EVs and GVs: which use more electricity?

I'm no expert, but I have read a lot of studies on this.
My understanding is that refining the oil requires a fair amount of energy.
However, most of the energy is from burning leftovers from the refining process. The actual draw from the grid is fairly minor.

So IMO EVs require much more electricity, however, gas vehicles require some. Add that to the gas and it is even more reason to go EV.

 

+1

Silly type things. If you need a pick up truck to go 5000 miles/year go gas, don't go for one of those promised conversion jobs.

Refineries typically burn oil and natural gas, and use oil, natural gas,steam and electicity.
U.S. Fuel Consumed at Refineries
44.6 Billion kwh electricity for 2012
U.S. Product Supplied of Finished Motor Gasoline (Thousand Barrels)
3.2 Billion barrels in 2012 of gasoline
which means there are about 14 kwh of electricity per barrel of gasoline. This is very low.

Now all that natural gas could be burned in a ccgt plant and generate electricity, but the refinery is consuming mainly oil and natural gas to make gasoline.

 

Sounds like AG has the updated figure for 2012. This is equal to $0.33 kwhr/per gallon gasoline, which I don't even like that number (considering only 50% of refinery product is gasoline) so I like to say 0.15 to 0.20 kwhr per gallon of crude processed to gasoline and diesel etc.

The urban legend came about with a "how to lie with statistics" number showing a whopping 7.5 kilowatt hrs electric per gallon of gasoline consumed...I presume a crafty CA environmentalist made the number up (unrelated to EV's). Then Nissan grabbed a hold of the 7.5 number used it for early Leaf write-ups, but Nissan quickly dropped it.

 

No matter how much you assign gasoline, its a small percentage

refineries are around 84% efficient. Gasoline has 33.7kwh of energy but it takes 6.4 kwh more energy. This is energy mainly from the oil and natural gas, but since its units are kwh people got confused and called this energy electricity. Slightly different efficiency (81.8% maybe from delivering the gas, and service station needs)and you get 7.5kwh

 

^^^...key point for Hyo Silver, since he asked: "inferred" kwhrs calculated from other energy sources (not elec) is the crux of the communications issue here. Oil refining does not use much kwhrs of actual electric, but you might find a way to say it consumes lots of kwhrs of energy, depending on other energy inputs.

It could be a mistake however to get hung up too much on energy used to make gasoline. Petroleum is essentially ready-made fuel in the ground that Earth came with, so you do not need to expend too much extra energy to make fuels from it...in the overall scheme of things. So one really needs to find a better argument (Middle East imports is a more popular argument or climate change).

 

Per US DOE, 2/3 of the energy is lost in generating and transmitting electricity.

Going by that, it takes 3 kWh of energy to generate 1 kWh of electricity.

To generate a gallon equivalent of electricity, you need roughly 67 kWh of energy. That's about 10x more required(?). Didn't realized it was that much.

EVs get high MPGe rating from EPA but if you include the fuel production into the equation, the picture suddenly changes.

 

I think you are doing some kind of wierd apples and oranges type thing.

Coal and ocgt natural gas are that low.
ccgt is much higher, about 45% for legacy, 55% for brand new plants.
nuclear, wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass, biogass, etc are hard to put a number on it.

As I said very little outside electricity is used in oil refining, although some refineries do generate electricity on site with natural gas and coal. These plants also use the steam from generation for the refining process.

Not sure if that number is meaningful at all, as with the leaf blather, this is misusing numbers.

In a new ccgt you need about 61 kwh of natural gas
For a 60 year old coal plant you need about 120 kwh worth of coal, for a ocgt about 100 kwh of natural gas.

Which is why transition to new ccgt, wind, and solar makes so much sense.

Refining oil sands requires about 7 kwh of natural gas plus that oil.

Again I would give them even more of an advantage. In california 39% of owners seem to put in solar when they buy an EV, in the country I would suggest it is at least 35% will choose wind or solar. Lets call the energy mix for non renewable plug-ins about 70kwh of fossil fuels (in california its lower, in indiana its higher, many more cars in california than indiana). (100%-35%) x 70kwh = 45.5 kwh natural gas (or coal equivs).

For oil refining is about 84% efficient = 33.7/84% = 40 kwh of oil (or natural gas equivs).

Now you do use more solar, wind, and natural gas than you would oil, but the sun the wind, and natural gas are much more plentiful in north america than oil. It seems that all you have to do is value oil 15% higher than natural gas and the plug-in makes more sense from an energy point of view.

But again natural gas and oil, not electricity are the main things used to create gasoline.

 

Yup, that's it. It takes 40 kWh of petroleum energy to get a gallon of gas, assuming gas is the only product out of the refinery.

However, it takes 101 kWh of energy (mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear, oil, renewable, etc to generate a gallon equivalent.

 

...I would point to EV advocate Chelsea Sexton. She feels it is somewhat a mistake focus on the environmental+ side of the pro-EV argument, because it is hard to make to make that argument (as you can see USB above picking it apart). EV is a fuel switching choice, and who can argue against diversity of fuel source? No one. She also feels EV is a superior driving quality, the thing she really advocates. I have not heard too many refute that either.

 

^ I like that approach.
Not only do you avoid all of the daffy arguments, but energy diversity is an elegant approach to integrating the whole EV thing into the fabric of America without all of the Scrappy-Do "take no prisoners" bitterness.
A few cars from now, and once I'm a confirmed hypocommuter I can see myself adding an EV and subtracting an ICE from my stable. Volts currently MSRP at less than 35K, and I can charge on both ends of my commute.
...and it's going to bet better from here!

I do have one nit to pick about the EV driving experience.
As a reformed gearhead and current motorcyclist, I love the torque but I bitterly miss driving a vehicle with a clutch and I also miss the throb of an ICE.

...Always will.

I'll have to check out some of Chelsea Sexton's work.
I like out of the box thinkers.

 

I worked through high school at an industrial diesel shop and then through college with several jobs in the south Texas oil patch.

There is an incredible, and I mean incredible, amount of service industry dedicated to just one active drilling rig. The fracking jobs require hundreds of commercial truck trips to bring in huge amounts of water (trips often hundreds of miles each due to limited water sources down here) and chemicals needed for the process. Most rigs run multiple diesel electric power plants to provide the massive amount of energy to drill miles down and then sideways. These run 24/7 for months at a time without pollution controls (edit: they might have some now, IDK).

And let's not even start on what it takes to build, service, and maintain an ocean rig.

Do any of these studies account for any portion of this? If so, then how do they separate these costs out if

A) it comes in a natural gas well vs. oil or
B) if it's a dry hole?

 

This is from EPA Beyond Tailpipe Emission site.

Driving your vehicle can yield both greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from your vehicle's tailpipe and GHG emissions related to the production of the fuel used to power your vehicle. For example, activities associated with fuel production such as feedstock extraction, feedstock transport to a processing plant, and conversion of feedstock to motor fuel, as well as distribution of the motor fuel, can all produce GHG emissions.

Beyond Tailpipe Emissions

 

EVs have the ability to use a variety of fuels. Electricity can be generated a number of ways. Some are completely sustainable, some are absolutely awful.

The issue is distinct though. The grid needs to be cleaned up, independently of the presence of EVs.
And, as the source of electricity is cleaned up, the EVs already on the road get cleaner as does every other item that uses electricity.

 

National argument in the US uses the average grid mix, based on data from 2009. Over 40% of the electricity generated is done with coal for those figures. Which leaves BEVs generally at or behind a Prius in emissions. Then opponents will not count that the grid can, and has, get cleaner, or that most EV sales are in regions with a generally better mix, or that a fair number of those buyers take steps to clean up the electric they use.

So fuel switching becomes a better argument for proponents to use.

 

I'm pretty sure just its own exhaust.
As far as I know, the electric generation for the BEV doesn't include any extraction and transportation of the power plant fuel, either.

 

Here are the results of well-to-wheel emissions based on the latest version of Argonne National Laboratory's GREET model (GREET1_2013)...





The generic HEV in the GREET model is assumed to get 34.7 mpg and the generic EV is assumed to get ~100 mpg gasoline equivalent.