Re:Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
by eru on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @03:59PM
(#14091864)
Do you know if anybody ran the numbers? Centralized coal plants might still be more efficient than micro-petrol plants in every car?
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Re:Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
by jacquesm on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @04:54PM
(#14092337)
It would certainly be an interesting thing to know. Back of the envelope for ICE is ~20% from tank to wheels, From coal plant to wheels of an electric vehicle you'd be looking at line losses first, then AC/DC conversion losses (5% or so) in the charger, battery loss during charging (Ri of the battery comes in to play both ways), again during discharging and then probably a better figure for the drivetrain of an electric car versus an ICE based car because it is much simpler, but the motor would still lose some energy to heat due to its internal resistance (another 3% or so).
Thermal efficiency for a coal plant is ~35% give or take (depending on how new the plant is) so that would be your starting point.
Charge/discharge losses for a large (20KWh) pack that I used were around 25%, a modern EV might do a bit better but probably not that much better (because the internal resistance of those cells they use is quite high).
Putting all that together:
.33 * .75 * .95 * .97 = ~22%, and ~24% for a high
efficiency coal plant.
With line losses un-accounted for because they vary very much depending on the location of the plant and the consumer.So it's actually pretty close, better than I expected.
Re:Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
by undersuit on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @06:50PM
(#14093219)
Would you like to run some more numbers? You only did 'tank to wheels', I'd like to see oil deposit to wheels and the similar calculations for coal deposit to wheels.
Re:Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
by eru on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @03:40PM
(#14101037)
Thanks for running the numbers. My recollection relied on "Sustainable Energy without the hot air". The bit about (electric) cars is available online at https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml (and the author comes to similiar-ish conclusions).