Robert’s LEAF diary – week 6: How running cars on solar coul
Enviado: 25 ago 2011, 12:19
Robert’s LEAF diary – week 6: How running cars on solar could truly upset the apple cart
"Last week some nice chaps from British Gas shoved 14 solar panels onto my roof, allowing me to charge the LEAF using sun power.
By Robert Llewellyn on June 3, 2011 5:14 PM
I’ve only recently found out that British Gas supplied electricity as well as gas, and I had no idea they supplied and installed solar panels. In many ways this doesn’t quite make sense. If you sell electricity why would you want to supply people with the equipment to make their own? It’s a mystery, but when you think about it, British Gas doesn’t ‘make’ electricity, they buy it from the power generators and sell it to us.
When you have your own micro generation unit like solar panels, in effect you become a power seller, able to sell back electricity to the national grid. The current rate, using the government’s feed in tariff, is 43.5 pence per unit of energy, known as a ‘kilowatt hour’. So I get paid when I don’t use the power generated off my office roof.
The local reaction has been intriguing. While my interest in electric cars has sometimes been seen as a middle class, over privileged media bubble pose, everyone is far more positive about the panels. As a nation we are a little bit behind with it all, though.
They’ve been fitting them in the rest of Europe, particularly Germany for years. Even archconservative Barons in Bavaria have them on the roof of their Schlosses. In fact they’ve got so many in Germany they have half of all the world’s entire stock of solar panels, which helps the country generate 20% of its power from renewables.
The UK hobbles along behind with something around 5%.
So, I’m a really late adopter globally, but of course here in the good old, coal powered, let’s-not-change-anything, don’t-put-up-a-wind-turbine-near-me United Kingdom, having solar panels is tantamount to a direct assault on the British way of life. “They don’t work in the UK, there’s not enough sun.” Blah de blah.
Well, I’ve had them all of four days and so far, even with a fairly dull, overcast cloudy four days I’ve generated 57 kilowatt hours of electricity.
Here’s the science bit… one kilowatt hour is 1,000 watts, or enough to run ten 100-watt light bulbs for one hour. So I could have run 520 bulbs for an hour for free. I don’t have any 100-watt bulbs so I’d have to buy 520 of them, wire them up and…
Or, to use the power slightly more sensibly, I can drive 210 miles in the LEAF. That’s 210 miles with zero carbon emissions and zero cost.
Yes, I can hear the hackles rising. Living in the over privileged media bubble I inhabit, I have completely ignored the costs of the solar panels, the car, the installation and everything else so my claim that the driving is ‘free’ is monstrous, offensive, insensitive, blinkered, ridiculous.
The total cost of the set up I now have is close to £36,000. That’s the car at £25,990, (after the government grant) and the solar panels at £10,000.
It’s a hell of a lot of money, but every time I walk around the streets of London I see dozens, nay, hundreds of cars stuck in traffic jams that easily cost that much, many of them a lot more.
It is expensive but it will get cheaper. And I believe the most important thing is that it is possible. Now. Today.
One of the interesting things I learned from the British Gas chaps is that only three years ago, the same set up I have would have cost nearer £15,000 and generated a lot less power. The panels are getting cheaper and more efficient all the time. They are being mass-produced at a prodigious rate; sadly not so many in this country, but globally it’s a booming industry.
So how important is it, on a global scale, to be able to drive a car where over half the electricity used to power it is generated without burning anything. Could it ever add up to even a moderate hill of beans?
I don’t know. I’ve got the feeling it could make a very big impact. It is, without question, disruptive technology. Implicit in that statement is the fact that not everything about disruptive technology is good. The internet batted seven kinds of excreta out of the music industry, some might say that’s a good thing but we do now have The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
If a lot of people start driving electric cars and generate a lot of the power themselves and don’t depend on the large power companies so much, and the government loses revenue from fossil fuel sales, and people aren’t happy about paying tax for fuel they generate themselves, it could all get very complicated. The apple cart could get well and truly upset.
For the time being though, in the summer, on long sunny days, I have to say I’m rather enjoying it."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... -cart.html
"Last week some nice chaps from British Gas shoved 14 solar panels onto my roof, allowing me to charge the LEAF using sun power.
By Robert Llewellyn on June 3, 2011 5:14 PM
I’ve only recently found out that British Gas supplied electricity as well as gas, and I had no idea they supplied and installed solar panels. In many ways this doesn’t quite make sense. If you sell electricity why would you want to supply people with the equipment to make their own? It’s a mystery, but when you think about it, British Gas doesn’t ‘make’ electricity, they buy it from the power generators and sell it to us.
When you have your own micro generation unit like solar panels, in effect you become a power seller, able to sell back electricity to the national grid. The current rate, using the government’s feed in tariff, is 43.5 pence per unit of energy, known as a ‘kilowatt hour’. So I get paid when I don’t use the power generated off my office roof.
The local reaction has been intriguing. While my interest in electric cars has sometimes been seen as a middle class, over privileged media bubble pose, everyone is far more positive about the panels. As a nation we are a little bit behind with it all, though.
They’ve been fitting them in the rest of Europe, particularly Germany for years. Even archconservative Barons in Bavaria have them on the roof of their Schlosses. In fact they’ve got so many in Germany they have half of all the world’s entire stock of solar panels, which helps the country generate 20% of its power from renewables.
The UK hobbles along behind with something around 5%.
So, I’m a really late adopter globally, but of course here in the good old, coal powered, let’s-not-change-anything, don’t-put-up-a-wind-turbine-near-me United Kingdom, having solar panels is tantamount to a direct assault on the British way of life. “They don’t work in the UK, there’s not enough sun.” Blah de blah.
Well, I’ve had them all of four days and so far, even with a fairly dull, overcast cloudy four days I’ve generated 57 kilowatt hours of electricity.
Here’s the science bit… one kilowatt hour is 1,000 watts, or enough to run ten 100-watt light bulbs for one hour. So I could have run 520 bulbs for an hour for free. I don’t have any 100-watt bulbs so I’d have to buy 520 of them, wire them up and…
Or, to use the power slightly more sensibly, I can drive 210 miles in the LEAF. That’s 210 miles with zero carbon emissions and zero cost.
Yes, I can hear the hackles rising. Living in the over privileged media bubble I inhabit, I have completely ignored the costs of the solar panels, the car, the installation and everything else so my claim that the driving is ‘free’ is monstrous, offensive, insensitive, blinkered, ridiculous.
The total cost of the set up I now have is close to £36,000. That’s the car at £25,990, (after the government grant) and the solar panels at £10,000.
It’s a hell of a lot of money, but every time I walk around the streets of London I see dozens, nay, hundreds of cars stuck in traffic jams that easily cost that much, many of them a lot more.
It is expensive but it will get cheaper. And I believe the most important thing is that it is possible. Now. Today.
One of the interesting things I learned from the British Gas chaps is that only three years ago, the same set up I have would have cost nearer £15,000 and generated a lot less power. The panels are getting cheaper and more efficient all the time. They are being mass-produced at a prodigious rate; sadly not so many in this country, but globally it’s a booming industry.
So how important is it, on a global scale, to be able to drive a car where over half the electricity used to power it is generated without burning anything. Could it ever add up to even a moderate hill of beans?
I don’t know. I’ve got the feeling it could make a very big impact. It is, without question, disruptive technology. Implicit in that statement is the fact that not everything about disruptive technology is good. The internet batted seven kinds of excreta out of the music industry, some might say that’s a good thing but we do now have The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
If a lot of people start driving electric cars and generate a lot of the power themselves and don’t depend on the large power companies so much, and the government loses revenue from fossil fuel sales, and people aren’t happy about paying tax for fuel they generate themselves, it could all get very complicated. The apple cart could get well and truly upset.
For the time being though, in the summer, on long sunny days, I have to say I’m rather enjoying it."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... -cart.html