Wake Up Call for Green Energy

[barbender]

 Donk, I'm afraid I'm more like your Dad's brother. I always have someone waiting on me🤦😁

I tell people I'm like a diesel engine. Big and kind of hard to start, and then you have to let it warm up for a bit. But once it's ready it can do some work😁

[SwampDonkey]

World takes all kinds Barbender. :D

[Riwaka]

Smith Crane and Construction, PTS Logistics and others - Kaiwera Downs Windfarm, Gore, Southern NZ.

Make the NZ forestry equipment (trucking) movers look like spend thrifts.

To get a single blade on a trailer up to the (edit) Turitea wind farm site (another site elsewhere).  Pullers- John Deere 9570R tractor hooked to 8x8 (tridrive) Oshkosh, then tridrive HD truck , turbine blade trailer pushed by tandem drive HD truck pushed by 2nd 8x8 (tridrive) Oshkosh.(vid is on insta)

General YT vid of Smith Crane at Kaiwera Downs site.
Kaiwera Downs Windfarm - Smith Crane and Construction Ltd. - YouTube

[SwampDonkey]

EV Battery failure woes. Then you get to drive a gas rental while waiting for months. :D

His electric vehicle battery died. One year later, he's still waiting for a replacement | CBC News


Blacklocks' Reporter article: "Cannot Sell Without Rebates"

Two provinces with the richest rebates for electric vehicles accounted for 74 percent of national sales last year, Department of Transport figures show. The department acknowledged it relied on rebates for “increasing the number of zero emission vehicles on the road.

[SwampDonkey]

Can't upgrade your house electric panel to 200 amps in rural areas for fast charging unless you pay to upgrade the community transformer to. So essentially, if you want more juice you upgrade the utility, not just your house.  :

He drives an electric truck in Yellowknife, but his home can't handle the charger it came with | CBC News

Even with the PITA the guy in the article still loves it. Well yeah, since he sunk all lot of quid into it, he has no choice. Learn to love it, or stew in your own juices. :D


One of the things we've said throughout this thread is lack of power supply for electrification. By 2035, it's going to get magnitudes worse since I see no big electric projects announced with shovels on the ground.  Right now we only have about 7% of vehicles on the road all electric. And that is mostly southern Ontario and southern BC. By 2035, there will be no more production of ICE vehicles in Canada. Then of course an election cycle can upset those plans.

[doc henderson]

Our hospital put in two way out in the parking lot.  not monitored, free to use.  should be for employee or pt. family use.  So now it is subsidized by the hospital, and they get their money from insurance and patients.  No reason a homeowner could not park a car there and pick up later after a "free" charge.

[Al_Smith]

I haven't seen any real data on how much a typical charge for an EV would be .Nor why anybody would think it takes a 200 amp service to charge a battery .You are not hitting that battery with an 80 amp charge rate .You could do it with  a trickle charger it would just take longer .In my mind it's not the charge method but more so the cost of the batteries .Besides all that EV's are not for everybody .Imagine being in the middle of no where  in North Dakota

[SwampDonkey]

Yellowknife is pretty much no where. Like hundreds of miles from anywhere. I would not want to try the 900 mile drive to Edmonton, Alberta on a battery. ;D

[doc henderson]

right.  If you need a jump for a dead battery in you EV, can you do it from another EV?  doubt that, you will just wind up with two stranded vehicles.  Maybe we can keep some diesel-powered trucks with two batteries and high output alternators to rescue the EVs.  They may say, you made your bed.  Can they be towed?  will it charge the batteries.  and can EV tow another EV and will it increase battery energy consumption.  If the energy comes from a coal power plant, are you really saving the world.  not good answers.

[Al_Smith]

I'm not on the EV band wagon except for my 36 volt golf cart which might have a range of 4-5 miles because of the size of lead acid batteries .I only charge it about once every week or two and it does not take long .Handy little doodle bug but certainly not a town car .Always starts but only goes at best 15 MPH .Traveling trails amongst monster oak trees it would be kind of stupid to run 35 MPH .If those giants can stop a D7 Caterpillar think what they could do to an 800 pound golf cart .

[Ianab]

I haven't seen any real data on how much a typical charge for an EV would be .Nor why anybody would think it takes a 200 amp service to charge a battery .You are not hitting that battery with an 80 amp charge rate

Commercial fast chargers need that sort of power, so they can dump say a 50% charge into an EV in about 15 mins. So by the time you have taken a toilet break, got coffee and a sandwich, the car is topped up and ready to go again.

At home (or really any place with power) a "trickle" charger will work, just takes a lot longer. You can approximate the time because it's all measured in Kilowatt Hours. Say your golf cart has 12v / 100 Amp/hour battery, that's 1.2 kw/h. To fully charge it in an hour you would need to give it 12 @ 100 amps. More sensible is a 10A charger, for 12 hours. The charge and discharge aren't 100% efficient, so maybe it would take 14 hours? Or more like you charge at 14V, so put 1.4 kw/h into the battery, and get 1.2 back out. But it's close enough for napkin maths.

Same with Electric cars. If your car has a 50 kw/h battery, you would need a 50 kw supply to charge it on an hour. So a commercial fast charger. If you hook it to a domestic 220V / 15 A circuit, you can get 3.3kw from it.  That would take at least 16 hours to fully charge.

Now obviously if you expect to use most of the cars range every day, then the small domestic charger isn't going to be practical because it can't fully recharge the battery overnight. In that case you need to rethink your life choices, and a plug in hybrid is probably a better option. But probably 95% of drivers are only going to need 10-50% charge for each day. Friends of ours have a Tesla, and bought is because he has a ~50 mile commute (100 return), so was spending a lot on gas. The Tesla can run to work and back, and still be over 50%.. So it only needs to be topped up ~50% each night. If they make another trip that day and get it close to empty, as long as it gets to 50% by the morning, then he's fine for a trip to work and back. Worst case he has to leave 15 mins early and call at a fast charger, and get a part charge there. So for his use case, the EV is totally practical. 

He has zero chance of ever needing to drive 900 miles across Alaska in the Winter, so that scenario simply doesn't come up.

[SwampDonkey]

Doesn't really matter the season, sometimes folks up there like to come down on a vacation in the summer. Not really possible on electric. Yellow knife is a long  ways east from Alaska, probably 900 miles. ;) Over 450 miles to High Level, Alberta, big enough place to have a hospital, a small town of about 6300. Then Slave Lake, another 300 miles, then Edmonton.

A single Tesla charger at High Level, a single level 2 charger, at the Best Western. No other chargers. And the stats on charging stations isn't good, only 20% are functional according to government stats.

[Ianab]

And the stats on charging stations isn't good, only 20% are functional according to government stats.

I think a better question then would be WHY most of the chargers are in-op? If only 20% of gas stations actually had gas, that would be a disaster. Or only 20% of houses had electricity.

For sure electric cars don't fit Every use case, but if I have to travel 900 odd miles, basically the length of my whole country, and probably 18+ hours driving, I will probably take a plane. Get there in 2 hours rather than 2 days, and hire a car at the other end if I need it. So it's edge cases that don't affect 95% of people.

Electric airliners are a whole different level of tech, and aren't a thing.... yet.

[SwampDonkey]

I know a lot of people that drive those kind of miles all the time to travel and site see, go watch a hockey game, etc. My cousin never stops. She wears out a car in 3 years, literally. :D Neighbors and a car load of kids drove 1200 miles to Kentucky this winter to see relatives. Some people never fly and winter is the extreme worst time. My cousins down the road drove many times clear across the county in an RV, in winter, to see their kids. That's over 3000 miles one way.

Most jobs in Yellow Knife are government driven or diamond mines. So flying is certainly common place with that class of people. And so is EV's purchases. But summer travel by road is not fringe. You'd be surprised if you lived in those remote towns. :D  A return flight is going to run around $400 or more. Plus you can't always depend on flying being an option either. Sometimes carriers cancel service, and often. Those EV people will be confined to the city anyway in the winters, real bitter cold reduces range. Right now it is -45F up there. There is not a lot of snow that far north, it's mostly cold. The trucks probably cross Great Slave Lake in the winter to save going around the lake. The place is stuck in the middle on the north side. And that is one of the largest fresh water bodies on the continent, and the deepest, at over 2000 ft.

As to inop chargers, could be a number of things involved. A previous article posted in here proves the stats, couldn't find many chargers that were functional. Many that were, it was a waiting game.

[Ianab]

Not exactly the "average" car users though.

I know exactly zero people that would routinely drive 900 miles.  They probably exist,  but saying electric cars are impractical because they wont work for that ~2% of the population is sort of a red herring.

They can work for the other 98% of people. I don't have one because our old gas vehicles are both high spec and still do the job, and for the miles we do, the cost of any new car (EV OR Gas) isn't justified.

[SwampDonkey]

Not really. It's about being able to go someplace without anxiety about doing it. Even if it's once a year or twice in 10 years. Nothing to do with averages, heck the average Canadian drives maybe 16,000 km a year. That means a bunch of drivers are on the high end, well over that, and a whole lot more on the low end. That doesn't negate the desire to be able to drive, when, where and how much at any time.

[twar]

We have the most EVs in the world (per capita), but they are not for everyone. We have the topography and distances of New Zealand with the weather of Canada, so for some people EVs are not the best (safest) way to go. That said, most driving for most people is rarely more than 100kms a day to the school, grocery store, soccer practice, back and forth to work etc., and most charging is at home over night, for about $5 for a "full tank". (The driving stats are about the same for US drivers National Household Travel Survey Daily Travel Quick Facts | Bureau of Transportation Statistics) I do not drive an EV myself, but this is how my older son and DIL (with 3 kids) drive. We just had a week of subzero (°F) weather and their typical driving pattern with 2 EVs was not disrupted. (The electric buses in Oslo, however, was another story.)

We too have the , "what about those who..." discussions, and for some an EV will not work, for the same reasons many of you have mentioned above. But for a lot of "average drivers", they work just fine.

[Paul_H]

It's been cold here the past few days, down to -20F
Alberta sent out an alert warning citizens to turn off their lights and appliances as much as possible or risk blackouts. Next door in Saskatchewan they fired up LNG and coal powered plants to help out their neighbours to the west.

SaskPower provides electricity to Alberta amid shortage | CTV News

[rusticretreater]

When you break down, what happens then?  Being mechanically adept, I could possibly fix it on the side of the road.  There are plenty of shops you could be towed to that can fix your vehicle.  Who can fix electric vehicles?   You can possibly put out a fire on your conventional vehicle.  Your electric vehicle is toast.

Some electric vehicles will not even start in low temps and also do not charge well either.

------------------------------
I read an interesting story about geothermal energy.  Scientists sunk a well to a magma chamber of the Kalfa volcano in northern Iceland awhile back.  They hit the chamber at a shallower depth than they expected and it ruined the well, but no eruption.  They are reworking things and plan to sink another well around 2026.  Water would instantly be vaporized if brought near the lava, then the steam could drive turbines for electricity.  That could possibly be a perpetual energy source.  I just wonder how the volcanic gases could be handled.

The challenge in finding the materials to withstand the heat is a major problem and will probably cause them to routinely change them out.  And there comes the added carbon footprint of manufacturing and maintenance.  Especially if they use carbon based materials!

[Ljohnsaw]

We have a geothermal field with power plants out here. I used to work for an energy company that had 2 plants.

They don't drill to magma, just to the hot rocks/steam zone. First 20 or so years, lots of pressure. More and more plants built and it started to decline. My company was a leader in reinjection of condensate and rain water (not a lot of rain). Then they ran a pipe many miles from a town's waste water plant.

Reworked the turbines for low pressure steam and still going, 40 some years after they were built.

Biggest hazard was sulfur. Initially had to pay to dispose of hazardous waste. Now sell it to chemical firms to make sulfuric acid.

[SwampDonkey]

Big volcanic earthquake out on Iceland recently.

Mail Online Videos: Top News & Viral Videos, Clips & Footage | Daily Mail Online

[JJ]

Bunch of dead robots out there..
Chicago-area Tesla charging stations lined with dead cars in freezing cold: 'A bunch of dead robots out here'

Committing to EV an be life threatening with killer cold temps  >:(.

      JJ

[Al_Smith]

Geothermal by it's name can be misleading .You have tapping into a heat source or could be used as a water or air harnassing the heat present in sub soil earth below the frost line with a heat pump .That is usually around 54 degree F. I had two units of the later that would have worked  well if I had a source of mineral free water .Which BTW I did not .The heat exchanger on both failed after 8-9 years if use .

[Ianab]

When you break down, what happens then?  Being mechanically adept, I could possibly fix it on the side of the road.

Older style ICE vehicles that was certainly true. They had some common failure points (like actual physical ignition points) and various things you could bodge back together with wire and duct tape. Fault finding a modern car will generally involve computer diagnostics as the fault is more likely to be electric / electronic. The info is generally out there, and diagnostic tools available, but it's not really side of the road stuff.

The actual reliability of EVs doesn't seem to be a problem. They are actually much simpler (mechanically) than an ICE (less moving parts). If it does stop, you call a tow truck, same as any other modern vehicle.

[newoodguy78]

That's exactly why I don't care for EVs as you just stated (and others)in most vehicles the issues that arise are electric/electronic and need a computer to diagnose. Now the big push is for something that's entirely electric  ???   I fail to see this as progress.
To each their own but no thanks I'm not going there.