Electric Charge points
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The installation of vehicle charging points should be welcomed- I am however unclear about the costs in the Council report — they have applied for capital funding from Welsh Government but they have not pout any details in the report about who pays for the electric. In many places such as Hotels, Cheshire Okas, Broughton Retail Park all provide FREE electric.
Will the electricity be free and therefore a charge to ratepayers in Wrexham, will it be paid for out of the car park charges (result in less net income ).
Or will it be chargeable at a level that the Council thunk they can make profits?The way it was explained to us was there would be a er, charge, for the charge https://www.wrexham.com/news/come-to-wrexham-see-wrexham-spend-some-money-and-also-charge-your-car-145839.html
Lead Member for Place – Environment and Transport, Councillor David A Bithell set the scene for the future of car usage in town: “If you park say in Waterworld, you pay your fee and if you have one of these electric or hybrid cars you can plug in, and there is then a charge for the electric. My understanding is the charge for the electric is very very low.”
I hope they put a few on the Councillors/ Top Management car park at Guildhall to encourage them to go green and set an example to Council staff.
Due to the lack of charging points, both locally and nationally, if any are fitted at the Guildhall then they should be available to everyone.
The whole issue of electric cars and their relative greenness is an interesting one.
On the one hand, yes an increase in electric cars within the town centre would reduce pollutants and emissions here. But of course a surge in use of electric cars would also cause of surge of energy required from the National Grid, which still has a large number of polluting power plants operating on it. So you reduce emissions in one location to produce them elsewhere.
The current electric mix on the national grid is roughly 51% nationally produced fossil fuel polluting energy sources (10% coal and 41% gas) vs 49% taken from either non-polluting nuclear or renewable sources or imported in from foreign countries of unknown generated origin.
Source: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
So in order for electric cars to be 100% genuine green – any increase in power demand as the number of electric vehicles plugged into the national grid increases needs to be met from non-polluting sources. So this will probably mean an increase in wind, solar and tidal projects plus huge nuclear power plants like Hinckley Point C.
In the most optimistic scenarios in 12 years time by 2030, a projected 9m electric cars could be on the road vs the 100,000+ on British roads today – so it will be interesting to see how the green energy mix increases in that time as well. There are also other issues of scale when everyone moves over to electric where you could get a huge peak domestic power surge around 5-6pm where everyone gets home and then plugs their cars into charge on top of the existing tea time surge. They would have to urge people to charge their cars smartly and stagger the demand about across the whole day. I suppose a broad range of electric charge power points across the county and rest of the country would allow people to charge their cars at different times and therefore minimise any surge activity.
In terms of the actual phased strategy planned for the roll-out of charge points around Wrexham I think it is a fairly sound idea putting them into the main council owned car parks and then to industrial estates and the bus station etc… I cannot actually find fault in it, unless of course implementation doesn’t go to plan. So we will have to wait and see.
Most of these charging points you see out and about in car parks etc seem a bit of a gimmick to me, more a public image promotion for whatever location they are in and hence why most are free to use.
What really should be happening if the country is serious about getting us all in electric cars is installing a charge point in every new home built. I can see a collaboration between Redrow and Toyota for example. ‘Buy a new house and get 20% off a Prius’.By the time this infrastructure is in place hew hydrogen driven cars will be coming on the market. The biggest issue with this electric technology is the need for increased energy generation to meet the demand- projects such as Wylfa B and Swansea Bay tidal barrage will not be generating energy until the late 2020s and they are only being used to replace obsolete generation plans these will be powered by hydrogen taken out of your ordinary tap water.
The capital investment in these plants is billions whereas the technology designs for hydrogen powers is £10’s of millions with a payback through the sale of every new car or conversion kit. All of which will run on water.
http://www.nextgreencar.com/fuelcellcars/
Even trains will be hydrogen powered by mid-2020’s – look at the plans already for Chester station and their hydrogen storage units.
[quote quote=145957]
The capital investment in these plants is billions whereas the technology designs for hydrogen powers is £10’s of millions with a payback through the sale of every new car or conversion kit. All of which will run on water.[/quote]It’s all fascinating stuff, you can’t help but feel that all of these OPEC countries etc… definitely have a vested interest in putting the breaks on the development of such amazing clean technology for as long as possible to maximise usage of oil reserves and revenues.
This is good news,the infrastructure is needed before most people will move to electric especially in Wrexham where a lot of people don’t have drives so can’t charge at home.
I always thought hydrogen cars would be best but virtually no one is making cars & the infrastructure would be more expensive than electric.
Quick charge is the only way to go so good on the council going for 7kw BUT closer to 22kw would be better that would fully charge the car within 3 to 4 hours
[quote quote=145951]The whole issue of electric cars and their relative greenness is an interesting one.
On the one hand, yes an increase in electric cars within the town centre would reduce pollutants and emissions here. But of course a surge in use of electric cars would also cause of surge of energy required from the National Grid, which still has a large number of polluting power plants operating on it. So you reduce emissions in one location to produce them elsewhere.[/quote]
There was a really good talk on this subject last night at Glyndwr.* Over their whole life electric are better CO2 wise than internal combustion engine, but the manufacture of new cars does still create a lot of CO2. Running big generators at optimised speeds is a lot more efficient than a car engine.
* There is enough electricity around to charge electric cars in the short/medium term, but it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.
* Charging overnight when you get home will make use of the glut of spare capacity in the system.
* When charging points become “smart”, cars will charge in the early hours but feed back into the grid for the ~18 hours a day your car isn’t being used.Things are certainly going to get interesting over the next 10 years.
Something that nobody seems to have mentioned. With all these cheap to run, low tax, subsidised vehicles, there will be a lot more traffic on the roads….
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