Electricity hidden CO2?

hmmm. rather large difference between what is reported here and what my power company actually tells me is used. now i do contribute to the "green power" intiative, but cant imagine that would make up that much difference....

they mention gas. well according to the bill insert i get, there is little or no gas in Olympia area being used

**edit**

ok, i have now punched in zip codes for 3 different cities in Wa and Or and the numbers are not changing. so despite what it says, its giving a very large regional average. so not really specific to any one area at all

 

I may well be wrong about the amount of energy required to fully charge a Volt with 40 mile electric-only range, but I do mean 20 kW-hours. If the real energy figure is smaller than 20 kW-hours, so much the better. A charging power (rate) of 20 kW would be amazingly large; no typical household could provide 1/20th of that.

 

figure 4 miles per KWH so most likely to be around 10 Kwh

 

Oops. My bad. I think I had a "senior moment" there. Sorry, Richard. :embarassed:

 

Same here, the numbers are quite different than reported by Seattle City Light. But SCL is a big public utility, getting first pick of the desirable sources. The private utilities are last in line, so get the undesirable sources.

The website shows 45% of our regional energy coming from fossil carbon, while SCL claims just 1.22%. I operate on the principle that most of the clean energy I don't consume still gets sold to someone else, displacing carbon somewhere down the line.

 

A minor point, but a matter of curiosity to me:

Are the above numbers measured at the wall or at the electric motor? The difference, of course, is battery inefficiency (charging and discharging losses). My Xebra (low-speed, light-weight, but inefficient) gets 3 miles per kWh, when driven gently, measured at the wall with a kwh meter. I have no way of measuring how many kWh the motor is actually using.

It would be interesting to know if the Rav4EV is being measured the same way.

 

well, it has to do with inefficiencies and different motors. my Zenn originally had a bigger motor which provided greater acceleration and i was getting 3.3 to 3.6 miles/kwh. well it burned up and instead of replacing it (and waiting up to 4 weeks for replacement) i opted to reinstall the standard motor instead.

well, its slower but it gets around 4 to 4.5 miles/kwh and its like 15 lbs lighter. so weight did not play a part. so the actual power used by the motor is probably less, so i would have to say that the RAV 4 numbers could be either way all depending on the motor, gearing and the fact that a transmission with a vehicle that heavy could easily greatly increase performance at higher speeds