FORD revises MPG for 6 cars

See EIA: "About 2/3 of the energy used to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity is “lost” at power plants and in power lines."

Electricity in the United States - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy - Energy Information Administration

 

If I were either of you two, I would not waste my time trying to reason with this guy. He seriously gets off on these kind of discussions and loves to argue endlessly about nothing (using fake facts and distorted numbers).

 

USB,
This pdf link agrees with you, and even more so as CCGT has replaced some coal from the time of publication.
They say 40% exits the plant and 6% lost en-route for a net 34% to the wall.

The efficiency improvement over the past decade is from the switch from coal to NG. That of course can change.

 

I've never had an issue with mileage ratings with any of our Toyotas, and our current 2007 Camry Hybrid and my new Prius v have delivered as expected. First it was stupid drivers, then a call to change the EPA's erroneous tests, and now it's just simply Ford. Their PR campaign and subsequent claims addressing the issues screams arrogance. Nobody in the automotive world believed their claims, our local dealer said they were hogwash.

The claims by many that it's not a bog deal are also hogwash. Perhaps the teflon shield can be peeled back now, and facts are fair to be discussed.

 

Some people just assume EV miles are cleaner and more efficient and no need to balance the two fuels.

Ford Energi tried to get EV to 85 mph and sacraficed efficiency of both fuels, unfortunately.

 

Okay I simply cannot accept this. Electric plants capturing waste heat to spin another turbine or two has been around for a century. It would be standard practice by now.
EIA.gov:
efficiency:
33% for coal power plants
42% for natural gas power plants
45% combined cycle

 

33% efficiency after transmission and distribution means 67% still waste heat. That doesn't get into cabin for warmth. You have no control as it is upstream.

Having local power plant (ICE) gives me the control (though not always) when to or not to run ICE as I see fit.

 

Sorry to confuse you with facts. Try googling 'fraction of US power plants that use CHP combined heat and power". As I understand this issue, the exhaust gases are relatively low heat and therefore poor source for turbines. The Danes have solved this problem by using the exhaust hot gas for home heating.

 

One-third are combined cycle. I would not describe that as "rare" to use your word.

 

Ouch! Truth hurts!

Ford Motor Company Lowers Fuel Economy Ratings For Six Vehicles | Ford Media Center

 

"Currently, 82 GW of installed CHP generation capacity—
the equivalent of more than 130 coal plants on average, or 9
percent of our nation’s total energy-generation capacity—is in
use at more than 4,100 sites across every state in the nation."

9% means one-third. Majority means 90%. Typical TH 'facts'.

 

Majority ==90%? Since when? 50%+1 vote is the proper definition. (2) I don't recall saying the majority of plants are combined cycle. (3) Here's the link and quote: "The researchers reported that between 1997 and 2012... the fraction of energy from combined cycle natural gas plants rose to 34 percent." New study: U.S. power plant emissions down

You cannot accuse me of "making-up facts" when I have a clear citation to back me up. Plus in the two years since, likely more combined cycle plants have been built. It might be as high as 40% now.

 

[shrug] You know exactly which other thread that comes from.

But thanks for the link on the current issue.

Though, I'm a bit stumped how combined cycle natural gas plants can produce 34% of our electric energy production, when all natural gas plants together produced only 27.4% of it in 2013. See:
EPA.gov- Fuel Mix for U.S. Electricity Generation

--------------------------------------------
PS:

That article claims CCNG produced 34%, and coal 59%, of the nation's electricity in 2012. Together, that is 93%.

For that same year, the EPA-EIA source I linked above shows the percentages from various other sources:
Nuclear: 19.0%
Hydro: 6.7%
Wind: 3.5%
Biomass: 1.4%
various others: 1.8%

Anyone proficient with basic arithmetic should already see a problem here, even before finding production figures from natural gas that doesn't use combined-cycle, i.e. steam boilers, combustion turbines, and other cycles.

Fine. I now accuse your cited source of being in error. But thanks for at least providing some citation.

In the first year since, the EPA-EIA shows that the fraction of electricity from all natural gas, CC and otherwise, fell from 30.3% to 27.4%. The second year since, i.e. 2014, mostly hasn't happened yet.

FWIW, EPA-EIA shows coal at 39.1% last year, and wind grew to 4.1%.

 

Thanks for jumping in and setting it straight.

The lesson is not to assume EV miles are cleaner than 50 MPG gas miles.

PiP uses very little electricity due to the thresholds set to complement with ICE. You cannot say that with other plugins. EV economy of anything below 100 MPGe is a red flag for substandard that 50 MPG gas Prius set.

 

Nice rule of thumb.

TH,

Read Fuzzy's posts, they are informative.
I unfortunately added some confusion to the issue of national fossil fuel efficiency because of my limited definition of CHP wherein district heating uses the power plant waste heat. More correctly, CHP is a basket of technologies with widely ranging improvements in efficiency.

E.g., IIRC most of the "CHP" capacity in the US is in newer NG plants built as so-called CCGT. You should realize though that a lot of these plants operate as peaker plants, meaning production is less than capacity. So while a CCGT plant can exceed 50% efficiency in actual use, they represent (my guess) around 5% of actual fossil fuel use.

Arithmetic time: 5% of say a 15% improvement in efficiency in CCGT compared to coal is 1.5% improvement to national efficiency from "CHP." This is why I said you can ignore CHP for the purposes of this discussion centered around an EV using an average national grid compared to a Prius.

 

Tesla S85 gets less than 100 MPGe..... I guess it is pretty inefficient though.

 

Compare CO2/mile between the cars and you will see USB's point.

He is probably using the US national grid average of ~ 40% coal and ~ 40% NG for the calc.

 

Just to stay on topic. Ford lied about their gas mileage many, many times

 

For the size and performance of the car, 89 MPGe is impressive. There is no hybrid in it's class that gets 44 MPG.

 

Honda Accord? BMW 328d? (shrug) Seawolf would be happy to know the Telsa S60 is rated dirtier than a Volkswagen Jetta Diesel by greenercars.org. It proves his point that EVs are not that clean.