Volt's Latest Bad News-Couched as Good News

Prius powerplant efficiency is about 30-35%, just like a coal plant.
2), you will save a lot more money in fuel costs by investing in conservation and solar heating, at least if the skewing effect of subsidies are ignored.

 

EVnow, thanks for the link to the thread discussing the "7.5 kwh/gallon" refinery cost that is being bandied about. The last post in the thread was most useful, reporting
22*10^9 kwh used by refineries.

Wikipedia [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_and_diesel_usage_and_pricing"]reports[/ame] 2005 US gasoline consumption as
140.890 * 10^9 gallons/year US use;

I'll leave the arithmetic for you to verify

 

No, Coal plants are much more efficient since their operating temperature is vastly higher. Basic Thermo 101.

 

The second part of your statement is not true at all, if you look at page 3 of http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/CAFE_Performance_Report_April_2010.pdf.

 

Wouldn't you agree though that The average highway capable EV is more efficient than the average highway capable ICE vehicle?
Also, even IF the pollution is the same if the electricity is 100% coal generated, how many locals get their electricity only from coal?

 

The efficiency question for the EV moves to the centralized power plant. Overall about the same as the Prius powerplant. See [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station[/ame]

which bases its statement on the paper
[Electrical Generation Efficiency—Working Document of the NPC Global Oil & Gas Study, 18 July 2007].

When this discussion has come up before, people have rightly pointed out that a well-wheel analysis is needed to actually answer the efficiency question. This is true, but hard to come by. Each time I have attempted the analysis the efficiencies come out about the same, because the transmission losses of electricity about balance out the extraction and refinery costs of liquid fuel, so I just point out the powerplant equivalencies. Casual statements that electric power generation is cleaner rely on the fallacious reasonlng of portfolio mix, but what matters is what type of plant supplies the marginal demand increase. The answer typically is coal and gas. See the attached graphic I have borrowed from Wayne Brown's site. Old timers from this forum will recognize Wayne as a reputable source. The piece I want to emphasize is the 21% losses of petrol from ground to tank. It is not a difficult exercise to reach similar numbers for coal from ground to pulverized powder at the plant, and then about 6-7% transmission losses to the home, and another 5% from home to car. E.g., the US DOE reports that http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/e_profiles_sum.html only 90% of the /*net*/ electricity production is sold. Add to that the energy costs of mining, transport, powerplant use, and the aforementioned home-to-car losses. 21% losses appears optimistic for coal, but most certainly not more efficient than liquid petrol.

Coal pollution is not the same as Prius, it is *much* dirtier. Read my earlier post.
Lastly, I am not comparing EV to shit ICE cars, but to the Prius. We can forget what we are arguing about pretty easy in these threads. My points are two:
1, I agree with CARB pushing HV over EV; and
2, A person who wants to make green purchases -- real green purchases, that have the most pollution reduction benefit for the $, skips EV for now and in the forseeable future and instead puts the money into clean energy *generation* (NOT consumption devices) and particularly into conservation.

 

Well, at least part of reality is starting to set in your mind. CARB was one of the leading proponents of the bush hydrogen policy. Basic research and some deployment are what was called for, and bush picked hydrogen to overfund and starve out other more promissing technolgy. Government rarely picks the winner, they pick counter productive loosers. This is true for CARB and the Bush administration. Their is deep dishonesty in CARBs spining of the ZEV to be a giver away program to its boards favorite sponsors. You seem to be spinning that their dishonesty is a good thing now. And you called me a zealot.

Its 2010 and the 2007 law is well on its way to being implemented. GM's Lutz was crying that he had to change his total product plan. Toyota, GM, and Ford politicized against it. Your version of history seems to have no bearing on reality. Try to at least think before posting something as idiotic as this. You could try goggling at least before you embarrass yourself again.

The passenger vehicle law was passed in 1975, and included multi year goals to 27.5. 2007 was the first year the standards were legally raised. Looking at your figures, made me realize that the truck goals have been changed. I do not know the years for laws passed for light trucks and 2wd and 4wd variation. If you can fill in that information it would be helpfull.

 

Thanks for the laugh. Remember though, that the small advance to date is under the auspices of the Obama administration, which has cleaned up the EPA of the bushie era 'free market' advocates.

I'll try to answer your CARB criticism as soon as it makes sense. Perhaps you can clarify any meaning in saying

You are spinning the bushiite era alt fuel promotions. They did not give a shit, but in a sop to the 'environmentalists' that obscured simple corruption of government by private industry, subsidized "yellow transportation" for Ford, and the "hydrogen economy" for GM. Guess who directed the fed executive policy? Yep, your favored 'free enterprise' companies.

 

Somehow you seem to have missed more than a few things in your reasoning.

1) Electricity production does not provide tailpipe emissions, it provides smokestack emissions. If one goal of ZEV is to reduce air polution in big cities, producing the electricty outside of the citities. Electric production can more easily be cleaned of polution. Coal plants can greatly remove their polutants, and in the future CO2 may be able to be sequestered. City of austin is completing maintenance of our dirtiest coal plants to reduce NOx emissions by 70% and they already were cleaner than cars in this regard, and SOx by 90% which will still be more than cars.

2) One of the goals of energy reduction is to reduce the amount of scarce resources (Oil) and replace them with more easily available resources (Coal, Wind, Biomass, Solar). Your model completely ignores this. Importation of large amounts of oil also affects our foreign policy and economy. Your model completely ignores these aspects.

3) Energy mix was completely ignored in your analysis. You picked the most CO2 intensive fossile fuel and compared it to the most effiecient cars. On the face of this analyis some one should at least ask what are you trying to hide. The answer of course is when you look at the real mix, even in california. 45% is natural gas which is much lower per kwh in CO2, particulates, and ozone precursors than gasoline or coal. You could look at washington state where night charging produces no additional green house gas. Even in Austin with over 30% coal based power, charging at night only produces a tiny percentage of the pollution. The coal plants must be run at night,wand in addition there is nuclear and wind that can not be turned off. Because of the city voluntarily switching to green generation more power is being added with wind and coal power will be slowly remved from the mix so rates will go up but night charging here is utility cost of less than 4 cents a kwh. Take a look at your own utility mix and it is unlikely your numbers make sense. If they don't fine, but this is not true for much of the country in general and for LA and SF in particular.

The prius puts less strain on gasoline production and airpolution than most cars. That is one reason I own one. It is not cleaner in california to have a prius versus a plug in hybrid. CARB has even stuck their nose in this industry to prevent prius conversions to plug ins. I do not know how their actions really can be viewed as environmentally friendly in their rules against plug ins and evs.

 

Here is a great site courtesy of the US DOE to answer questions regarding CO2 emissions and pollutants: State Electric Profiles
This is California, but I think all 50 states can be viewed.

If one knows the energy mix portfolio, some reasonable extrapolations about coal burning can be ferreted out. Notice the direct use statistic of close to 10%! We can start to add up our own little table of coal ground-to-car energy losses:

Mining: unknown
Transport: unknown
Commercial power plant direct use: > 10%
Net production to sales delta: 10%
Retail to Consumer losses: unknown
Home-to-car: 5%
---
Power-plant TD efficiency: ~33%

 

Sagebrush, Labeling something bushite does not mean you win the argument even in your own mind.

You seem absolutely confused about what free market is. It doesn't mean the biggest PACs what have private companies write the rules. That is big government, whether the peoples republic of california writes the rules, or oil companies and adm write our energy policy.

You seem to love your straw man and continually like to falsely set it up as what free enterprise is. Try again. Really most on this board should understand if gm writes the rules or toyota that is not a free market. Did you flunk high school economics and government? Please buy a clue and try to allow facts to enter into your brain. I don't care if you insult me, but really your ideas are insulting to everyone's intelligence.

 

I thought I was obvious that writing 'tailpipe' pollutants means HC, oxides, VOC and particulates. I forgot who I am talking with. Look at the links I have provided, they make it *very* clear that coal is a lot dirtier to combust at central power plants than petrol in a Prius. I am aware of NIMBY'sm, I just do not subscribe to it. Air pollution also has a tendency to not respect suburban sensibilities and borders.

2)I have been very clear that my comments are environmental considerations. I find it hilarious that you lump coal and solar together. 'AustinGreen', eh ?

3)For the umpteenth time, energy mix is irrelevant to questions of supplying marginal demand. Do you not understand what marginal demand is ?

 

You said something about my logic being wrong. Still looking for you to justify your BS ...

 

Then you are blind. I posted yesterday, both the numbers that debunk the 7.5 kwh/gallon direct use cost, as well as an example that simpletons can follow to explain why EV use is a shell game. Perhaps I use 'shell game' differently than you ? EV use can also be described as a 'rob peter to pay paul' bit of idiocy.

 

I did understand what you were saying. I changed the term to the more common one so that you might understand the point. Air pollution is a big problem in certain cities. If the emissions are moved away from the city then the smoke stack emissions. The fact that you don't personally subscribe to a theory that has been supported in numerous studies does not really impress me.

Coal and nuclear are the dirtiest sources of power in austin. Solar is the most expensive. I try to talk about the energy mix and yes coal produced energy powering cars does reduce the need to import foreign oil. I am glad that facts amuse you. Do you think that it is good public policy to ignore replacements of imported oil in analysis?

Apparently you don't understand marginal demand. In Austin marginal demand is served by natural gas. Additional demand which peaks between 4-6pm in the summer for my electricity hours that electric cars should not be charged. Additional capacity is being added here with wind, solar, and biomass and the plan is to reduce use of coal even while demand increases. California is tough state for marginal demand since they are electricity producer unfriendly, so must import electricity from other states. If you give me your location I can tell you what source of power will be used for night charging. Ignoring the mix is a great distortion of energy use.

 

That alone is not enough information to say what a coal plants efficiency is. A new super-critical coal plant might beat 35%-40% but most of the plants in operation in the USA are not super-critical. The normal is 33% for the USA.

 

What theory, that NIMBY'ism benefits some and harms others, and is a zero sum game ?Enjoy your 'green' hypocrisy.

Marginal demand realities vary across localities, but on average are supplied by coal and gas. If you want to restrict your EV support to the city of Austin you have a better argument, albeit a short-sighted and provincial one. I live in Albuquerque, NM. 100% of our marginal demands are coal based. Part of our baseload is supplied by a beautiful wind-farm in the SE part of the state, but unfortunately the windmills do not spin faster when people turn on AC. Nor does the sun shine brighter. "California" is a big place, but an excellent article that averages state wide expected pollution from PHEV/BEV marginal demands is at http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1145. Links to similar studies focusing on other states are referenced. I think the article way over-estimates EV 'efficiency', but I will post this objection separately. The approach is spot-on

 

Perhaps I am not sure what you mean by marginal demand?
Isn't 'baseline' the consistent level of power generation and 'marginal' a result of shorter term increases due such as higher ac use in the afternoons, etc?
My understanding is that coal plants are typically use for baseline power, no marginal as you indicated, as coal plants can't be turned on an off efficiently or quickly.
Wind, on the other hand is rarely used for baseline, since it can be intermittent.

If you are generalizing from your local to the entire nation, I don't think that is correct. Each region has it's own mix of electricity. Some regions may use all coal, while others use mainly natural gas, yet others use hydro, or nuclear, or wind or solar.
On an individual basis, someone may be getting all of their power to charge their EV with solar and/or wind.
So if you want to discuss it on that level, there is a slightly different set of statistics involved for each individual.

 

Zythryn,
You understand marginal demand about the same way I do.
Wind and Solar are never used as marginal suppliers. Wind will not blow faster, and the sun will not shine brighter, just because you plugged in an EV or turned on the AC.

You are exactly right that NG is the preferred marginal supplier where it is available. Parts of California are set up this way. I think that hydro is also an excellent marginal supplier where available, although I am not positive on this point. Some owners may use its entire capacity for baseload because it is cheap.

So my earlier statement that marginal use can just be called "coal" is not correct, to the extent that the supply is covered with NG. However, some of the increased demand anticipated with PH(ev) adoption will be covered with increased baseline production, which is coal based. This was not my earlier argument, and really only became clear to me after reading the UC-Davis article I linked to in post #77.

I know that someone will jump in and say "wait, baseline can be covered with increased wind/solar." The fallacy here is that the clean energy addition to the grid is ALREADY BEING USED TO OFFSET dirty energy, so additional demands from new EV consumption will bring online dirty energy that had been retired.

Consider 3 scenarios:
1. Dirty house, dirty car from liquid fuel
2. Home PV added
3. Consideration of parking the Prius and using a new EV instead.

We will state that the home uses 700 Kwh, the car 200 Kwh, and our PV makes 300 Kwh (even more than our car needs!). For reasons I have mentioned, the GHG and pollution from coal and petrol per Kwh does not favor coal.

1. 700 Kwh dirty for the house, 200 Kwh dirty for the car. Total 900 Kwh dirty fuel.
2. 400 Kwh dirty for the house, 200 Kwh dirty for the car.
At this point, we have cleaned up the grid 300 Kwh and only use 600 Kwh dirty energy. Nice
3. 400 Kwh dirty for the house, 200 Kwh dirty electric for the car, and no dirty electric fuel. Still using 600 Kwh of dirty fuel -- the EV didn't clean anything up.

See the fallacy? Addition of clean energy to the grid does not magically make EV a smart choice *until dirty energy is off the grid*. Or when EV is less polluting per km than petrol.

 

Without getting into a long discussion of basics, if we are just looking at the basic themo cycles of a car engine and steam plant, basic thermo is enough to make it clear that a steam plant is significantly more efficient than a car engine (Prius included). If all kinds of (occasionally invalid) caveats and externalities are factored in, then ANY conclusion can be reached by adjusting these. What is clear to me is that the conclusion has been reached and all that need to be done is adjust these externalities to reach the opinion desired.