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Has anyone gone full electric in their household. Induction/electric hob, electric oven, electric boiler or heaters, electric car/bike?
Good god no. Leccy is expensive compared to gas, god knows what our bills would be for electric heating - it was bad enough heating a shed and a conservatory with electric last winter for WFH.
Gas CH and stove here and it's very efficient - £40 a month compared to £160 plus on leccy (summer use for leccy).
I've been thinking about this. Our leccy is all renewable, and I think that with decent intelligent heating you could do a lot better than pumping hot water all over the house to heat it. There seems to be a lot of heat wasted in our house via the pipes. The airing cupboard is roasting when the gas boiler is heating the water but not when the immersion heater does it.
I feel like there should be a better way of using leccy to keep the costs low.
Our leccy is all renewable
Is it really though? If there was no wind and it was dark does your electricity go off or does it include nuclear?
I feel like there should be a better way of using leccy to keep the costs low.
I'm thinking the same. Are radiators actually that bad, what is better, etc.?
Good god no. Leccy is expensive compared to gas, god knows what our bills would be for electric heating
Yes, but cost is a constraint that could be overcome, although not by the individual. It would need a national approach. Gas will become more and more expensive and it always pollutes because you need to burn it. Electricity also pollutes but it can be made in many different ways, some pollute far less (I'm not saying zero emission though e.g. wind farms still will pollute during their construction, and they currently need fossil fuel backup)
Yes. But we still burn 2m3 of wood rather than heat electrically. The day leccy is zero fossil fuel I'll stop burning wood.
People who think their leccy is 100% renewable are kidding themselves unless they get cut off every time there's a cold snap with little wind off the Scottish coast.
Most of the year our PV produces more than we consume, but in November, December and January we draw a little off the grid.
Pipes can be lagged, Molgrips. I even lag the hot water pipes all the way to the shower and bathroom tap so less water is wasted by people running the tap till the water gets hot.
I've thought about it too. If it's so critical to buy an EV, why isn't it as critical to switch to electric heating and hot water?
You would need an extra 50,000 wind turbines (on top of the existing 9,000 in the UK) to provide enough power to heat every household. Obviously, homes are mostly heated during the winter, so you'd also need some form of grid storage than can store all of that power generated over the summer. Some quick back-of-the-envelope maths says that if we started stockpiling Tesla EV battery packs once they got to 50% charging capacity, we'd only need 3 billion of them to store the output of 50,000 wind turbines for half the year, to be used in the other half (ignoring self-discharge, which will probably multiply things several times).
My step dad's house is heated by an electric combi. It's proper expensive as it's an old house.
It was that or put an oil burner in as it's on the edge of Dartmoor and there's no mains gas.
The sort of calculations you're doing tell us the only way to get rid of fossil fuels is cut energy demand,twrch. And the only way to do that is make houses more efficient. I reduced the energy needs of our house by six, doing better would require knocking it down and starting again.
I’ve thought about it too. If it’s so critical to buy an EV, why isn’t it as critical to switch to electric heating and hot water?
It's critical to buy an EV to save the car industry not the environment.
Out of interest, how did you achieve that? I take it to mean you reduced the energy requirements of your house to 1/6th its previous value, which is a remarkable reduction.
it’s so critical to buy an EV
The car industry either supports a significant proportion of the UK population or they have friends in high places. Getting people to buy electric cars won't just be about moving people away from petrol and diesel.
We all remember the scrappage scheme con.
There seems to be a lot of heat wasted in our house via the pipes. The airing cupboard is roasting when the gas boiler is heating the water
Yes, but all of those pipes are within the skin of the house so it's not waste - it still contributes to the temperature of the house (if there was zero loss from the pipes/boiler casing the rads would have to output more heat than they do now).
Although not exactly what you're looking for, we have a place by the coast that's 100% electric and once we're there we don't need the car as everything's within walking distance.
In the summer it's really cheap to run as it also has solar PV but in the winter it's spendy to heat.
If I had room I'd fit a stove which would be a game changer for winter use.
Pipes can be lagged, Molgrips.
I'm not sure why you think I'm unaware of this, Ed. Everything visible is heavily lagged, obviously, but there is still a lot of waste heat because lagging isn't perfect.
People who think their leccy is 100% renewable are kidding themselves unless they get cut off every time there’s a cold snap with little wind off the Scottish coast.
You know what.. never mind.
I still have GCH but induction hobs are sooo much easier to clean. I'll never go back to a gas hob ever again.
The start point was a 1933 solid block house with hollow brick lining, 29mm wooden floor, secondary double glazing on some windows, one thin layer of roof insulation, gas central heating, big electric oven, filament and halogen lighting.
100mm of recycled polyester under the floor.
various types of R3.2 insultation on the walls
Insulated ceiling and then 3 layers of insulation in the roof with two layers on the gable ends
PVC 0.9 uw triple glazing of all the big windows and secondary triple glazing of the small ones.
Double glazing and insulation of entrance doors
LED lighting throughout
Smaller more effiencient oven and hob
Solar thermal for domestic hot water in Summer, the solar tank feeds the electric conventional tank in Winter. The solar water is still hot enough for a shower on 30/9
Not only have we divided energy use by 6 but the place is cosy, the damp has gone, there are no cold spots, I can walk around barefoot.
It's not passivhaus standard because there are still some thermal bridges, we don't have heat recovery ventilation, and the walls aren't quite up to standard. If everyone did the same the gas industry would cease to exist.
Avro tarrif I was on, gas 2.48p pkwh, electric 14.7p pkwh even if my boiler is only 85% efficient, that's still 5 times more expensive for electric. Not many gonna go from gas htg to electric on those figures through choice alone.
Yes, but all of those pipes are within the skin of the house so it’s not waste – it still contributes to the temperature of the house
There's a bit more to it. The CH pump, valves and a lots of the pipes are in the airing cupboard which is on the 2nd floor landing. So in winter it's toasty warm up there even when the heating's not running i.e. when we're in bed or out at school/work. In summer though, all the heat coming into the house through windows and the roof rises to the second floor landing where it gets really quite hot, and the waste heat from the airing cupboard just makes it worse. It's also immediately outside the hottest room in the house on a summer evening which is exactly where you don't want it.
The rest of the pipes in the floors and such I don't think are lagged, so the heat can end up in the corners of rooms where it's not necessarily of use.
Re electric heating, I'd like a combination electric/water radiator, so I don't have to spin the whole thing up and heat the whole house core if I'm WFH all day. You can get towel rails that are hybrid electric/water, but apparently not radiators, unless anyone knows otherwise. I could install an electric rad alongside the water one but there's not a lot of space.
Another thing that might work would be infra-red heating for the morning - we're only up and about for 45 mins before work/school so if we could have say, infra-red panels on a motion sensor in bedrooms and the kitchen it could save a significant amount of energy.
EDIT hmm, I could put an IR panel above my desk where I work all day - this might work. It's a small desk in a corner, so maybe a 200W panel could be enough.
Re electric heating, I’d like a combination electric/water radiator, so I don’t have to spin the whole thing up and heat the whole house core if I’m WFH all day. You can get towel rails that are hybrid electric/water, but apparently not radiators
A freestanding oil filled radiator meets half of that requirement?
Is it really though? If there was no wind and it was dark does your electricity go off or does it include nuclear?
You forgot hydroelectric, and probably biomass - which I think most places still count as renewable?
Oh god no. Even with prices (for consumers) jumping 25% gas is still way cheaper per KWH.
I supposed eventually we'll all have to, it's only a few years until gas boilers are banned from new builds and I suspect banned all together a few years later.
Tough decision then I guess, I think there's going to be a huge increase demand for more and more 'leccy' over the next few years without a huge increase in supply, it's going to become more and more expensive, do you pay £3k for an electric combi and take the pain from EDF or whoever, or spend £12k-£15k on some kind of heat pump.
The point is that the so-called "green" leccy sellers buy their leccy on the market and when there's high demand conbined with low "green" production there isn't enough to go around. The Germans and others are really into green energy, demand outstrips supply so they buy whatever they can get when their gree suppliers don't have enough. All the green will in the world is forgotten when a Winter anti-cyclone sits over a freezing Europe, wind production is negigible, hydro is fulfilling it's traditional role of meeting demand peaks and buffering etc. Biomass is currently tiny. So all the coal and gas stations get fired up, and green buyers get nuclear and fossil fuel leccy whether they like it or not.
We live in a village off the gas mains. Everyone here is on oil fired heating. Our boiler is about to get replaced with - a new oil fired boiler. All other options wont work or will cost significantly more.
All other options wont work or will cost significantly more.
You can afford it you know you can. It's just a question of priorities, doing something to reduce your carbon footprint or using the money to increase it. It might no be your case, your posting history suggests a mosest life style, but for most people it's a case of won't rather than can't.
In Sweden and most houses do mot have gas. I have an heat pump to water radiators. Smaller houses have air/air heat pumps. They are really cheap to buy. Sweden is powered by hydro and nuclear. But then a lot of the nuclear is due to be shut in the next few years.
Free market is probably not adequate for the medium/long term planning required to build the right infrastructure to handle this but politics seem so dogmatic about the market that I doubt anyone has the balls to really fix it along with setting the required regs for housing which should be set now if we were serious about things.
Yes been thinking about this recently as a friend has replaced an always-breaking biomass boiler (previous owner) with gas and I wondered if electric boiler plus solar panels would have been a better call. I knew leccy was a lot dearer per kwh but above comments bring it home so it really seems it is only for the pioneers with money to burn atm.
But it is coming to us all at some point in the drive away from gas, and so minimising the need to draw from the grid during winter has to be the aim. Listened to an interesting podcast saying the latest developments in solar PV is improving the amount of energy harvested from 20% to 35-45%. Obviously that's only of what's hitting the panel, which isn't that much in winter UK, but it all helps minimise the draw on the renewable-nuclear-fossil generation mix.
Want to get myself in the situation of having some solar in the next 5-10 years to this aim.....or look for an old mill with working race (they actually produce v little power from what I've read).
So all the coal and gas stations get fired up, and green buyers get nuclear and fossil fuel leccy whether they like it or not.
Sigh.. yeah.. but if, over a year, a renewable energy company has committed to renewably generate the same amount of energy it has sold, then more customers for that company means more renewable energy. So the fact that not every electron was energized by wind or sun at any given point does not necessarily mean that the whole idea is rubbish.
We were fully electric in a modern 2 bed, purpose built, triple glazed flat in Leeds. Our electric bill was around £190 a month and we were out most of the day.
not necessarily mean that the whole idea is rubbish
I agree with the proviso that some of the companies are just greenwashing. Greenpeace rank the green energy suppliers. The French/Belgian ones get between 2/20 and 20/20 even if the 20/20 can't guarantee 100% renewable at your socket. Check yours out, mine is 5/20. 🙁
We were fully electric in a modern 2 bed, purpose built, triple glazed flat in Leeds. Our electric bill was around £190 a month and we were out most of the day.
Something's up there. We had electric rads in a new build flat, electricity wasn't much, something like £50/mo.
This is our new house on the Isle of Mull - all electric (didn’t have any choice). Heating is ASHP with wet underfloor heating downstairs and radiators upstairs. Induction hob in kitchen. Leccy bill for the first 3 months was £150 - house is 110m2 and there’s 2 of us. Not built to Passivehaus standard, but very well insulated - the floor slab is sat on 200mm of insulation; the heating is set to run automatically and today was the first time noticed that the radiators were mildly warm. Did ask about ground source heat pump with mechanical ventilation & heat recovery but our builder said the payback wasn’t really worth the expense - he’s built lots of houses on the west coast. During the summer, even with windows open the temperature in the house was a constant 20-22 degrees inside. Having moved from a detached, Edwardian house in Hampshire it’s a revelation - we had the heating on constantly in winter and it never got warm plus it cost a lot more to heat.
Our boiler just stopped working so we are making at start!!
The so called green tariffs are a joke - it all goes into the grid anyway, and you can't tell which bean caused the fart.
Firms are currently able to advertise their tariffs as “green” even if some of the energy they supply comes from fossil fuels, which industry figures have warned risks misleading consumers.
Suppliers can use several ways to achieve green status under the current rules, including through committing to use 100% of the income from their customers to invest in developing renewable energy or by striking a deal with an existing windfarm or solar array to buy the electricity they produce.
Having moved from a detached, Edwardian house in Hampshire it’s a revelation – we had the heating on constantly in winter and it never got warm plus it cost a lot more to heat.
But early to make comparisons surely.
Our heating still hasn't kicked in yet it's been unseasonable warm. Solar panels say September's had more sun hours than August this year. It's only the last week the temperature has started to come down. Last Saturday I rode to tomintoul from here in shorts and short sleeves -and was sweating buckets.
UK green energy surcharges set to switch from electric to gas bills
If this goes ahead, the switch to electric everything will look a lot more attractive
We're some way along the track, but we built a new house, so that's a heat pump and low heat requirement and not the challenge of a leaky old building. I have retrofitted ASHP into 2 houses as well, both running well but one involved retrofitting UFH, the other quite a few new rads.
I thought we might burn logs as well but in the new house we stopped short of fitting a log burner and in the ASHP/UFH one it's turned out it isn't needed either.
Our leccy source is still all mains, and I too am a little skeptical of renewable tariffs, but I'll probably move to one and a Smart meter soon, and at some point I hope to have most of our use over the year supplied by our own solar panels.
Running an EV is the easy bit. I suspect that's one reason why it's more often done. We do also still have a ICE van but it's annual mileage has dropped a lot since getting the EV.
Something’s up there. We had electric rads in a new build flat, electricity wasn’t much, something like £50/mo.
Electric immersion heater.
A few houses in Falkirk had electric central heating installed. Costing £100 to £150 a week.
Mate of mine has. Turned his gas off months ago.
He has air source heat pump for the hot water and central heating.
Electric oven/hob.
And both him and his missus have EV's
He does have PV panels on the roof, which will help reduce energy bills.
Not sure how much it costs compared to when he had gas, but he's all about saving money, so would imagine it is cheaper otherwise he would never have done it.
Electric immersion heater.
Our boiler's been bust for about 2 months. Electricity DD is £52/mo, we're now £175 in credit.
Is it possible to insulate the inside of an old house with insulation on the walls without creating a dew point between the insulation and the now cold outside wall? When I had the survey of my house the building inspector recommended to remove the insulation.
We'll consume about 2000kWh this year (1450kWh year to date) which includes charging the car at home when possible. 400e a year of which 120e is standing charge. When I first cut the gas off the electricity bill jumped logically enough. Then I fitted solar thermal and progressively replaced appliances with more efficeint ones when they packed up. Direct feeding the washing machine from the solar tank cut what that used. Getting rid of the fibre box when the phones went 4G+ helped too - it was the main consumer in Summer.
13 years after I started every energy saving investment I've made has paid for itself in energy saving except the extra cost of triple glazing over equivalent double glazing. In terms of embedded energy the pay back period was even faster than financial break even.
Have an educated guess at where energy prices are going and do your sums, you might find doing the right thing in terms of your energy use might save you money too. I did my sums on solar thermal based on energy prices in 2008 and reckoned pay back would be 11 years, gas price rises somewhat reduced that and most of our hot water has been free for years.
For those with heat pumps (ground or air) is it possible to run these with PV power?
Would PV panels produce enough power to run the heat pump?
I know that GSHPs aren't "passive" - but my understanding is that these are supposed to be left on "long and low", so would it be practical to run these during the daylight hours on PV power, and then have the switch off at dusk when the light runs out?
You will always need a battery buffer. With enough solar panels then yes you could run a heat pump from PV but it would need to be a lot to deal with winter depands and poor winter PV yeilds
A pal of mine in Fort William is doing a passive house conversion on his house. Interesting to see just how little power you need if you can keep the heat in:
https://twitter.com/estresidder/status/1440013193334644737?s=21
I know it’s not feasible for lots of folk at the mo but certainly interesting to see what can be done.
We had an offer last year to replace our boiler with an ASHP for free, as we are in a relatively new build (13 years old) and the boiler was woefully under specced for the house we jumped at the opportunity. Surveyor came round and straight away called out the small bore radiator piping, we'd need to run larger diameter pipework through the whole house and while they would do that it, wouldn't be run through the walls like the existing pipes! Needless to say we had to turn down the offer which is a shame. I believe that there are split ashp which are high-temp, high pressure capable which might be worth looking at.
Was considering solar thermal, or solar battery, anyone know if you can combine these, or would you still need to keep a hot water tank?
Was considering solar thermal, or solar battery, anyone know if you can combine these, or would you still need to keep a hot water tank?
They both require a tank. PV outputs to immersion heater. Solar thermal via a coil.
I meant one of these. Not sure if there's an equivalent that can be 'charged' using solar thermal.
Interesting to see just how little power you need if you can keep the heat in:
Even in winter the TV and two adults lying on a sofa is enough to keep our living room warm without the radiator; warm enough that we end up having to open the door to let heat out. We have a large floor-ceiling window with a thick double curtain on it that goes all the way to the ground. Other than that, it's just a 15 year old bog standard newbuild. It is a semi though.
I am almost all electric now, heat pump, solar panels, induction hob, e bike and car.
Just the campervan burning dead sea creatures.
I also had the issue with small bore heating pipes mentioned by Hagi when installing the heat pump but went ahead. You hardly notice the pipes on the wall so glad that I did.
Solar PV alone to run a heat pump in my opinion. When you want heat there is normally not much Sun.
Are their any remotely viable long term energy storage technologies available? I mean long term as in from the summer to the winter. Thinking about micro generation really rather than grid scale.
Thermal stores and state change batteries are really useful but I don't think you could store enough or for long enough.
I know that efficiency from solar PV is still not great, if you combined it with hydrogen production which is also pretty poor or compressed air or something else is it simply not worth the effort?
Batteries would obviously need to be ridiculously enormous and use far too many resources but would a large pressure vessel be ridiculous too?
Tank your attic. Pump water up in summer. Use it as micro-hydro in winter.
Wife is a property developer, her latest new builds are all electric. A block of 8 flats all using thermaskirts for heating.
First winter using them so will be interesting to see how they perform. As some of the flats are fairly small (1 bed studio) the thermaskirt looks a lot cleaner than having radiators on the wall.
She wanted solar as well, but the weight was an issue.
She’s just bought some new land and these flats will also be all electric, including provisioning of a meter for EV’s.
Not yet, but it's part of our plans in the near future.
House needs some work to enable low temperature heating systems, but we have an extension planned which will help get this done.
Next car will be electric as more s/h options with adequate range become available. I couldn't afford a car that new at the moment.
Are their any remotely viable long term energy storage technologies available?
No. Not for the home or even small scale consumer.
To the OP - about 30% of Scandinavia. That's a guess number, but it's mostly electric for heating, or wood fires on occasion. Gas and coal simply non options. If you have an electric car, there you go.
100% renewable in Norway . 🙂
You can use a GSHP to store energy, to a degree. Best if you have a runway or similar though 😁
A battery would work quite well. V2G is also viable
Not sure if there’s an equivalent that can be ‘charged’ using solar thermal.
That would be a water tank. Which is why solar thermal is so good. Tanks are not bad.
I’ve thought about it too. If it’s so critical to buy an EV, why isn’t it as critical to switch to electric heating and hot water?
Both are critical. You won’t be able to buy a petrol/diesel car or a gas boiler in 20 years time. We’ve shifting too slow on both, but there are genuine reasons why neither can be done quickly. We’re not talking enough about gas central heating.
[ gas boiler and diesel car here ]
Does anyone know if there are heat pumps that can run alongside a gas boiler without a tank (I.e. shared radiators). I'd like a system with a heat pump run by solar when light available but that did not force use of expensive electricity when there was not enough light.
Are their any remotely viable long term energy storage technologies available?
If you had a decent sized garden, wouldn't it be possible to dig a hole, put two water tanks one on top of each other, and build your own pumped water storage system really quite easily?
A couple of days ago I mentioned that I had gone fully electric with an Air Source Heat Pump and EV apart from a diesel campervan. I checked the numbers and they are interesting.
Annual use in 2019/20 was approximately 10,000kWh gas and 2,000 kWh electricity.
Annual use in 2020/21 was approximately 5,500kWh electricity and no gas.
Using the heat pump for space heating has made a significant difference in energy use and carbon footprint though not cost as electricity is more expensive.
I have read unconfirmed reports that environmental levies in the UK will be moved from electricity to gas bills which would change the balance of pricing in favour of electricity if done. This appears to make sense if we wish to reduce use of fossil fuels such as gas.
Still a looooong way to go to match Edukator's <2,000kWh though.
Good man!
Yes, our house is fully electric. Built 5 years ago with an ASHP. Heavily insulated, qith a good spec. Costs around £120pm, and thats for a family of 4. I'm guessing that's going to start creeping up now.
Long term plan is to install solar on the rear as its in direct sun most of the day, and put a storage battery in the garage.
A battery would work quite well. V2G is also viable
Not long term it won't. What's V2G when it's at home?
If you had a decent sized garden, wouldn’t it be possible to dig a hole, put two water tanks one on top of each other, and build your own pumped water storage system really quite easily?
Only if your garden encompassed an entire valley with suitable elevation or had a deep mine underneath it.
Storage is one thing I'm happy to leave to EDF for the moment. Pump storage using reservoirs is cleaner than batteries. The more surplus renewables a country has the better it can use existing reservoirs for pump storage. The Germans are building new ones but understandably mmet opposition. The key will be to put them in places where they can be used for both irrigation and electricity buffering, possibly with recreational use too.
I'd like to be able to use my car for storage. Of the 52kWh I'd be quite happy to use 20kWh to reduce my own demand during peak demand and even allow EDF to take some back.
Storage is always inefficient, cars lose 15-40% depending on the charge rate and so do power walls, better let the big companies do it when necessary than have lots of consumers second guessing.
Agree with Edukator, although I realise the biggest reason for people wanting to store the energy is excess power vs the derisory export tarriffs. Surplus is inevitable if you design your system to be self sufficient through most of the year but it would be nice if the economics stacked up better.
The first realisation has to be that our electric consumption for everything other than heat, room heating, oven, kettle, is miniscule, I used 68p of electricity yesterday(more than half of which is generally oven or kettle, and on the same day used half of a £10 bag of smokeless nuts in my multifuel stove for heating(I can switch to gas also) as a quick comparison.
If you were to try and heat the average house with electricity, using the same comparison it would be 68p and ?...it would take some self generating system, it it exists, to produce enough electricity for that particular house.
But I am in the process of rebuilding it from the inside out, half of it is currently ripped out and being insulated to modern spec(it was built in 1882) first reality is insulation and heat retention is the quickest way to get any house down to a low enough energy consumption to make something like electricity even possible, without keeping the heat in forget it.
Likewise if you have very good insulation all options are cheaper and less energy, sounds obvious but most can't just reinsulate their whole house.
As a rough guide I'm 175mm celotex from the cavity then roof, 100mm underfoot, sealed box 100 square meters floor space with a sealed room off it, as per current updated planning permission spec, this is not enough insulation to run electric for heating by a long long way.
The so called green tariffs are a joke – it all goes into the grid anyway, and you can’t tell which bean caused the fart.
This is true, of course, but you can give your electricity bill to a "supplier" who invests all your coins into renewable energy rather than purchasing units from non renewables.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/09/how-green-is-your-energy-tariff/
V2G when it’s at home?
Vehicle to Grid. It means that you can get power out of your EV as well as put power in. The idea being that you tell the system what your mileage requirements are (e.g. commute 20 miles to work and back and possibly the shop, whatever) and then you leave your car plugged in all the time. Then it can fill your car when there's an excess of renewable supply and drain it for the benefit of the grid when there's not enough. But it won't drain it beyond what you say you need.
Related to the storage point I was day-job procrastinating the other day, and went digging around online to see if I could find a UK gov strategy on future electricity supply.
The best thing I came across was the energy white paper published in December, which has some useful stuff (snapshots below).... but is pretty light on detail on how security of supply will be ensured whilst also shifting to renewables. Nuclear still seems to be on the table, but progress on any new stations is slow? Plus the "capacity market" is highlighted as a policy mechanism.... basically seems to be additional payments for guaranteed supply during during peak periods. Storage schemes could do well out of that system I guess. Hopefully a solution emerges from somewhere!
These "Insulate Britain" nutters that have been chaining themselves to roads etc have a point, without insulating UK houses we are simply not going to have a sustainable future, it is the first and key step.
Switch the gas off and the UK's electricity trying to heat leaky homes would drain the grid in an hour.
Vehicle to Grid. It means that you can get power out of your EV as well as put power in. The idea being that you tell the system what your mileage requirements are (e.g. commute 20 miles to work and back and possibly the shop, whatever) and then you leave your car plugged in all the time. Then it can fill your car when there’s an excess of renewable supply and drain it for the benefit of the grid when there’s not enough.
If everyone had an electric car plugged in could it operate as a giant collective battery for the grid?
You mean such as the node distributed plan Tesla put forward.
It's one of the main selling points of the system for me without the brains the battery is useless to me.
You sell at peak and charge at off-peak. The algorithms learn your needs and the local grids demands and schedules your capacity appropriately.
For those of us who's car is rarely at the house at peak times
Remembering of course that there's no such thing as backfeeding to the wider grid. Only the local grid downstream of the transformer hence the browngen derisory price as standard.
If everyone had an electric car plugged in could it operate as a giant collective battery for the grid?
Yes that's the idea.
Just anticipating an ev future and the idea of v2g seems like another added complication on top of planning for when to charge beyond 80% for a bigger journey and when where to charge when out and about. Be a right ball ache if you’ve forgotten to change your v2g schedule and wake up to a car at 60% ahead of a 200m day.
Re load balencing:storage I really like the gravitricy approach. Low geographic footprint, Mechanical with no battery degradation or rare element mining. This is for 24hr cycles though not seasonal length storage to allow solar energy to be released for the winter.
Remembering of course that there’s no such thing as backfeeding to the wider grid. Only the local grid downstream of the transformer hence the browngen derisory price as standard.
Hmm, interesting. But does it not amount to the same thing, backfeeding to the local grid will reduce the amount that needs to be supplied 'forward' through the transformer? I guess it will reduce the flexibility to move power around the network though.
yes but no .
great if theres 200 houses down stream of your transformer on say a housing estate.
less so if like me your looking at the transformer out the front window and can count on your fingers the number of houses it supplies with the majority being unoccupied during peak times.
Right, got you. Peak times are the key thing too. Overnight its obvious that most EVs will be plugged-in and able to accept and store 'excess' power available from the grid. But will enough of them still be plugged-in to really help with the morning and evening peaks? A tricky balancing act to predict and coordinate that!