If West London electricity grid has already hit capacity, what about the ban on sales of new internal combustion cars from 2030, in just eight years time?
I strongly suspect that ban will be delayed. There's still no serious effort to build large-scale public EV charging infrastructure.
The ban on new petrol vehicles seems likely to result in more older (higher-emission) vehicles remaining on the road for longer, as EVs still remain 'toys for the wealthy', far too expensive for the working class (who rely on inexpensive used cars).
It's unclear what the used EV market is going to look like longer-term in terms of pricing, degraded battery packs, and reduced range, and availability of repair/servicing for a vehicle that's now a 'tech product' full of software locks, that can only be repaired by authorised dealers, rather than by any skilled mechanic.
It's also unclear how governments are going to tax EV users to recoup the huge amount of fuel tax lost from the switch to EVs...
The used market is what really concerns me with the EV market, when it comes to sustainability. My daughter will be driving in 2 years time and is adamant she won't drive something powered by fossil-fuels.
However, what choice does she have? Any used EV will have a range of 50 miles, and that is after a full 8 hour charge. Fixing/replacing the battery will cost far more than the vehicle itself.
More recent EVs 2nd-hand price is still higher than a new petrol-based one.
I can't see how the market can support itself, without efforts to create batteries that can be recycled easily, but the manufacturers don't seem to have an interest in that.
This is a nice summary of all the usual talking points that aren't true.
The ban has already been brought forward in multiple jurisdictions, that's the general trend, as people realise all the lies they've been told about EVs aren't true, so delaying it would be very surprising. In London, they have the low emission zones on top of that, so any poor person buying an old ICE car for use in London would be paying hefty sums to drive around.
There's multiple serious efforts to build large-scale public (and private) EV charging infrastructure. Why do you think there isn't? How can you think that? They're popping up everywhere.
The ban doesn't even ban PHEVs currently (though there's reasonable chance that it will be strengenthed in some way as the transition accelerates) so even ignoring all EVs with lower TCO than equivalent ICE cars available today, which will be 8 years old in 2030, there's also tons of hybrids for these poor people to buy.
Degraded battery packs? Now that's a classic, thought that one had died out, along with "toys for the wealthy".
The "fuel tax" is more than made up for by all the many benefits of EV (less pollution being a key one) that society gets, but it's good that governments will probably tax EVs as cars, even EVs, have multiple negative externalities that the people who use them should pay for, so the people cycling or on the train don't need to pay for other people's bad decisions. Otherwise we'll end up with inefficient American sprawl rather than healthy, livable cities.
In the UK, the government also pays for the dementia and asthma that the car pollution creates, and importing the fuels is a cost, as is the lost efficiency, cost of meeting net zero targets and upgrading the grid (which EVs help with) so it evens out.
As I say, they'll probably start taxing them anyway, and thats good, London has a "Congestion Charge" so exceptions for EV make sense as a short term incentive, but they still cause "congestion" and should still pay.
In some degradation curves for lithium batteries, it looks like degradation is linear down to 80% over around 150 cycles. From then it degrades to 0% over another 100 cycles.
From the curves in your link, it seems EVs have fewer cycles per year than mobile phones or laptops.
But after 15-20 years, their batteries will still most likely be dead.
Average age of cars in the UK is 8.4 years, it's growing, but slowly, the 13 years+ segment is about 1/5 of the total, so as long as 1 out of every 5 batteries makes it that far, we'll be fine, anything better than that is a plus. Plus we can start making the new batteries from the 20 year old dead batteries rather than mining fresh materials for them, if we can't find any other use for them.
The average /lifespan/ of a car in the UK appears to be 13 years which I think means we currently expect half of cars to be used for longer than that. EV batteries apparently have 7-8 year warranties, I assume that's the result of a lot of careful consideration.
We can expect battery tech to improve in the next 8 years, and hopefully become cheaper, but a move to EVs could still drastically limit availability of cheap vehicles for those who need them.
How do you expect to create "healthy, livable cities" at a time when cities are in decline, perhaps even becoming obsolete? First, the internet killed physical retail, recently, the pandemic killed more businesses/opportunities and caused an exodus of WFH-ers, and in some cities there's a very visible rise in crime, drugs, and homelessness.
Removing private cars from cities won't revolutionise them, when the roads are still going to be full of commercial vehicles, buses, and taxis. Yeah, it'll make it somewhat safer for cyclists and reduce air pollution and noise a little - but not enough to turn a declining urban dystopia into a desirable place to live.
Unless of course, you're very wealthy and can live in a luxury apartment with good security and plenty of distance from the 'rough areas'.
> Removing private cars from cities won't revolutionise them, when the roads are still going to be full of commercial vehicles, buses, and taxis
That sounds pretty revolutionary to me already? Why don't you think so?
There's lots of existing plans to improve those other things too, pedestrian only zones, car-free superblocks, e-cargo bikes replacing some commercial vehicles, bike shares, subways and metro systems, bus rapid transit corridors, seperated bike-lanes, mixed-usage districts so that people have everything they need within a walkable radius.
Plan for cars and you get cars, plan for people and you get people.
Even if I accept your premise that cities are descending into "Escape from New York" territory, how does allowing ICE cars to spew pollution do anything but make that worse?
Do you have a source for that? Here in NYC things seem as popular as ever, with record-breaking rents due to high demand. Is it different elsewhere?
Regardless, even if it's true that some cities are struggling, that only makes it more important for them to focus on improving quality of life: a rise in WFH means people have more options, and a city that doesn't want to depopulate has to be an attractive place to live independent of economic opportunity.
All politicians from now to the 2030s will be jumping on the "ban petrol cars" bandwagon because it will bring them a lot of votes, but it's an unrealistic goal we will never achieve and we will find ourselves in 10 years with no widespread electric network, a lot of broken promises and a even warmer Earth.
As a climate change alarmist, I consider any "ban on X in < 20 years" promise as wishful thinking or a populist lie, which will eventually turn into a huge cash-grab and tax reliefs for their lobbyist friends that will have gotten into electric by then.
I admire all those that still believe their favourite party will fight climate change.
As someone with similar concerns, how far do you think solar can take us? An average solar roof with ~10kWp of solar panels with a battery (an electric car?) should be enough to cover most of the needs of the house, leaving just the car as an external user.
That, and with smart charging (ie off-peak) we could smooth the consumption curve, meaning we could use non-elastic generation (nuclear, ..?) more?
Going to be much more challenging in Europe and cooler climates with less sunshine.
Sunny places like Australia are having the problem of too much solar on the grid now and looking at community batteries and EV charging as ways to offset that and stabilise things.
I'm at +45° north and it should work fine here (I'm basing all my assumptions on where I live). It most definitely wouldn't work in Sweden and Norway, but France and maybe even northern Germany should be fine?
I just did some quick calculations (which might be wrong, but maybe not by orders of magnitude) based on reported numbers on the internet. It seems that powering a medium sized air source heat pump purely on solar in a UK winter would require a £34K investment in solar panels, covering nearly 300 square metres. Not exactly viable per property in city-density housing.
City dense will never work since skyscrapers have ridiculously low roof amounts compared to the populace.
Also, as far as heating goes, passive houses should need almost nothing for the winter (still need to heat water for showering, etc. though).
E: Can you share your numbers? A 10kWp plant that I had in mind is ~50m^2 - 30x330kWp panels at about 1.6m^2 each, so did you mean you actually need a 60kWp plant?
Makes one to think how much of the solar capacity will end up simply unused during peaks. That is it is there, but the relays have disconnected it. As we simply will not have enough places to sink it all and for grid stability you can't produce more than you use...
Unfortunately one of the biggest technical problems with renewables is that we still lack an efficient way to deal with energy storage. It's still relatively expensive, inefficient, and creating waste. Maybe in 20-30 years you will be able to live in the winter using the energy produced during the summer and stored in batteries that are cheap and 100% recyclable, but it's not a reality yet.
20-30 years is optimistic IMHO. We're still a huge technological breakthrough in batteries away for large-scale, high-capacity energy storage to be viable.
It might happen, but the technology still isn't there, yet we're going all in on renewables, especially in countries like Germany and Italy where nuclear is politically toxic.
“PV Diverters” supposedly remedy that problem. They use current transformers to detect when the home’s solar supply is outstripping its demand, and then switch on power consuming devices like electric water heating / air conditioning so the power isn’t wasted.
10kWp is not enough during winter (november-february) in most of Europe. It would be enough only if you heat by using something else (like gas), not heat pump.
Look at country side in Eastern Europe. You think that people are driving around in cars made between 1990-2010 because they are fans of old tech? No they drive those cars, because they don't have money to buy something better.
And those guys are going to support anyone who is going to oppose ICE ban, because for people living on country side it will be absolutely unaffordable to have BEV with range of their current old ICE car.
Why would people who drive 10-30 year old cars, and for whatever reason feel that they need an ICE car, vote against a ban on the sale of new ICE cars starting in a decade?
That doesn't even begin to affect their purchases for 20-40 years and even then, it still doesn't ban plug-in hybrids, that will be their best options for 10 year old cars in about 10 years time anyway?
Because BEVs which they will eventually get will have range of +-50km, which is much less than their current ICE cars for much more money. Is it really that hard to grasp it?
Yes, it is. Are they intentionally not buying the second hand PHEVs Which will probably still be available to buy new at this point? Are they picking their cars at random? Or do they run some kind of rough calculation of expected running costs for their intended usage before they decide to buy it?
If so then the ones that only need 50km daily range can buy the BEV and save on gas, and the other ones can buy the PHEVs and still save on gas, which will probably be pretty expensive since we're talking about the year 2040 at the minimum if they really need to get a car exactly 10 years old, rather than their usual limit of up to 30 year old cars. People happy with 30 yeor old cars will only start to have problems car shopping in the 2060s
You are missing the point. The whole thread is about the fact, that most people will be unable to afford a BEV and cheap ICE won't be available because arbitrary reasons. Those people will then actively vote for populists and they will put a brake or even reverse the green policies.
It is so patently ridiculous, when you are trying to sell old junk BEV as a superior product, while it can't even remotely do what previous ICE with similar age was able to do. People does not understand why they should use inferior product - junk BEV with burnt out battery - and that's the reason why they will be actively detracting any kind of green effort, because current policies are leaving those people behind. Frankly it seems to me that majority of society will be left behind by insensitive and expensive green policies.
The vocal people on twitter and left-side of media? Actual voters really don't have much alternatives. At least not once they can vocalise and not get skewered by inclusive people.
The impact of domestic chargers with smart charging enabled (now mandatory) on maximum demand after diversity is not very large because they almost always end up charging in the middle of the night. Public chargers have a much bigger impact because they need to run when the customer plugs in and not later. Heat pumps have a massive impact because they have no diversity (when my house is cold, so are all my neighbours and probably it was cold yesterday and will be tomorrow as well).
How most people can end up charging in the middle of the night, when 50% of people in EU are living in apartments, have no parking space and will be most probably using on Fast DC chargers?
This story is specifically about West London, which is not the EU but I'll grant you has similar settlement patterns.
More than two thirds of car owners in the UK have access to off-street parking. Many people who do not have such access don't have a car in the first place.
This part of outer West London is particularly suburban, I would expect that number to be even higher there.
I would also expect a very substantial number of slow lamp-post chargers suitable for over-night charging to be installed instead of DC fast chargers.
Wait, where do these theoretical people park their car then? Either they have a parking spot which a charger can be installed at, or they don’t have a parking spot at all, and presumably just drive around endlessly?
Electric cars are the problem but maybe also the solution, since they can be configured to feed power back into the grid at peak times (and peak spikes is the limiting factor)
Supplying the grid with say, 6kW for 1 hour during a peak load event, would only dent an EV battery by about 10% of total charge. And thats only needed on some days of the year. Only a tiny % of total vehicles would be needed to be connected to work together mimicking one gas peaker plant. And you can get paid to do it.
The deadline for petrol cars is unrealistic, we dont have the generating capacity or the infrastructure to deal with that many electric vehicles and I dont know if we ever will. Hydrogen is looking like a better alternative right now.
Human slaves must make space for Computer. Humans can tend to Computer and clean off dust and plug in Cables, but not disturb Computer by living nearby.
I can't imagine much new investment into UK datacentres will happen with electricity prices at £0.66/kWh ($0.80). That's a quoted day time price for a fixed 12 month tariff at the moment.
At this price (20x of solar cost in sunny regions) solar panels even in UK look like a great business. A square meter panel costs $200 and generates 200 watt. Say only half - 100 watt - in UK. That is 0.64kWh per 8 hour day. I.e. $0.50/day at those prices - basically a crypto level of ROI - 400 days. Wind, especially in the ocean, is even better.
I wonder if the current energy crisis - and thus the resulting increased prices providing much better ROI for green investment - would move the world to green economy more than anything else before. In some paradoxical sense Russia attacking Ukraine is what may prove to be the biggest driver for greening of our civilization.
> In its note, the [Greater London Authority] said pressure on the grid in west London has been particularly acute because a number of data centres have been built nearby in recent years, taking advantage of fibre optic cables that run along the M4 corridor, before crossing the Atlantic.
The article (https://archive.ph/Azysn BTW) says Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow. Zooming in on a random patch of land between the labels Ealing and Hillingdon, I found a large clump of what seems to be warehouses.
Maybe elsewhere is cheaper, but an area with warehouses is cheap enough, in a sense.
I found Heathrow too, so I assume noise depresses the pricing. But servers don't mind aircraft noise.
Oops. I had only residential property in mind, perhaps because the title is "home ban", but my phrasing covered both kinds of property. Sloppy of me. Sorry.
FWIW, a decade ago it was revealed that Heathrow's holding company was happily buying up houses close to the airport.[0]
(Full disclosure: also years ago I did some consulting work for the airport. There are some very strange incentives at play at LHR which may not be apparent to outsiders.)
They're in Slough which isn't technically London but still close enough to affect the west London's electric grid.
The problem with moving too far out is that you end up with even greater problems of having your data centre miles from any major fibre backbone. It's a similar reason why a lot of broadcasting studios and other network hubs used to be based close to the BT tower despite that being hugely expensive real estate.
For ‘financial stuff’ where proximity matters (which is a small fraction of it) you would be colocated with the exchange, and there’s no need for that data centre to be in London.
As I understand Slough and West London more broadly are a sweet spot for both connectivity to international fibre cables as they come out of the ground and available electricity at a reasonable rate (although they might have saturated that particular aspect if the article is true). Slough trading estate has a dedicated Biomass Power Station.
With less confidence, I vaguely remember a discussion with a datacentre technician at one of these sites who said something about the curvature of the cabling which can impact latency/speed for high frequency trading outfits located in the datacentres. I'm not sure in which direction this would worsen but perhaps another factor.
Shaving a few minutes off your shower, walking to the shop instead of driving, turning your thermostat down by a few degrees will make no f@@kin difference what so ever to the horror that is coming.
The whole point of these exercises is not to save energy but to engage the population to believe that they are part of the problem and therefore part of the solution. They are not.
One of the most important videos on the entire Internet, if you cannot understand why then you are probably already lost.
Setting aside the day to day practicalities of off grid living (always watching energy use, no electric heat or cooking, the possibility of running out), the main issue is that this is the middle of the city. A block of apartments might be 6 storeys tall - a 50m2 flat would therefore only have 8.3m2 of rooftop - there's simply not nearly enough rooftop area to generate the power the building needs.
Solar wouldn't even be particularly useful for peak compensation, as generally the UK peaks fall on winter evenings, while solar only makes useful power in summer.
A better solution would be just the batteries. If these buildings had enough battery storage to compensate for usage during the few peak usage hours per day, the effect of new buildings on the grid would be negligible (as the grid is basically underutilised for most of the day). Then the solar could be built much more cost effectively in a field out of the city.
A single home with all of its roof covered in solar panels is barely self-sufficient, even during the summer half-year. It can be, but it depends on usage.
Because such a system wouldn't work in the winter. New homes in West London would almost certainly be in the form of multi story apartment building; so there wouldn't be enough free surface area to install solar panels to collect enough energy even if there was enough sunlight.
Yes, this does not even cover electricity needs in winter if fitted on an individual family house (my neighbour has this and tells me that they do need the grid in winter, and they still have a gas boiler) so on a block of flats this has to be more of a gimmick than anything else...
I wouldn't say it's famous for its rainfall. It gets on average about half of the annual precipitation that New York City does, which itself isn't exactly known as a rainy place.
Doesn't NYC get heavier rain than London though. London just gets gray skies and drizzle most days of the week, without much precipitation. NYC gets a few days of heavy rain then lots of sun.
NYC is also over 1000 miles closer to the equator than London is. People forget how far north the UK is, the vast majority of the population in Quebec lives further south than the most southern point in the UK.
It looks like their precipitation is fairly similarly distributed through the year, so it's not like London is just very slightly rainy all the time and NYC has a monsoon season. In any case, the point is that the characterisation of London as too rainy for solar is not right.
It's not exactly "joined-up" thinking.