of half full cars connected back to the grid every evening – right at peak demand hour.

17. @Graham H

    Yes we have pumped storage, 4 power stations in the U.K., Dinorwig (near Snowdon), Ffestiniog, Cruachan (Loch Awe) and Foyers (Loch Ness). Dinorwig is the second largest in Europe in terms of power output, only just behind the Grand Maison station near Alpe D’Huez in France. (When the Tour de France climbs the Col du Croix de Fer, it climbs up the lower dam wall, and alongside the upper reservoir). Fun fact: Carol Vorderman of Countdown fame designed part of the drainage system at Dinorwig as a young engineer.

    Another 2 pumped storage stations have consent – a small one in Snowdonia, and a much larger version in Coire Glas, near Fort William.

    The issue with all 6 of these facilities is that whilst they collectively can generate 4.5GW at full tilt, they ‘empty the tanks’ relatively quickly – none last more than a day, whilst Dinorwig can empty the top reservoir of 8.5 million tonnes of water in about 6 hours. Nowhere near long enough to deal with a week of no wind in February. (Interestingly Australia is building a massive pumped storage system that has a 1 week capacity at 2GW: Snowy 2.0, worth a read-up).

    As @Bob says, part of the plan is to use electric car batteries, with some clever charging / charging technology. Another part of the plan is the grid connections to France (2), Belgium, the Netherlands, the island of Ireland (2), Denmark and Norway. Collectively these will have around 8GW of capacity, which enables us to export low carbon electricity at times of over supply, and import electricity at times of high demand. Given that most of the supplying countries have low carbon generation, it should work out pretty well.

18. @SFD – Thank you for that, most interesting. I have to admit, I’d assumed that such storage buffers dealt with within day fluctuations as much as windless days on a strategic basis.

19. @SFD: The storage lake power stations were primarily built for drinking tea!

    Take Dinorwic, it’s close to Liverpool and Manchester and it can be running at full power in about 60 seconds. So this means that when it was built it was the fastest way of supplying enough power to the grid in that area to deal with all the kettles being turned on during half time or an ad break.

    Gas, coal or nuclear all required much longer periods to come online. Of course wind farms will change that…

    Originally the lake storage schemes were also meant to use excess nuclear power in the night to pump the water back up. This again was designed to smooth usage and increase utilisation…

20. The other great advantage of a pumped-storage system is that it can start from completely “cold”, even if the rest of the entire grid has gone down …. & then you successively restart all the other stations.
    Nowadays, of course, you can do that with gas-powered stations, as well, but:
    1] They didn’t exist back in the 1960/70’s
    &
    2] The latter burn Carbon

21. @Graham H – the UKs current pump storage schemes are exactly that, for intra-day power demand fluctuations. Some other countries are thinking about longer durations , although they do have geography / topography in their favour.

    @SHLR – Dinorwig (and the others) were built partly for (very) short term power demands – it can be up to full power from spinning standby in 16 seconds. They were also built partly to take excess supply at times of low demand, and supply it back at times of peak demand. This was particularly so when the UK was potentially heading down the French route of primarily nuclear generation.

22. The power station at Cruachan (Loch Awe) has a visitor centre. You travel down a tunnel -about 1km long – to the turbine hall, deep under the mountain. I’m no engineer but I found it utterly fascinating to visit. I suspect anyone who frequents this site would enjoy a visit.
    There are two operators in there with a TV switched on at all times – as stated above – they need to kick the power in when there is a sudden surge of demand. During my visit, the ad breaks in Coronation Street or big football matches were specifically mentioned. They have four turbines at Cruachan and on my visit they had one always spinning on standby, so that they can kick in within seconds. From “cold” would take about two minutes.

23. One problem is that I would have thought windless periods in Britain would tend to be also windless in neighbouring countries – the wind doesn’t stop at the frontier. However, I suppose the interconnectors will work rather better with hydro power and perhaps solar.

24. @Andrew M Some of the driving faults you mention could now be detected by camera (current science of video analytics can do some amazing things, even if it then routes to a human for a final check). Excessive speed for conditions, tailgating for sure.

    The problem is to do it effectively would require more or less blanket coverage of video cameras, otherwise it would be only a “spot check”. Such an increase has other issues, of course.

    As for the rest of the faults (and to an extent speed-conditions/tailgating), these faults easily detectable by current generation of in-vehicle telematics (increasingly fitted to commercial vehicles).

    And mandatory telematics for new vehicles for everyone is on the way, most likely driven by insurance companies charging a lot more for a policy if you don’t share the telematics data (there are policies which allow a discount already). Unless our lawmakers prohibit that sort of discriminatory pricing/precondition (cf DNA testing disclosure for life/medical/critical illness policies, where that sort of requirement is not permitted.)

25. Since we are on the subject of power storage it’s worth mentioning that there are other methods, one of which might be of interest to LR readers. See here: https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/article/8736-america%E2%80%99s-first-commercial-scale-rail-energy-storage-project-receives-blm-approval

26. @Islanddweller: Dinorwig has one too, it’s fascinating!

27. However you look at it, the only way forward is with EVs. They could make the central London area EV-only at some point too.. An additional benefit is that it gives the Saudis and the Texans less OIL-money to play with. As they are best mates of Trump and his tribe – that is another plus.

28. @Ma
    Actually, windless areas are relatively small. They are either the eye of a depression or the peak of a high pressure area. As soon as you move away from the centre the winds pick up again. Clearly, both of these can be slow moving, which will lead to windlessness in one area lasting some time, but the area is not that large. It won’t be windless both over the whole of the UK and the rest of north west Europe at the same time.

29. Excuse my ignorance, but under current battery technology wouldn’t using car batteries as grid storage (ie charging/discharging car batteries to balance grid demand) severely shorten the battery life – which the driver might see as a poor investment against any payments for making the battery available? Of course, technology can improve. (And allowing a smart grid to choose when to charge car batteries doesn’t have the same drawback.)

30. @ML
    Not “severely”, no. Latest car battery technology allows in the region of 6,000 charge/discharge cycles before significant degradation of capacity – i.e. more than 16 years if you recharge daily. (Of course most EV users don’t charge that often – more like once or twice a week – for ordinary use, but they might go through those cycles more often if they were being paid to power the grid).

    There’s also interesting research suggesting that the charging *profile* makes a big difference (I.e. do you charge/discharge quickly or slowly) – and some suggests that adding in some relatively gentle discharges (as is expected from “vehicle to grid” power) wouldn’t have any negative effect on battery life at all, given the steeper discharge cycles that driving the vehicle will involve.

    Finally, bear in mind that when the battery reaches that point of significant degradation, that doesn’t make it worthless – it’ll most likely be taken out of a car and used as static storage, where weight isn’t an issue so you can just use more packs with lower capacity – so the cost to the car owner of battery degradation isn’t as worrying as you’d think.

    Some on this website might enjoy the YouTube channel “Fully Charged” (presented by Robert Llewelyn, ex of red dwarf/scrapheap challenge) on these issues.

31. @ML

    In addition to what Anonymous (16:38, 5th Nov 2019) said, Tesla also seem to have found that if you keep the charge of the battery between 15% and 85% full it reduces degradation significantly, so they’ve started displaying 15% as “0%”, and 85% as “100%”.

    Side note, that’s also how they can magically “unlock” extra range in cases of emergency, as with the wildfires in California last year where Tesla provided an over-the-air software update to allow owners to get further away on the charge they had in the car.

32. @ML – investment maybe the leasing/power company not the driver. Citroen for example packs are leased. Prius packs originally were specified for a ten year life but have outlasted that comfortably. The packs are actually small cells and there are shops dismantling Tesla ones for economic renewal.

    On Economy 7 you can already have free units off-peak for a higher standing charge. The whole smart meter idea is to allow future recharge management.

33. New iPhones charge the battery to about 80%, then add a final top-up in the morning before your alarm goes off (assuming you set an alarm on your phone).

    You can verify this by looking at the charge history in the settings.

    Part of the reason for slow charging is because battery life is improved when they are stored and charged cool.

34. @MILEST on 3 Nov at 23:57

    You wrote: “Such an increase [in electronic monitoring] has other issues, of course.”

    Indeed, to a level that the population as a whole would deem totally unacceptable, I hope. Mission creep would enable a level of surveillance of every driver that should be unlawful. I write this as a lifelong non-driver.

35. @Anonymous

    +1 for the Fully Charged Show. Discovered it earlier this year – great show! As well as YouTube they do a weekly podcast and they cover all sorts of renewable energy as well as electric vehicles (not just cars).

36. @AlanBG
    Agreed, it seems pretty sinister to me that Tesla can – at will – ‘unlock’ (or presumably ‘lock’) extra mileage on cars.

37. @CHRISMITCH
    Presumably they can also take over the driving remotely as well?

38. @Malcolm “the wind doesn’t stop at the frontier”

    Good radar view here windy.com

    It’s included in my weather app replacement after Accucast went subscription.

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