Greetings from Norway

[catwoman]

^ . . when you've nothing else, there's always facetious

[corriescar66]

True. Sadly I don't have a smart meter to watch and enjoy. Still, I'm glad you admit defeat.

[Catmad]

Just something else to think about guys and gals... Hydo power stations rely on the water being pumped back up the mountain at off peak times ie through the night so where do you think the energy comes from to power the pumps.......?

[JOCK55]

Sorry Catmad, I believe you are incorrect with your assertion that Hydropower Stations in UK are "Pumped Storage" Power stations. Some are, but very few. The majority use Dams to control the availability and quantity of water required to drive electrical generation turbines. The dams are filled by rainfall, river flow and snow melt. The water is used once and then allowed to flow away.

In a report generated by the World Atlas of Hydropower and Dams, it found that in the UK we generate over 5,885 GigaWatt per Year using purely hydro, with an additional 2,800 MegaWatt per Year capacity of existing pumped storage. Pumped storage is becoming more prevalent as most of the naturally occurring hydropower sites have been exploited, but has a long way to go to catch up.

Ipso Facto, very little power is currently used to recirculate the water used at the moment.

[catwoman]

Hi Catmad, I think you've raised an interesting question. One of the big ones of those lame excuses that naysayers come up with is that there's no point generating/using renewably sourced electricity if you still use some non-renewable resources to do it. For some strange reason it's apparently an 'all-or-nothing' equation to a closed mind.

If you're interested and want to find out how stored hydro power generation still plays a vital part in balancing grid demand, Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged Show made a very well informed video about a year ago, touring the installation at Dinorwig, Wales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McByJeX2evM

Thanks again to Smitten for starting us down this remarkable off-topic thread, I'm loving how it is developing and highlighting all the challenges and psychologies at play behind the fossils/renewables debate, it's so out there!

[Smitten]

Thanks Catwoman. All I had to do was post a snap of a Tesla charging and the rest just happened! Fascinating debate though. Interestingly I would say there are far fewer EVs on the road in the rural parts of Norway than in and around Bergen and Oslo and also the charging network is less in evidence so I suspect it's still quite a task to use an EV regularly here on longer journeys if you stay far from major routes, unless it's a Tesla. I opted for a petrol rental for a 7 day driving holiday but could easily have rented an EV for the same money but not being used to the technology I admit I had sone range and charging anxiety. I am glad I did as I have not seen that many public charging points away from the main towns.

[Catmad]

The renewable debate is easy to solve. You have wind, solar, tidal, hydro with baseload provided by nuclear = total energy system as renewable as possible.

[Smitten]

I conducted a small survey driving back to Bergen for about 4.5 hours on the E39 (basically an A road single carriageway for most part from Denmark to Northern Norway. I counted just 13 EVs and of these there was 1 Jaguar, 1 BMW and the rest were Tesla's. Once I arrived in Bergen I rapidly lost count but the most common EV was Tesla by miles I would say 75% of what I saw. Equal numbers of Nissan Leaf and BMWs with a smattering of Jag EVs (4 in total) and Golf he's. Morning rush hour on the way to the airport saw a stampede of EVs in the bus lanes, I would say probably 15% to 20% of the traffic was electric and it was a sight to behold. I gather this privilege will soon be ended due to the sheer number of EVs blocking the bus lanes...quite an eye opener. Nice to see Jaguar represented abroad but only saw 1 F type and 2 F Paces during whole week long visit and no Xe or Xf models at all. Not a scientific survey by any means but, interesting hopefully.

[catwoman]

Norway: Electric car sales continue climbing...
https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/06/no ... ady-climb/

While here in the UK...
https://www.electrive.com/2019/03/29/uk ... ev-uptake/


SMMT provide regular stats for new EV sales in the UK: https://www.smmt.co.uk/2019/06/may-ev-registrations-2/ reported a 60.2% increase in demand for battery EVs in 2019, year-to-date, over 2018.

It's also interesting to see what the used car sales trends are for numbers of people swapping out from their aged petrol/diesels to newer pre-owned EVs, instead of yet another ICE vehicle. Used EVs are currently more readily available and more affordable to buy than new ones, as you would expect, and they also fit well with the ethos of people who consider reuse, recycle and repurpose as being important watchwords.

In May SMMT published overall used car sales for Qtr 1 2019 being flat (-0.6%) compared to Qtr 1 2018, but they recorded a "30.7% growth in demand for hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars as 32,272 change hands" for the same period
(source: https://www.smmt.co.uk/2019/05/used-car-sales-q1-2019/ )


Meantime, Jag's XJ production ends in July, with it's EV replacement due in 2020

[catwoman]

Good ol' Arnie, total master of the deadpan one-liner...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXodSqMpuUQ Kicking Gas

Funny thing is I've been having some conversations with sales people at a few dealerships recently who are still like this....