Electric cars?

[basilio]

The first thing with the report is, they are quoting land area required for molten salt storage generators, which in 2013 was the holy grail.
The land requirement for PV panels is near double that of molten salt, then there is the issue of intermittency and storage.
Since then, they are finding molten salt generators don't produce anywhere near rated capacity, the U.S manufacturers have gone into liquidation.
So in reality using data from 2013, is a bit shaky, but it is a good article.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...olar-power-companies-have-all-but-disappeared

SP I think your are mistaken. The article I referenced made no mention of molten salt generators.
It was comprehesive. Interesting that molten salt projects are not working out.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/

 

[sptrawler]

SP I think your are mistaken. The article I referenced made no mention of molten salt generators.
It was comprehesive. Interesting that molten salt projects are not working out.
https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/

Bas from your article:
Starting with some conservative assumptions from a 2013 National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) report, we know that it takes, on average, 3.4 acres of solar panels to generate a gigawatt hour of electricity over a year. Given the U.S. consumes about 4 petawatt hours of electricity per year, we’d need about 13,600,000 acres or 21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year.

Now from the 2013 National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) report, from above:
We found total land-use requirements for solar power plants to have a wide range across technologies. Generation-weighted averages for total area requirements range from about 3 acres/GWh/yr for CSP towers and CPV installations to 5.5 acres/GWh/yr for small 2-axis flat panel PV power plants.

CSP towers are molten salt, from my understanding, which will bring the weighted average down a lot due to their size.
But as I said they are having issues, the one suggested for South Australia has been abandoned.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

No body forgets that, we just understand that moving from a system that is 100% dependant on one specific fossil fuel source, to another system that is still capable of exploiting that same fossil fuel sources in a much more efficient way, while also being able to use many other renewable energy sources is better.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, eg we don't need to find an answer that is 100% renewable energy from day one to begin the transition away from fossil fuels.

No one is saying electric cars are carbon neutral, although the may be one day, in the mean time they are much less carbon intensive than petrol cars, even if we used oil, gas and coal power plants, and ignored the growing renewable energy industry.

But it isn't more efficient if you have to extract the fossil fuels to burn, to generate the electricity, to then transmit the electricity, to then store it at a power station, to then recharge a battery. A battery that had to be produced from mining materials that required fossil fuel based machinery to dig up.

There have been many studies that have shown that EVs aren't less carbon intensive when factoring in the mining of materials and recycling of batteries.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

No body forgets that, we just understand that moving from a system that is 100% dependant on one specific fossil fuel source, to another system that is still capable of exploiting that same fossil fuel sources in a much more efficient way, while also being able to use many other renewable energy sources is better.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, eg we don't need to find an answer that is 100% renewable energy from day one to begin the transition away from fossil fuels.

No one is saying electric cars are carbon neutral, although the may be one day, in the mean time they are much less carbon intensive than petrol cars, even if we used oil, gas and coal power plants, and ignored the growing renewable energy industry.

I can understand if large cities want to move to an era of clean public transport; but just replacing all fossil fuel based cars with EVs is hard to make a case for environmentally, economically and commercially.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

No need, it's going to happen regardless.

OK; you keep that thought going, I will believe it when I see it.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

The step missing in the calculations is the thermodynamic efficiency of the gasoline fuelled engine versus the efficiency of batteries and an electric motor.

There's no need for electricity to replace the heat input from gasoline, since heat itself from a car engine is not useful beyond minor amounts, it only needs to produce the same motive power to the wheels.

There was no step missing. I intentionally wanted to get a quick and rough idea, and loose ball park of energy, electricity and costs.

Should I also consider the 47.2 billion gallons of diesel per year, for heavy vehicles, in the USA?

 

[qldfrog]

I can understand if large cities want to move to an era of clean public transport; but just replacing all fossil fuel based cars with EVs is hard to make a case for environmentally, economically and commercially.

But politically? Who cares about the economy...

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

But politically? Who cares about the economy...

That is why the Greens are stuck at ~10%.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

The step missing in the calculations is the thermodynamic efficiency of the gasoline fuelled engine versus the efficiency of batteries and an electric motor.

There's no need for electricity to replace the heat input from gasoline, since heat itself from a car engine is not useful beyond minor amounts, it only needs to produce the same motive power to the wheels.

FINE; we can just look at this on gallons and miles based on some rough electric vehicle specs: I will just start with: 265 miles to 85 KW/h which is equivalent to 89 miles to the gallon.

USA gallons consumed of gasoline (130.64 billion) and diesel (47.2 billion) = ~178 billion gallons of fuel for vehicles in the USA in 2019.

So: 89 miles x 178 billion gallons of fuel = 15842000000000 miles travelled on gasoline and diesel

15842000000000 miles travelled on gasoline and diesel / 265 miles on electric vehicle = 59781132080 lots of 85 KW/h

That brings us to 5081396227000 KW/h = 5081396 GW/h per year

Still reasonably close to my initial figures (~5.5% more), however I included the diesel.

 

[over9k]

The way to do it would be to have an interference device in the charging system that makes it only charge your electric car in off-peak hours. That way you'd charge it for the cheapest cost possible and we wouldn't need to upgrade the existing power grid at all. Literally just plug & play.

But electric cars are still prohibitively expensive to buy and the range is severely limited. This will change. It all boils down to battery tech really.

I'd just cover half the planet in nuclear power plants and robert's your mother's brother.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

The way to do it would be to have an interference device in the charging system that makes it only charge your electric car in off-peak hours. That way you'd charge it for the cheapest cost possible and we wouldn't need to upgrade the existing power grid at all. Literally just plug & play.

But electric cars are still prohibitively expensive to buy and the range is severely limited. This will change. It all boils down to battery tech really.

Still need at least ~1081 x ~580MW nuclear powerplants looking at these recent numbers: 5081396 GW/h per year to completely phase out 100% internal combustion engine vehicles in the USA.

Anyway; I have spent enough time on this, to find myself pretty close to where I was when I started.

 

[over9k]

A decent nuclear plant can pump out gigawatts at a time so it could certainly be done if nuclear was used.

This obviously has decades to transition so a few hundred could definitely be built over the next 20-30 years.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

A decent nuclear plant can pump out gigawatts at a time so it could certainly be done if nuclear was used.

This obviously has decades to transition so a few hundred could definitely be built over the next 20-30 years.

Or we can just meltdown our grids.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Still need at least ~1081 x ~580MW nuclear powerplants looking at these recent numbers: 5081396 GW/h per year to completely phase out 100% internal combustion engine vehicles in the USA.

Anyway; I have spent enough time on this, to find myself pretty close to where I was when I started.

I have deliberately ignored the electricity lost (up to ~30%) when charging the batteries and/or when they are sitting around not being used; however these inconvenient facts don't matter to many.

 

[Value Collector]

Renewables aren't fit for purpose in many nations and countries.

This is like a religion now.

so those countries can use fossil fuels, the other 99% can use renewables.

again, never let perfect be the enemy of good, just because a solution isn’t perfect right now in every possible situation doesn’t mean it’s not good.

out of interest which countries are you saying aren’t fit for renewables?

 

[Value Collector]

But it isn't more efficient if you have to extract the fossil fuels to burn, to generate the electricity, to then transmit the electricity, to then store it at a power station, to then recharge a battery. A battery that had to be produced from mining materials that required fossil fuel based machinery to dig up.

There have been many studies that have shown that EVs aren't less carbon intensive when factoring in the mining of materials and recycling of batteries.

burning those fossil fuels in efficient power plants and charging batteries is far more efficient that refining them, then burning them in inefficient motors in cars.

do a little bit of research into how much more Efficient Ev’s are that combustion engines, as I have already said petrol cars use 5 times the amount of energy well to wheels than an ev.

 

[Value Collector]

I can understand if large cities want to move to an era of clean public transport; but just replacing all fossil fuel based cars with EVs is hard to make a case for environmentally, economically and commercially.

it’s only hard to make a case for it if you ignore the facts, which you have been doing a good job at so far.

 

[Smurf1976]

USA gallons consumed of gasoline (130.64 billion) and diesel (47.2 billion) = ~178 billion gallons of fuel for vehicles in the USA in 2019.

So: 89 miles x 178 billion gallons of fuel = 15842000000000 miles travelled on gasoline and diesel

Do you honestly believe that the average car or light commercial vehicle in the US gets 89 miles per gallon using gasoline or diesel?

In truth you'll find the average is around quarter of that for cars and it's even worse for light trucks. There's the point you are missing - EV's get the equivalent of 89 mpg but gasoline sure doesn't, the engine just isn't anywhere close to being efficient enough to achieve that.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

so those countries can use fossil fuels, the other 99% can use renewables.

again, never let perfect be the enemy of good, just because a solution isn’t perfect right now in every possible situation doesn’t mean it’s not good.

out of interest which countries are you saying aren’t fit for renewables?

Countries that have low solar intensity, insufficient high wind regions, inadequate geothermal, and/or little options for hydro.

Then there is the issue with countries that have a large geographical landmass ,which have their high density populations far away from the renewable energy sources.

 

[Chronos-Plutus]

Do you honestly believe that the average car or light commercial vehicle in the US gets 89 miles per gallon using gasoline or diesel?

In truth you'll find the average is around quarter of that for cars and it's even worse for light trucks. There's the point you are missing - EV's get the equivalent of 89 mpg but gasoline sure doesn't, the engine just isn't anywhere close to being efficient enough to achieve that.

Would you like me to start breaking down all the vehicle categories in the USA now, both electric and ICE? Get their specs and input them into the calculation.

Also I should be adding up to an additional ~30% of electrical capacity to compensate for the electricity loss in transmission, battery charge, and vampire drain.