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Net Work Alan Winstanley This month’s column brings the latest electric vehicle trends and new EV brands about to launch in Britain, with updates on the power generation front and, of course, the latest from the LEO satellite broadband sector. P revious Net Work columns brought news of Britain’s electric vehicle sector as the lurch towards car electrification gathers pace. The UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reports that 52% of all new car registrations in February were battery-powered (BEV), hybrid (HEV), mild hybrid (MHEV) or plug-in hybrid (PHEV). Those BEVs represented 16.5% of all UK February car registrations. Even so, 48% of new cars registered in February were still petrol (gas) or diesel – a far higher proportion than in, say, EV-friendly Norway – but there was of course no reference to used car sales, whether fossil-fuelled or electrically propelled. Despite the interest in new EV cars, the high cost and practical challenges of running them puts them well beyond the reach of many motorists struggling in today’s financial climate. However, the signs are that interest in buying used EVs has cooled dramatically in Britain: wary buyers, already feeling the pinch from the rising cost of living and energy costs, are deterred by the dearth of EV charging points, worries about range anxiety and nagging doubts about becoming lumbered with yesterday’s outdated (or worn out) battery technology. As used EVs are gradually ‘returning to the market’, some secondhand EV models are suffering ‘incredibly large drops’ in value, says car dealer journal Automotive Management. They report that the lack of interest in buying used EV cars is such that some dealerships have stopped stocking them altogether, in order to avoid getting stuck with large inventories of rapidly depreciating electric cars that simply aren’t selling. Highlighted is the Tesla Model 3, which has dropped over 33% on average in the past four months, and Tesla also skewed the market by slashing new car prices by up to 20% earlier this year, as supply finally started to exceed demand. Semiconductor shortages and supply chain problems didn’t help EV sales either, so consequently there is still a keen interest in buying 12 The Atto 3 is BYD’s (Build Your Dream) first EV to launch in Britain, featuring a futuristic interior and ‘Blade’ battery. sensibly priced petrol cars instead. It seems there is plenty of life left in older petrol cars before sales of new ones are banned altogether. Maybe those used EVs will be sold off at bargain basement prices in coming months. Who’s in charge? Britain continues to drag its heels over the supply of EV charging points. New British housing stock is supposed to include an EV charging point, but as one web forum poster pointed out, ‘if the local electricity substation that feeds your street has a 400A fuse, and every house has at least one 32A charger, then you do the maths. They can’t even roll out smart meters for every house and that’s cost more than £12bn so far, and is far from complete... I understood that the electrical load of a new housing estate averages eight amps per property, and now they want to add 32A for one EV on top of changing your gas central heating boiler to a heat pump,’ the poster mused. In the January 2022 issue I mentioned a possible charging solution for EV owners in the shape of a semi-portable battery pack on wheels, called the ZipCharge Go. This well-publicised powerbank was being developed for ‘topping up’ EVs in the street or car park – the idea was due to launch some time this year, but I now understand that the ZipCharge Go never made it beyond the prototype stage. This illustrates the typical vagaries of this fast-moving tech sector. At least British EV owners are not alone in suffering practical problems of EV ownership. An American EV owner recently posted on Reddit: ‘Was at the Electrify America station in Indiana yesterday. In a blizzard. With 30 miles of range and about 75 miles to drive. Station had eight chargers. Only ONE was working and it was in use. The EA call centre was useless. Took hours to get a charge when it should have taken 20 minutes. Until this gets figured out, electric cars will be limited, period.’ Sounds all too familiar. Blade Runner Listed in nearly 74,500 new February registrations were exactly 13 (thirteen) GWM Ora £32,000+ electric mini cars, the cute Chinese EV previously described in Net Work. There are yet more Chinese EV brands, almost too many to follow, heading our way across Northern Europe, starting with BYD – an acronym for ‘Build Your Dreams’. BYD is barely 20 years old and may be unfamiliar to most readers, but BYD is a huge Chinese conglomerate that manufactures semiconductors and batteries as well as solar arrays, energy storage systems, EV chargers and electric buses. Cars made by subsidiary BYD Auto will arrive in British Practical Electronics | May | 2023 showrooms this year, starting with the attractive BYD Atto 3 compact SUV. Of particular interest is BYD’s ‘Blade’ lithium-iron-phosphate battery that they claim is among the safest in the world. BYD reckons that the pressure to improve car cruising range had forced battery makers to pursue an increase in battery energy density over safety considera- The Atto 3 cabin is ‘built with the concept of sports and fitness’ with a ‘trendy and avant-garde design’, BYD says. Traditional motorists might not agree. tions. BYD’s Blade battery uses a unique cell construction, which they an extremely sleek executive car and a coal-fired station up to speed, and stated withstood nail puncture tests SUV from BYD. The Atto 3 is expected environmentalists were hopping mad and neither overheated nor produced to cost around £35,000. For more de- at the thought of it, but, thanks to the efforts of all those in our hard-worksmoke. When damaged, ordinary Li-Ion tails, see: www.byd.com/eu/car/atto3 ing energy sector, the lights are still batteries have a tendency to thermally on, and life goes on as normal. This runaway and are nearly impossible to Energy for tomorrow time round, smart meter users were not extinguish once they start to melt down Despite earlier dire predictions of pos– often exploding – as graphically de- sible power cuts, the UK seems to be asked to reduce their consumption in scribed in previous Net Work columns. weathering the winter storms well, at return for receiving a small cash bonus. Software developer Kate Rose Morley Other Blade safety distinctions include least as far as energy consumption is having a high starting temperature for concerned. In March, National Grid has coded a very impressive website exothermic reactions, slow heat release ESO (the UK electricity system opera- that publishes more live National and low heat generation, as well as an tor) tweeted that an electricity margin Grid data than I know what to do ability to not release oxygen during notice (EMN) had been issued to the with – it’s available for viewing at: market for one day, which meant that https://grid.iamkate.com breakdowns or easily catch fire. Historical trend graphs (under BYD adds that their smart technology Britain’s last remaining coal-fired power allows for ‘bi-directional EV charg- stations were ‘warmed up’ just in case ‘Generation’) show the gradual total ing’. Suitably equipped vehicles could they might be needed to top up the elimination of coal, a steady decline charge overnight at off-peak times when supply. It takes time and money to get in nuclear and a rise in wind power energy demand is low, and become a powerbank to feed energy back into the electricity grid when demand is high. A year ago, in the May 2022 issue, I mentioned this V2G or V2H (Vehicle to Grid/ Home) technology but this is barely at a developmental stage here in Britain. In comparison, BYD has offered DTG (Direct to Grid) charging since 2015 when its conventional-looking ‘e6’ car was first launched in the US – it was the only car on sale at that time with V2G included as standard. As things turned out, BYD arrived in the UK well over a decade ago, floating its ‘e6’ potentially as a taxi, but the Chinese firm has kept a low profile ever since – until now. As well as in the UK (eg, Arnold Laver dealerships), dealers for BYD electric cars have been signed up across Europe. Traditionalists who prefer to use tactile knobs and switches might not adapt so well to the touchscreen way of doing things in an electric vehicle, but the BYD Atto 3 has a stylish interior dash that’s ‘built with the concept of sports and fitness’ with a ‘trendy and avant-garde design’ they say, so its target market is clear to see. BYD is presently slugging it out with Tesla over pricing, but the BYD Atto 3 is part of a phalanx of futuristic-looking electric vehicle brands, including XPeng, Fisker and Nio that may eventually become familiar sights on Britain’s An impressive data website coded by Kate Rose Morley displays National Grid roads. European drivers will also see generation and statistics. Practical Electronics | May | 2023 13 Left: The first of two French-built 500-tonne reactor vessels arrived at the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in February. Above: A Russian-built poloidal field coil was successfully delivered to the multinational ITER nuclear fusion pilot plant in France in February. generation over the past ten years. For a different outlook on the National Grid stats, try the graphs and dials shown on: www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Britain is the first new one to be built in 20 years. Sadly, like a number of other key infrastructure projects in Britain, it has suffered delays and construction cost overruns. In February the site received the first of two French-built 500-tonne nuclear reactor vessels, as construction of this ‘too-big-to-fail’ power station continues with completion expected within five years. Interested readers can find more background on the history and status of Hinkley Point C at: https://bit.ly/pe-may23-hinkc Previously covered in Net Work, December 2022, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is an ambitious multi-national effort being built in France to explore the boundaries of nuclear fusion. The ITER tokomak will not however be used to generate electricity for the grid. In February, after a near four-month voyage from St. Petersburg, a giant Russian-made 160-tonne poloidal field coil was successfully delivered to the ITER site, having taken some six years to fabricate. Russia’s Rosatom is contributing 400 tonnes of equipment to the ITER project, which has now reached 78% along the road to ‘first plasma’. Space is (still) hard London-based network operator OneWeb continues to build its constellation of satellites intended to provide Internet access between the North Pole and the 50th parallel. OneWeb uses a number of service providers, including friendly rival SpaceX, to launch small batches of its satellites into LEO. To digress for a moment, it’s funny how a feeling of deja-vu can trigger 14 distant memories: when I hosted the Ingenuity Unlimited column of readers’ circuit ideas here at Everyday Practical Electronics in the 1990s, I received a circuit suggestion for a 4000-series CMOS-based electronic rotary switch from an engineer who worked at the emerging Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Department of Space. It was carefully typed with a dot-matrix printer on tissue-thin paper, which I found in my archives (fortunately, I’m ruthlessly methodical) and our correspondence had always stuck in my mind. Fast forward 25 years, and in October 2022 a jubilant ISRO launched its new LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mk. III) rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and it successfully placed 36 OneWeb satellites into their intended orbits. The triumph was one of India’s biggest ever commercial orders, and the launch can be seen at: http://bit.ly/3yFSAsn OneWeb’s constellation of 542 first-generation satellites is nearing completion, and a second launch from India was due to lift off in March. Following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, 36 OneWeb satellites worth some $230m were impounded at the Russian-controlled Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where presumably they have lain ever since. It’s thought that they could now be traded for some badly needed Russian Soyuz stages languishing at the European Spaceport in French Guyana, which is situated in north-eastern South America. Roscosmos pulled the plug on co-operating with the European Space Agency, leaving critical Soyuz rocket parts behind. The European site accommodates the European Ariane 5 as well as Russian-built Soyuz vehicles, but the ESA continues to develop its long-overdue Ariane 6 launcher which is now slated to launch from French Guyana by the year end. Last year, Arianespace signed a contract with Amazon for 18 flights carrying satellites into LEO for Project Kuiper, Amazon’s own satellite-based Internet service that is still seeking regulatory approval. More details are at: www.arianespace.com – note that there is no website for Kuiper, although projectkuiper.com leads to an enigmatic login page. Other news An advanced new fusion energy prototype will be built by Tokamak Energy at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham Campus, near Oxford. The compact spherical tokamak, called ST80-HTS, is due for completion by 2026. It will incorporate advanced technologies required for the delivery of sustainable fusion energy, including cutting-edge high temperature superconducting magnets to confine and control the hydrogen fuel, which becomes plasma many times hotter than the sun, they report. Last year, their current ST40 fusion device in Milton Park, Oxfordshire, achieved a 100-million-degrees-Celsius fusion plasma – the highest temperature ever recorded in a compact spherical tokamak, the research centre reported. The European Union has formulated in record time plans for a new secure satellite communications programme of its own. Called IRISS (or IRIS2), the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite may see the development and launch of up to 170 LEO satellites between the years 2025 and 2027. It’s also intended to integrate with other EU space programmes such as the Copernicus earth observatory and Galileo satnav, as well as offering secure communications while eliminating Internet dead Practical Electronics | May | 2023 India’s Space Research Organisation Dept of Space readies a payload of 36 OneWeb satellites for launch into low-earth orbit. spots in Europe and across the entire African continent. America’s Lockheed Martin has announced plans to build its first satellite factory outside the US in Britain, which will create 2,000 skilled jobs in Britain’s The Ivie Bud is a replacement In-Home Display with app, for UK smart meter owners. Check compatibility online. booming space sector. The firm states, ‘it is serious about having a footprint in the UK and creating UK jobs, as well as developing the UK supply chain.’ Lockheed Martin, in partnership with ABL Space Systems, would be among the first companies to support a launch from the SaxaVord Spaceport – one of Britain’s new vertical spaceports, currently under construction (see last month). Japan’s first launch of its new H3 rocket on 7 March ended in failure when a self-destruct signal had to be sent to abort the mission, destroying the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-3 payload. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) suspects that the second stage failed to ignite – see: http://bit.ly/3FqcV93 Space is still hard to do and full of ‘anomalies’ and ‘launch attempts’, as JAXA, Virgin Orbit, Skyrora and ABL Space Systems have all recently found. Green tech company Ivie is selling a replacement or upgrade In-Home Display (IHD) for British smart meter owners. The Ivie Bud costs £49.99 and will work with any energy supplier, they say, but it’s necessary to check smart meter compatibility before buying. This can be done online at https://ivie.co.uk/ product/ivie-bud/ and the Ivie app is available from Google Play and the App Store. Alternatively, there’s the Loop app (with no IHD) that links to your smart meter, see: https://loop.homes That’s all for this month’s Net Work. Don’t forget that the hyperlinks above are ready-made for you to click on in my Net Work blog summary at: www.electronpublishing.com See you next month! Terrington Components • Project boxes designed and manufactured in the UK. • Many of our enclosures used on former Maplin projects. • Unique designs and sizes, including square, long and deep variaaons of our screwed lid enclosures. • Sub-miniature sizes down to 23mm x 16mm, ideal for IoT devices. MADE IN BRITAIN www.terrington-components.co.uk | sales<at>terrington-components.co.uk | Tel: 01553 636999 Practical Electronics | May | 2023 15