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Comment by wopwops | Hacker News Reader

"EVs convert over 77% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12%–30% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels."

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml

EV charging doesn't need to deliver anywhere near the amount of energy contained in gas to displace gas.

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The ~2MW value is after taking that into account.

Does this calculation account for the 10-20% electrical energy loss during transmission across the grid?

The fraction of energy lost in the grid in the US is around 6%.

Probably if you wanted to do that you would also need to calculate the energy loss of transporting the gas to the pump as well

And losses during burning of the gas.

Things look even more dire for gas when you consider the entire supply chain. Remember that you burn gas as terrible efficiency to transport it to gas station.

it is even more dire - transport of gas - imagine hurricane, tornado damages, pipelines, electric supply for gas pump pumps... good luck with pumping gas without electricity, or i remember 8 hour queue before hurricane in front of gas station for some reason...

with PV on roof you do not need to transport anything from anywhere, charge and be functional. not even talking about house comfort while literally everyone around you is panicking, because of lack of electricity. ( you can connect 200watt inverter to your outlet to help "pace" ongrid inverter to work in offrgid situation, so yes all PV can do offgrid for 30 bucks on top)

yes generators are a thing until russia knocks on US sovereignty and US does nothing about it - Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack ...

Did you really think 10-20% loss would erase 50-60% more efficiency when you asked that question? Did you also ask the same question about gasoline energy efficiency and whether it included the significantly higher amount of energy required to move that oil/gasoline all over, multiple times, before it ends up in a tank?

You’re missing a state of change. California uses coal, natural gas, and nuclear primarily. Nuclear efficiency is low at 33%. Best case you‘re charging your car from a new natural gas plant that is a combined cycle design which can potentially have up to 60% efficacy.

So 60% efficiency, minus 9.2% transmission loss, Minus charging losses and then electric motor efficiency loses… verses directly consuming fuel and putting the power to the wheels.

Electric cars are much less efficient if you consider the entire stream. If you want to use the argument that the gasoline needs to be refined and transported. Well so does natural gas. Or coal, or nuclear fuel rods, or bio mass, etc etc.

I’m not saying electric cars aren’t good. But we should really force people to charge them with solar if we want peak efficiency to save the planet.

Generating plant efficiency source - https://www.pcienergysolutions.com/2023/04/17/power-plant-ef...

Electrical distribution loss in California 9.2% source - https://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how...

you forgot to calculate how much of cost of nuclear energy(sic) is going towards removing all CO2, NOx it is generating....

so if you are calculating efficiency of one power plant calculate this into price of another power plant too.

we can build utility PV + 12 hour battery with LCOE lower than nuclear... PV + battery price is for already deployed system. nuclear price is prediction of price of new plant...

Nuclear is dead in the water. And it is not pacific ocean water.

I’m not missing anything. You’re being extremely selective in your argument by excluding all of the processes that extracted, transported, and converted, transported again, and again, and then again before ending up in a tank, and ignoring all those same processes required and used recursively for each of those processes, including the coal, natural gas, etc burned to power all those processes, etc etc to the same level of insane detail that you want to pick electric apart.

But then, starting from the position that 10% loss on a 60% directly efficient ‘fuel’ is worse than a minimum 83% loss of efficiency on another fuel isn’t much of a genuine position in the first place.

No, just like gas figures don't account for 100% overhead in rectification process.

This is the „well to wheel“ efficiency of a BEV. It accounts for transmission losses, charging and powertrain losses.

As a point of reference, the well to wheel efficiency for gasoline is somewhere between 12-20%.

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