Posts by Stoneshop

Re: 350kW!!!!

Lot of EVs driving around right now disprove that. Right now they work for lots of people.

We recently got a 2012 Kangoo ZE in addition to a 2003 Kangoo diesel we've been using for the past eight years. Even with its limited range (~100km) we're figuring it can do at least 90% of our car rides. And even on average days the solar panels on our roof generate more than would be needed for a full battery.

There are of course costs to owning two cars, like insurance and maintenance (though no road tax for BEV for at least the coming years), but maintenance for the diesel will go down, and city centre environment zones are accessible again.

Re: 350kW!!!!

That does not mean electric cars (which most cannot afford), it means electric scooters, bicycles and rickshaws. I think this is already happening.

It is, as per a recent article in the Grauniad (can't find it atm, sorry)

Re: 350kW!!!!

and people running power-showers

I don't really get why you would use one of those instead of a storage heater. Maybe if you're space-constrained, but otherwise? 2kW over a couple of (night-time) hours would be much gentler on the grid than everybody pulling 10..15kW during a brief morning timewindow.

Re: Reminds me of Henry Ford

That was a century ago. Nowadays, it appears that you can.

Re: 350kW!!!!

Huge bulk storage capacity that is mobile too.

For extremely small values of 'huge'. 100kWh can power a dozen houses for a day or two if they're a bit frugal, way less if cooking, showering and/or heating is electric.

I suspect EVs will not only be storing charge for the grid shortly but will be moving it too.

For data there may be a lot of bandwidth in a stationwagon, for energy less so (unless as hydrocarbons).

Re: 350kW!!!!

All good until the owners of said cars want o use them after they've silently dumped their battery content to prop up the grid.

You really think that EV owners will allow their car's batteries to be entirely depleted in feeding back to the grid? Even if the inverter in the car would have a controller setting to feed back until exhausted, the owner won't use that setting. And ultimately frobbing in a chip that fakes the battery level to be lower than it actually is if such a 'deplete' setting would become mandated.

Also, using your car's batteries for grid support might be a possibility in the future, but AFAIK no EV has that option yet.

Re: can squeeze 700km from a single full battery charge

but in the winter when it's cold,

Yes, that eats into your range. But at least some EVs can be fitted with a diesel-fueled heater.

dark and probably wet,

Our Kangoo ZE runs the lights and the other non-traction stuff on a hefty conventional 12V battery. Which lasts well beyond the traction battery range.

when over half of my commute is on motorways and when the battery is 5 years old that 150 mile range is suddenly very optimistic.

It is.

Re: 350kW!!!!

it's still going to be FUN supplying Nx350kW to those car parks.

Car parks associated with urban housing (i.e. where people live, and more specifically sleep) don't need to turbo charge every car that's parked there, nor do they have to be charged at the same time. In most cases they don't need to be charged from nearly empty to full either.

Capacity to charge all cars parked there overnight, plus a bit of leeway so that you can have a few getting charged at max power if necessary (and their owners getting charged appropriately so people selecting that option only when they actually need it) would appear to me to be quite sufficient.

Re: 350kW!!!!

Yes, charging daily could swap for filling monthly/weekly. But still need the infrastructure.

So you drive 20 miles a day, roughly, six days a week. At an average power use of 350Wh/mile you'd be using about 7kWh per day. Which, if you trickle charge overnight, would be like running half a kettle for six or seven hours. Which doesn't need any changes to infrastructure at your end

Re: 350kW!!!!

"Embedded generation", things like solar panels on houses or a few kW of local batteries must always disconnect when there's major distruption on the grid, for safety reasons.

That's right, but it doesn't need to stop your solar system charging your EV. Or just topping up your domestic battery or thermal storage; systems are increasingly designed and set up to operate that way. As long as the inverter is properly disconnected from the grid mains there's no problem with 'island' mode inverters running autonomously and delivering power to whatever can use it.

Re: 350kW!!!!

Maybe the charger would have to be intelligent and monitor your other loads, and turn down its power take if necessary.

I've just wired up a Type 2 EV charge point at home (3x 32A max). For a domestic feed you definitely need load monitoring, and while it's an option with this kit I have selected it. Just need to install the current transformers in the main distribution board, but as it's getting dark now it'll have to wait a bit as I don't relish working on electrics with only battery lighting if I can avoid it.

Re: a system that can automatically and fairly

A tumor of the female endocrine glands, or, per Frank Zappa, her mammalian protuberances?

Re: Linux.

I was going to suggest that the obvious method for error free, restartable file transfers back in '93 would have been to use Kermit.

I'm quite sure that ZModem could deal with interrupted file transfers, though that might have been a later protocol extension or some external add-on. It definitely was pretty capable of dealing with hokey connections by adjusting packet sizes as needed, so when the error rate went up the packet size decrease and vice versa.

Re: Blast from the past

Might be hard to find a graphical screen with the dimensions to fit in a Z88 (or the Tandy 100), but the Compute Module supports 2 DSI ports so with two smaller screens (5" or so?) side by side you could have sufficient screen real estate.

You would also want to fit a trackpoint, touchpad or trackball somewhere.