Well...
I live south of San Francisco on the rural coast and have those same outages and PG&E has dramatically improved its grid since being sued over the fires they started. With the Tesla PowerWall II whole house battery backup and solar panels I get free power day and night and hear about those outages from my neighbors. Two years and going strong, on track for 6-1/2 year payoff to free energy even with all the fog here. That may change when we get a pure EV, as I said they are short supply.
I am considering the entire chain. Natural gas turbine generators are in the range of 50-60% efficient for electrical generation. Oil refining is the largest industrial energy user in the US, and ICE engines might get to 35% efficiency, but most car & engines are more like 20% efficient. High voltage power lines are about 98% efficient. I know you want it to be about even, but for efficiency ICE vehicles aren't even close. Also, everyone likes to talk about lithium and rare earth mining, but ICE vehicles are no prizes either, using much more iron and aluminum, not to mention a bunch of precious metals in the catalytic converters. The main problems with EVs are that they are in an early phase of their development, and that the infrastructure to support them is sorely lacking.
And all this electrical demand will come when everyone can buy one. Ford has orders for two years worth of production of their electric trucks.
You rarely see an article with so much information so scatter brained. Nor one that ends up being a complete nothing burger.A just-published article in IEEE Spectrum about EVs. Written by three PhDs, including two professors, and IMO is not especially complete or well-researched. It strikes me as highly biased. Leaves out many significant advantages of EVs over ICE vehicles, like everything to do with oil production, refining, and transporting oil and fuel, and side-effect pollution (leaks, cold-starts, old vehicles, etc.). Not one mention I noticed yet about the dramatically better energy efficiency of EVs over ICE vehicles. (Efficiency is important. Not just for any given vehicle, but multiply the difference by, say, 350 million just in the US and the potential savings are very large.) Also leaves out that most power grid upgrade roadblocks in western countries are due to environmentalists and NIMBY voters and their lawsuits. Basically, the authors make the case that EVs are mostly not as environmentally friendly in the real world one would expect, and that what we really need to do is alter our lifestyles dramatically. Uses an example of Singapore for mass-transit. I had to chuckle. Singapore? Really? EVs for a lot of use models have signifiant advantages for the economy and the environment that go beyond whatever happens with global warming.
While I'm mostly putting this article down, I'm posting it because I think this sort of biased pseudo-science is exactly what's wrong with the EV debate today. Given another ten years or so of technology development, I think most ICE cars will look and feel obsolete. Instead, we muddy up the discussion with stuff like this.
We Need More Than Just Electric Vehicles
To decarbonize road transport we need to complement EVs with bikes, rail, city planning, and alternative energyspectrum.ieee.org
No one here I've read has said global warming is a hoax. They shouldn't anyway, it's done-deal science. The questions are only what to do about it, and many of us are tired of addressing the "We have to do something!" proposals that cost a lot but don't have a measurable effect on the average global temperature. So why not stow the political comments?
Sri Lanka is a good example of what could happen if you force these changes before it is time. Food shortages, economic collapse and civil unrest. You don't get that nice rosy list of benefits in your cartoon if you force it before the tech is ready and before the industries involved have advanced to the point of taking over prior methods. The world is too far behind the curve to achieve all of that quickly enough to keep it to 2 degrees C. It will get there, it will be later than optimum in some ways, but you create problems acting as if 2.1 degrees is an existential threat.
I'm not advocating waiting for the big final solution. That is why the idea to force things is wrong. We don't have a final solution. Economics for the most part will drive the use of other energies. We haven't yet taken enough of those small steps for the result to be ready all things considered. Energy transitions take about two generations.
You're sure of that figure ?
Well, that's forgetting the huge existing park for petrol cars.
I have no issue to move cars to electric engine, as long as it's part of a well thought through and matured strategy, starting with the electricity production, distribution, price, and giving time to technology and people to adapt.
10 years ago there's no way I thought I'd happily be driving an EV for over 30k miles a year. The more issues we solve and the more incentives that are offered the more people EVs will appeal to. It will take a while but I'm hoping the momentum is now there. Long range EV travel isn't an issue in the UK but charging in cities definitely is.
Lack of foreign currency as a result of the pandemic, collapse of tourism, collapse of remittances of those working abroad, energy production relies on imported heavy oil and coal whose prices have risen sharply, extreme drought leads to production collapse of hydroelectric power plants,... So it's a bit more complicated.
It is not out of question that certain tipping points are already triggered at 1.5°C. Therefore, 2°C warming is already a very big risk.
There are studies that assume that the electricity for EC is generated by, for example, coal and gas-fired power plants (in which case a large part of the energy used is already lost) and then calculate the well-to-wheel efficiency of EC versus ICV.
Regarding Sri Lanka you missed out the most important factor leading to famine it was when the government banned the importation of fertilisers. Then there is the enormous debt owing to the Chinese Government. To many countries such as Sri Lanka the western debate over EVs and climate change isn’t for them.
I like GE's data better than anything else I saw online.You're sure of that figure ?
Looks more like 40% for the standard ones, for me.Breaking the Power Plant Efficiency Record | GE Vernova
Learn how GE Power set the record for the world's most efficient power plant. The combined-cycle plant is the first of its kind equipped with an HA turbine.www.ge.com
I'm not buying the French data. Not even close. 27% for EVs? Ridiculous. Electric motors are typically about 85% efficient; Tesla claims well over 90%. EV batteries do have charging losses measured at 12-15%. (It takes 100KWH to get a 85KWH or so effective charge.) AC-DC conversion losses are in the claimed range of 1-10%; Tesla claims 1%. For home chargers, the Level 2 (240v) chargers I've surveyed are at about 90% in an IEEE article I was just reading, and the article is from 2014, which means the chargers have probably improved. So, 85% - 15% - 10%, taking the lower end of every range, and you're looking at 60% energy efficiency for operation compared to (being generous) 30% for gasoline engines, and comparing electrical generation and transmission to oil refineries, pipelines, storage tank pumping, and trucking for the last several miles, can't be close.
Well, you pretty much did the math yourself.
Interesting. Assuming gasoline refinery efficiency of about 87%, and I'm not sure how to estimate the energy efficiency of storage, pipelines, and trucking distribution (but let's assume 90% just to throw a number out there, because the volumes of gasoline are so high), then 30% (ICE motor efficiency) - 13% (refinery losses) - 10% (distribution loss estimate), just to make the calculation similar for ICE vehicles, and you're at 7% energy efficiency for combustion engines. Which means that by this kind of shamefully sketchy math, EV are four times more energy efficient than ICE vehicles.
