Question about EV Value and environmental impact

[SageBrush]

Convert your usage of natural gas (at a rate of 28 kWh per Therm) and ask your local solar guy for a conversion of peak kW of panels to kWh per year.

That would be a good start for resistance heating, although my boiler is not that efficient, so more along the lines of 26 kWh/therm before I account for distribution losses in this house with radiant heating.

Vinnie and I live in the SW US. I was hoping to hear about heat pumps. I have this notion that a well insulated home in my locale can time time-shift heating demands to the sunny and/or high COP hours. I would like to build off-grid with minimal fossil fuel back-up.

As for talking with a solar guy, well I can look up PVwatts just as easy ;-)
And have ... multiple times. Using pole-mounted PV that I adjust tilt a couple times a year, I can approach 1.9 kWh/watt*year maximum.

 

[SageBrush]

I with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farms, on parcels of land totaling the area of Indiana.

Parcels of roofs and parcels of air does not have quite the same bullet point impact, does it ?

 

[dgpcolorado]

How much *electricity* does it take to make a gallon of gasoline? 6kWh. How many people include that in their ICE footprint?...

That is a myth. It takes quite a bit of energy to refine oil into gasoline (and other products) but most of it comes from natural gas and refining byproducts, not electricity. The expression of energy in "kWh" got picked up by some people many years ago as meaning "electricity", which was not the case, and the story won't die.

People who don't think solar is an option for them should look into Community Solar Farms. We had one put in, a couple of miles from me, the first publicly owned solar farm in Maine. It produces enough power for 9 households on a barn and field. It has almost all the advantages of rooftop solar, but is usable even if you move (within the electric company service area). It is a great solution for renters, people who plan to move, and others. Look it up, to see if you can do it in your area...

Our local power co-op put in a community array some years ago:

At the time it was the largest community owned array, although bigger ones have since been built elsewhere. My local library owns 41 panels in the array to offset some of its electricity usage. The array is now fully subscribed, so no more panels are currently available.

I installed my first solar panels at my house in 2008 as "phase 1" of a future electric car. So I don't have much patience with the whole "you're driving on coal" argument used by some to denigrate EVs. I even do most of my charging during the day when my panels, and those of my neighbors, are producing power.

 

[int32_t]

I agree that we are talking about hundreds of thousands of years; however, hydrocarbon dependance will due us in far before that. On another note, numbers!

• It would cost over $29 Trillion to generate America’s baseload electric power with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farms, on parcels of land totaling the area of Indiana. Or:

• It would cost over $18 Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totaling the area of West Virginia. Or:

• We could do it for less than $3 Trillion with AP-1000 Light Water Reactors, on parcels totaling a few square miles. Or:

• We could do it for $1 Trillion with liquid-fueled Molten Salt Reactors, on the same amount of land, but with no water cooling, no risk of meltdowns, and the ability to use our stockpiles of nuclear “waste” as a secondary fuel.

Honesty I'm not a fan of weird radioactive waste that hangs around for that long. This isn't even a case of NIMBY -- I wouldn't wish radioactive waste on my worst enemies. It's NABY, or Not in Anybody's Backyard, because it will be bad for all of us. At least trees and plants suck up carbon, turning it into people-food. Nothing sucks up whatever random unstable atoms are left over after a nuclear reaction.

Okay, yes, it's not easy being green (must be true because a green critter said it!). Are we talking up-front costs here or ongoing costs? Solar is more affordable every year, and makes a great rooftop addition to almost any home. No one person has to pay all of this.

 

[int32_t]

That is a myth. It takes quite a bit of energy to refine oil into gasoline (and other products) but most of it comes from natural gas and refining byproducts, not electricity. The expression of energy in "kWh" got picked up by some people many years ago as meaning "electricity", which was not the case, and the story won't die.

It's cool to see giant solar farms like that. As long as they're in the desert or on people's roofs and not on good farm land there's nothing to complain about.

Very informative video, which I thought came up earlier in this thread:

It does take an enormous amount of electricity in addition to other fuels to make gasoline.

 

[SageBrush]

It does take an enormous amount of electricity in addition to other fuels to make gasoline.

It does NOT, and the electricity that is consumed is typically from the oil stock itself.

The EPA estimate of ~ 17% energy cost to turn oil into petrol includes all energy inputs. As DGPcolorado said, it really is past time to put that myth to rest.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Couple issues.
Typically electric vehicles are charged in their garages during the night time off peak hours. Most electricity produced by carbon and nuc power plants are just throwing away their unused electricity at that time. No new power plants necessary to charge up our vehicles.

Tesla's Sister company, Solar City, has just announced that they have produced enough solar panels to cover all the electricity used so far by the entire Tesla Fleet. All vehicle charging has been offset by those panels.

As things go forward, the solar will begin to replace fossile fuels to charge up all the electric vehicles on the road.

Tesla also has plans to solarize not only their SuperChargers, but the GigaFactory battery plants as well.

 

[SageBrush]

Tesla also has plans to solarize not only their SuperChargers, but the GigaFactory battery plants as well.

I've seen this great picture of the (?) future Gigafactory with a hillside of wind turbines nearby.

Just fantastic

 

[SageBrush]

Typically electric vehicles are charged in their garages during the night time off peak hours. Most electricity produced by carbon and nuc power plants are just throwing away their unused electricity at that time.

That is another myth.

 

[ChadS]

Funny. I've been thinking for a while of writing an "EV Myths" document, where rather than bust anti-EV myths like batteries only last 3 years and all electricity comes from coal and lithium is toxic and we're running out and battery EMF will kill you, I'd instead bust pro-EV myths like how much electricity it takes to refine oil, or that electricity is thrown away at night. (It is sometimes...for example wind farms here in WA have had to do so...but not often. Incidentally, more EVs charging at night can help with that problem).

Most of refining energy does indeed come from the oil stock itself. However, that doesn't mean there isn't still a lot of electricity used in petroleum refining. The oil industry won't report it, but the utilities know who uses their product. The second largest user of electricity in CA is...oil refineries. We can indeed free up quite a bit of peak-time usage as we transition from oil to electricity. Not enough to power all cars as EVs, but enough to make an important difference and make the transition easier than some fear (which it already is not as bad as many fear given that most EV charging is off-peak as long as people have L2 and TOU rates).

 

[SageBrush]

(It is sometimes...for example wind farms here in WA have had to do so...but not often).

You hit on one of my pet peeves with Excel energy in Colorado. They way too often shut down wind farms at night in order to use coal electricity instead.

 

[SmartElectric]

Most electricity produced by carbon and nuc power plants are just throwing away their unused electricity at that time. No new power plants necessary to charge up our vehicles.

This is true in Ontario. I blogged about this a few years ago when I got my Smart ED:
Smart Electric Drive: Choose one : boil steam or recharge a million electric cars

Quote (me) : "Very often in Ontario, the Bruce Nuclear facility "vents steam" using a steam bypass capability that effectively boils water to avoid producing power to the turbines, so as to reduce the amount of electricity generated, when the baseload supply exceeds the overnight low demand trough. Bruce power is paid to waste energy producing unused steam, as it provides flexibility to the grid."​

 

[Jeff N]

Most of refining energy does indeed come from the oil stock itself. However, that doesn't mean there isn't still a lot of electricity used in petroleum refining. The oil industry won't report it, but the utilities know who uses their product. The second largest user of electricity in CA is...oil refineries.

Those two ideas don't necessarily correlate. Every report I've ever seen says grid electricity makes up 3.5 - 5.5% of the energy input in the refinery process. Presumably it keeps the lights on and powers the computers and electric motors. That's come from national labs GREET studies, US Energy Information Agency, and data.un.org for multiple countries. Please provide some credible evidence that it is significantly more than that on average or it's just a conspiracy theory.

It's true that oil refineries use a huge amount of electricity. However, the energy in the petroleum they refine is massively even larger so at the end of the day it is only about 200-300 Wh of grid electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline.

That "Volts for Oil" episode of Fully Charged is a big mess of misinformation.

 

[Lon12]

Speaking of waste energy... It is really sad to see how much natural gas is still being flared off everyday. It is shocking to see when you fly over North Dakota at night.
Is that factored in to the energy required to make gasoline?

 

[Jeff N]

Then I did some research to find out how much electricity it takes to refine gasoline. Turns out it's 8 kWh, give or take, per litre of gasoline refined from oil.

Show your math and information sources please.

You are saying it takes refineries (perhaps in Alberta) about 30 kWh of grid electricity to refine one US gallon of gasoline? That's wildly higher than any previous estimate of the energy to refine a gallon of gas. Plus, you think it is all in the form of electricity (made from coal).

I'm rather skeptical.

Unfortunately, this Fully Charged episode Being cited here is almost completely wrong on all of its major points:

1. There is no conspiracy by oil companies to hide their post-2005 grid electricity consumption. The data remains trivially available online from the UN's statistics website.

2. The UN data shows that grid electricity use by UK refineries is between 0.3 - 0.5 kWh per gallon of refined gasoline, not the 4.5 kWh claimed in the episode. This is roughly consistent with US refinery use based on separately published US government statistics.

3. The likely source of this confusion is that refineries use 4.5 - 7.5 kWh of "energy" not "electricity" in refining a gallon of gasoline. Only about 3.5 - 5.5 percent of that energy is in the form of grid electricity. The vast majority of that energy is natural gas and leftover refining byproducts such as so-called "still gas" from earlier refining output. If you stopped refining gasoline, only the natural gas would still be available for charging EVs but would first have to be converted to electricity at 50% efficiency and would translate into about 1.0 - 1.5 kWh of electricity per gallon of gasoline not refined. So, maybe 3 to 6 miles of EV driving rather than 10 to 20.

See my detailed post here:

Pollution: EV vs ICE - Page 3 - My Nissan Leaf Forum

 

[vinnie97]

Bummer. I'd like to hear details since it is on my wish list to do the same.

Well, I don't have the bottom line calculations available, but the fault is mine due to failing to plan ahead/foreseeing the future (and sizing the system based on needs at the time aka 2013). The addition of a tankless electric water heater and electric heat pump in subsequent years basically created an energy deficit where the PVs couldn't keep up. An EV would certainly make it worse naturally.

 

[SageBrush]

Well, I don't have the bottom line calculations available, but the fault is mine due to failing to plan ahead/foreseeing the future (and sizing the system based on needs at the time aka 2013). The addition of a tankless electric water heater and electric heat pump in subsequent years basically created an energy deficit where the PVs couldn't keep up. An EV would certainly make it worse naturally.

Gothcha. Are you constrained by the inverter from adding more PV panels ?

Are you using the heat pump for water, house heating or both ? I'm really interested to hear your heat pump experience

 

[vinnie97]

Vinnie and I live in the SW US. I was hoping to hear about heat pumps. I have this notion that a well insulated home in my locale can time time-shift heating demands to the sunny and/or high COP hours. I would like to build off-grid with minimal fossil fuel back-up.

You nailed it...in the high desert, winters aren't as frigid as you get in the NE, midwest, or plains. Last winter was the first full winter of usage...the Bryant system (their most efficient unit, and it's basically a rebadge of the Carrier Infinity Greenspeed) can operate without breaking a sweat (sic?) well below freezing. There are some electric strips that can be employed as auxillary when it's in defrost, but I really think I could survive a winter here fairly comfortably with those disabled.

Just saw your most recent post (which inadvertently applies to the last paragraph )...the heat pump is just for the house. I have a tankless (on-demand) electric for water.

 

[deonb]

You nailed it...in the high desert, winters aren't as frigid as you get in the NE, midwest, or plains. Last winter was the first full winter of usage...the Bryant system (their most efficient unit, and it's basically a rebadge of the Carrier Infinity Greenspeed) can operate without breaking a sweat (sic?) well below freezing. There are some electric strips that can be employed as auxillary when it's in defrost, but I really think I could survive a winter here fairly comfortably with those disabled.

Just saw your most recent post (which inadvertently applies to the last paragraph )...the heat pump is just for the house. I have a tankless (on-demand) electric for water.

I have a heatpump system with auxiliary natural gas. The natural gas part of my system stopped working last year, so I ran the entire winter on just the heatpump. Our winter temperature averages here between 30 and 45, with a few hours of a few days dropping down to low 20's.

The heatpump was totally able to keep up. My house temperature never dropped below 65, and I'm sure if I improve my insulation it wouldn't have ever dropped below 68.

It amuses me to no end that you can take a sub-freezing temperature and turn it into heat, but it works just fine.

 

[SageBrush]

It amuses me to no end that you can take a sub-freezing temperature and turn it into heat, but it works just fine.

What you call freezing, the machine calls 273 Kelvin ;-)