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Where will we get ALL that electricity whan most cars are electric?

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35% of our EV utility customers here in San Diego have PV solar...
That's great, but I'm willing to bet that most of the power to charge those EVs is not solar. I typically charge at night, after I'm home from work/gym/etc. That overnight power isn't coming from PV. Could it come from batteries charged by PV? Sure, but right now that's way more expensive than running a gas-fired plant.
 
4.5 kWh of electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline is not correct. On average it's less than 0.2 kWh of electricity per gallon. A little over 95% of the 5-6 kWh of energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline is thermal energy produced from burning petroleum byproducts made in the refinery (mostly) and burning natural gas (to a somewhat lesser extent). Less than 5% of the energy used in oil refineries is electricity. There's a discussion on this subject on TMC starting here

Also, it's common for oil refineries to have Cogen plants to make their own electricity.

Thanks. That is consistent with what I have read elsewhere.
 
4.5 kWh of electricity to refine a gallon of gasoline is not correct. On average it's less than 0.2 kWh of electricity per gallon. A little over 95% of the 5-6 kWh of energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline is thermal energy produced from burning petroleum byproducts made in the refinery (mostly) and burning natural gas (to a somewhat lesser extent). Less than 5% of the energy used in oil refineries is electricity. There's a discussion on this subject on TMC starting here

Also, it's common for oil refineries to have Cogen plants to make their own electricity.

Doesn't matter. That's energy burned that could have otherwise been turning a generator and putting kWh on the grid. Cogen or not, you have to include all of those kWh.
 
Doesn't matter. That's energy burned that could have otherwise been turning a generator and putting kWh on the grid. Cogen or not, you have to include all of those kWh.

The petroleum byproducts burned in oil refineries for fuel (petroleum coke and still gas) would not otherwise be used to make electricity. For starters, these byproducts wouldn't exist without oil refineries. Besides, oil is way too expensive to be used to make electricity. Electricity in Hawaii is mostly made from oil, which is the main reason why Hawaii's electricity cost per kWh is about 3x the national average.

The natural gas burned and used to make hydrogen in oil refineries would be freed up to make electricity, if refineries weren't using it.
 
10% of all natural gas used in California goes towards steam extraction of oil at the Kern Oil Field. If we didn't need that oil, we could also get all that natural gas back for electricity production or sauteing chicken. Go knows how much similar resource goes into making gasoline from tar sands in Canada.

A lot of that Kern natural gas comes back in the form of energy co-generation, but you get my point. We're not just offsetting the oil coming out of the ground, we're offsetting all the energy that it takes to get it out. Increasingly, those numbers are(I assume) huge. Not needing gasoline actually ADDS a good bit of electricity capacity by eliminating huge chunks of demand from the oil industry.
 
Exactly...if we're talking about where we'll get the energy to power EVs in the future, the energy consumed by oil refining should be an offset. Any method oil refiners have to power their operations could also generate electricity. There might be some delta; process steam is lower pressure than that needed to drive modern electric turbines, but energy is energy, and refining petroleum takes a lot.
 
I agree that 135 people taking the poll (Driving on Sunshine - Page 7) is a small number of people. But since we had 30 votes the 60% mark has held +/-2% over the last 6 months and 100 additional votes. So there has been very little drift as more people vote. Another small data point is we have 5 Tesla owners in NE Tennessee, 2 of us (40%) have solar and one more has already committed. So shortly our small group will be at 60%.

But let's say there may well be a selection bias and the real number is 30%. I still believe 30% is significant at this early stage. Those early 30% are showing what is possible. They show it is VERY possible for people to add an EV with very little impact to the grid. While I am not against nuclear and/or fusion, solar works NOW. Solar is cost effective now in most areas of the country. Is it perfect, no but show me any power technology that does not have some downside.
 
That's great, but I'm willing to bet that most of the power to charge those EVs is not solar. I typically charge at night, after I'm home from work/gym/etc. That overnight power isn't coming from PV. Could it come from batteries charged by PV? Sure, but right now that's way more expensive than running a gas-fired plant.

But I guess in the spirit of this thread, it still counts. Because the original poster's question included generating capacity, and the PV generation shifts around the peak loads that in turn require less peak capacity.
 
But I guess in the spirit of this thread, it still counts. Because the original poster's question included generating capacity, and the PV generation shifts around the peak loads that in turn require less peak capacity.
Hydro-electric power, which provides a substantial majority of the power produced in Canada and a less substantial (but still significant) portion of the power in the US plus pumped storage and demand management systems provide low cost storage and buffering of power and enable renewable energy to be utilized as and when available.
 
Hydro-electric power, which provides a substantial majority of the power produced in Canada and a less substantial (but still significant) portion of the power in the US plus pumped storage and demand management systems provide low cost storage and buffering of power and enable renewable energy to be utilized as and when available.
Hydro is very important in some parts of the US, but negligible in others; e.g. it's nearly 20% in Alaska but less than 0.1% in New Jersey. So, it will have an uneven capacity to serve as the balancing power supply. Overall, conventional hydro accounted for 6.6% of US electric generation (MWh) and 6.9% of installed capacity (MW). There's an additional 1.8% of capacity as pumped storage. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of hydro is "run of river" and has no storage capacity. Other hydro has limited pondage, enough to be good intra-day but not enough to carry much energy from one week to the next. All hydro systems have operational requirements ("minimum flow") as well.
 
I work in the nuclear industry... thermal power generation is surviving on it's own inertia. The only reason we continue to use it is because we've been using it for so long. Solar PV is the future, with leveled power generation cost <$0.02/kWh I don't see anything that can compete. In a decade even a magic hot rock will be more expensive than solar PV since you still have to convert that heat to electricity.
 
if oil isnt required, the dedicated powerplants that run oil refineries can more than handle the load for EVs

take a good look at this video

also take a look at this link to see where your country fits in

Countries Compared by Energy Consumption by petroleum refineries. International Statistics at NationMaster.com

This video is very well done - I like the animation, but the claim made at minute 3:16, that 4.5 kwh of electricity is required to refine a gallon of gas, is evidently not correct:

Where will we get ALL that electricity whan most cars are electric? - Page 4

Your second link is interesting. It shows that in 2005 the amount of electricity used per capita by by refineries in the US was 165kwh. If that number is correct, it would be enough electrical energy for each citizen to drive around 412 miles in the Model S (using 400 kwh/mile, assuming 20% charging and vampire losses). While not negligible, this is obviously not enough to power our transportation system.
 
This video is very well done - I like the animation, but the claim made at minute 3:16, that 4.5 kwh of electricity is required to refine a gallon of gas, is evidently not correct:

Where will we get ALL that electricity whan most cars are electric? - Page 4

Your second link is interesting. It shows that in 2005 the amount of electricity used per capita by by refineries in the US was 165kwh. If that number is correct, it would be enough electrical energy for each citizen to drive around 412 miles in the Model S (using 400 kwh/mile, assuming 20% charging and vampire losses). While not negligible, this is obviously not enough to power our transportation system.

In Canada the corresponding number is roughly 1000 km per person per year.
 
Or better yet, the usable energy, or energy with sufficient exergy to be used to power EVs.

In this case, in CA circa the early 2000s, I think it's roughly 4-6+/kWh per gallon of useful energy, with roughly three quarters of that being natural gas. The basic idea is that we could use the electricity directly to charge EVs, and use the natural gas indirectly to run power plants that would charge EV.

https://www.sce.com/NR/rdonlyres/B7B6326E-C9C1-4151-B96D-06D8AB369928/0/SCE200608EEPlans.pdf

How much energy does it take to produce a gallon of gasoline? - Page 5 - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com

The SCE link actually references the energy inputs of refining, which is nice to see. It's a shame CA didn't keep up the page that had the energy inputs for extraction, but sufficed to say it's fairly large also and the figures are on evnut's page below.

Darrell also has some more info here that seems to support that assertion from someone named Earl.

Gasoline and Oil

The usable energy inputs for just refining would power ~8+% of all vehicle miles traveled. Include domestic extraction in that (with a total of ~15% I imagine) and we're near the ~4-6kWh/gallon of electricity equivalent figure.

Naturally that would increase if we include the energy costs of exploration/drilling, transportation to the refinery, transportation from the refinery, and last but not least, drivers stopping at gas stations rather than just plugging in at home. I think ~5kWh/gallon is probably a good ballpark figure.

What's really impressive about this is that most vehicles with Model S performance only get ~20+mpg if driven conservatively, which means that an S driven conservatively (~300Wh/mile) gets ~3/4 of the energy it needs just by avoiding refining that one gallon of gas. That's pretty near IMO. The figures aren't quite as good for econoboxes, since ICE efficiency is higher there, but there's still a substantial amount of energy available to charge an EV directly, or create electricity to charge an EV, by virtue of avoiding the extraction/refining/transportation of oil/gasoline in the first place.
 
As has been pointed out in this discussion: There really are two issues - 1) Can the grid support it, and 2) Will the electricity generation feeding the grid be able to keep pace.

I suspect the answer is already that this is not on issue for many places. In my personal situation, my daily charging electricity needs are about 25% of what my daily house electrical usage is. The vast majority of my house electrical requirement is during the day. the car charges at night.

The unused generation and grid/distribution systems available at night is more than adequate for my charging needs by a factor of 2-3 times. Although the individual ratios will differ, I'd expect the vast majority of EV owners fall in to the same category.

That's with changing nothing today. As electricity is diverted from refiner consumption, more solar comes online, etc... the generation side might improve.