Hello,
mgerhard74 wrote: ↑Sunday 20 May 2018 17:21
Our PV ownconsumtion rate decrease from about 33% to 42% in april and 55% in may. Every kilometer of our Nissan Leaf is free. (and of course free of fuel and co2)
Well, as usual, free until you consider all the energy that was used for battery manufacturing and needed ore extraction... Same for PV panels: several 10's of sq-meters resulting from another heavy energy eater, silicon foundry. Lets' not speak about recycling side.
A few years ago, PV was indeed considered such a waste that it was only considered to electrify areas that could not be wired easily to the public electric network! Now governments give money for equipments that will struggle for decades to just give back the energy that was needed to manufacture them, provided you don't have an heavy wind or hail period that'll break everything. As well as for electric cars that overweight their fuel counterparts by 30% in average.
This is just crazy.
If you consider a french Renault Zoe (maybe the most successful electric car in Fra,ce: A city car weighting 1450kg!) compared to a suzuki swift (another city car, with current generation at 900kg in average after loosing 150kg since last generation), that can be up to 60% overweight for the electric version that will only allow you to drive 200/300km!
=> With current PV and battery tech, it's everything but CO2 free.
The only interest is money: Buying your next 2 decades electricity once now (if you're lucky), at current energy cost that drive PV panels/battery manufacturing costs. As energy will cost more and more, you main save money.
But in the end, if everyone does the same, this will just accelerate our current problems.
An effort on current average car weight and aerodynamics (forget SUV's and such small dick compensators, as marketing guys qualify them in the automotive industry!) with current engine technology could do the job of an electric counterpart for half the weight at 3 to 5l/100km fuel consumption.
The miracle electric battery tech, we still wait for it since the very first electric car, named "Jamais Contente" (="Never Happy"!):
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_contente