The Big Battery Factory

[threegee]

4 hours ago, Alan Edgar (Eggy1948) said:

Looks like the UK wants to reduce carbon emissions by less battery plants than the rest of Europe and more car sharing

Carbon emissions aren't the problem.  The major problems with ICE are:

• The UK has depleted its own oil reserves.
• It can only get more expensive.
• There's a huge, hidden health problem from NOX emissions.
• It's extremely inefficient as a method of propulsion (circa 17% efficiency).
• It's all in the wrong places on earth, so costs more energy to transport.
• It costs lives in other ways: practically every war in modern times has oil as root cause.

Lots of more minor problems too.  Think gas street lamps in the age of the electric light bulb - that's where we are currently at!  People resisting EVs are of exactly the same mentality as those silly people in the 1910s claiming that the horseless carriage would never catch on.

[Vic Patterson]

2 hours ago, threegee said:

People resisting EVs are of exactly the same mentality as those silly people in the 1910s claiming that the horseless carriage would never catch on.

Because in 1910 most vehicles were steam or electric powered and the horseless carriage wasn’t economically viable until gasoline (petrol) driven carriages were developed, Petrol was a cheap throw way byproduct! A similar situation as today’s EV’s until they are developed enough to be as practical replacements.

I look forward to be able to buy and use an EV, but because of my location, climate and costs they are still prohibitive, my alternate vehicles only needs petrol to start but runs on anything flammable (moonshine etc!) and doesn’t need a battery.

2 hours ago, threegee said:

The UK has depleted its own oil reserves.

Alberta has an abundance of oil, gas and coal, No shortage here.

 

 

2 hours ago, threegee said:

It's extremely inefficient as a method of propulsion (circa 17% efficiency).

ICE 30%. EV 80%

2 hours ago, threegee said:

It's all in the wrong places on earth, so costs more energy to transport.

Canada Government is blocking the use of Alberta pipelines! (we are landlocked)

You do make a lot of good points three gee.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Vic Patterson

[threegee]

4 hours ago, Vic Patterson said:

  6 hours ago, threegee said:

It's extremely inefficient as a method of propulsion (circa 17% efficiency).

ICE 30%. EV 80%

OK, we are both right.  Power directly from the engine is at around 30%, but power into the wheels is at around 17% efficiency. Also, ICE engines can't recover the kinetic energy of the vehicle, so it's wasted in the braking system.  This can be a huge factor as Pepsi are reporting with their new semis..

Quote

"Going across Donner Pass and back from [Sacramento] to Nevada, we're able to, on the trip back, actually zero out, in terms of state of charge improving due to regenerative braking… It extends range for us in a way that is invaluable."

-- Dejan Antunović, Pepsi

Of course, the waste heat from the engine can be very useful in cold climates, so there can be some offset.  This doesn't seem to have influence our Norwegian friends too much, though, as more than 80% of their new vehicle purchases are now EVs.

[Vic Patterson]

I'm looking forward to the day EV is practical here, but it's still not here, there are two EV's here in town, both Tesla, but no charging stations within a 120 miles, they can reach the next town north but needs a partial recharge to get home, a full charge is needed to reach the city, same to return, a long time wasted if you're just picking up at he airport or for a short medical appointment.

Regenerative braking is only good for inefficient driving! I often drive to the next town south 95 miles and not touch the brake, in the mountains and using cruise control, or to the city 300 miles and only brake at the gas station.

I suspect the normal driving distances in Norway is much less and have a battery charging infrastructure in place, their winter is shorter and not as severe as here. 

For now Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) cars would be ideal. My daughter lives close to the city, drives a Prius and loves it.

[threegee]

It's not simply braking, your engine/transmission is contributing lots of drag too.  There's a charging station in practically every garage or on every drive - it's called a wall outlet.  We quite happily used the little box that came with the car for over a year, and could still get by without the 3-phase wall charger.  But it's nice to know that we can head off on a long trip at max capacity at very little notice, and that we can offer destination charging to visiting friends.  I got an extra long Type 2 cable so that it will reach under the door onto our back lane: one day someone will thank me for this!

People have been fed the idea that you must have dedicated fast chargers everywhere, but the reality is that all you need is to adjust your mindset away from your expensive dinosaur juice addiction.  My only wish is that our wall charger and the car could agree to a slower charging rate, as even the minimum setting (5A of 3-phase) generally tops up the car in little more than an hour of cheap rate power when actually I want to extend this over much more of the cheap rate period.

So IMHO too much is made of charging times.  Very rarely have we ever been ready to go from a stop before the car was, and not having to queue to pay at service stations is an extra bonus. You can be taking on power within a few seconds of arriving, and it's simply pull the connector and go.  In fact, there have been occasions when a short charging time has been a bit of a pain: getting to the top floor of a hotel and flopping down on the bed to almost immediately get a message that the charge is complete, and you're expected to remove the vehicle from the charger within ten minutes!  Always best to find a hotel with a reserved destination charger that tops you up overnight for free.  We arrived at one posh Italian hotel in the early hours to find the manager - no less - standing ready to remove the reserved sign right outside the main entrance to enable us to plug in for a free overnight charge.  No lugging our bags from the car park, and very satisfied customers who will definitely revisit.

PHEVs are a bit of a joke when they park up at public chargers in an attempt to bolster their tiny electric range, and actually annoy other EV owners.  There's a usage case for people who do short commutes and can filch power from an employer, but generally they are the worst of both worlds: none of the maintenance savings and very little fuel saving to compensate for all the extra complexity.  I convinced one of our neighbours here to wait for an affordable proper EV, and I'm sure that's coming fairly soon now.

I agree that you've a special case there, but in a different way we were "way out in the styx" in the first year or two.  We didn't even have any service available this end of Italy, let alone fast public charging.  Any concerns we had were very easily overcome, and we'll never buy another ICE vehicle.  I will bet you are going to see some Cybertrucks locally in the next year - 18 months max!

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/northumberland-britishvolt-electric-car-battery-27533683?fbclid=IwAR3ZFT-qCYSXLdf1VEVzuonUtNl1NL3OcW2hjXVlJG7Aeo9_Z0EJm1y9sDc

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/council/councillors-call-for-answers-on-future-of-britishvolt-site-in-northumberland-4348524?fbclid=IwAR3nydp_Z5mucBHAowLTq2mPZQqeia_PJXNpw2q2fOt52XHPihmGvzJ1m0g

 

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

BBC news latest update :- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67149907?fbclid=IwAR3azyuk2WG0XaKDM2smXxrlGqbFyE_MhhPSVEViAKTC6_km1hw5mmdsxts

Edited October 19, 2023 by Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

 

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2024-02-15/britishvolt-administrators-in-negotiations-with-potential-new-buyers?fbclid=IwAR2y_w_7jLEwHIS4IlO9P-qHTNsNfxscb6LKcW96bL-0TWzBBh0J-SobV_k

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

 

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/britishvolt-cambois-northumberland-county-council-28887437?fbclid=IwAR20CimeFvKKDjmhSdLRo4siOuIeapWcpQYDB2t1zHutHaFHv8_NcRCzhvM

[threegee]

I've likely said this before, but at the risk of becoming boring... 😁

Looking back, it will be no bad thing that early expectations regarding Cambois weren't met.  The reason I say this is that world battery prices are on spectacular decline (per kilowatt) right now.  What looked economic a few months back could easily turn into a white elephant today.  There are so many plants now in construction that there's going to be a painful shake-out in the not too distant future.  Also, Lithium batteries are rapidly becoming a strategic material: what would the military now do without its modern armada of drones?!  Import barriers and local incentives are becoming the order of the day.  So if you don't have a large enough domestic market established to take all the output, it's doomed from the start.

It's always nice to be on the cutting edge of new technologies, but those who play with sharp objects...  Doing what you do do well still has a lot to say for it.  If you consulted Elon Musk on this, he'd certainly say start at the downstream end small and then vertically integrate backwards.  Nice that some of this is already going on:-

https://etn.news/energy-storage/rimac-energy-opens-new-bess-manufacturing-facility-in-the-uk

[Vic Patterson]

6 hours ago, threegee said:

I've likely said this before, but at the risk of becoming boring... 😁

Looking back, it will be no bad thing that early expectations regarding Cambois weren't met.  The reason I say this is that world battery prices are on spectacular decline (per kilowatt) right now.  What looked economic a few months back could easily turn into a white elephant today.  There are so many plants now in construction that there's going to be a painful shake-out in the not too distant future.  Also, Lithium batteries are rapidly becoming a strategic material: what would the military now do without its modern armada of drones?!  Import barriers and local incentives are becoming the order of the day.  So if you don't have a large enough domestic market established to take all the output, it's doomed from the start.

It's always nice to be on the cutting edge of new technologies, but those who play with sharp objects...  Doing what you do do well still has a lot to say for it.  If you consulted Elon Musk on this, he'd certainly say start at the downstream end small and then vertically integrate backwards.  Nice that some of this is already going on:-

https://etn.news/energy-storage/rimac-energy-opens-new-bess-manufacturing-facility-in-the-uk

Our Government (Canadian) is giving away millions to foreign companies to come and build facilities for making batteries, we have most of the "ingredients" to make them, but the environmentalists rather we get others mine it, using less friendly methods. 

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

9 hours ago, threegee said:

I've likely said this before, but at the risk of becoming boring... 😁

Looking back, it will be no bad thing that early expectations regarding Cambois weren't met.  The reason I say this is that world battery prices are on spectacular decline (per kilowatt) right now.  What looked economic a few months back could easily turn into a white elephant today.  There are so many plants now in construction that there's going to be a painful shake-out in the not too distant future.  Also, Lithium batteries are rapidly becoming a strategic material: what would the military now do without its modern armada of drones?!  Import barriers and local incentives are becoming the order of the day.  So if you don't have a large enough domestic market established to take all the output, it's doomed from the start.

It's always nice to be on the cutting edge of new technologies, but those who play with sharp objects...  Doing what you do do well still has a lot to say for it.  If you consulted Elon Musk on this, he'd certainly say start at the downstream end small and then vertically integrate backwards.  Nice that some of this is already going on:-

https://etn.news/energy-storage/rimac-energy-opens-new-bess-manufacturing-facility-in-the-uk

How many battery factories are there in the UK?

 

 

one factory

 

The UK only has one factory producing batteries at “giga” scale: a site run by the Chinese-owned AESC in Sunderland that supplies Nissan. It is capable of producing 2 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery capacity a year. Two more gigafactories are due to be built.20 Nov 2023

[threegee]

The Nissan supplier is piddling compared with other international efforts, so their use of "giga" probably raises some chuckles in international circles.  I seriously doubt whether any of the other UK efforts will get off the ground, as there's already oversupply.

The TYPE of battery matters enormously these days, and by the time you ramp, it's very easy to find that there's no market for what you are producing at any price.  We've seen this before in our area.  Remember the Siemens DRAM factory off the spine road. By the time they were able to produce 1M bit chips in volume, the market had already moved on to 4 Mbit and the factory was a very expensive white elephant. The speed of innovation in batteries at the moment is even faster than that!

[threegee]

Britishvolt’s gigafactory site sold off in electric car blow

The site that had been earmarked for the Britishvolt gigafactory has been bought by Blackstone Credit: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire

US private equity investors have bought the site of what had been hoped would become Britain’s first electric car battery gigafactory in a blow to Britain’s net zero ambitions.

Land in Cambois near Blyth in Northumberland had been expected to become the home of the £3.8bn Britishvolt factory before the company fell into administration last year.

However, Northumberland County Council revealed it has sold the site to Blackstone, which plans to turn the site into a data centre.

Britishvolt, which was backed by mining giant Glencore, collapsed with the loss of more than 200 jobs and had been in line for £100m in funding from the Government via its Automotive Transformation Fund. 

An Australian company, Recharge Industries, had promised to buy the site before itself being hit with a winding up petition. 

The Blackstone deal, for an undisclosed sum, comes after what receivers at Begbies Traynor Group described as a “complex” sales process for the 235-acre site.

Northumberland County Council leader Cllr Glen Sanderson said Blackstone’s plans would lead to an investment of up to £10bn and support as many as 4,300 jobs.

He said: “Driving growth and jobs is a key priority for this Council. Next week, Cabinet will consider this really unique opportunity for Northumberland which offers a huge boost to the regeneration and renaissance of the local area.”

[threegee]

 

Blackstone to Buy Britishvolt Site for Massive QTS Data Center

Alamy

 

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/buildconstruction/blackstone-buy-britishvolt-site-massive-qts-data-center#close-modal

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

8 hours ago, threegee said:

 

Blackstone to Buy Britishvolt Site for Massive QTS Data Center

 Alamy

 

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/buildconstruction/blackstone-buy-britishvolt-site-massive-qts-data-center#close-modal

So if the move for the QTS Data Center is successfull then Cambois will have a cloud hangiing over it for many years to come

[threegee]

Quote

Northumberland County Council leader Cllr Glen Sanderson said Blackstone’s plans would lead to an investment of up to £10bn and support as many as 4,300 jobs.

Question for Councillor Sanderson:  Have you ever been in a modern data centre?  If you have, the one thing you'd have noticed is the distinct lack of human beings.  Yes, a sprinkling of security staff and the odd cleaner, but thousands of jobs?!!!  Though... maybe he means Chinese jobs building the gear, and remote administration, and supervisory jobs in the SE?

Are they going to duct all the waste heat into local homes to provide free super-clean central heating, so providing a REAL benefit to the community?  Now, THAT would be worth having, and any politico worth his/her salt should be pushing for such a scheme.

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

On 16/04/2024 at 12:38, threegee said:

Question for Councillor Sanderson:  Have you ever been in a modern data centre?  If you have, the one thing you'd have noticed is the distinct lack of human beings. 

I agree that the way they talk suggests that there will be 4,00 jobs for the life of the data centre but that has always been  the way they put it to the audience as they attempt to impress the public with 'their' achievment.

Extract from the Financil Times online story -  If successful, it is hoped that the project could attract billions in investment to build one of Europe’s largest data centres and create about 4,000 jobs, the council said. 

I can put up with that nonsense it's the way the world has been informed that Britishvolt, and now Blackstone, are building on the former Blyth Power Station (BPS)  site. I am not aware of BPS having owned all the surrounding plots of land in Cambois. As far as I am concerned Britishvolt have never been on the BPS site. 🤞 

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/politics/blackstone-completes-purchase-of-britishvolt-site-in-northumberland-for-ps10bn-data-centre-project-4613166?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0ya8d4tRxxamma5ImsnoyZ1H6KT_qxijqdBqn6M-fARwjmQU7-A1470Wo_aem_AeYLWyaO5b51Yrao1ZrkYS_7yL0WUjrfVqEon4mYV9d9EszXApeOxRp7yxp-YT3NHc-wBweraBxzy7Q6DssxyLxH#d90wphi9cyd

 

[threegee]

One graph says why:

It's really about the current craze to invest in AI.

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/business/report-outlines-ambition-to-start-work-on-ps10bn-northumberland-data-centre-in-2025-4760845?fbclid=IwY2xjawFCfwJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaoNQaWoeQnies9fiIimPdKJ8TMpHcGJGvEjOnIIaYOWStYvUNN-3P1fsg_aem_Z0NnUoToPzxNfbhgFQPxRA

The purpose of the report is to ‘ensure that potential impacts that could give rise to likely significant effects are proportionately and appropriately addressed’ in an Environmental Impact Assessment.

Data centres similar to this CGI are planned for the Northumberland site. (Photo by QTS/Northumberland County Council)

It addresses issues including ecology, transport and access, air quality, noise and vibration, water, climate, socio-economics, health and visual impact.

 

The report adds that proposals are being developed for an outline planning application, with all matters reserved except for access, for the erection of up to 10 data centres totalling up to 540,000 sq m.

"The proposed development will be a flagship project and one of the largest data centre campuses in Europe,” adds the report.

"It is anticipated that the proposed development will be built out in phases across a period of approximately nine years.

 

"Construction works are anticipated to commence in 2025 once the outline planning permission has been granted.

“Although the details of phasing have yet to be determined, it is currently anticipated that the first phase would comprise the build out of two date centres.”

The campus could draw further investment of between £5bn and £10bn from the centre’s future tenant, likely a tech giant such as Google or Microsoft.

Data centres are used to house computer systems to store and manage large amounts of digital data.

In April, councillors agreed to revise their right to buy back the land in exchange for a fund of up to £110m, set to be invested across the county. Blackstone’s plans were contingent on this being agreed.

The council and Blackstone estimate the project will create 1,600 direct jobs, including 1,200 long-term construction jobs, and over 2,700 indirect jobs.

The site was previously earmarked for an electric car battery gigafactory built by start up firm Britishvolt, but these proposals have now been ditched.

 

[threegee]

How can they predict how many jobs there will be when they don't even know which company will tenant it?  It's actually just a speculation on the current AI fad that some in the financial world think is a bubble that could burst at any time. 

There seems to be one major thing missing in this proposal: the impact on local electricity supplies.  In truth, that's why they want to locate it here - because there's simply not enough available power in the South East!  A planning application has been refused in the Irish Republic recently for this very reason:-

 

 

Incidentally, the projected number of permanent jobs to be created for this proposal is a whopping 50, and that's probably egging it a lot in order to get the thing approved!  Ours isn't even a firm proposal like the Google one, and simply a financial speculation by money-grubbing Blackrock.  The majority of the actual jobs will be fairly lowly paid security, groundsmen, and cleaning jobs. You will probably be able to count the number of on-site technical jobs on your fingers with fingers to spare. Someone is being had or there's an epidemic of wishful thinking in the council!

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

£10bn data centre investment in Northumberland shows UK ‘open for business’ says Starmer

 

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2024-09-26/10bn-data-centre-investment-shows-uk-open-for-business-says-starmer?fbclid=IwY2xjawFiDcZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHW3u9BRGSAaD82D8QwcSDSH0w9O2LcCAJjyWLdRLgGKUGoW4GQmosIAKhw_aem_hZFxFJyrdyhIAdR82QTzsA

 

[Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)]

8 hours ago, Alan Edgar (Eggy1948) said:

£10bn data centre investment in Northumberland shows UK ‘open for business’ says Starmer

 

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2024-09-26/10bn-data-centre-investment-shows-uk-open-for-business-says-starmer?fbclid=IwY2xjawFiDcZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHW3u9BRGSAaD82D8QwcSDSH0w9O2LcCAJjyWLdRLgGKUGoW4GQmosIAKhw_aem_hZFxFJyrdyhIAdR82QTzsA