How much electricity to produce gasoline?

[Norbert]

How can you tell it's only externally purchased electricity? I don't see that specified. Are you assuming that on site produced electricity doesn't enter the grid and isn't measured?

There indeed seems to be a lack of description on the site. It's my common sense interpretation, as it says "consumption", and I don't expect refineries to report internally produced and used electricity (see post #37 for a bit of description) (and even if it did, I wouldn't expect that to show up in this statistic). Also I wouldn't expect a refinery to feed electricity back to the grid and then consume it again (but even if it did, that's surely rare and I wouldn't mind that small number to be part of the statistic).

EDIT: In any case, the point is that refineries use more energy than that number, at least since they also use other types of energy.

 

[Norbert]

JRP3,

The data's source is the United Nations Statistics Division (which I assume is reliable), however apart from very general definitions, I have not found Metadata describing the origin of the numbers in more detail.

This is a more direct link to the Un data: UNdata | record view | Total Electricity

 

[dpeilow]

Plugs and Cars: The electricity in gasoline

 

[jaanton]

Years ago when the California Electric Power Crisis was going on, there was all this stuff about forcing businesses to cut power for health and safety stuff. The refiners got an exemption because their refining towers have massive electric fans which are pretty efficient when running but restarting them takes massive amounts of power. (Sounds like AC induction motors he he he) So much that they bring in semi-trucks of capacitors to help handle the surge. So they must be running 24/7.

 

[vfx]

Gasoline's long tailpipe.

My car can run 30 miles on "invisible" gasoline.

Both Hydrogen and Gasoline add a step. Why not just put the electricity straight into an EV battery?

 

[richkae]

This question was bothering me so I did a bunch of research over the weekend and put it on my blog:
Refining | High Speed Charging

 

[William13]

Richkae, love your analysis.

 

[zack]

If you've taken everything into consideration, Richkae, that's a really dramatic bit of information.

 

[vfx]

Summery:

Yes we could supply the energy we need to drive EVs more than 50% of the miles we drive in a year from repurposing the energy we use just to refine gasoline.

And you mention that does no include finding drilling and pre and post refining transportation.

So to try and make this into a sound bite and ballpark the parts left out, Could this be the statement?

"If you took all the electricity it takes to find make and transport gasoline, you could drive an electric car 60 percent of the distance that burning that gas would take you."

(still needs work)

 

[JRP3]

Replace "electricity" with "energy" to be accurate, and maybe use "over half of all miles traveled" or "power over half of all vehicles on the road."

 

[stopcrazypp]

Replace "electricity" with "energy" to be accurate, and maybe use "over half of all miles traveled" or "power over half of all vehicles on the road."

That's not completely accurate either. This isn't straight energy equivalency, but talking about using those energy sources to make electricity.

 

[dpeilow]

Electric Mini: It takes a lot of coal to make gasoline

 

[vfx]

Electric Mini: It takes a lot of coal to make gasoline

It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles, than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles.

 

[vfx]

Discussion here:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5046

 

[vfx]

http://gatewayev.org/how-much-electricity-is-used-refine-a-gallon-of-gasoline

 

[vfx]

Elon: Exactly...., you have enough electricity to power all the cars in the country if you stop refining gasoline. You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine gasoline, something like the Model S can go 20 miles on 5 kilowatt hours. You basically have the energy needed to power electric vehicles if you stop refining.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-and-chris-paine-explain-how-the-electric-car-got-its-revenge-2011-10#ixzz1buMFO2AY

 

[vfx]

Feel free to use this when someone hits you with the "long Tailpipe" argument.


"I Want My Electricity Back! "

The big oil companies take the electricity that can go in our cars and use it all to refine it into
gasoline.
Then they re-sell it to burn in gas cars. Wouldn't you want to eliminate the middleman?"

"I Want My Electricity Back! "

 

[Lloyd]

On CNBC today an analyst said he expects oil to go for $150/barrel next year..

 

[JRP3]

One problem with Elon's statement is that some of the energy used to refine gasoline is generated on site from petroleum by products and NG. Now we'd probably get more mileage if a barrel of oil were refined less and burned in a generating plant to charge EV's, but then we're still using petroleum for transportation.

 

[Norbert]

Electric Mini: It takes a lot of coal to make gasoline

It seems to be based on the same (or similar) Argonne National Laboratories studies which I referred to earlier in this thread.