WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
I'm amazed by some of the things I have learnt, and how my opinion has changed, since I started to think about, and thus "research", buying a Tesla ... i.e. the change in thinking associated with moving from ICE to BEV
I thought that BEV was a stepping stone and we would eventually get Hydrogen - in fact I wondered why we didn't already have Hydrogen as I had assumed it should be easy to put a Hydrogen Pump at filling stations similarly to Gas (as in UK-Speak Gas not USA-Speak Gasoline!). I assumed that Battery charge/discharge was very inefficient by comparison.
Having done some reading on the subject I now realise that production of Hydrogen, compression and transport is hugely inefficient; I wonder if the perception that Battery Charge/Discharge [in terms of powering an electric motor, compared to Petrol + ICE] is inefficient is a common misconception in the general public?
I also thought that BEV charging would be a huge concern/load for power generation and distribution. I'm now better educated, and had in any case assumed that BEV charging would be mostly at night, during the "Bathtub" period.
I had also considered the balance of payments issues with Middle Eastern oil, and Russian gas, and also the held-to-ransom risk that that entails - I remember Sheikh Yamani (nominative determinism?!) quadrupling the price of oil in the 1973 and all the turmoil which that caused, and I had the thought that home-grown energy (renewables, but also North Sea oil etc. and maybe even Fracking) was a significant benefit in that regard. Researching BEVs has introduced me to some USA forum members talking of not only "saving the planet" but also "Preventing war" ... until then I hadn't extrapolated improving "balance of payments" to "preventing war" but its an interesting point (and interesting to hear USA thinking, and their perceived economic / balance-of-payments benefit of Fracking, which I would personally prefer we avoid) ... I think the balance of payments improvement that BEV brings ought to be enough to make government subsidise BEV to the hilt (and also home insulation, AND a change to building regs so that Passive House is a minimum requirement not an optional luxury as it is probably seen to be at present)
I had also thought that home owner battery storage was a pipe dream - I assumed the battery needed to be huge and cost far too high for any reasonable payback - but I now realise that 100kWh storage!! is not necessary at all as even modest storage, and smart meters, has a part to play in offsetting Coronation Street / Eastenders kettle-switch-on surges. I don't know what effect a brief switch-off would have on BEV charging? but if that is not a technical/wear problem then car chargers could be switched off [by Smart Meters] at peak times. To date I've only seen things like Fridges and Freezers mentioned in terms of smart meter power usage smoothing, which seems like only a few watts saved compared to 3kW for turning on a kettle - turning off a car charger is a much bigger win! Anyways, we have Economy-7 here so I would only charge my car during peak time, say, 5% of the time. Shall we lobby the government to provide a Quooker boiling tap [a snip at £850 for the basic model!] in every house to prevent the Soap Kettle power-generation spike?
We try to turn off everything on standby in our house. I think we are quite good (when we first started doing this about 10 years ago we also changed light bulbs from incandescent to the, then, novel fluorescent equivalents and put timers on anything that didn't need to be on 24/7 and cut our electricity usage by 50% without any lifestyle changes at all ...). I'm really annoyed that when we redid the kitchen/utility we didn't put isolator switches for all the white goods on the wall alongside the power point sockets - the isolator switches are, as is typical, buried under the work-surface behind the machine itself. So we now have all the dishwashers, washing machines, etc. on parasitic power all day long
All our ovens / hobs / microwaves have clocks ... and over the years (don't buy them any more) we have had several that won't work, after a power cut/off, until their clock has been "set" - so an on/off-at-wall switch for them was not clever - Bedside Clocks ... the list goes on, there are just so many parasitic-power devices in the house
I don't understand why I need a "soft" power button on the front of my Washing machine (and tumble, dishwasher, oven, hob, microwave, etc.), when it could have an actual power button and use zero power when off. Actually my TV too (if I press the button rather than the remote). The bedroom TV on the wall has unswitched power socket hidden neatly behind the TV. Again, I should have put an On/OFF switch next to the power sockets nearby, so instead I have added an ugly inline-switch on the power cable which now has to dangle below the TV a bit
I did a Google for household power consumption, as my recollection was that it had increased by 50% or maybe even doubled over the last decade or two - caused by increase in consumer electronics, and standby power, which I thought could be an argument for diverting to BEV charging instead, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that after the initial dramatic rise from 1990-ish onwards there has been an equally dramatic fall in the last 5 years. In that period EU bought in requirement for standby power to be fractions of a Watt, rather than immersion-heater-brick power equivalents prevalent before when manufacturers used cheapest-possible power supply transformers, and also lighting changed to compact fluorescents and, more latterly, LED. (We've replaced the candle bulbs [from memory they were 40W incandescents originally] in our hallways wall lights with LED models. They are now 3W and the plain glass ones were so bright we had to buy frosted glass instead, as I couldn't find any that were less than 3W and thus not blindingly bright!)
But I still think the standby power wastage is gross ... but the prevalent view is "convenience".
Should I get comfortable that my standby usage is "reasonable for convenience"? or should I save that and make it available for car charging instead? I suppose at worst it might be 100W which would be 2.4kWh a day, which isn't going to charge a BEV very much!
Perhaps I should also set a goal to Rant Less?!!
I thought that BEV was a stepping stone and we would eventually get Hydrogen - in fact I wondered why we didn't already have Hydrogen as I had assumed it should be easy to put a Hydrogen Pump at filling stations similarly to Gas (as in UK-Speak Gas not USA-Speak Gasoline!). I assumed that Battery charge/discharge was very inefficient by comparison.
Having done some reading on the subject I now realise that production of Hydrogen, compression and transport is hugely inefficient; I wonder if the perception that Battery Charge/Discharge [in terms of powering an electric motor, compared to Petrol + ICE] is inefficient is a common misconception in the general public?
I also thought that BEV charging would be a huge concern/load for power generation and distribution. I'm now better educated, and had in any case assumed that BEV charging would be mostly at night, during the "Bathtub" period.
I had also considered the balance of payments issues with Middle Eastern oil, and Russian gas, and also the held-to-ransom risk that that entails - I remember Sheikh Yamani (nominative determinism?!) quadrupling the price of oil in the 1973 and all the turmoil which that caused, and I had the thought that home-grown energy (renewables, but also North Sea oil etc. and maybe even Fracking) was a significant benefit in that regard. Researching BEVs has introduced me to some USA forum members talking of not only "saving the planet" but also "Preventing war" ... until then I hadn't extrapolated improving "balance of payments" to "preventing war" but its an interesting point (and interesting to hear USA thinking, and their perceived economic / balance-of-payments benefit of Fracking, which I would personally prefer we avoid) ... I think the balance of payments improvement that BEV brings ought to be enough to make government subsidise BEV to the hilt (and also home insulation, AND a change to building regs so that Passive House is a minimum requirement not an optional luxury as it is probably seen to be at present)
I had also thought that home owner battery storage was a pipe dream - I assumed the battery needed to be huge and cost far too high for any reasonable payback - but I now realise that 100kWh storage!! is not necessary at all as even modest storage, and smart meters, has a part to play in offsetting Coronation Street / Eastenders kettle-switch-on surges. I don't know what effect a brief switch-off would have on BEV charging? but if that is not a technical/wear problem then car chargers could be switched off [by Smart Meters] at peak times. To date I've only seen things like Fridges and Freezers mentioned in terms of smart meter power usage smoothing, which seems like only a few watts saved compared to 3kW for turning on a kettle - turning off a car charger is a much bigger win! Anyways, we have Economy-7 here so I would only charge my car during peak time, say, 5% of the time. Shall we lobby the government to provide a Quooker boiling tap [a snip at £850 for the basic model!] in every house to prevent the Soap Kettle power-generation spike?
We try to turn off everything on standby in our house. I think we are quite good (when we first started doing this about 10 years ago we also changed light bulbs from incandescent to the, then, novel fluorescent equivalents and put timers on anything that didn't need to be on 24/7 and cut our electricity usage by 50% without any lifestyle changes at all ...). I'm really annoyed that when we redid the kitchen/utility we didn't put isolator switches for all the white goods on the wall alongside the power point sockets - the isolator switches are, as is typical, buried under the work-surface behind the machine itself. So we now have all the dishwashers, washing machines, etc. on parasitic power all day long
All our ovens / hobs / microwaves have clocks ... and over the years (don't buy them any more) we have had several that won't work, after a power cut/off, until their clock has been "set" - so an on/off-at-wall switch for them was not clever - Bedside Clocks ... the list goes on, there are just so many parasitic-power devices in the houseI don't understand why I need a "soft" power button on the front of my Washing machine (and tumble, dishwasher, oven, hob, microwave, etc.), when it could have an actual power button and use zero power when off. Actually my TV too (if I press the button rather than the remote). The bedroom TV on the wall has unswitched power socket hidden neatly behind the TV. Again, I should have put an On/OFF switch next to the power sockets nearby, so instead I have added an ugly inline-switch on the power cable which now has to dangle below the TV a bit
I did a Google for household power consumption, as my recollection was that it had increased by 50% or maybe even doubled over the last decade or two - caused by increase in consumer electronics, and standby power, which I thought could be an argument for diverting to BEV charging instead, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that after the initial dramatic rise from 1990-ish onwards there has been an equally dramatic fall in the last 5 years. In that period EU bought in requirement for standby power to be fractions of a Watt, rather than immersion-heater-brick power equivalents prevalent before when manufacturers used cheapest-possible power supply transformers, and also lighting changed to compact fluorescents and, more latterly, LED. (We've replaced the candle bulbs [from memory they were 40W incandescents originally] in our hallways wall lights with LED models. They are now 3W and the plain glass ones were so bright we had to buy frosted glass instead, as I couldn't find any that were less than 3W and thus not blindingly bright!)
But I still think the standby power wastage is gross ... but the prevalent view is "convenience".
Should I get comfortable that my standby usage is "reasonable for convenience"? or should I save that and make it available for car charging instead? I suppose at worst it might be 100W which would be 2.4kWh a day, which isn't going to charge a BEV very much!
Perhaps I should also set a goal to Rant Less?!!
