Use your car as a battery?

[JamesPa]

39 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Though you say we can afford it, as you observe, we spend it on other stuff. For us to afford it, the fact remains that peoples standard of living will go backwards in a big way. More of an exsistence than a life. Humans are humans, they are not going to agree to that on a voluntary basis.

The irony is that those who can afford it least will suffer the most, whilst those who could easily afford to make a contribution (and who contribute most to the problem) will find ways to insulate themselves, at the expense of others of course.  In case that is in doubt here is a map of C02 emissions per capita, according to Wikipedia

 

 

and GDP per capita from the same source

 

 

the overlap is quite marked!

 

39 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Only a dictatorship can impose that. I cant go along with that.

 

I'm not actually convinced you (or I) will have a choice. (about dictatorship)

 

The right wing is clearly 'on the march' and the conditions are ripe (and getting riper) for it to succeed, just as it did for a while in the 1930s in Germany.  The USA stands poised to elect a would-be dictator, several US states have clearly 'gone rogue' and the supreme court in the US is now overtly political.  Several European countries are actively toying with right wing extremism, including Germany which has a history that you might think would convince their population otherwise.  Our next government may well be left leaning, but its clear that the right wing has taken control of the Tory party.  Since, historically, the Tory party has governed the UK most of the time during the last century, we can fairly confidently expect that the right wing of the party, if they continue to hold it, will be back in control in 5, or at most 10, years time.  They are already doing quite a good job of dismantling several legal protections and undermining the independence of the judiciary (which, if you study constitutional theory, is one of the three pillars of a functioning democracy);  why would anyone think that's going to change?  Furthermore they have the ear of the popular media (from which many people get their 'facts', and are trying their best to undermine any significant media outlet that doesn't support the cause

 

Oddly the Chinese might just come to the rescue.  Its not in their interest for the current world order to break down, and they have a political structure which can do almost anything within their own country, and a lot outside.  They might just exert sufficient influence to keep things relatively sane, albeit they wont care much about democracy.

 

 

Interestingly COVID showed that, faced with a crisis, democracies will accept extreme curtailment of their lives.  In the case of COVID in the UK of course, not until it was too late to avert the worst of the consequences.  More bizarrely, we repeated the mistake, see comment above about who is in charge.

 

Notwithstanding the potential pessimistic outlook, I will continue to argue for, and make changes to reduce my personal carbon footprint (in the case of my heating - if my LPA eventually lets me, which at present is looking less not more likely).  Not to do so is to surrender, which cedes all control.

 

 

Edited February 24 by JamesPa

[Roger440]

I think its best we dont go down the politics road tbh.

[Crofter]

3 hours ago, joe90 said:

Can we be nosey and ask where you are at the moment? (being nosey really)

Well not to rub it in but currently in the British Virgin Islands.

Pretty idyllic until you get to a shop and it's US$12 for a loaf of bread.

Fortunately we stocked up on flour in one of the French islands which are less extortionate.

 

Living on the boat for a few years has really shown me how you can live with the minimum of resources. We literally live off sunshine and rainwater. I have a sail for my dinghy and most of the time don't need to use the outboard. So we can go weeks at a time without using any fossil fuels at all. Our main engine is diesel but we don't move that often, and try to only do longer trips on days when we can do the bulk of the journey under sail.

 

Of course, there is some outsourcing going on- we use buses and launderettes, and almost all of the food here is imported.

[Dillsue]

2 hours ago, Roger440 said:

In the UK, primarily i think thats going to be more rain. Much more frequent flooding events. Whatever else, i think we can all agree, less rain is very unlikely! At the moment we tinker at the fringes, dont fund it well, maintain jack all, build on flood plains, and pay lip service to SUDS regulations. Theres a lot of the UK's housing in flood prone areas. Its likely that many will simply become unlivable. Where will those people go? Can you protect them? Who is thinking about it? And coming up with a plan? No one is the answer. 

 

 

All our surface water stays on our level plot and we don't flood. We have some pooling and you need wellies in places but its gone in a day or so. The ground is more than capable of dealing with repeated heavy downpours. What causes flooding is people dumping their water on others via drains and water courses. If people upstream of flood prone areas dealt with their surface water flooding will be drastically reduced. In terms of who is thinking of it/planning it/dealing with it,  I believe the new land payments scheme will pay landowners to retain water in areas upstream of flood prone areas. Water from commercial and domestic sources will need a bit more thinking about but turning the shoe on the bottom of down spouts 90 degrees to dump water on your garden and not into the drains will do your bit to help not flood your neighbours. It'll also help not inundate sewage treatment plants and wash all your sewage into seas and rivers, so a double win.

3 hours ago, Roger440 said:

And i guess we will will have more exceptional heat events. The whole grant process effectively bars fitting of anything than can do cooling. Like A2A systems. Bonkers, just bonkers. During those heat events, you tend to find its bright and sunny. So lots of energy to be had to drive them. But no, lets make sure we cant fit the very thing we are going to need with increasing frequency..

Have a look a gridwatch and you'll see that solar only makes up a small proportion of generation so when it's sunny and hot turning AC on just ramps up a gas power station. I guess that's why the grants won't cover cooling as its just exacerbating the problem.

[JamesPa]

53 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

I think its best we dont go down the politics road tbh.

Better stay clear of climate change then, as it appears to divide politicians and the media along lines which are common with many other aspects of politics.

[Dillsue]

Back to the original post, I read earlier that Indra don't expect to have a Chademo bi directional charger available till 2025 so how they envisage the Power Pack scheme working is anyone's guess?? Anyone know their plans??

[Roger440]

8 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

All our surface water stays on our level plot and we don't flood. We have some pooling and you need wellies in places but its gone in a day or so. The ground is more than capable of dealing with repeated heavy downpours. What causes flooding is people dumping their water on others via drains and water courses. If people upstream of flood prone areas dealt with their surface water flooding will be drastically reduced. In terms of who is thinking of it/planning it/dealing with it,  I believe the new land payments scheme will pay landowners to retain water in areas upstream of flood prone areas. Water from commercial and domestic sources will need a bit more thinking about but turning the shoe on the bottom of down spouts 90 degrees to dump water on your garden and not into the drains will do your bit to help not flood your neighbours. It'll also help not inundate sewage treatment plants and wash all your sewage into seas and rivers, so a double win.

Have a look a gridwatch and you'll see that solar only makes up a small proportion of generation so when it's sunny and hot turning AC on just ramps up a gas power station. I guess that's why the grants won't cover cooling as its just exacerbating the problem.

 

Having lived in a village subject to flooding, including my house, im only too well aware.

 

Sadly, its just paid lip service. No one cars, no one enforces. Developers just get good reports written to bamboozle planners.  Even when measures are put in place, no one maintains them. I can give you enough examples to ramble on for days. But a couple

 

The one that winds me up most is permeable block paving. Permeable until the gaps block of with dirt and moss. About 2 years in most cases. Then its just impermeable. Utter bollocks. Just a box ticking excercise. Supermarket near stratford on avon.

 

Tingewick bypass. Built and surfaced with porus tarmac. No surprise it failed in short order due to freezing. Resurfaced with normal surface. Same road has some extensive drainage. Problem is, its completely blocked. Bear in mind this is only 20 or so years old so all built to relevant standard. Drains are blocked because bucks council abandoned drain clearance over a decade ago. So the rain of 1/2 mile of road ends up in one place, flood over road and straight into the river. Been like it years.

 

New housing estate in buckingham. Big balancing pond and connected to exsisting culvert to river. Pond full of vegetation. Council wont take it on. Developer doesnt give a toss. Its compromised already. Give it a few more years it will achieve nothing. Estate of 400 houses feeding into that culvert. Developer will wind up that company and no one will look after it. 

 

Ref A/C. Maybe i should have expanded. If you have a/c, then part of the deal is your own solar big enough to drive it. Zero demand on grid. Zero pollution. Bebefit A2A much easier to fit, get right, and for owners to understanmd. ie, press button, heat comes out.

[Roger440]

15 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

Better stay clear of climate change then, as it appears to divide politicians and the media along lines which are common with many other aspects of politics.

 

Not really. We have discussed on here at length. Its not got political previously.

 

Always good to remember that not everyone, will share your view. Which is where it inevitably goes pear shaped. Theres other places for that. Take it there.

 

 

[Roger440]

14 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

Back to the original post, I read earlier that Indra don't expect to have a Chademo bi directional charger available till 2025 so how they envisage the Power Pack scheme working is anyone's guess?? Anyone know their plans??

 

And back to what i said earlier too. Unfathomable to normal people. What does any of that mean?

[JamesPa]

31 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

Not really. We have discussed on here at length. Its not got political previously.

 

Always good to remember that not everyone, will share your view. Which is where it inevitably goes pear shaped. Theres other places for that. Take it there.

 

 

Here is a quote from your post on page 2 of this thread. 

 

"The government should be ensuring the infrastructure is capable of the demands placed upon it. Not me. Not sure why i should be covering (and funding) their incompetence?"

 

Nothing political there of course.

 

Anyway I'm happy to leave it and return to the topic of the thread!

[JamesPa]

49 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

Back to the original post, I read earlier that Indra don't expect to have a Chademo bi directional charger available till 2025 so how they envisage the Power Pack scheme working is anyone's guess?? Anyone know their plans??

Funny you should ask, I was wondering that.  The wallbox octopus say they support appears no longer to be available.  So unless you happen to have one the offer is currently unavailable to you.  Octopus do say that they are 'working on further integrations'.

[Gone West]

15 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Here is a picture of a beef farm near to me.

Here is a picture of the field next to my garden. In this part of the country a good farmer takes cattle in for the winter to stop the fields being damaged by the heavy animals and puts sheep in. Showing that picture, to me, proves you are clutching at straws and have lost the arguement.

 

 

[FuerteStu]

4 minutes ago, Gone West said:

Here is a picture of the field next to my garden. In this part of the country a good farmer takes cattle in for the winter to stop the fields being damaged by the heavy animals and puts sheep in. Showing that picture, to me, proves you are clutching at straws and have lost the arguement.

 

 

Exactly this. 

 

A good tradesman doesn't leave his tools out in the rain to get trashed, a good farmer doesn't trash the land he makes his living from. 

 

Him showing a dozen animals in poor conditions just highlights the unsustainable situation we're in. Things need to go backwards to how they were before the global economy and mass production caused all the problems mentioned in this thread. 

 

[PaulRLondon]

I'm a little confused with all this. The Blink EQ200 is out with Type 2 V2G supported. So if I have a car that supports V2G (I do) and EV solar panels with battery and G99 (I do) and on an export tariff (I do) so how does this 'just work'. Is it the charger, the eq200 for example, that will start pushing electricity to the grid for me?

[JohnMo]

1 minute ago, PaulRLondon said:

I'm a little confused with all this. The Blink EQ200 is out with Type 2 V2G supported. So if I have a car that supports V2G (I do) and EV solar panels with battery and G99 (I do) and on an export tariff (I do) so how does this 'just work'. Is it the charger, the eq200 for example, that will start pushing electricity to the grid for me?

Octopus will have or need to have a charger they can control. At a time of their choosing they will suck energy out of the car. Later they will refill to a full charge.

[SteamyTea]

32 minutes ago, Gone West said:

Showing that picture, to me, proves you are clutching at straws and have lost the arguement.

No it does not, just shows that there is a huge variation in farming practices, just as there is in shopping practices.

 

(I think people forget that I did a ResM in Agriculture, predominately dairy farms)

[joe90]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

just shows that there is a huge variation in farming practices, just as there is in shopping practices.

I agree, it’s about choice.

[FuerteStu]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

No it does not, just shows that there is a huge variation in farming practices, just as there is in shopping practices.

 

(I think people forget that I did a ResM in Agriculture, predominately dairy farms)

Once again you're humblebragging about the fact you've studied the systems that have caused all the problems on this planet. 

 

Yet offering no reasonable suggestions about the way forward. 

 

Is almost as if those studies have conditioned you to accept them as the only way.. 

 

History will tell you that no system stays the same, they will always change. 

 

So let's agree that people need educating about the costs of their current consumption and the benefits of a local economies. 

[Kelvin]

2 hours ago, FuerteStu said:

Exactly this. 

 

A good tradesman doesn't leave his tools out in the rain to get trashed, a good farmer doesn't trash the land he makes his living from. 

 

Him showing a dozen animals in poor conditions just highlights the unsustainable situation we're in. Things need to go backwards to how they were before the global economy and mass production caused all the problems mentioned in this thread. 

 

Exactly. The field that adjoins our land has livestock rotated through it. Cows with calves a few months ago and now sheep. This keeps the grass down and the weeds in control while not damaging the ground. The livestock here is sent to a local abattoir and ends up at the local butcher. Same with the fruit as we buy that direct from the farmer. Where we used to live our paddock backed onto a farm that provided eggs for The Happy Egg company. The chickens had free range of 15 acres of land and while there were thousands of chickens in the field you’d never really guess that just by looking as they were so spread out. 
 

Sadly I’m not entirely convinced we can fix the problems we’ve created. We can mitigate some of the effects of the changing climate. However this argument that the UK is so small that anything we do is negligible compared to the much larger polluters is specious. It’s about intent and everyone doing something to reduce their footprint both at a macro scale and a micro scale. An example of this is the rainwater attenuation we put in. We didn’t strictly have to but we did anyway because the town below us is prone to flooding and we didn’t want to add to the problem. 
 

 

Edited February 25 by Kelvin

[Dillsue]

7 hours ago, PaulRLondon said:

I'm a little confused with all this. The Blink EQ200 is out with Type 2 V2G supported. So if I have a car that supports V2G (I do) and EV solar panels with battery and G99 (I do) and on an export tariff (I do) so how does this 'just work'. Is it the charger, the eq200 for example, that will start pushing electricity to the grid for me?

You need both the car and the charger to support bi directional charging/discharging. The car and the charger have to be built to the same standard which Octopus are saying needs to be Chademo for their power pack scheme. In the UK, other than Chademo I don't think there's any other working standard available yet but I think CCS is planned to support it some time in the future.

 

I beleive grid connected Chademo is only in use in the UK for trials hence me asking if anyone knows what Octopus have planned for public use

[Dillsue]

18 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

And back to what i said earlier too. Unfathomable to normal people. What does any of that mean?

Indra- manufacturer of EV chargers

Chademo- specification for bi directional charging(putting power into an EVs battery and taking it out again when you need/want it

Power pack- Octopus scheme to use your EV battery linked to in first post.

[Gone West]

7 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

No it does not, just shows that there is a huge variation in farming practices, just as there is in shopping practices.

Your picture showed very poor farming practice and not something I've seen since living down here. As it shows poor farming practice it will be in a very small minority of cases and not representative of beef farming in Cornwall. So why make the comment you did about beef farming in Cornwall? If you really think importing beef from Australia or the Americas full of growth hormone and antibiotics is better than local beef, that's fine, but you won't convince me.

[Dillsue]

5 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Sadly I’m not entirely convinced we can fix the problems we’ve created. We can mitigate some of the effects of the changing climate.

I don't think theres any doubt we can fix the mess we've made to the climate/environment but it's likely gonna take many decades, be very painful for much of the world's population and eyewateringly expensive

[Kelvin]

57 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

I don't think theres any doubt we can fix the mess we've made to the climate/environment but it's likely gonna take many decades, be very painful for much of the world's population and eyewateringly expensive

There’s plenty of doubt we can. Last year the IPCC issued a report saying we are at last chance saloon to address it. 

[Dillsue]

49 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

There’s plenty of doubt we can. Last year the IPCC issued a report saying we are at last chance saloon to address it. 

Stop doing all the things we shouldnt in the next 5 years, job done with recovery over the next decades. Like I said gonna be very painful and expensive.

 

Particularly in the first world, we don't have the appetite for it as most people aren't capable of assessing and appreciating the risk to them and their offspring and don't give a monkeys about the billions they aren't acquainted with.