Fossil fuels aren't going away entirely. You can't run an aluminum smelter on solar power. You can't fly a fighter jet on a battery. Somalia won't have the capital to convert any time soon. Oil and gas will continue to have applications for a long time to come. But, most residential applications for powering homes and vehicles in the United States could easily switch in the next couple of decades, which would be a win by itself. I'm only middling concerned about the environmental impact of batteries. I don't think we do a good job right now of controlling that impact, but I think it is more controllable than emissions from fossil fuels that go up in the air. We can, in theory, collect and recycle spent batteries.
Did your efficiency account for transmission of electricity and then the inefficiency of charging the battery or just the creation at the power plant? What about the self discharge of the battery when left to sit? If anyone knows of a complete comparison I would be interested to read it. Electrics have the inherent advantage of reduced urban air pollution as the combustion in a power plant doesn't take on the streets.
Nope, basic engineering efficiencies without transmission. Also without all the massive extra inefficiencies of a car starting up, warming up, operating at different speeds, changing gears, idling running extra bells and whistles, and so on. But you make a good point that our power grid is still operating largely in the late 19th century, losing about half of transmitted power. Why be obsessed with one kind of car though? LOL. I don't get it, unless you are sunk in the business or something.
The EIA says average transmission loss is 7%. Combined cycle nat gas plants run at 45% efficiency. 45%*.93=42%. Not sure about the battery charge loss.
Start up and warm up on modern cars is irrelevant. Changing gears, and different speeds is accounted for in EPA average MPG. I'm not sure what you mean by one type of car because we are comparing two. There are many inefficiencies with electrics people don't regularly account for. Charging being a big one but also self discharge.
Small hobby LiPo charging is about 85% but the balancing and charging electrics on a large pack with thousands of cells might increase/decrease that. Self discharge is ~1% per day. That is a combined inefficiency. Amount of energy put into a cell vs amount it holds and amount lost with the power converter of the charger.
Interesting. I had thought they were much higher than that, but I'm finding the same numbers. All the more support for grid-based car power, I suppose.
Is that a national average? I imagine the likely urban buyer of an electric car would also have a lower transmission loss than rural.
Yep. Just did Texas using the formula they outline here http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=105&t=3. Comes out to 6.4%.
there are other solutions. the world is progressing and moving forward. http://news.yahoo.com/israel-39-motor-fuels-strategy-leans-gas-135002835--finance.html Israel is investing 430 million dollars in developing battery and biofuel technologies. One of the startups named co2fuel is going to turn the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a useful fuel gas mixture called syngas. so the aim is almost not to relay on oil anymore, and to reduce the greenhouse effect in the process.
I'm skeptical fossil fuels in cars are going away completely in our lifespans. I hope I'm wrong though, but I'm more confident it'll still be dominant at the pump in the next 30 years. 1) Average lifespan of a car fleet is around 10-15 years. Even if cars being sold in lots were all magically pure electric at this moment, there would still be more cars that run on gas for another decade. The success of Cash for Clunkers didn't turn out as planned either... 2) Emerging nations will want to drive automobiles as well. While battery powered cars could also hit their market through cheaper versions, there will be an impending supply constraint in the materials used for batteries (rare earths, manufacturing processes) that will drive up the price of those batteries. There are already economies of scale for gas powered autos and that solid technology will possibly split the market among nations who choose green with green and brown from the lack of green. Another example is the lengthy waiting list for electric windmills. Once those babies turn online, the energy it generates is cheaper than coal powered energy. It's just that factories can't crank them out fast enough. 3) Emerging markets will need more energy to pace and sustain middle class consumption. This is less for cars, but more the other daily luxuries we take for granted (electric heating/cooling, televisions, computer, ipads, etc). Again, I think solar and other renewables will augment this but will not outpace the world's progressive rate of growth. In fact, I'm more inclined to believe that it is price constrained even if energy is being taught as an inelastic good. It's inelastic in price ceiling, but if it became dirt cheap, it stops being a limited resource and turns into something more evenly distributed, exploited (with possible new innovation or luxury) or wasted. 4) Profitability in capital intensive startup technologies plus demand constraints mentioned in the other points hinge upon manufacturing availability and price of raw materials and more importantly the current cost of gas. Big duh here, but we've been talking about solar and wind for more than 30 years, and the same things still pop up. I think the OP believes we're at a tipping point in affordability, but this affordability is under which price set for gas? A $70+ per barrel mindset that is powering the fracking boom that would not have otherwise materialized pre-Iraq war, when gas prices were 50-70% lower than $70/bbl? That last oil bust not only collapsed prices in other energies but almost bankrupted the solar and wind industries along with shale, fracking, and deep sea oil ventures. It's a risky and volatile market and I don't think any of the players want their investments to dry up with something so cheap and so fast. It's only gonna happen if they can ramp up, pump out cheap parts and make a profit even if the price gas ever dies down, which I don't think it will ever get below 75 bucks from a demand perspective but could from some erratic speculative ventures over a good chunk of time like 6 months. In conclusion, like the dollar system that's tied to gas, I don't think it's dominance will ever fade. Competing renewable technology will hopefully blunt our extreme dependence upon fossil fuels, but as growth in the emerging and developing markets continue to explode at 10%+ annual rates, alternatives are more like the calvary rather than the replacements. It'll be a basket of energies to play upon, and hopefully our energy grid will become more flexible from it. Perhaps there will come a highly cheap and efficient process to generate electricity that will absolutely shatter the industry and a huge chunk of the financial market, but I highly doubt something like that will come dramatically without counterparties figuring out ways to fill that void.
Thought this would be interesting to add to this discussion. http://nysebigstage.com/articles/toyota-brings-hydrogen-cars-to-production?cid=p_outbrain Toyota Brings Hydrogen Cars to Production The automaker’s new hydrogen fuel-cell car can go 400 miles on a fill-up. Twelve years ago, Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) began testing a unique — and outlandishly expensive — automobile in California: a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells. This so-called FCHV (fuel cell hybrid vehicle) was an electric car that didn’t need to be plugged in. Its electricity was generated by a stack of fuel cells that ran on compressed gaseous hydrogen, a relatively cheap fuel that gives off no harmful emissions; its only byproduct was water vapor. The FCHV never made it to dealer lots, however. Production of plug-in electric cars proved more viable, partially because the FCHV technology was prohibitively expensive. Fast-forward a decade, and things have changed. In 2015 Toyota will begin selling a production version of its hydrogen fuel-cell (HFC) car that can refuel in three minutes with enough hydrogen to drive more than 300 miles, the company says. Toyota won’t be alone. Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda Motor Co. (NYSE: HMC), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) (in partnership with Renault), and Chevrolet at General Motors (NYSE: GM) are also all expected to begin producing HFC cars, beginning a new revolution in automobiles that, Toyota estimates, should result in “tens of thousands” of HFC cars on American roads by 2020. “We think this is the only alternative-fuel technology right now that comes close to gasoline,” says Craig Scott, advanced technology manager for Toyota — and someone who’s been working on fuel-cell cars for the company since the program’s onset. “There are no compromises, unlike with other alternatives.” Scott also works on plug-in electric cars, and loves them, but notes that they are limited by current battery technology; batteries are heavy and expensive, and you just can’t drive very far using them as a power source. An HFC car, however, “looks and drives like a gasoline-powered car” with no range limitations. That is critical, Scott notes. Consumers want to be good environmental stewards — if they can do it without being inconvenienced. “You have to be able to let people drive it like a normal car,” Scott says. Scott says that politics helped push EVs to the forefront, while relegating HFCs to the back burner, but he also admits that the cars weren’t ready, technologically, for the mass market. “We hadn’t solved durability, or cold weather. These were major engineering hurdles that we spent the past eight years cracking.” Once Toyota cleared those hurdles, the next challenge arose: making the HFC car affordable for mass production. The original prototypes were valued at $1 million or more per car. “For the last four years or so we’ve been steadily working on how to get the cost out,” Scott says. “That’s what Toyota does best.” Toyota welcomes competition, Scott says, because HFCs can only be viable if there’s an infrastructure to support them. And convincing the business world to invest in hydrogen filling stations will require volume — enough cars to make those stations profitable. He understands that consumers are naturally hesitant to take a risk on anything new, but he’s confident that they’ll come around. After all, when Toyota introduced the Prius, now America’s best-selling hybrid, sales were sluggish. “Fuel-cell cars will probably be polarizing at first,” he says. But over time, people will see that a HFC car has the range and convenience of a gasoline-powered car, with absolutely no emissions. “Then they’ll realize, ‘Why wouldn’t I buy this?’”
Actually you can run an aluminum smelter on solar power. Here is paper on that: http://www.ripecap.net/Uploads/654.pdf Yes you can't run a jet on batteries but there is a lot of research into creating aviation fuel from renewable biofuels. Places like Somalia might have a better shot at developing a fossil fuel free energy infrastructure since there isn't such an embedded energy infrastructure already. For example from my own observation I've seen more use of solar energy in places like Sri Lanka and the Philippines than I have in the US. As I said I don't think we will see the end of fossil fuels anytime soon but I don't see any theoretical hurdles to why we couldn't significantly shift away from them using current technology. I agree and don't think the pollution from batteries is that big of a hurdle.
In summary, significantly more storage and much longer life. http://m.phys.org/_news308504040.html It's known that electric vehicles could travel longer distances before needing to charge and more renewable energy could be saved for a rainy day if lithium-sulfur batteries can just overcome a few technical hurdles. Now, a novel design for a critical part of the battery has been shown to significantly extend the technology's lifespan, bringing it closer to commercial use. A "hybrid"*anode*developed at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory could quadruple the life of lithium-sulfur batteries.*Nature Communicationspublished a paper today describing the anode's design and performance. "Lithium-sulfur batteries could one day help us take electric cars on longer drives and store renewable wind energy more cheaply, but some technical challenges have to be overcome first," said PNNL Laboratory Fellow Jun Liu, who is the paper's corresponding author. "PNNL's new anode design is helping bringing us closer to that day." Today's electric vehicles are commonly powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which are also being used to store renewable energy. But the chemistry of lithium-ion batteries limits how much energy they can store. One promising solution is the lithium-sulfur battery, which can hold as much as four times more energy per mass than lithium-ion batteries. This would enable electric vehicles to drive longer on a single charge and help store more renewable energy. The down side of lithium-sulfur batteries, however, is they have a much shorter lifespan because they can't be charged as many times as lithium-ion batteries. Most batteries have two electrodes: one is positively charged and called a cathode, while the second is negative and called an anode. Electricity is generated when electrons flow through a wire that connects the two. Meanwhile, charged molecules called ions shuffle from one electrode to the other through another path: the electrolyte solution in which the electrodes sit. The lithium-sulfur battery's main obstacles are unwanted side reactions that cut the battery's life short. The undesirable action starts on the battery's sulfur-containing cathode, which slowly disintegrates and forms molecules called polysulfides that dissolve into the battery's electrolyte liquid. The dissolved sulfur eventually develops into a thin film called the solid-state electrolyte interface layer. The film forms on the surface of the lithium-containing anode, growing until the battery is inoperable. Most lithium-sulfur battery research to date has centered on stopping sulfur leakage from the cathode. But PNNL researchers determined stopping that leakage can be particularly challenging. Besides, recent research has shown a battery with a dissolved cathode can still work. So the PNNL team focused on the battery's other side by adding a protective shield to the anode. The new shield is made of graphite, a thin matrix of connected carbon molecules that is already used in lithium-ion battery anodes. In a lithium-sulfur battery, PNNL's graphite shield moves the sulfur side reactions away from the anode's lithium surface, preventing it from growing the debilitating interference layer. Combining graphite from*lithium-ion batteries*with lithium from conventional lithium-sulfur batteries, the researchers dubbed their new anode a hybrid of the two. The new anode quadrupled the lifespan of the lithium-sulfur battery system the PNNL team tested. When equipped with a conventional anode, the battery stopped working after about 100 charge-and-discharge cycles. But the system worked well past 400 cycles when it used PNNL's hybrid anode and was tested under the same conditions. "Sulfur is still dissolved in a lithium-sulfur battery that uses our hybrid anode, but that doesn't really matter," Liu said. "Tests showed a battery with a hybrid anode can successfully be charged repeatedly at a high rate for more 400 cycles, and with just an 11-percent decrease in the battery's energy storage capacity." This and most other lithium-sulfur battery research is conducted with small, thin-film versions of the battery that are ideal for lab tests. Larger, thicker batteries would be needed to power electric cars and store*renewable energy. Liu noted tests with a larger*battery*system would better evaluate the performance of PNNL's new hybrid anode for real-world applications.
