Hacker News Reader

Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

All politicians from now to the 2030s will be jumping on the "ban petrol cars" bandwagon because it will bring them a lot of votes, but it's an unrealistic goal we will never achieve and we will find ourselves in 10 years with no widespread electric network, a lot of broken promises and a even warmer Earth.

As a climate change alarmist, I consider any "ban on X in < 20 years" promise as wishful thinking or a populist lie, which will eventually turn into a huge cash-grab and tax reliefs for their lobbyist friends that will have gotten into electric by then.

I admire all those that still believe their favourite party will fight climate change.

View on HN

As someone with similar concerns, how far do you think solar can take us? An average solar roof with ~10kWp of solar panels with a battery (an electric car?) should be enough to cover most of the needs of the house, leaving just the car as an external user.

That, and with smart charging (ie off-peak) we could smooth the consumption curve, meaning we could use non-elastic generation (nuclear, ..?) more?

Going to be much more challenging in Europe and cooler climates with less sunshine.

Sunny places like Australia are having the problem of too much solar on the grid now and looking at community batteries and EV charging as ways to offset that and stabilise things.

I'm at +45° north and it should work fine here (I'm basing all my assumptions on where I live). It most definitely wouldn't work in Sweden and Norway, but France and maybe even northern Germany should be fine?

45N is basically northern Mediterranean; most of Europe does not have similar climate. It does not work fine even at 48N during november-february.

I just did some quick calculations (which might be wrong, but maybe not by orders of magnitude) based on reported numbers on the internet. It seems that powering a medium sized air source heat pump purely on solar in a UK winter would require a £34K investment in solar panels, covering nearly 300 square metres. Not exactly viable per property in city-density housing.

City dense will never work since skyscrapers have ridiculously low roof amounts compared to the populace.

Also, as far as heating goes, passive houses should need almost nothing for the winter (still need to heat water for showering, etc. though).

E: Can you share your numbers? A 10kWp plant that I had in mind is ~50m^2 - 30x330kWp panels at about 1.6m^2 each, so did you mean you actually need a 60kWp plant?

Sorry, I didn't save the numbers.. But yeah, sounds right - based on reports that we can only expect 1/5th of the output per panel in winter.

"Passive houses" are not going to happen in the UK for the vast majority of the population in my lifetime!

Makes one to think how much of the solar capacity will end up simply unused during peaks. That is it is there, but the relays have disconnected it. As we simply will not have enough places to sink it all and for grid stability you can't produce more than you use...

“PV Diverters” supposedly remedy that problem. They use current transformers to detect when the home’s solar supply is outstripping its demand, and then switch on power consuming devices like electric water heating / air conditioning so the power isn’t wasted.

Unfortunately one of the biggest technical problems with renewables is that we still lack an efficient way to deal with energy storage. It's still relatively expensive, inefficient, and creating waste. Maybe in 20-30 years you will be able to live in the winter using the energy produced during the summer and stored in batteries that are cheap and 100% recyclable, but it's not a reality yet.

20-30 years is optimistic IMHO. We're still a huge technological breakthrough in batteries away for large-scale, high-capacity energy storage to be viable.

It might happen, but the technology still isn't there, yet we're going all in on renewables, especially in countries like Germany and Italy where nuclear is politically toxic.

10kWp is not enough during winter (november-february) in most of Europe. It would be enough only if you heat by using something else (like gas), not heat pump.

Climate change alarmists don't call themselves "climate change alarmists", that's what climate change deniers call people who don't deny climate change.

Ban petrol cars is bringing votes from whom? I don’t know anybody who supports that.

The vocal people on twitter and left-side of media? Actual voters really don't have much alternatives. At least not once they can vocalise and not get skewered by inclusive people.

Look at country side in Eastern Europe. You think that people are driving around in cars made between 1990-2010 because they are fans of old tech? No they drive those cars, because they don't have money to buy something better.

And those guys are going to support anyone who is going to oppose ICE ban, because for people living on country side it will be absolutely unaffordable to have BEV with range of their current old ICE car.

Why would people who drive 10-30 year old cars, and for whatever reason feel that they need an ICE car, vote against a ban on the sale of new ICE cars starting in a decade?

That doesn't even begin to affect their purchases for 20-40 years and even then, it still doesn't ban plug-in hybrids, that will be their best options for 10 year old cars in about 10 years time anyway?

It just makes no sense.

Because BEVs which they will eventually get will have range of +-50km, which is much less than their current ICE cars for much more money. Is it really that hard to grasp it?

> Is it really that hard to grasp it?

Yes, it is. Are they intentionally not buying the second hand PHEVs Which will probably still be available to buy new at this point? Are they picking their cars at random? Or do they run some kind of rough calculation of expected running costs for their intended usage before they decide to buy it?

If so then the ones that only need 50km daily range can buy the BEV and save on gas, and the other ones can buy the PHEVs and still save on gas, which will probably be pretty expensive since we're talking about the year 2040 at the minimum if they really need to get a car exactly 10 years old, rather than their usual limit of up to 30 year old cars. People happy with 30 yeor old cars will only start to have problems car shopping in the 2060s

You are missing the point. The whole thread is about the fact, that most people will be unable to afford a BEV and cheap ICE won't be available because arbitrary reasons. Those people will then actively vote for populists and they will put a brake or even reverse the green policies.

It is so patently ridiculous, when you are trying to sell old junk BEV as a superior product, while it can't even remotely do what previous ICE with similar age was able to do. People does not understand why they should use inferior product - junk BEV with burnt out battery - and that's the reason why they will be actively detracting any kind of green effort, because current policies are leaving those people behind. Frankly it seems to me that majority of society will be left behind by insensitive and expensive green policies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com