400kW charger - how many of these on a typical local network ?

No, because it is not.

And no matter how much you go on about it it will never be irrelevant to consider usage patterns of facilities when planning their provision.
OK BAS, I give up, you are obviously correct . I wrote about one specific point about a particular post by one person and you then responded by talking about lots of thing that are related to the general subject but had no connection whatsoever to what I wrote and I somehow thought what you posted was irrelevant.

You have now convinced me that if anyone else were to talk about unrelated matters it is irrelevant but when you do that it is relevant.

Happy now?
 
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I'll be happy that you stop moaning about it.

But sad (for you) that you still do not see that when flameport wrote

Virtually all electric cars can do 100+ miles on one charge.
The average car journey in the UK is about 10 miles.
Very few people drive more than 100 miles in a day, so for most people the existing range is plenty.

and you responded that 100 miles "is pathetic when all ICE cars do 300-500 per tank", that the average journey was irrelevant and that there would be "a number of longer, maybe much longer, ones", when you speculated that "virtually everyone drives more than 100 miles in a day a reasonable number of times per year; visiting friends / family, holidays, etc."

that it was not irrelevant to ask you what your experience was, and how often would you have needed to refuel elsewhere if you always started each day with a full tank?

Maybe I did overestimate the ease with which people could recharge an EV at home overnight, or at work, but pretending that nobody will be able to, and that it is irrelevant to consider whether the usage patterns of public EV charging points might be different to that of filling stations when the topic under discussion is the provision of high capacity public EV charging points is wrong.
 
A question for everybody except Stephen:

Assuming that you only needed a car for X days a year, how big would X have to be for you to think it made sense to own one?
 
But we do need to stop thinking about charging cars in the same way that we refuel them.

If people had a pipe delivering petrol or diseasel to their homes so they could top their tank up every night how many would need to refill elsewhere, and how often?

The difference is the range of liquid fuel is much greater and refuelling is the work of minutes.

The more the number of electric vehicles there are, the greater the demand on the network will be. If everyone were to buy electric, then there could never be the capacity to charge them, without massive improvements in generation and distribution infrastructure. How are those with no drive, who have to park on street going to recharge their vehicles?
 
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. How are those with no drive, who have to park on street going to recharge their vehicles?

If only there was some way things could be added to the pavement, beside places where cars are parked.

Has such a thing ever been attempted before?

parking-meter.jpg
 
Blimey - who knew that a clockwork meter was equivalent to an EV charge point
 
If only there was some way things could be added to the pavement, beside places where cars are parked.
Has such a thing ever been attempted before?
There is a teensie little difference between a clockwork device on a pole, and something that's going to draw a considerable load from the lecky network.
Yes, in principle, it would be possible to add lots of charging points - but it would be eye wateringly expensive to do. The chargers themselves are not exactly free, and each would need connecting to the network - so look forward to all the roads/pavements being well and truly trashed.. That would be part of the "massive improvements in ... distribution infrastructure" Harry mentioned.
But the other part of "massive improvements in generation and distribution infrastructure" is dealing with the actual load. As already pointed out, we do not have the means of generating the amount of lecky needed - even if we get those coal stations fired up again :whistle: And the whole distribution network would not cope with the load - from the grid down to the local network. Upgrading that lot is one heck of a lot of roads dug up.
 
Most around here have drives, but many have 2, 3 even 4 cars in their drives. With a 60, 80 100amp maximum supply, main supply cable calculated with a large amount of diversity thrown in. Imagine those 2, 3 and 4 cars all demanding a full overnight charge. Then there is silly talk of people who have to park on the street, plugging into the nearest lamppost to recharge. Silly ideas to tap into car battery systems, to provide power to the local grid. Even more silly talk of doing away with gas boilers for heating.

Somebody just hasn't quite thought through the implications of the policies, they have no idea of basic engineering principles.

Electric vehicles work fine, but only in small numbers and for short commutes.
 
This might have been the answer.

https://jalopnik.com/how-the-swiss-developed-an-emissions-free-bus-without-u-1413061006

And knowing there's a pressurized vessel full of hydrogen and a massive spinning chunk of metal just makes bus rides more exciting for everyone.

In a separate report which I can no longer access it was thought that regeneration braking would more than double the distance between re-charging points for long distance routes. It did not work as well as was hoped but it did work
 
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This might have been the answer.

https://jalopnik.com/how-the-swiss-developed-an-emissions-free-bus-without-u-1413061006

And knowing there's a pressurized vessel full of hydrogen and a massive spinning chunk of metal just makes bus rides more exciting for everyone.

In a separate report which I can no longer access it was thought that regeneration braking would more than double the distance between re-charging points for long distance routes. It did not work as well as was hoped but it did work

Or maybe not - notice how an angle grinder when running, resists attempts to change its orientation due to the gyroscopic effect. That is just a small, light weight disk spinning - Much worse with a ton or two of flywheel spinning at high speed, in a moving vehicle.
 
gyroscopic effect

In the bus project the flywheel axis was originally vertical allowing the vehicle to turn either left or right on level ground without significant presessive forces. Banked curves and hills however required the flywheel to be in a gimball mounting if the vehicle was to be viable as a long distance vehicle.

There are a few multi kilowatt-hour storage units in remote areas. The flywheel is spun up over night by a small motor that the long distance supply cable can cope with and then the energy is used to supply power during the day. Power that the long distance cable could not supply.
 
Hydrogen is a terrible idea for an energy storage medium. Apart from the "where does it come from ?" Issue which won't change until we've gotva heck of a lot more nuclear and wind generation capacity; it's really difficult (expensive in energy) to get into a form (VERY high pressure and/or VERY low temperature). And when you've put all that energy in, you have a fuel with a **** poor energy to size&weight ratio, needs a completely new infrastructure to distribute and retail, and leaks out of whatever you try and store it in.
There are a few multi kilowatt-hour storage units in remote areas. The flywheel is spun up over night by a small motor that the long distance supply cable can cope with and then the energy is used to supply power during the day. Power that the long distance cable could not supply.
JET in Oxfordshire has flywheel storage - dunno if they still do or if they've changed. When they fire it up, it needs power measured in MW - and the grid people (would it be grid or DNO @ 132kV ?) weren't happy with pulling short pulses of such high power out of the network.
I vaguely recall being told that the flywheels were squareish at rest and stretched into a circle when up to speed.
But the idea of energy storage to meet intermittent large loads isn't new. When Tower Bridge was built, it was driven by hydraulic motors (3 cylinder, water powered) which were powered by pressure in cylinders hidden in the towers - which lifted massive weights to store energy. The power to lift the weights came from a smaller steam driven pump.
 
When Tower Bridge was built, it was driven by hydraulic motors (3 cylinder, water powered) which were powered by pressure in cylinders hidden in the towers - which lifted massive weights to store energy. The power to lift the weights came from a smaller steam driven pump.

There was a lot of (water) hydraulic power distributed by high pressure pipes in some UK cities.
 

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