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The Forum > Article Comments > Living in electric dreams > Comments

Living in electric dreams : Comments

By Tristan Prasser, published 13/5/2019

Electric vehicles may be the next big thing, but the ALP's policy will do little to help the environment and will do more to waste taxpayers money and hurt consumers.

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EVs won't go prime time until their $45k minimum sticker price is halved. That's up to the car makers not Shorten. Other ALP policies are either suss or a drop in the bucket. Once a few hundred million dollars start leaving the country for 'international permits' even the true believers will question whether the money would be better spent at home.

Contrary to optimistic claims I think power prices will largely increase. That is because increasingly high priced gas will be needed to balance fickle wind and solar. Another big coal station Liddell will close in 2022 the end of the next parliamentary term meaning more reliable power is needed. Shorten has ruled out nuclear so he must have something magical up his sleeve.
Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 13 May 2019 9:24:13 AM
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Barge-in Bill hasn't given any more thought to his impractical and highly unlikely ‘50% EVs by 2030’ than he has given to all his other uncosted policies. How about clockwork cars, which you could get out and wind up when they ran out of puff halfway across the Ninety Mile Desert or the Hay Plains. There won't be any electric charging to be had.

“The danger (of electric cars) really came home to me when I met up with an affluent, long-time Melbourne acquaintance who lives in a street where there are six Tesla cars.

When they all try to charge their batteries at the same time, the power goes out in the street because the grid fails. Sometimes it fails when only three or four of them try to charge at the same time.” (Economist Robert Gottliebsen, The Australian).

Bill wouldn't have heard about that piece of information. He prefers ideology to real life and common sense. He and the jet-set global travellers (those hypocrites and big emitters) don't know that the average Aussie takes road trips for his modest holidays, and there is no way that recharging facilities will ever be able to cater for them. EVs make sense in cities, but they are not worth a pinch of poop in our huge countryside.

Besides, the way we are going, we won't have enough electricity to keep the lights burning.

There is hope, though, while we have young people who are not raving lefties talking common sense as Tristan Passer is here.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 13 May 2019 9:38:19 AM
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Electric vehicles are our undisputed future. Albeit the fossil fuel industry and some of the paid stooges will claim otherwise and see all kinds of yet to happen possible problems.

That said, the only real drawback on electric vehicles is both price and range. As we saw with colour TV's when they were first introduced were horrendously expensive and only the privileged rich could afford one. Now anyone can buy a brand new one with all the bells and whistles.

So, expect the price to come way down as more secondhand fleets are ungraded and the secondhand market swells with used vehicles

. As for range. One day not too far ahead in time the roads we drive on will continuously charge our vehicles as we drive. Much to the consternation of various brain dead rev heads. who will as is their want drive around the block revving their monster trucks to make as much noise as they can.

That is, until the local gas stations and motor retailers see that the side of the bread with their butter on it is served only by servicing the electric vehicle market. One apparently can recharge on fast charge, an electric vehicle to 80%, in around 25 minutes the time required to take a leisurely comfort stop

. Moreover, next-generation electric vehicles will be better safer drivers, than their human occupants?

With completely autonomous vehicles available in my kids lifetime and a boon for elderly drivers who will have their former independence restored by such technological innovation.

I think the Labor party has got it right and the conservatives should do to Labor, what Labor has done to them and borrow their better policy paradigms
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 13 May 2019 10:08:24 AM
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ttbn, that "piece of information" has already been exposed as a hoax. Firstly notice that he hasn't named the street where this supposedly happened. Secondly, Tesla cars (and even EVs generally) are currently so rare that there isn't a street with six of them. Thirdly a home EV charger uses no more power than an oven, so it would take a lot more than six to cause an outage.Fourthly the company that manages Melbourne's electricity distribution has no record of such an occurrence.

A target of 50% EVs is not particularly ambitious - it's within the range the Libs are predicting will occur anyway, so their scaremongering shows they can't be trusted.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 13 May 2019 10:17:41 AM
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ttbn: You quoted: "The danger (of electric cars) really came home to me when I met up with an affluent, long-time Melbourne acquaintance who lives in a street where there are six Tesla cars. When they all try to charge their batteries at the same time, the power goes out in the street because the grid fails. Sometimes it fails when only three or four of them try to charge at the same time.” (Economist Robert Gottliebsen, The Australian)."

I'm very skeptical of this claim, it sounds like complete BS. Typically EV's recharge at home by plugging into a standard wall socket. So they are severely limited by the power they can draw otherwise they would "blow a fuse" (or for modern fuse boxes trip the switch). In these cases they can draw no more than standard appliances - eg: a kettle would draw the same power. So if it only took 6 cars using this sort of charging to black out the neighbourhood then it sounds look they have extremely dodgy supply issues. eg. If just 6 cars could cause it to fail then it would black-out every day as soon as everyone starts cooking in the evening.

However, I believe you can install special chargers in your garage, in which case they might draw more (I don't know the details but maybe they they use 3 phase if available or or maybe they can be specially wired to legally draw higher currents on one dedicated circuit) but it would still be required to be within the regulations/building code and should definitely not cause the local grid to fail.
Posted by thinkabit, Monday, 13 May 2019 10:34:05 AM
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The real problem with our electricity distribution is not that we do not generate enough to meet demand, but that lost from power plant to consumer and as around 11% as transmission losses and an average 64% as distribution losses.

All of which are paid for by the hapless consumer and the additional charges placed by the price gouging investors with their gold-plated poles and wires. Plus the charges placed by this or that government as their personal ATM's to pay for their entitlements, salary padding/incompetence?

If however, we stop burning coal to power steam driven generators and instead cook it to release the total methane content,.

Then send that to the end user as gas, where we can for one, eliminate most if not all the transmission losses and reduce power transmission carbon pollution by 75% in one fell swoop.

And given the flameless heat source is solar thermal, Eliminate all the moving parts that are the principal source of black and brownouts.

Moreover, given this scrubbed gas is then consumed in household ceramic fuel cells the carbon produced is far further reduced with mostly pristine water vapour produced as the exhaust product and endless free hot water one of the other byproducts.

Plus a 50%+ saleable surplus! As for paying for the system, scales of economy could reduce the cost of the ceramic fuel cells down to an affordable $5,000.00 And be paid for by a far more reasonable quarterly electricity charge, say 25% of current charge plus 10%, which would see the fuel cell paid for and completely owned in around ten or so years
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 13 May 2019 10:39:39 AM
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Six cars al charging at the same time causing a power outage? If true and not a fossil fuel stooges BS? Would seem to suggest they are sharing their street transformer with an indoor cannabis garden and stolen electricity?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 13 May 2019 10:54:17 AM
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ttbn,
Further to my original post, the full rebuttal of Gottliebsen's claim is at http://reneweconomy.com.au/murdoch-media-and-the-myth-about-tesla-evs-causing-blackouts-84284/

______________________________________________________________________________________

Alan B.,
From where did you get the idea that we average 64% as distribution losses?
Either you're missing a decimal point, or the figure is completely made up!

If you want to reduce carbon pollution, leave the coal in the ground!
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 13 May 2019 12:21:26 PM
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thinkabit,

You would need to contact the person quoted about that. I just passed it on.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 13 May 2019 1:48:09 PM
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Hi Aidan

You may be right on "50% EVs is not particularly ambitious - it's within the range the Libs are predicting will occur anyway, so their scaremongering shows they can't be trusted."

Here is the LIBERAL PARTY'S very vague, playing it safe, no numbers:

"NATIONAL STRATEGY for ELECTRIC VEHICLES" of 27 February 2019 http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/national-vehicle-strategy

"The National Strategy for Electric Vehicles will ensure the transition to electric vehicle technology and infrastructure is planned and managed, so that all Australians can access the benefits of the latest technology.

Greater electric vehicle uptake could mean cleaner air, better health, smarter cities, lower transport costs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The Strategy will coordinate action across government, industry and the community to address barriers to uptake and ensure Australia reaps the benefits of new vehicle technology.

The Strategy will build on the current work of the Ministerial Forum on Vehicle Emissions and the COAG Transport and Infrastructure Council. It will complement grants from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

Further information [which still has no numbers, figures or percentage goals] http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/4476cfd6-330a-4e6f-b0c8-985a4a8985af/files/national-strategy-electric-vehicles.pdf
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 13 May 2019 4:02:11 PM
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I was quoting an electrical engineer's findings Adian and I have earned my living as a chemical engineer, an assayer and for a power company in a science-related capacity. You? CPA?

Pretty tired of your continual BS and fact-free attacks on my credibility. Where you seem to argue against MSR thorium and or paint it as something so far away to be prohibitively costly by the time we get an INTELLIGENT government, not the in-house servants and MSR thorium? Of this or that outcome of like yours, of harmful vested interest?.

One notes your as usual link dependant mountainous misinformation as you support only renewables. Yet allow huge imports of fossil fuel. As for leaving the coal in the ground, how then are we to pay for all the government supplied benefits and services/pensions etc

. Thank God no one on OLO or any government body takes you and your Russian sympathetic/gormless green attack dog view seriously!

Don't you get that extracted methane from coal would power the entirety of the current transport fleet as CNG, and as the first consequence, lower CO2 emission by around 40% and allow us to bank the 26 billion plus currently expended on fully imported fuel,plus remove the transmission and distribution losses which are a combined 75% you economic and environmental Genius

! You seriously believe we could leave that coal in the ground, power our economy and earn enough export dollars to house clothe and feed a nation of over 20 million people!?

As they say in the classics, you must be dreaming or smoking too much of that( ice laced) weed that has clearly scattered your marbles and civility!

You have a very nice day now, y'hear.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 13 May 2019 4:13:53 PM
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Alan B.,
I too am an engineer, though I'm civil.

If you don't want your credibility to be attacked, don't keep reposting the same dubious clams after criticism has been made of them. I think MSR thorium is a technology with great potential, but there are technical problems that will need to be solved before it's commercialised. And it[s downright dishonest to claim that it CAN generate power at the price that its proponents think it may eventually be able to - doubly so when you don't do the same for competing technologies.

Maybe there are remote parts of Queensland where transmission and distribution losses combined once approached 75%. But nowadays, for the system as a whole, "The losses are equivalent to approximately 10% of the total electricity transported between power stations and market customers" according to AEMO. See http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Security-and-reliability/Loss-factor-and-regional-boundaries
So please, stop claiming incredible inefficiency unless you have real evidence to back it up!

We have plenty of methane (aka natural gas) already - we don't need to synthesise it - and if we do so, it shouldn't be from coal.

>You seriously believe we could leave that coal in the ground, power our economy and earn
>enough export dollars to house clothe and feed a nation of over 20 million people!?
If you're asking me if we can do it before the year's out, then no. It will take a few years to adjust, and large scale steelmaking without burning coal will require commercialisation of molten oxide electrolysis. But our economy is not a one trick pony. We get a lot of value from metals mining and agriculture, and we're capable of high value services and manufacturing. Remember, most of manufacturing's value is in the IP not the fabrication.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 13 May 2019 6:34:08 PM
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So we have the ridiculous situation that the planners have been pushing high rise apartment living as their ideal form of living.

Now the idiots, having got a couple of million of these apartments built, & having failed to enthuse Ozzies to take to bicycles as a desirable form of transport, they have now totally lost the plot.

With no facility to charge electric cars in any of these millions of apartments basement, they go off at a new ridiculous tangent of electric cars. We have the crazy situation where the only people likely to find electric cars capable of supporting their inner city transport needs, live in accommodation where recharging the things is currently impossible.

To retrofit these buildings with the capacity to charge hundreds of residents cars over night would cost hundreds of billions, & that is before considering the huge addition needed to a mature inner city grid to supply the power.

I have been wondering which discipline planners or economists are the most stupid in modern society, but then I realised these fools are simply the product of their education.

So now we all know, it is the idiots teaching these "professionals" who causing the problems. Yes it is academia that is the most stupid, obvious really when you look at their products.

Stop Press. This boils down to having real idiots like Bill Shorten believe the rubbish.
Posted by Hasbeen, Monday, 13 May 2019 8:40:56 PM
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.

Dear Tristan (the author),

.

For all the reasons, of which I am sure you are aware – costs: enormous initial construction and development costs, high kilowatt hour cost; environmental problems: catastrophe risk, extraction of uranium, CO2 emissions, discharge of hot water, long term storage of nuclear waste, etc. – I doubt that the Australian population would accept the introduction of nuclear power as the principal source of electricity with any great enthusiasm.

The transition to renewable energies would seem to be the best solution – possibly backed-up and completed by small nuclear plants if there is no more acceptable alternative.

.
Posted by Banjo Paterson, Monday, 13 May 2019 11:20:53 PM
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If you're not starting to see conspiracy theories, I reckon now would be the best time to pull all of those lurking in the dark out. It's not a secret that there are a lot of people with hidden agendas trying to stop electric vehicles. We just need to make sure that people are going to talk louder than the dirty politicians if we want to make a difference to the planet at some point..
Posted by EdwardThirlwall, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 3:03:43 PM
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Hasbeen,

You forget that people can dangle extension cords from their windows to their cars below.
Extension cord making will be a growth industry as will be the nicking of said cords; further growth, by job creation, will come about by the raising of special local police forces dedicated to thwarting Cord Nickers.

Times of high wind may cause some problems.
Posted by Is Mise, Wednesday, 15 May 2019 4:33:52 PM
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