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Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

Hallucigenia
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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#438691

Postby Hallucigenia » August 31st, 2021, 3:51 pm

A good overview of the prospects for electric trucks :

https://theicct.org/publications/eu-tra ... ysis-aug21

The current driving range of battery electric long-haul tractor-trailers under typical use profiles could exceed 500 km for a battery size of around 1,000 kWh. However, improvements in battery energy density, road-load technologies, and transmission efficiency, will enable substantially smaller batteries around 700 kWh to achieve a 500 km driving range in the future, a 30% reduction in battery energy capacity requirements.
Battery electric powertrains can achieve a 500 km daily driving range with just a 11% payload penalty in comparison to diesel powertrains, mainly driven by the additional weight of the battery pack. However, scenarios for future technology improvement eliminate the payload penalty and rather generate a payload gain for distances less than 500 km.
Extreme cold and hot temperatures impact the driving range of battery-electric trucks by less than 9% if proper technologies are deployed. The analysis shows that, if efficient heat pumps are used, the impact of extreme ambient temperatures of -7°C and 35°C on the driving range does not exceed 9%. These additional energy needs are mostly driven by the thermal management of the battery and, to a lesser extent, by the thermal management of the cabin.


If you can charge during driver rest periods, then the 500km goes up to 660km, covering >90% of potential uses. Tesla are claiming 800km range for their Semi, but we'll see what the reality is.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#440059

Postby Hallucigenia » September 6th, 2021, 2:47 pm

BMW now have €20bn of batteries under contract, up from €12bn :
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... mand-grows

It makes the reasonable point that the current shortage of chips means that carmakers will be particularly sensitive to the need to guarantee supplies of other inputs.

BEVs have sold more than diesels for three months in a row in the UK, with petrol+diesel down to <51% of August sales, and ~20% of mild hybrids and around 10% each for "full" hybrids, plug-ins and BEVs :
https://www.smmt.co.uk/2021/09/electrif ... ll-market/

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#440233

Postby Hallucigenia » September 7th, 2021, 10:02 am

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 021-09-07/

" Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Tuesday it expects to spend more than $13.5 billion by 2030 to develop batteries and its battery supply system...Toyota said it aims to slash the cost of its batteries by 30% or more by working on the materials used and the way the cells are structured.

"Then, for the vehicle, we aim to improve power consumption, which is an indicator of the amount of electricity used per kilometer, by 30%, starting with the Toyota bZ4X," Chief Technology Officer Masahiko Maeda told a briefing, referring to an upcoming compact SUV model.

The company is also the front runner to mass produce solid-state batteries
"

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#441504

Postby 88V8 » September 11th, 2021, 7:22 pm

The notions of battery swaps - flat for full - has been mooted for EVs, but not yet. Here's a ship where it's actually happening.
Powering a container ship with a battery in ... a container... is either visionary, or a duh! moment that we've missed a blindingly obvious solution.
Heineken... wasn't it Guinness that refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach, or at least it was until the spoilsports at the ASA banned it - well here it's Heineken that's refreshing itself with battery power.

With thousands of kilometers of navigable waterways and Europe's largest container port in the city of Rotterdam, inland shipping plays a big part in the carbon dioxide emissions of the Netherlands, accounting for 5% overall according to Zero Emissions Services (ZES). The company aims to make these operations more sustainable by offering an alternative to the diesel-powered container ships that frequent these routes with something it calls the ZES energy system.

https://newatlas.com/marine/zero-emissions-services-freight-batteries-swappable-containers/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=52d0840bc8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_09_07_08_02&utm_medium=email&um_term=0_65b67362bd-52d0840bc8-92456261

On a cursory search, ZES don't seem to be listed. Never mind, there'll be a listed competitor along eventually.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#449940

Postby Hallucigenia » October 13th, 2021, 8:13 pm

UK's largest operator of electric trains for freight has switched to diesel due to the increasing costs of wholesale electricity :
https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/risin ... -traction/

Not ideal, and sounds like this could be the result of screwing up their hedging, but an example of the urgency of moving green taxes from electricity to fossil fuels.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#449963

Postby Sorcery » October 13th, 2021, 9:11 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:UK's largest operator of electric trains for freight has switched to diesel due to the increasing costs of wholesale electricity :
https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/risin ... -traction/

Not ideal, and sounds like this could be the result of screwing up their hedging, but an example of the urgency of moving green taxes from electricity to fossil fuels.


Hi Hallucigenia, long time no chat. Well if we carry on going to a carbon free future, we will have no electricity either when the wind doesn't blow. I am betting on fossil fuels at the moment. Have bought more DEC, PHAR, JKX, TLW, HBR and GENL recently. When a senior UK politician (Boris) says we can go net zero carbon by 2030 or 2050, with no particular expertise or knowledge of the subject and no technology in sight to do it, then I have to laugh a little and say I beg to differ and act accordingly.

P.S. Did we ever solve/agree the "Are wind turbines carbon neutral over their lifetimes?" issue. I don't think we did. They still require subsidies from our electricity bills aiui. Welcome back anyway. ;-)

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450001

Postby Hallucigenia » October 14th, 2021, 1:08 am

Sorcery wrote:Hi Hallucigenia, long time no chat. Well if we carry on going to a carbon free future, we will have no electricity either when the wind doesn't blow. I am betting on fossil fuels at the moment. Have bought more DEC, PHAR, JKX, TLW, HBR and GENL recently. When a senior UK politician (Boris) says we can go net zero carbon by 2030 or 2050, with no particular expertise or knowledge of the subject and no technology in sight to do it, then I have to laugh a little and say I beg to differ and act accordingly.

P.S. Did we ever solve/agree the "Are wind turbines carbon neutral over their lifetimes?" issue. I don't think we did. They still require subsidies from our electricity bills aiui. Welcome back anyway. ;-)


Likewise. It's a real interesting one at the moment, we're just starting to see the chaos of a market (and political settlement) being disrupted, there will be opportunities on both sides. I never pay too much attention to what Johnson says and frankly in the global scheme of things the UK is insignificant, but much of the world is now committing to net zero in the 2050 kind of timeframe so it needs to be borne in mind. I'd pay less attention to Johnson than what's coming out of BEIS like the recent (very ambitious) hydrogen strategy.

Carbon neutral or EROI>1 ? Unless a turbine is photosynthesising it's not going to be carbon "neutral", but a recent Bernstein report put current wind technology at 11g/kWh with 6g/lWh possible, compared to 44g/kWh for solar, 450g/kWh for gas and 1000g/kWh for coal. And eg this 2019 paper in Nature Energy by Sgouridis et al put wind at an EROI of 20+, even with an element of attached storage.

There's been no support for onshore wind since 2015 (although there will be a token amount in the current round), but that hasn't stopped wind farms being built outside the subsidy regime, on a "commercial" basis. And the 3rd round of auctions in 2019 saw 5.5GW of offshore wind etc bid at just over £40/MWh, around 20% below the government's expected reference price, with the difference going to subsidising consumers. In many parts of the world, wind and solar are now the cheapest form of electricity (but obviously you need to pay more to get dispatchability). With recent craziness the electricity price is some way above the reference price, and if those farms had been built by now then the consumer would be raking it in to the tune of £billions. We'll see what happens in the current auction, but the fact that HMG have lifted the previous 12GW cap suggests that interest will be high.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450029

Postby PeterGray » October 14th, 2021, 9:42 am

Well if we carry on going to a carbon free future, we will have no electricity either when the wind doesn't blow.

Well, we'll need storage of probably various forms, likely some nuclear and some gas generation on standby at least for the foreseable. Arguable none of that is cheap, or necessarily cost effective, but still cheaper than cooking the planet.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450049

Postby Howard » October 14th, 2021, 10:36 am

Hallucigenia wrote:UK's largest operator of electric trains for freight has switched to diesel due to the increasing costs of wholesale electricity :
https://www.railjournal.com/fleet/risin ... -traction/

Not ideal, and sounds like this could be the result of screwing up their hedging, but an example of the urgency of moving green taxes from electricity to fossil fuels.


Thanks for this interesting link which I read yesterday. The story made the Today programme this morning and it was fun thinking "I knew that!"

In a way the operator did hedge by having fully operational diesel locomotives available at short notice. Maybe cheaper than long-term hedges in a volatile market?

regards

Howard

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450067

Postby Hallucigenia » October 14th, 2021, 11:28 am

Howard wrote:Thanks for this interesting link which I read yesterday. The story made the Today programme this morning and it was fun thinking "I knew that!"

In a way the operator did hedge by having fully operational diesel locomotives available at short notice. Maybe cheaper than long-term hedges in a volatile market?


Where the International Railway Journal leads, John Humphries can only follow....

I don't know enough about how Freighliner works, but I think they've just got lucky - they bought a bunch of new-to-them engines just before lockdown with the intention of replacing diesel with electric (and also took over some extra diesel ones when they won a new contract) but lockdown had disrupted the changeover, so they had a surplus that they wouldn't normally. And in addition I don't know how they are affected by the chaos in the freight market at the moment - they would normally be moving a lot of the boxes on container ships that are now not coming here because customs infrastructure has seized up due to Brexit.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450144

Postby Sorcery » October 14th, 2021, 3:35 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
Sorcery wrote:Hi Hallucigenia, long time no chat. Well if we carry on going to a carbon free future, we will have no electricity either when the wind doesn't blow. I am betting on fossil fuels at the moment. Have bought more DEC, PHAR, JKX, TLW, HBR and GENL recently. When a senior UK politician (Boris) says we can go net zero carbon by 2030 or 2050, with no particular expertise or knowledge of the subject and no technology in sight to do it, then I have to laugh a little and say I beg to differ and act accordingly.

P.S. Did we ever solve/agree the "Are wind turbines carbon neutral over their lifetimes?" issue. I don't think we did. They still require subsidies from our electricity bills aiui. Welcome back anyway. ;-)


Likewise. It's a real interesting one at the moment, we're just starting to see the chaos of a market (and political settlement) being disrupted, there will be opportunities on both sides. I never pay too much attention to what Johnson says and frankly in the global scheme of things the UK is insignificant, but much of the world is now committing to net zero in the 2050 kind of timeframe so it needs to be borne in mind. I'd pay less attention to Johnson than what's coming out of BEIS like the recent (very ambitious) hydrogen strategy.

Carbon neutral or EROI>1 ? Unless a turbine is photosynthesising it's not going to be carbon "neutral", but a recent Bernstein report put current wind technology at 11g/kWh with 6g/lWh possible, compared to 44g/kWh for solar, 450g/kWh for gas and 1000g/kWh for coal. And eg this 2019 paper in Nature Energy by Sgouridis et al put wind at an EROI of 20+, even with an element of attached storage.

There's been no support for onshore wind since 2015 (although there will be a token amount in the current round), but that hasn't stopped wind farms being built outside the subsidy regime, on a "commercial" basis. And the 3rd round of auctions in 2019 saw 5.5GW of offshore wind etc bid at just over £40/MWh, around 20% below the government's expected reference price, with the difference going to subsidising consumers. In many parts of the world, wind and solar are now the cheapest form of electricity (but obviously you need to pay more to get dispatchability). With recent craziness the electricity price is some way above the reference price, and if those farms had been built by now then the consumer would be raking it in to the tune of £billions. We'll see what happens in the current auction, but the fact that HMG have lifted the previous 12GW cap suggests that interest will be high.


Thanks for a well linked reply. The EROI numbers shown by Sgourdis are comparing wind turbines to fossil fuel+Carbon Capture & Storage, so skews the present picture since nobody is or is yet able to do CCS. BP pulled out of a CCS scheme recently, presumably because they couldn't make it economic though they appear to be looking at it again. It's good to see SSE installing unsubsidised turbines: I guess that's land based not marine though. I would welcome unsubsidised wind farms, it's difficult to distinguish between wind farms and subsidy farms. I am not sure EROI is accurately calculated when you have to dig down to include all the energy spent on mining, refiining and manufactoring and installation of each component. EROI probably excludes workers time/energy costs too. Whereas price paid and received excluding subsidies is a better measure of success.

Good day on the markets for oil&gas though. :-) That said I am heavily underwater on them since I didn't sell at the first signs of the pandemic.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450159

Postby Hallucigenia » October 14th, 2021, 4:47 pm

Sorcery wrote:Thanks for a well linked reply. The EROI numbers shown by Sgourdis are comparing wind turbines to fossil fuel+Carbon Capture & Storage, so skews the present picture since nobody is or is yet able to do CCS. BP pulled out of a CCS scheme recently, presumably because they couldn't make it economic though they appear to be looking at it again.


At this stage it doesn't look economic on its own, but there's been an acceptance by governments that they need to support it to get it off the ground. It got a whole "point" to itself in last year's Ten Point Plan, which had the ambition to "capture 10Mt of carbon dioxide a year by 2030, the equivalent of 4 million cars’ worth of annual emissions. We will invest up to £1 billion to support the establishment of CCUS in 4 industrial clusters", two by the mid-2020s and a total of four by 2030.

There's since been more detail in eg the update on the Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund a few months ago.

The current plan seems to be that capture will establish a critical mass via "blue hydrogen" - hydrogen made from [natural gas + capture], so there will be some spillover from funds such as the £240 million Net Zero Hydrogen Fund directed at Point Two, for 5GW of low-carbon hydrogen by 2030.

Sorcery wrote:I would welcome unsubsidised wind farms, it's difficult to distinguish between wind farms and subsidy farms.


They are already here. I'll say again - there's been no deal for onshore wind subsidies since 2015. And all the auctions since 2015 for things like offshire wind have been for CfDs which see "anti-subsidy" paid if wholesale prices rise above the strike price (as is happening now). So if the market price is £50/MWh (the average for a long time) then an auction price of £60/MWh means that consumers pay the wind farm £60-50=£10/MWh. But if the market price goes up to £75/MWh, then the wind farm still only gets £60/MWh and the consumers are paid £75-60=£15/MWh.

It takes around 3-4 years to get from auction to first electricity (Covid hasn't helped); offshire wind in Allocation Round 2 in 2017 came in at £62.50/MWh and those sites are just completing construction now, I guess they will be close to subsidy-neutral or even subsidy-negative from the start. Allocation Round 3 in 2019 came in at just over £40/MWh, should start generating towards the end of next year and 2023, and should give consumers a good financial contribution. Compare that with the strike price of £117/MWh for offshore in AR1 in 2015 - the drop in cost has been remarkable. But given recent craziness in the market, even those AR1 offshore wind farms will have been paying anti-subsidies at times, effectively even the most expensive kind of wind farm will have been subsidising the gas power stations....

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450189

Postby daveh » October 14th, 2021, 7:41 pm

Moray East offshore windfarm near me started production recently and was contracted at £55/MWh (in 2012 prices) so I guess at the moment will be paying money to the government rather than receiving a subsidy payment. Also in all the recent rounds of auctions for the rights to develop offshore windfarms the companies have been paying extremely large fees to the crown estate for the right to develop particular sites.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450221

Postby Nimrod103 » October 14th, 2021, 10:06 pm

daveh wrote:Moray East offshore windfarm near me started production recently and was contracted at £55/MWh (in 2012 prices) so I guess at the moment will be paying money to the government rather than receiving a subsidy payment. Also in all the recent rounds of auctions for the rights to develop offshore windfarms the companies have been paying extremely large fees to the crown estate for the right to develop particular sites.


How much is "extremely large fees"? For renting a bit of seabed, and maybe a landfall on the beach for the power lines?

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450238

Postby Hallucigenia » October 15th, 2021, 12:15 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
daveh wrote:Moray East offshore windfarm near me started production recently and was contracted at £55/MWh (in 2012 prices) so I guess at the moment will be paying money to the government rather than receiving a subsidy payment. Also in all the recent rounds of auctions for the rights to develop offshore windfarms the companies have been paying extremely large fees to the crown estate for the right to develop particular sites.


How much is "extremely large fees"? For renting a bit of seabed, and maybe a landfall on the beach for the power lines?


Round 4 option fee deposits from 6 projects totalling 8GW were £879m, just to get their feet under the table :
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/ ... n-economy/

Thanks Dave, I knew ME were still installing turbines, I'd not seen that they'd already started operations. The average for the 2017 round was boosted by Triton Knoll at £74.75/MWh.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#450292

Postby daveh » October 15th, 2021, 10:17 am

Moray East has installed it's final turbine and is exporting power by all three cables according to it's website. First power was in June, and the final cable came into use in September. They may still be doing commissioning work as the Notice to Mariner's says that commissioning work is going on at the moment. The website says power is being produced at £57.50 per MWh I'm assuming that's in today's prices.

There seems to be a lot of wind power coming online - now we need to get on with increasing our storage capacity, be that pumped storage, batteries, hydrogen production or some combination of all three and other options I've not thought of.

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#469907

Postby Hallucigenia » January 3rd, 2022, 12:48 pm

Overview of where we are with non-fossil lorries and buses :
https://theicct.org/publications/race-t ... v-eu-dec21

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#473142

Postby Hallucigenia » January 14th, 2022, 6:04 pm

Significant detail from BP for the economics of electric - and for owners of fuel stations like the majors :
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-01-14/

"If I think about a tank of fuel versus a fast charge, we are nearing a place where the business fundamentals on the fast charge are better than they are on the fuel"

Of course, the real "business fundamentals" on fuel come from selling the cup of coffee in the shop...

Shell announced yesterday their first high-speed recharging, replacing standard pumps at a station in Fulham with nine 175kW chargers that should give 80% capacity in 10 minutes.

https://www.shell.co.uk/media/2022-medi ... ondon.html

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The perpetual motion train

#484536

Postby 88V8 » March 5th, 2022, 3:06 pm

An offshoot of Williams Grand Prix Engineering whose founder Frank Williams died last November, Williams Advanced Engineering has been bought by Australian mining conglomerate Fortescue Metals, and together they appear to have invented a perpetual motion machine.

The regenerating battery-electric iron-ore train will use gravitational energy to recharge its battery electric systems without any additional charging requirements for the return trip to reload.

The idea is that when the train is running downhill loaded, regenerative braking will provide sufficient charge to take the empty train back to the mine without any external charging.

A bit like those balanced funiculars where the full carriages descending pull the empty carriages back to the top.

Rather clever, really... https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/03/gravity-charging-battery-train-to-be-developed-for-australian-mining-firm/

V8

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Re: Transportation matters (re energy investment etc)

#484651

Postby PeterGray » March 6th, 2022, 10:17 am

A good idea, though a little way to go yet to perpetual motion!

However, I'm not entirely sure how that will compare in energy saving terms to the solution that's been in use in mines and canals for a long time where transporting materials downhill - have an up and a down incline/tramway connected, so filling a car at the top brings up the other.

Presumably, it allows more flexibilty about route, it can be longer and curved, and possible even have some short reverse grades in it, which would be difficult with the traditional approach.


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