Essay by Eric Worrall
Can anyone on team green do simple math?
Power grid foils Ampol’s big EV charger plans
Ben Potter and Simon Evans
Updated Aug 19, 2024 – 7.09pm, first published at 1.33pmAmpol, one of the country’s largest petrol retailers, has dialled back plans to triple the number of electric vehicle chargers because of power grid limitations in a blow to government hopes of pushing motorists towards cleaner cars in big numbers by 2030.
The company’s chief executive, Matt Halliday, said it would not be possible to expand the number of charging bays from 92 to 300 by the end of this year because of difficulties connecting chargers to the grid which is already struggling to cope with an influx of renewable energy generation.
…
“[As] much as we spend a lot of time talking about generation, firming and transmission infrastructure, the last mile distribution grid is not really built for large-scale electrification, despite the best will that the players have to try and make it happen,” Mr Halliday added. “There are a lot of constraints that need to be worked through.”
…A dearth of EV chargers will in particular affect long-haul motorists. Chargers range from 75 kilowatts for a small charging bay to 300 kilowatts for fast chargers, and operators typically install three to five at a site, imposing substantial new loads that local low-voltage networks have not previously had to bear, said Ross De Rango, head of energy and infrastructure at the Electric Vehicle Council.
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Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/ampol-dials-back-ev-charging-target-slashes-dividend-20240812-p5k1q4
I drove a 4WD through outback Australia last December, from the East cost of subtropical Queensland to Adelaide on the Southern coast of Australia. Most of the towns in outback Australia are really friendly, but there are some unpleasant exceptions.
One particularly remote town in Western New South Wales I met an EV charger repairman who told me he is making a fortune repairing the EV station every few days, the local gangs keep wrecking the charging station. He was only a few feet away from his van, but he kept the back locked the whole time he was working, except to get tools. During the 5 minutes we stopped there for a comfort break, two teenage gang bangers did a walk by of my vehicle. The pub across the street was boarded up, the windows had obviously been repeatedly smashed until the owner obviously got fed up with replacing them. I had no idea if the pub was open, and felt no inclination to take a closer look.
I got out of town as soon as I could, I didn’t want to be robbed or worse. The thought of sitting there for hours charging an EV was unthinkable.
Yet if you were to drive an EV on this route, the fastest, most direct route between Brisbane and Adelaide, you would have to stop in this train wreck of a town. My long range diesel 4WD aircon was struggling with the blazing sun and desert heat, burning heaps of fuel keeping the vehicle interior habitable, so forget the brochure EV range figures, you would have had to recharge an EV every few hundred miles. I never saw any EVs on that stretch of road, but imagine if there were more EVs on that route, and you had to queue for a charge in a place like that?
I’m glad the plans of the EV enthusiasts are faltering. There is more at stake than the embarrassment of company executives and politicians being exposed as innumerate incompetents.
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I like the way the supply cable is laid across a very wide road.
I was assuming it was a mobile charging vehicle giving an emergency charge.
Likely with a diesel generator mounted on the back
The image is not from Australia.
Geoff S
I think that is photographic licence rather than a practical requirement.
Or how an AI thinks an EV should be charged 😉
“Can anyone on team green do simple math?”
The self evident answer is no, else they would not be on team green.
Nor simple engineering.
Nor simple science.
Nor simple economics.
Nor simple logic.
Remember that before AOC joined the green team, she was a bartender.
A bartender with an ECONOMICS DEGREE who thinks there are no consequences to just printing all the money you need to do whatever you want.
Her “university” should be stripped of its accreditation.
Interesting that the bar she worked at went belly up when NYC enacted an increased minimum wage.
She might have become a lawyer but she couldn’t pass a bar
She did not have a law degree.
I think you missed the joke there….. 🙂
😉
With a degree in economics, IIRC, from Columbia.
Boston University. AOC would never have been admitted to Columbia. Manifestly not bright enough.
Simple logic:
Australian Government figures show that approx two thirds of a billion vehicle miles are driven daily. How probable is it that these will be driven wholly by electric vehicles?
2/3B miles…
600,000,000 miles
If an 85KWh Tesla can safely drive 200 miles between charges…
Then that’s 3,000,000-85KWh batteries being recharged daily
That’s a requirement of 255,000,000KWh of daily charging capacity needed
That’s 10.625 GW of dedicated generation needed for transportation alone… Daily.
300KW fast charging would then require 35,000 fast chargers to accommodate the EV needs
OK OK 2/3 billion is 666,666,667 miles but I just rounded for easy in the head calcs.
The distance between charging is approximately linear to battery capacity (total charge) less depletion limits. So a 400 mile EV will have a battery capacity roughly 170kWh (using the Tesla numbers). If the 200 mile EV takes an hour to charge, the 400 mile battery will take 2 hours.
Rough numbers.
Correct if charge is between ~15-85%. The first 15 is slower because lower charge rate to prevent internal resistance heating, and the last 15% is slower because charge current must be tapered off to prevent potential cell overcharge.
You have done what the green mental midgets don’t get which is the impossible migration all the energy stored in petrol/diesel stations to the grid via additional generation. Never going to happen. It would cost trillions when combined with costs of building generating reserves for intermittent wind and solar and all the additional grid infrastructure.
Yes. You can only get there by leaving out most of the costs and work necessary to make the vision work. In the case of the residential energy transformation this includes upgrading the local network so as to be able to deliver all the power the heat pumps and EVs will require. Never even mentioned. Just like all the ambitious wind and solar plans never mention storage or the gas system installations required for them to work. And the transmission costs for getting the intermittent power to where the demand is.
I read in today’s Grauniad the following
“and wind and solar are intermittent resources, so the amount of electricity can vary.”
Can’t remember seeing them admit that before. Hope? Probably not.
Politicians and Environmentalists are unable to grasp the Law of Conservation of Energy. For them, electricity is something which just comes out of a socket on the wall.
No analysis of alternatives.
No risk assessments.
The list goes on and on and on.
In Australia, I have studied the growth of green activism since the early 1970s when we discovered a major new uranium deposit that created rage among the agitators. I was one of the main fight-back people because the quiet big green players and financiers had to reveal themselves. We took some to court, novel back then.
There were a few smart cookies who were given new positions with real power in places like national parks and wildlife and internationals like UN world heritage. These were hard to combat because decisions and policies could be made by apologists in governments quoting that they would have to act by their best official advice like from the UN.
The bulk of the green folk were the slave class that did what the smart cookies ordered. They had a common property that male or female, young or old, they were thick as bricks. There was little sign of any who had studied resource developments like mining in anything like the depth needed for mature discussion. The skill ended when the slogans ran out.
When they started to realise that fairyland ambitions were not enough, many of them took advantage of free university education and some ended up with PhD after their name, a few even getting to be “Professor”, a publicity advantage that we busy people in industry rarely took time off to gain.
But titles or not, the mass the green players were simple minded, under-educated, poor performers in economics, mathematics, expression – they rarely accepted public debate because they lost so often.
This dumbness has not gone away over recent years. The main change has seen high rank politicians from Prime Minister down drawn from or influenced by green. This is a passing fad that is in the act of going extinct as voters see for themselves the tremendous harm being done by the green ignorati driven by silly slogans and little of substance.
Geoff S
Is that another word for bar-steward?
Green Deal/Net Zero legislation has abolished physics and economics.
Here in the USA, the feds have funds to build all the chargers you can imagine, but not one cent for increased generation. I’m very surprised none of the bright green bulbs working in the Biden admin didn’t build solar panels and windmills around charging stations, and then build more than eight.
Problem is, apparently, that site-selection criteria for the charging stations dodn’t include assuring that electrical service was available at the site. And who did Biden put in charge of that activity?
His neurologist?
Are you insinuating that Biden did sufficient planning to actually put someone in charge or charging?
The feds have no funds of their own. They are spending money confiscated from tax payers and getting loans (it’s called national debt, bonds, etc.) from China (and other foreign countries)..
Most of the debt is held by US citizens and institutions.
Rule #1 for motorists in America:
Never ever come to a complete stop while motoring in a ghetto.
This causes immediate problems with EV’s stopping to recharge and is never a consideration made during initial planning activities.
So despite their problems they are going to be selling solar generated power to Singapore.
Australia greenlights US$13.5b project to ship solar energy to Singapore | Singapore Business Review (sbr.com.sg)
Aussie Energy and Climate Change Minister “Blowhard” Bowen can greenlight all the fantastic fake green energy dreams he likes, but most of them are fizzers, because he and his hangers-on are both clueless and rank practitioners of perfidy.
I would not want to be on the maintenance and repair team for that 4300 kilometer subsea cable.
I thought the British 500 km cable was insane. This redefines insanity.
This undersea connecting cable has zero chance of ever being built because of capital costs and the inevitable and continual repair bills after completion. It is yet another political pipe dream.
Wait one damned minute!
“6GW of 24/7 green electricity”
All from a giant solar farm?
And their are complaints of the damage from open pit coal mines.
Australians hate to admit it, but some parts are still a bit ‘backward’ – in the style of Deliverance. I read an account of a murder which took place in the middle of nowhere, and the writer said that there are people who can get away with whatever they want, with no police for perhaps hundreds of miles, the perpetrators just disappear…and that’s even if the victim is found.
Scary.
Meanwhile in the U.S., the whereabouts of some 300,000 children trafficked into the country in recent years is unknown.
“in the style of Deliverance”
Don’t make fun of North Georgia just because their culture is different. It’s been under development for several hundred years now, and the best they could come up with in that time. ‘Least us Tarheel Hillbillies did better ’cause we had the Cherokees’ to start with:<)
Sounds like Chicago.
Basic rule…. Don’t go west of Parkes !!
Story tip: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/08/22/green-inferno-tesla-big-rig-battery-blaze-shuts-down-california-highway-for-12-hours/
I read about a similar fire a few days ago. Is this the same fire or a new one?
This one is from 3 days ago from what I can tell. There was also the battery fire from a month ago – https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/battery-fire-traffic-nevada-california.html
The lithium battery wreck in the Mojave Desert on Interstate 15 was covered pretty well in WUWT.
“…the last mile distribution grid is not really built for large-scale electrification…”
It’s about time some of the problems with mandating EVs start getting wider circulation, and the useful idiots that want to ‘replace all ICE vehicles with EVs’ start seeing the error of their ways. The above problem, e.g. the local grid “is not really built for large-scale electrification” is just one of many problems they are going to face, and I would bet raise their estimated conversion costs by at least an order of magnitude.
Don’t you just love it when the politicians, mostly lawyers that couldn’t make it in the law business, and environmentalist, that majored in gender studies and such, come up with these harebrained schemes.
But they want to use 4300 km of cable to electrify Singapore. Copper, steel, graphite, aluminum, does not matter. That is a lot of cable that could be used to benefit Australians rather than grift for the politicians.
The plan is always the same, whether the US, Australia, UK. It is to more than double demand by moving everyone to electric powered EVs and heat pumps.
And at the same time to move the generation of the electricity to wind and solar, without providing any solution which would make this intermittent supply usable for the purpose. No plans for storage on anything like the scale required.
If you like, put succinctly, its to double or triple electricity demand while wrecking the supply so that it cannot even support current demand.
Gee, imagine that; human nature in operation with no effective restraints in remote locations. Apparently local officials don’t care enough to police the local thugs.
To often those local officials are or their children are the local thugs.
Hmmm…
Human Nature
Interesting phrase
It implies that Humans are Natural
“Can anyone on team green do simple math?” Simple answer, no. Even worse most of their “green ideas” are worse for the environment than the existing tech they want to replace. As I have gone through life I have figured out most people don’t act on logic, they act on feelings.
And those emotions are pumped up with histrionics and hyperboles, aka scaring the knickers off people.
I think the Chicken Little story needs to be mandatory as also the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Look at Chicago in the winter. EVs could not be charged. The batteries fully depleted due to the heaters trying to keep the batteries at minimum temperature. A lot of EV battery replacement and a lot of towing charges were incurred by those stranded motorists.
A few years back in Virginia a major snow storm closed I-95 for something like 100 miles stranding thousands of motorists for 26 hours. It is horrifying to imagine what the news would have been had those been EVs. One cannot carry a battery recharge in a jerry can like you can gas.
I got it. Solar panel on roof, windmill on back bumper, and hamster on treadmill for back up
Article says :”…would not be possible to expand the number of charging bays from 92 to 300 by the end of this year…”.
Hard to remember my semester of electricity, but isn’t really true that they could build the charging bays but they would have limit the number in use at any one time.
The Californian way seems to be to reduce the amount of power flowing to the vehicles to a trickle. But this doesn’t solve the charging bay occupancy issue.
If they want to convince people that charging is as easy as getting gas then 1. The number of charging stations must at least equal today’s gas pumps. 2. Time to charge needs to be below 10 minutes and available to all. Good luck with both. The only positive about EV charging is overnight home stations, which can not be available to all.
Best summary of the practicalities I have seen.
White math?No. Queer math? Yes.
Not sure I like the term “team green”. I prefer “gang green”. It has a certain ring about it.
I have passed through Wilcannia 20 to 30 times and never once had the inclination to stop. Most of those trips were in the 1970s. I think the hotel there had windows. Cobar is a much more hospitable place to stop.
I doubt there are any electric car owners in Wilcannia!
The Cobar council used quite a coarse crushed gravel for road works. Gravel was big enough to smash a windscreen. Inevitably anywhere the road had been resealed was littered with broken glass, So Cobar was a place where garages sold temporary plastic screens and lots of duct tape. Good for about 70kph before they blew in even with the side windows open.
A simple solution, eliminate all subsidies, tax credits and mandates for renewables and EVs and all of these issues disappear.
Well there’s one plus travelling with EVs in those situations-
Caravan stolen with family of five inside at Hughenden (msn.com)
You wouldn’t be towing the caravan.
Sorry Eric. You are the bigger fool for not understanding the game.. Of course there’s not enough Electricity from the grid to power EV; or enough strategic materials and rare earths to replace ICE vehicles, no less expand the total number on the road. All that means is that a decade from now people will no longer own private vehicles. That’s the intention. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg let the cat out of the bag a while ago. Private vehicles will be replaced by car services. Only a small handful of super elite will be permitted to own a vehicle. Understand now?