tomo,
That "Connection Guide" was an impressive document. Another scheme that reminds me of Terry Gilliam's Miracle of Flight, where one person invents in-flight movies, another invents the departure lounge, etc., but still nobody had invented the aeroplane. On p22 we have a list of "Impacts", none of which are addressed in the rest of the doc (which I admit I only skimmed), but it includes killer items like over-voltage and overheating. Tsk, tsk. Never mind. Here are all the forms to fill in to connect up.

Another little thought with the V2G, your neighbour may not be able to siphon your tank. He can only do it if the wire to his property is the same phase as the wire to yours. A more sure way would be for him to park his car next to yours, hook up a lead, and "siphon" directly...

And all this charging and discharging has to sap battery capacity. Not such a big deal with a power wall (or whatever), but quite important if your car's range matters to you.

On Harry Hopkins, I'm pretty sure you've pointed me at him previously. I read around a little and came away with the feeling that he was more of a Talleyrand type — an adroit survivor — than a zealot.

Whoever started the rot, it would be nice to see it end.

Ofcom ?

Pffffffffff........

sad sack

MikeHig,

I think it's a pipe dream for longer than that, as is a general uptake of BEVs. The whole thing is science fiction. A few EVs in the street is one thing, but having one in every house is going to require a massive rework of the cabling and equipment. V2G could help a bit, but by adding a lot of extra complexity; weird to be "siphoning your neighbour's tank" so you can go for a drive. How's the electricity bill going to read?

It's an interesting thought about hooking up an "extension lead" between their V2L and home without isolating the home from the grid (presumably during a blackout). People have probably already run into this with portable generators. Not sure what would happen -- just more async inverter noise on the grid, or fry the inverter itself?

I suppose a sensible person would avoid the issue by just running a conventional extension lead to the fridge itself (or whatever) rather than power the whole house with a male-to-male extension lead to a wall socket.

tomo,
The reaction to Durkin's first effort probably did quite a lot to improve his second. Even if his first had been great, it wouldn't have done much to stop the rise of the monster. His second just might help speed its fall.

Quite enjoyed the John Anderson conversation with Richard Epstein (from mid '22) on the Roe vs. Wade overturn in the US. Went nicely into the creeping federalism in the USA (quite familiar with it in Aus. too). He placed the start of the rot further back than I'd have expected, at the FDR regime, when a lot of today's federal "cartels" were put in place.

My guess is that Australia was in its usual position, following about 20 years behind.

"Tom Nelson + Martin Durkin"

Sounds like a massive OFCOM complaint, right there.

https://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/

Robert; tomo: V2G is a deceptively simple concept. As so often, there’s devilry lurking in the detail. The idea is that the cars’ onboard chargers are bi-directional so they can take 400/800V DC from the battery, convert it to 240V AC and push it back into the domestic “charger” (actually just a high-powered 240V connection). However, afaik, there are only 2 cars available in the UK with V2G capability – the Cupra Born and Nissan Leaf (maybe not all models of each) and the Leaf is being withdrawn from the market. So effectively none of the 1 million plus EVs already on the UK roads can supply the grid*.

Secondly, none of the domestic chargers already installed have the necessary safety kit to allow supply to the grid, as mentioned.

So V2G is a pipedream until a) all existing chargers are replaced or upgraded plus all future installations being equipped for grid supply and b) new EVs start to be supplied with V2G built in. Ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.

*Quite a few EVs already have V2L (vehicle-to-load) via one or more 240V AC sockets – useful for powering tools, kettles etc outside the home. I fear that, sooner or later, someone will try to run their house wifi/freezer/TV/ whatever via an extension lead without isolating the house from the mains.

tomo,
The car didn't seem to do too badly at serving up power. It ran the angle grinder ok, and who knows what the inrush current of that welder would be. And the electronics seem to have protected the charging circuits well enough. An annoyance to have a "take to dealer" warning on the dash, but AIUI, everything was still working after the customary power-cycle. I'd give it a pass. If you've been foolish enough to buy an EV in the first place, at least you might not need to buy a generator to keep your fridge running during the ever-more-likely blackouts.

I think "vehicle to grid" is different though, in that it uses the charge port bidirectionally. Such a disappointment to find that your vehicle is already discharged when the blackout starts. Time to crank up the gererator after all...

As for the other link, I suppose it's a mercy that there's only one day of "visibility".

Listened to the Matt Ridley interview again. Was ok, but nothing amazing.

Listened to the McArdle EconTalk again too. She was talking about using Google's Gemini to generate pictures of Popes and other things and how the results were a bit too "culturally diverse". And she was also talking about asking it to write poems about various politically known figures and how it went ahead for lefties, but refused for righties. Etc. Etc. And she said how remarkably quickly Google got on top of the various glaring problems so that Gemini was less obviously biased the next day.

IMO it all comes back to what I said months ago about turning search on its head. All these "draw me a picture" or "write me a poem" problems are essentially "create a greetings card" — a pretty picture, a little ditty — there is no definitive answer. It's up to the user to behave like I do when buying a card: look through them until one turns up that is *apt*.

The user might be in for a long search if he's looking through all possible responses to "Write me a poem about Elon Musk", and there is *no* definitive answer.

Today, Jo Nova is onto a ludicrous indoctrination scheme for Tasmanian children. Particularly liked this bit:

Their channel has 197 videos and only 25 subscribers. Gems like “How can we get people to care about climate change” have amassed all of nine views. Looks like they don’t have the answer.