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Colin Brown's avatar

Great conversation. I hadn't listened to Greg Jackson before and he came across really clearly.

His mother would definitely be proud! Happy to introduce you to the team running Finn Grid.

Finland has made that transition (is across the street) so always good to understand how their mix works and what a modern grid looks like.

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Richard Preece's avatar

Excellent. There is much there to develop a competing narrative to counter the populists.

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David Thielen's avatar

Assuming the issue that brought the grid down was lack of inertia (very likely), there are two zero carbon ways to address this:

1. Figure out how to do so with batteries and electronic controllers providing inertia from the batteries. This will take time to get right but is doable.

2. Build nuclear plants. The large nuclear plants have tremendous inertia.

One thing I think you all got a little wrong. When load increases, that increases the counter magnetic force on a turbine. The turbine then increases the gas it burns to counter that force - to keep itself at 60 (or 50 in Europe)Hz.

I go into detail about the fact that we don’t face this issue in Colorado. YET!

https://liberalandlovingit.substack.com/p/can-the-spainportugal-blackout-happen

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Charlotte Senior's avatar

Loved the conversation. I’ve been a long time exponential view subscriber and Octopus Energy customer. I wanted to make 2 comments / observations on the comment that we need to get across the road quicker. My observations taken from my own experience as a loyal octopus energy customer shouldn’t be taken as criticisms. I love the innovation at Octopus Energy and the customer service is amazing; every person I’ve interacted with has been super helpful .

Observation 1: I’m fortunate enough to own 2 homes; one a 5 bed detached house the other a 2 bed end of terrace with a large garden. Both have needed their boilers replacing in the last 12 months (the 2 bed is having its boiler replaced this week). I was keen to replace the boilers with ASHPs . octopus energy came out to survey the 5 bedroom house and concluded that it was too large for them. Octopus Energy also evaluated the 2 bed property and there wasn’t enough outside space for the ASHP. For me this shows the enormous task required to retrofit the uk housing stock with ASHP or find an alternative solution for providing renewable heating to homes.

Observation 2: again I’m fortunate enough to own 2 full electric vehicles. I’ve been looking a battery storage for our homes for the last 2 to 3 years but failing to commit knowing that the battery technology will get better. Our 2 EVs sit on our drive most of the day. Having listened to the conversation I put the following into chatGPT 4.5 model:

I have a 2023 Tesla Model 3 and a 2023 Audi e-Tron 50 which are both fully electric. I’m on the Octopus Go energy tariff and have a pod point charger that I use to charge them at home.

Currently I can only plug in the Audi at any time to receive cheap electricity if octopus want to discharge electricity to balance the grid and have to charge the Tesla between 11.30 pm and 5.30 pm.

I would like to know if there is a way I can register both cars so either can be plugged in to work as battery storage.

I would also like to know if either of them can be used to power my house and act as battery storage when not being used as a car.

I got the following response:

Currently, Octopus Energy’s Intelligent Octopus Go tariff supports integration with only one electric vehicle (EV) per account. This means you can register either your 2023 Tesla Model 3 or your 2023 Audi e-Tron 50 for smart charging, but not both simultaneously. However, you can manually switch between vehicles by disconnecting one and connecting the other through the Octopus Energy app. 

Alternatively, if you have a compatible smart charger, such as an Ohme charger, you can integrate it with Intelligent Octopus Go. This setup allows the charger to manage the charging schedule, enabling you to charge multiple EVs. However, the system won’t distinguish between different vehicles, so it’s essential to ensure that the charging preferences set in the app align with the battery capacities of your EVs. 

Regarding using your EVs as home battery storage, the 2023 Audi e-Tron 50 does not support vehicle-to-home (V2H) or vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities. As for the 2023 Tesla Model 3, while Tesla has announced plans to introduce bidirectional charging capabilities by 2025, this feature is not currently available. Therefore, at this time, neither of your vehicles can be used to power your home or act as battery storage.  

If you’re interested in home energy storage solutions, you might consider installing a dedicated home battery system, such as the Tesla Powerwall, which can store energy for use during peak times or power outages.

I haven’t verified the response based on the sources provided but assuming it’s not hallucinating it also shows what further innovation is required to scale up V2H technology.

I’m intrigued by the data from exponential view that said Norway (?) is now 97% electric vehicles (might have got that slightly wrong) as I imagine that the majority of those vehicles can’t do V2H either.

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