When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?

[Simon]

Sorry to be another one to doubt you but I would be amazed if in fact a battery can save and not cost you especially given your power prices.
Maybe in the UK batteries are subsidized to half the cost of what the rest of the world pays but if you are talking a commercial battery pack not a DIY one, they would have to be exceptionaly cheap to have any worthwhile payback time if at all.

What sort of EV do you have?

I don't have an EV but typically you can lease the battery for around £70 a month. So providing you do the miles it can work out.

I don't know what you mean by given my power prices. i have already explained (call me a liar if you like) that over night charging can be done for £0.09/KWh. If the average claim of 250Wh/mile is true that makes the mileage energy cost around 2-3p/m. MY CAR costs me 15p/mile in petrol and it's a small car. So clearly if you drive enough the battery price soon does not matter. Call me a liar if you like I am simply doing basic arithmetic on real numbers. An EV does not have a combustion engine full of moving parts rubbing and banging into each other as part of their normal operation and the maitenance on an electric motor will be far lower than a combustion engine. No clutch, no cam belt - I am due a cam belt change, that will cost £500 and i get nothing from that other than i can keep driving. with an EV £500 buys me 7 months of battery lease.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Maybe you should concentrate on explaining to us how ICE is more efficient than electric

Easy: Power plants are a smidge more efficient than ICEs, say 50% efficiency, but power grid transmission and distribution losses are about 9% (91% efficiency), and the EVs charge/discharge losses are at least 15% (85% efficiency). That's 0.5*0.91*0.85= 38% efficiency, which is ~= most ICEs nowadays.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=power+grid+distribution+losses

[Simon]

Maybe you should concentrate on explaining to us how ICE is more efficient than electric

Easy: Power plants are a smidge more efficient than ICEs, say 50% efficiency, but power grid transmission and distribution losses are about 9% (91% efficiency), and the EVs charge/discharge losses are at least 15% (85% efficiency). That's 0.5*0.91*0.85= 38% efficiency, which is ~= most ICEs nowadays.

False, power plants are not that inneficient. They convert power 24 hours a day and a 0.1% increase in efficiency will mean thousands more money earnt every hour. My house boiler is 96% efficient and you are telling me that a larger energy conversion system run as a money making process on an industrial scale is halve the efficiency of my little house boiler ? words fail me. If that is the basis of your argument you are greatly mistaken.

Look if you like you gas guzzling poluter you have my personal permission to keep driving it if that makes you happy in your personal version of the world.

If you want more information about energy sources in the uk (WARNING FACTS ARE ABOUT TO BE PRESENTED PREPARE YOURSELF) go to gridwatch.co.uk. As you can see a lot of our energy is not made with fossil fuels anymore anyway. I have seen up to 35% solar + wind output. Most times our coal plants do not get used. that site is simply taking the data being pumped out by the UK grid and graphing it for easy reading plus adds some info about the sources.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Yes some forms of generation are more efficient than others, but not all countries are the same, look:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources

E.g. in the UK renewables are 27.9, but in Saudi Arabia 0%...

[Simon]

and you 50% efficiency claim on fossil fuel conversion? that was your claim. I said i have seen up to 35% renewable generation that is peak. Yes 27.9% on average for a year sounds right.

[george80]

First of all calm down and stop being overly defensive. I didn't call or imply you were a liar and I will explain what I said in a very logical, straightforward way that shows exactly what I was thinking.... which had nothing to do with you lying.

I don't have an EV but typically you can lease the battery for around £70 a month.

How big is the battery?  Thats an important detail.
Let me work backwards on that a bit and prempt my answer to your lying concern.

based on teh info you have given I'll take it that your battery is 100%  charged at night. yeah, I realise it may not be fully charged every night but I'll base the answer on the fact it is given an EV could easily consume the storage capacity of any battery bank.

If you are paying .09 per KWh at night and .18 per day, your saving having the battery is .09 per kwh.
At 70 quid a month rent, you would have to be storing 777 Kwh a month or 26 Kwh a day at the .09 saving to BREAK EVEN on the cost of the battery. It would in reality be more because there is no way you are putting the same into the battery as it is storing and you are getting out. I don't need to factor that in because the margin is too wide on the negative side to have to worry. I'll keep that up my sleeve to give a " worse than" number.

Now as I'm assuming this is not a DIY setup, I will say right here and now, your battery is NOT storing 26KWH and therefore its not coming close to repaying it's cost, it's costing you a lot to have it.
How do I know it's not storing 26KWH a day? Easy. There isn't a commercial battery that does these days. Again unless you have some modulated pack with that sort of capacity which would be highly unlikely, the biggest battery out there atm is a power wally. 13 Kwh usable.

I don't know what you mean by given my power prices.

Heres what I mean.
By my and i think most world standards, your power is cheap.  The cheaper your power the less you save on having a battery.  If  you were paying $1 Kwh then it would be easy to recoup your investment.  The less you pay the less you save the less returns you get.

And that is the sum total of my comment on given your power prices. They are cheap and they make getting a return on a battery investment more difficult.

/ end of implications , thought behind comment.

Now, as you don't have an EV and may not be using all the capacity you have now, sure as hell you aren't using 25KWh Day unless you are heating electricaly in winter, which your  battery is Highly UNlikley to be storing anyway, you cannot save enough on costs of the power you store to justify the expense of the battery.

This is pretty much a universal case.
I have spoken to people all over the world about this.  Power is cheaper in some parts than others but battery prices follow that very closely as well.
Cheap power, cheaper batteries. More exy power, more exy batteries.  because the MARGIN is very consistent, there are VERY few places and applications where a battery will justify itself. Maybe.

All the calcs I have run so far are on solar, IE free power. You are the first I have spoken to and looked at with paying for power to recharge the battery.  really irrelevant because the power has a price either way. Either what you save buying or what you loose in FIT's . In this case its the margin between what you pay peak and off peak.  If you were just paying the .9 straight out, in this case the number is conveniently the same so don't matter which way you slice it. If your battery is as I'm guessing, something in the 6-8 Kw range, the thing is COSTING you heaps.

Would not matter if you had an EV to charge or a steelworks to run, the battery only holds so much and that how much is not enough to repay the cost of having the thing.  That's it.  There are no other calcs or factors other than the inefficiency of charging 2 batteries, the home and the EV one which as I said at the outset, makes the situation WORSE.


There is lots of complicated maths people bandy about but it's this simple.  battery cost Vs. offset cost of power stored.
The only additional thing is that you will never use 100% of battery capacity every day due to not being home, on holidays, cloudy weather not allowing full charge ( in other cases) and so on. You can calculate the BEst case scenario which is always detrimental enough and from there the reality you can't calculate is worse.

i have already explained (call me a liar if you like) that over night charging can be done for £0.09/KWh. If the average claim of 250Wh/mile is true that makes the mileage energy cost around 2-3p/m.

Unfortunately what you are missing is the less power you use in this case the worse the rental detriment on the battery becomes.
70 quid would buy you 777 Kwh. untill you use 800+ kwh, you'd be better without the thing.
I would assume there was setup and installation costs with that as well which would go to buying more power depending on how you want to amortize the cost time wise.

Buying a battery outright is bad enough. Renting is going to be far worse because you will over time be paying even more than the battery could be bought for.


 

MY CAR costs me 15p/mile in petrol and it's a small car.

If we look at the cost of the battery rental, and cost of fuel, your car could take you 466 Miles a month/ 116 Miles wk  before you were any worse off.
This is exactly where the price you pay for power is not the be all and end all of it. There are a LOT more costs than just power and I'm sorry to set you off in what will most likely be another indignant outcry but your investment in a battery , especially with the low power prices you enjoy, is a pathetically poor one.

I don't know where you get the 7000 mile break even number from because there is no possible way to do that going on the numbers you are quoting.  But again, on your own figures, 466 miles a month is 5600 a year which is what your battery RENTAL would have taken you in the IC PLUS, you then have to pay for the power you would use in your EV and offset the cost of petrol in your IC against that. I reckon you'd get at least 8000 miles in the IC for the same cost NOT counting installation of the battery and the extra power you are buying to take into account inefficiency. If your battery is 5 Kwh, you are buying bare minimum 7 to get 5 into your EV.... when you get your EV.

So clearly if you drive enough the battery price soon does not matter.

No, sorry again, it ALWAYS matter especially when it's a huge step backwards as yours is.
You can't pretend costs aren't there and dont count them. It all has to be factored in. by the sounds of it, I'sd say the battery matters hugely in your case because  firstly, even if you do fully utilize it it's costing you far more than it saves you, secondly you are highly likley not to be using it to capacity now anyway increasing the cost of having it and 3rdly, when you get an EV you are still likley to be buying extra power anyway and if you are not it just means the low level of usage again makes the ROI worse.

There is NO upside here, no way this thing is saving you money or worth having.... as much as I'm sure you are going to refute that with complicated and flawed calculations.

An EV does not have a combustion engine full of moving parts rubbing and banging into each other as part of their normal operation and the maintenance on an electric motor will be far lower than a combustion engine.

The only thing different to an EV and an IC is the power train. Ev's still have shock absorbers, suspension bushing,  tyres and brake pads, wiper blades, Cabin filters, Lubrication of door latches, cables and hinges, need wheel alignments,  OIL changed ( despite the wide spread greenwashed denial of this) and a whole load of other things that are the normal service and maintence items on an IC.
This idea an IC don't have an engine and gearbox and nothing ever wears out on them is greenwashing at it's finest.  Yes, they need an oil change more often BUT, look at the service list and what you pay for when you do get your car serviced, all the same things I mentioned no matter if it's an EV or IC.


 

No clutch, no cam belt - I am due a cam belt change, that will cost £500 and i get nothing from that other than i can keep driving. with an EV £500 buys me 7 months of battery lease.

Clutch if you know how to drive will last over 100K Miles.  Cam belt change is 60K + Miles.  500 quid over 60K miles is less than .8 p per mile.
If you are going to split hairs down to that level and try to tell me they count, sorry, you and I are on differnt levels financially and are talking an accuracy of budgeting I couldn't come near and sure as hell don't want to be worrying about.  You go into costs so much with running an EV but do you budget as tightly for the beers you drink in a year or the times you have take away or what you spend taking the family out for a day or....??
I sure as hell don't, I have far bettter things to worry about in my life than the the .08P cam belt wear costs me every mile.
How much do tyres and brake pads cost you per mile.  WHAT is the cost of the things an EV needs?
I'll bet my backside a set of pads on an EV costs double if not more what they do in your car you have now. I'll also bet that the servicing costs of an EV  will be a lot higher if less frequent than an ev narrowing the gap far closer to what is always made out.

And just occurred to me being we have different currency's, how the hell is a cam belt change costing you 500 quid? Your money is double mine and if you are paying my equivalent of $1000 for a cam belt change, you are either Driving a Ferrari or you are getting bent over and torn a new one big time.  If you are driving a small car I doubt the engine is anything exotic so I will have to assume you are either getting ripped well and truly on the price or Guilding the lilly.

Yeah, I do know a little about cars, family business is in the auto game so I am involved and have a good idea of things in the real world.

Whats the insurance comparison between an EV and a comparable IC? How about parts prices if you break a tail light or need a new wheel strut, door lock motor, windscreen,  wiper motor or any of those other common high demand parts that all cars have?
Being you are talking about getting a used IC, it's a certainty not a possibility the thing is going to need parts.

And lets not forget the biggie here, while you are counting cam belt costs that here would be a once in 5 years thing for half the cost you are quoting,  what about the BATTERY replacement cost on an EV?
Those things don't last forever and they are going to make engine replacement on an IC look cheap.
ANY IC these days that doesent go 250Km / 15 years on the original engine has been flogged or was a lemon. How long will an EV go? From everything I read you can count on a new battery pack in 7-10 years.  what does that particular 12 gauge shot to the pocket cost as a standalone and per mile basis?  I'm bettering it's going to make your cam belt look like a bargain particularly as the intervals could be pretty close.

From what I read, EV's are not worth replacing battery packs because by the time they need one they have depriciated so much that it's simply not worth it. I expect that situation will only become stronger as more cars are available on teh market with better range and more features. Who's going to want to replace the pack in a 60 mile range car when maybe a few grand will buy them something 5+ years newer with 3xplus the range and all the advantages every later model has.

I would suggest when buying a used EV, do your homework thoroughly and tread VERY carefully.

There is a LOT more to this picture than the cost of fueling and in this case it's not nearly what you make out anyway.

And just to clarify, i'm not calling you a liar, just mistaken and over looking a lot of things that make your position inaccurate and not what you think it is.

[Simon]

What difference does having a house battery make? that is for the house not a car, if i was generating enough to also fill a car fine but as i said previously for me if i was doing it economy 7 alongside my solar system would be perfect. By day I use my solar and battery, by night I charge the car off the grid at 8-9p/KWh

other people would have to look at their circumstances as on economy 7 you pay more by day.

So power cost for a car:

Petrol 15p/mile
EV 2.5p/mile.

I do 8000 miles a year or 670 miles a month, so 670*0.15 = £100 on petrol

100-70 (battery)= £20
20/0.025 = 800 miles a month on electric!

The EV breaks even and i do a low mileage.

Does the EV need a cam belt change every 60'000 miles? no so 500/60'000 = 0.8p/mile spend it how you will but it is about 1/3 the cost of electric for a mile.

People doing 10'000+ miles will see the benefits.

[george80]

Maybe you should concentrate on explaining to us how ICE is more efficient than electric

Easy: Power plants are a smidge more efficient than ICEs, say 50% efficiency, but power grid transmission and distribution losses are about 9% (91% efficiency), and the EVs charge/discharge losses are at least 15% (85% efficiency). That's 0.5*0.91*0.85= 38% efficiency, which is ~= most ICEs nowadays.

False, power plants are not that inneficient.

OH yes they are!!!


The energy efficiency of a conventional thermal power station, considered salable energy produced as a percent of the heating value of the fuel consumed, is typically 33% to 48%. As with all heat engines, their efficiency is limited, and governed by the laws of thermodynamics.
Thermal power station - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station

And given the inevitable refuting of the source, I also fact checked with several other sites including gubbermint ones which agreed on the lower side of those numbers.
If you want to disprove that, please feel free to post creditable links that say otherwise.

My house boiler is 96% efficient and you are telling me that a larger energy conversion system run as a money making process on an industrial scale is halve the efficiency of my little house boiler ?

YEP!  Thats not taking into account the generation and transmission of the power in the first place.
The scenario of heating a tank and energy transformation of solid matter or other energy conversion into electrical current is a totally different thing. May as well say your domestic water heater gets 32 Mpg

words fail me.

So do your incorrect beliefs and understandings of a number of things which give you an unrealistic position on different issues.

If that is the basis of your argument you are greatly mistaken.

No, YOU are the one mistaken as the link I provided and all others clearly show.

Look if you like you gas guzzling poluter you have my personal permission to keep driving it if that makes you happy in your personal version of the world.

C'mon. We are having a largely rational and so far more or less factual discussion here. Don't throw a childish hissy fit because you don't like what's being said and it does not tie in factually with what you want to believe.

In any case MY diesel guzzling 2.5 ton behemoth ( oooh, there's that foul " D " word!!) will wipe the floor in the emissions contest with any EV out there as well as being cheaper to run. The fact you are still driving an IC makes your retort even more hypocritical.

If you want more information about energy sources in the uk (WARNING FACTS ARE ABOUT TO BE PRESENTED PREPARE YOURSELF) go to gridwatch.co.uk. As you can see a lot of our energy is not made with fossil fuels anymore anyway. I have seen up to 35% solar + wind output.

All along YOU have been talking about charging at night for .09p Kwh.  Now I realise you are on the other side of the pond and the planet to me, but I would go out on a limb and hazard a guess that You don't have squat near 35% Solar or wind at night when YOU are proposing doing your charging. Looking at the site you linked, it's fair to say that at night, at least 80% of your power is going to be from FF or nuke power.
That is a FACT from your own sources  wether you like it or not.

Most times our coal plants do not get used. that site is simply taking the data being pumped out by the UK grid and graphing it for easy reading plus adds some info about the sources.

Maybe but they are operating now as I see 6% of generation is coming from Biomass... Burning.  Oh the Co2, Oh the humanity!!
If your wind generation there is as flakey as ours, which I'm sure it is, then there will be plenty of times when the RE input is basicaly zero and you'll be running that EV entirely off Fossil or nuke energy.  Geez, that  reality has to hurt!

I also see that the solar input is not measured and is a guesimate from a university.  If there is any place you can trust to be greenwashed and hyping up the green figures you can bet your arse it will be a university.

In any case, the charging  YOU have been proposing would take place at night when unreliables would be at their lowest input of all.
If you really want to get some green credibility, put 10Kw of solar panels on your roof so you can power your entire needs renewably and feed some  power back to the grid to boot. 

I have 25Kw and counting on my roof and I am as anti green washed and commercial unreliables  as they come. Makes me laugh how all the save the world types RARELY if ever can even come close to the amount of RE power I have or drive cleaner vehicles that have less impact they go on about.

[Simon]

so obviously petrol does not have any "transmission" costs, it magically arrives in your petrol tank. No extraction process, no shipping or piping it ashore, no refinery processes, not transportation across the world, give me a break!

a sweeping statement from wikepedia to cover many different ways of generating power. Most of our power is CCGT which granted is 60% and over only so you are mostly correct.

So as we have now switched to efficiency talk how efficient is EV versus ICE ? ICE does not do regenerative breaking for a start!

[george80]

What difference does having a house battery make? that is for the house not a car, if i was generating enough to also fill a car fine but as i said previously for me if i was doing it economy 7 alongside my solar system would be perfect. By day I use my solar and battery, by night I charge the car off the grid at 8-9p/KWh

The difference it makes is you are paying for something to save money that's costing you far more than it could ever save! 

If you don't intend using it for the car, presumably because it's smaller than i suggested, then your battery is even more of a joke as to you saving money. It's a complete and utter waste of money and the planets resources.

Again you fail to mention what size it is but as you didn't even attempt to refute one thing I said about it's capacity and inability to off set it's cost, I was obviously spot on with everything I said because you sure as heck wouldn't have missed an opportunity to rub it in my face.
I been down this road before. It's extremely rare if not impossible for battery's to be a viable investment  anywhere in the world at this time Unless there is some massive subsidy that brings them down to at very least half price.

Does the EV need a cam belt change every 60'000 miles? no so 500/60'000 = 0.8p/mile spend it how you will but it is about 1/3 the cost of electric for a mile.

Does teh IC need a 2500 quid battery every 10 years if you are lucky?
Lets just ignore that battery replacement cost in the EV won't we and stick to comparing apples to lettuce.
Makes the numbers we want to present in the argument look so much better than if we added the EV costs in and did it fairly and came up with an answer we didn't want.  That would be completely unacceptable wouldn't it so best we do all we can to avoid that embarrassment. 

People doing 10'000+ miles will see the benefits.

Which you don't.  Neither do most people in the UK by the looks of it through a quick google check and by a fair margin.

The latest reports from the Department of Transport indicate that cars in England drove an average of 7,900 miles per year in 2015, down 15% from 9,200 miles per year in 2002.

Oh dear, this cheaper to run thing isn't looking good at all for most people where you are after all is it?  Pretty safe to say the trend is continuing so the ROI is getting even worse for the EV's. Bugger!
That cheaper refueling cost wasn't all it was cracked up to be after all was it?
Who would have seen that coming??   

I can see that you made a better decision with the EV not to get one so far than you did with the battery but how much would you pay for the sort of EV you have in mind? What would it be, how old and how many miles would you expect the sort of thing you are looking for to have traveled when you got it for the price point you are aiming at?

[ahbushnell]

Maybe you should concentrate on explaining to us how ICE is more efficient than electric

Easy: Power plants are a smidge more efficient than ICEs, say 50% efficiency, but power grid transmission and distribution losses are about 9% (91% efficiency), and the EVs charge/discharge losses are at least 15% (85% efficiency). That's 0.5*0.91*0.85= 38% efficiency, which is ~= most ICEs nowadays.

False, power plants are not that inneficient. They convert power 24 hours a day and a 0.1% increase in efficiency will mean thousands more money earnt every hour. My house boiler is 96% efficient and you are telling me that a larger energy conversion system run as a money making process on an industrial scale is halve the efficiency of my little house boiler ? words fail me. If that is the basis of your argument you are greatly mistaken.

A boiler in a house is heating water.  Generating electricity is different.  It uses a heat engine.  It's around 45% efficient converting to electricity. 
 
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3

Heat engines are limited by Carnot law.  This applies to ICE and power plants.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee102/node/1942

[Simon]

Well clearly you will just jumble facts together to suit your needs so pointless trying to explain it to you again. I give up. My battery is 10KW, it runs my house and it will pay for itself, rest assured i did my sums. 5000 cycles of 8KWh (80% DOD) = 40'000KWh * 0.18 = £7200, the batteries cost £4000! and electricity will continue to rise. If you want to include the infamous connection fee i pay it gets even better!

[george80]

so obviously petrol does not have any "transmission" costs, it magically arrives in your petrol tank. No extraction process, no shipping or piping it ashore, no refinery processes, not transportation across the world, give me a break!

Again you are trying to talk about the MPG your tea kettle gets.
No one said anything about costs, the discussion point YOU raised was EFFICENCY.
I don't know what the efficiency of petrol is but  it's irrelevant. It's a fuel in it's own right, it's not a solid material transformed into an electrical form.

a sweeping statement from wikepedia to cover many different ways of generating power. Most of our power is CCGT which granted is 60% and over only so you are mostly correct.

Yeah, I knew you'd refute that as it is highly inconvinent to the fanatasy you want to push.
In any case, what do you think natural gas is? Renewable?
Guess what, it's a fossil fuel too so is no different in the grand scheme of things to oil or coal.  Still releases the dreaded Co2 into the atmosphere.

Yes, I know, these inconvenient truths are the most upsetting thing a person can be confronted with but try to be brave and admit when you are wrong and not discredit yourself with trying to make any more far fetched excuses or unfortunate retorts.
It's not so much the right or wrong that affects a persons credibility and standing in the community, it's whether or not they have the round hairy ones to admit they were on the wrong track and to learn something from it to better their knowledge in the future and be more informed.
Sticking to an incorrect position and trying to defend it when one is clearly in the KA KA up to their eyeballs is not a good look for anyone.
The problem is once you get in the quicksand the desperate struggle to dig yourself out only leads to rash, poorly thought out statements that make you sink quicker.

So as we have now switched to efficiency talk how efficient is EV versus ICE ? ICE does not do regenerative breaking for a start!

Switched?

You were arguing efficiency with others long before I got into pointing out your flawed position and and completely erroneous statements.
You either need to catch up or go back to where I said efficency was irrelevant because it was running and cost of ownership that mattered.

If you want to try saving face and going back to that, i'll let someone else take over. you are acting the same as others you berate for their behavior and frankly, you are too easy for me to be bothered playing against. I'm not learning anything, your statements are way too easy to shoot down in flames and clearly as Yoda would say, " The green washing is strong in this one".

You have said nothing of any credibility, nothing that makes me re evaluate my position or brings up any other perspectives ( other than the exaggeration of you claims so i'm bored now.

You carry on because I concede, your ability to do that far outweighs my level of interest in further proving your complete and utter lack of knowledge on the subject and Hypocrisy.

[nctnico]

When it comes to efficiency you can do a very simple comparison: just compare the CO2 emissions per distance driven. That is a very simple sum to do.

[Simon]

When it comes to efficiency you can do a very simple comparison: just compare the CO2 emissions per distance driven. That is a very simple sum to do.

That is you definition of efficiency? I take it you don't call yourself an engineer?

[nctnico]

When it comes to efficiency you can do a very simple comparison: just compare the CO2 emissions per distance driven. That is a very simple sum to do.

That is you definition of efficiency? I take it you don't call yourself an engineer?

Efficiency is input versus output. CO2 is a direct measure of the amount of energy you have to put in. Distance driven is the output. It cannot get more basic than that and there is no debate possible on what numbers are cherry picked or not.

What makes an EV inefficient is the long chain between energy source and the wheels. There is a lot more to it to get an EV moving than just an electric motor. Even while each link in the chain is efficient in itself, together you still get a 30% to 40% loss between the generator and the wheels.

[Simon]

can you really measure all the inputs? don't be silly. I am clearly wasting my time. This is something that with the most scientific study would struggle to come the an answer and your argument is about power station efficiency and yet you ignore the ongoing move to renewables and other methods like nuclear. Keep up or the world will leave you behind. At this stage I think it fair to assume that they are the same particularly if you want to ignore the elephant in the room of ICE petrol in to wiles out. how much power is in 1L of petrol?

[Simon]

Oh look, 1L of petrol has 13.3KWh, my car does 10m/L that is 1.3KW per mile, 1300/250 = 5.3 oh dear oh dear.........

[DougSpindler]

Maybe you should concentrate on explaining to us how ICE is more efficient than electric

Easy: Power plants are a smidge more efficient than ICEs, say 50% efficiency, but power grid transmission and distribution losses are about 9% (91% efficiency), and the EVs charge/discharge losses are at least 15% (85% efficiency). That's 0.5*0.91*0.85= 38% efficiency, which is ~= most ICEs nowadays.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=power+grid+distribution+losses

That is only when they are running and there is demand.  What happens when demand changes and they are they are using fuel to produce energy and there is no demand?  Messes with their efficiency.  Or what happens when demand exceeds production capabilities?  We have no means of storing electricty and providing immediate electricity to the grid.  This is why in the US we have peaker power generating facilities.  Efficiency blows when you provide real life situations.

Here in California we have power outages on nice clear sunny days because of solar.  When an unannounced cloud passes over a solar.farm the output decreases enough we can lose power.

Factor that into your efficiency calculations.

[Simon]

We use pumped storage in the UK for peaks. At night I expect the load is pretty stable and that is when you would charge an EV.

[DougSpindler]

Simon thank you for your posts and responses.   You clearly know what you are talking about and have mentioned issues others seems to just ignore.  Some folks in this thread like nctnico think they art engineers by dodging Google searches.  The sad part is people in this thread like nctnico have said their beliefs are more powerful than critical thinking skills.  When one places his beliefs as being far more credible than science and critical thinking skills you don’t have a chance of having an intelligent conversation with them.

While others may disagree with you, I appreciate your posts and have learned a few thinkgs from them.  Thank you.

[coppice]

We use pumped storage in the UK for peaks. At night I expect the load is pretty stable and that is when you would charge an EV.

Actually, the pumped storage in the UK was built to ride over a sudden failure of a major generating site. That's why it was built with the added cost and complexity to have a very fast turn around from pumping to generating. Storage in other parts of the world has been built primarily for peak mitigation. For example, CLP, one of the power utilities in Hong Kong, has insufficient generating capacity, on purpose. They use their nuclear capacity (actually located in southern China) to pump up a reservoir every night (also located in southern China), and generate from that reservoir during the peak demand each day.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

and you 50% efficiency claim on fossil fuel conversion? that was your claim. I said i have seen up to 35% renewable generation that is peak. Yes 27.9% on average for a year sounds right.

That's only about 1/4 of the total that has better generation efficiency, the grid and other losses are the same and still there.

If the average claim of 250Wh/mile is true

250Wh/mile = 15.53 kWh/100km which is clearly wrong because:

1) Tesla says the range of a 75 kWh Model S (*) is 400km, that's 18.75 kWh/100km not 15.53.
2) You've got to add the charge/discharge losses because to get 18.75 kWh of energy out of the battery you've got to draw off the wall plug at least 18.75/0.85= 22 kWh.

There's a huge difference between 15 and 22 kWh: 22 is 1.5x as much.

You can buy a twizy as I've done and halve that figure to slightly below 100 Wh/km, but it's not a real car and won't take you very far away on a charge (75km). Or a tin can like the Leaf or a Zoe but that won't save you too many Wh over the Model S.

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S

An EV does not have a combustion engine full of moving parts rubbing and banging into each other as part of their normal operation and the maitenance on an electric motor will be far lower than a combustion engine. No clutch, no cam belt - I am due a cam belt change, that will cost £500 and i get nothing from that other than i can keep driving. with an EV £500 buys me 7 months of battery lease.

All cars have this maintenance:

Tires
brake pads
windshield wipers and fluid
Cabin air filter
shock absorbers
brake fluid every 4..5 years
Radiator fluid every 4..5 years
A/C gas leakages
Gearbox oil every 10 years
Wheel hubs ball bearings, engine mounts, bushings and driveshafts as needed

ICE
clutch 100..200k km
cam belt 100..200k km
oil 10..20k km ($50)
Air and oil filter 10..20k km ($50)

EV
Battery every ? km (very expensive)

ICE does not do regenerative breaking for a start!

All the hybrids have KERS.

Most of our power is CCGT which granted is 60% and over only so you are mostly correct.

In cold weather when you turn on the cabin heater (which is a load of several kW) the efficiency of an ICE increases, but the efficiency of an EV decreases and by very much because the heat has been dumped as losses at the power plant but in the ICE it's dumped inside the cabin where it's needed so not a waste.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Oh look, 1L of petrol has 13.3KWh, my car does 10m/L that is 1.3KW per mile, 1300/250 = 5.3 oh dear oh dear.........

One litre of petrol has 9.5 kWh of energy not 13.3 (*). In another post above I say why I think the 250 Wh/mile figure is wrong, 22kWh/100km is closer to the real thing I believe, and that's 350 Wh/mile. Add the generation and grid losses to the equation and do the math again... and don't turn on the cabin heater of your EV.

(*) 34.2MJ/litre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

[DougSpindler]

We use pumped storage in the UK for peaks. At night I expect the load is pretty stable and that is when you would charge an EV.

Actually, the pumped storage in the UK was built to ride over a sudden failure of a major generating site. That's why it was built with the added cost and complexity to have a very fast turn around from pumping to generating. Storage in other parts of the world has been built primarily for peak mitigation. For example, CLP, one of the power utilities in Hong Kong, has insufficient generating capacity, on purpose. They use their nuclear capacity (actually located in southern China) to pump up a reservoir every night (also located in southern China), and generate from that reservoir during the peak demand each day.

NO!  This is NOT the same thing.  Peaker vs. peak rimes are completely different.  Stored hydro is a way of conserving water and supplying electricity when demands are typically high which is typically during the day and on work days.  It takes time to open the values to let more water flow through the gernerators and get that electricty on the grid.  Likewise if demand unexpectedly decreases during the day it takes time for the valves controlling the amount of water flowing through the generators to be closed.

This can take hours.

Peaker powerplants are completely different.  They are typically natural gas and use jet engines.  If unexpectedly the demand for electricity is greater at a given moment peaker engines are fired up to cover that unexpected demand.  Takes far less time to fire up a jet engine than open a valve at a dam or generate more steam burning coal.

As the demand for electricty decreases the peaker engines are shut off.

If it were not for peaker power generation capabilities power companies would have to always be running there generators at full capacity to cover those unexpected demand.

And to make this more complicated I live in California which is connected to a power grid that covers many states.  There are several hundred power companies which all get there electricty from the same power generating facilities.  Orders for how much much each power company is going to buy at every minute of every day is placed a day in advance so all of the power generating plant know how much to produce. 

Solar and wind are unreliable it makes it hard to know just how much power each power plant and there are hundreds of those as well needs to produce to meet the needs of each power company and the millions of customers.

All it takes to have a large power outage is a large cloud over a large PV solar farm.  Or no wind on a day wind was predicted.  Or an unusually hot day and everyone turning on an air conditioner.

Batteries would be the solution, but as has been pointed out their cost is prohibitive and there capacity is very small.  The figure is something like all of the batteries in the world would supply the world with enough electricity for 10 minutes.

This is why we use fossil fuels.  They are abundant, produce a lot of energy for their size and are inexpensive.  Only energy form that’s more energy rich for its size is nuclear.