How Much Electricity Does It take To Replace Gasoline? By Jeff Wilson

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Much-Electricity-Does-by-Jeff-Wilson-081221-993.html


How Much Electricity Does It Take To Replace Gasoline




This was one of the major questions burning in my mind as I was doing research for The Manhattan Project of 2009.

If we took every gasoline-powered car, truck, and SUV and replaced their powertrain with an electric powertrain, how much electricity would it take to totally replace gasoline?

This is easy to figure out.

In the U.S., we use 142 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Each gallon of gasoline contains about 36.6 kilowatt-hours of energy. So, the total energy consumed by gasoline-powered vehicles is:

142,000,000,000 x 36.6 kilowatt-hours = 5,197,200,000,000 kilowatt-hours

That is, the energy in all the gasoline consumed is about 5,200 billion kilowatt-hours.

So is that how much electricity we need? No! It turns out that electric vehicles are far more energy efficient! A gasoline-powered vehicle does good to average 15% energy efficiency. I know this from taking actual measurements while doing research for my first book. A plug-in electric car, however, can easily maintain 60% energy efficiency. Since the electric car is 4 times as efficient, it only needs 1/4 as much energy to go a mile. That means we can divide the total energy used by a gasoline-powered car to see how much electricity it would need to go the same distance.

5,200 billion kilowatt-hours / 4 = 1,300 billion kilowatt-hours

Here it is. This is how much electricity we will need in order to replace gasoline.

Let’s say we want to get this electricity from a renewable source. How does this much electricity compare to, say, wind energy? For this, we take a look at the estimated wind energy potential for the top 5 states1:

North Dakota 1,210 billion kilowatt-hours
Texas 1,190
Kansas 1,070
South Dakota 1,030
Montana 1.020

As you can see, gasoline could be almost totally replaced by the wind energy of North Dakota by itself.

The coming switch from gasoline to electricity is not lost on the big utility companies. They see electric vehicles as a major new market for electricity, and especially a market that will consume electricity mostly overnight, when the utilities have a lot of excess capacity.

In the late 90’s, Southern California Edison ran a fleet of 320 electric Toyota RAV4’s from 1997 to 2002, racking up 7 million miles in evaluating the potential of electric vehicles. The result: they were quite surprised at how well they worked, and how reliable they were. One of their major concerns was battery life; the tests showed conclusively that the vehicles’ NiMH batteries could provide 130,000 to 150,000 of reliable service.

More recently, SoCal Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric are partnering with Mitsubishi to test Mitsubishi’s i MiEV electric cars in their fleets. In addition to generally promoting electric cars, the companies are hoping to learn how to develop their infrastructure to better accommodate electric cars.


1Source: An Assesment of the Available Windy Land Area and Wind Energy Potential in the Contiguous United States, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 1991.




Authors Website: www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com

Authors Bio: Jeff has degrees in Physics, Math, and Electrical Engineering. He has been an engineer, entrepreneur, and technical writer for three decades. Jeff has 3 grown sons and one grandson. His favorite pastimes are fishing and paragliding. Author of "How Much Energy Does My Car Use" And "The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW."

[Joanne98]

1. Electric lawn mowers are good too. I have one and it never breaks down.

[bobbert]

6. How new is your mower?

Back in the 90's I used one for two summers and got rid of the damn thing for a gas-powered one. It didn't have nearly as much power so I would have to walk very very slowly and it took three times as long to do the yard. Perhaps a newer one would be much better than that crap I was using.

[DeadManInc]

2. Isn't that 5.2 trillion, not billion?

[4dsc]

4. The math sucks doesn't it,

Someone needs to go back to the drawing board..

[nyc 4 Biden]

5. The OP is right...

OP said "5,200 billion."

That is 5.2 trillion.

[Sentath]

3. I HATE it when they leave out a vital word

"the vehicles’ NiMH batteries could provide 130,000 to 150,000 of reliable service."

Hours?
Miles?
Days?
Furlongs?
Fortnights?

[bobbert]

7. One would assume that is miles since I've heard they last about 10 years

but what about disposal of the batteries? Are NiMH batteries recyclable? I guess they can't be that much worse than the batteries we use in cars today, except that they are much, much larger.

[cascadiance]

8. Need to also factor in the costs (financial and environmental) of manufacturing more batteries too..

And ultimately what it costs to build windmills or solar tiles to supply the electricity (since the materials for batteries, wind turbines and solar tiles take from the pool of finite resources of this earth and aren't infinite in supply too). One needs to look at the total chain of creating the energy creation goods and as you indicate disposing of them in a recyclable way that hopefully can also reduce the costs later of manufacturing future batteries, etc.

I still feel that ultimately we can make a better and more sustainable power generation model with solar or wind as the power generation source, but we DO need to look at all of the costs and needs to ensure we're doing it right.

[Locrian]

9. very true

>>>One needs to look at the total chain of creating the energy creation goods

Also need to include the cost / cost reduction of energy TRANSPORTATION itself. How much energy does it take to move all that gas/oil vs electrons? Then there is the infrastructure: gas / oil storage, tanks, pumps, etc vs upgrading the grid, etc

[cascadiance]

10. And the efficiency of transporting energy over distance (solar) vs. local

I believe that having local solar tiles in one's house for example (though not perhaps as efficient in generating the power itself as some centralized set of solar gathering facilities somewhere else), will lose less in transporting energy into your home than you getting energy through the grid shipped to you from some solar generation source that's miles away...

Figuring out the answers to all of these questions will be an ongoing thing that will fuel our economic growth again. A lot of opportunities out there. We just need to focus on the right targets and put the right incentives to reduce our environmental costs, not just reward generating pure profits everything else be damned like we have in the past.

[caraher]

18. probably miles

A recent article I saw about Toyota hybrid cars talked about battery life matching the lifetime of the vehicle, which they estimated as 150,000 miles.

[greenman3610]

11. From Stanford U engineer Mark Jacobsen, handy map

more at
http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayHTMLArticleforfree.cfm?JournalCode=EE&Year=2009&ManuscriptID=b809990c&Iss=Advance_Article

[ejpoeta]

12. and i think all we need to do is look at russia shutting off the supply

to ukraine (?) is it? to see just WHY we need to make this a priority. getting away from petroleum. it's like an achilles heel. if people thought $4/gal gas was bad.... let's just piss off someone in OPEC and see how bad it can get. it's not that we get our oil from them, either. it's that they can shut down production and watch the prices go up, up, up. it is definitely a national security issue as well as an environmental one for me. and you can convince people like my brother who is a total republican noisebox, if you can frame it in a national security way. if i could afford a windmill right now, we'd have one in our backyard. period! i'd plaster solar panels all over the place if i could afford it. believe me!!

[GliderGuider]

13. You don't even need to piss anyone off to feel the pinch.

Back in May I did the following price projection for oil based on the observed trend from 2002 to 2006.



This projection ignored the additional price rise in 2007 and 2008 due to speculation. Even with the drop back to $50/bbl since then, if we resumed that trend at the end of 2009 we'd be looking at $150/bbl oil in 2012, which means $4.00 gasoline comes back, for starters.

As soon as the global economy tries to recover from the current depression, and demand for oil goes up as a result, I fully expect to see prices spike higher than that, regardless of what OPEC or Russia does.

[Elderon]

14. Wouldn't that also be called

Speculation?

just sayin ;)



Sorry, Devil's Advocate & all...

[GliderGuider]

15. Yeah, 'cept I don't make any money from it...

;-)

[Elderon]

16. Good Point!

Pro Bono Speculation,

I do that alot myself. hehe

Your message on the trend is understood though... and somewhat saddening unfortunately

[ejpoeta]

17. and frustrating too, because how much have we heard about the need for alternatives lately?

nada. the only time we hear people demanding anything (which is the only way it's going to happen) is when the prices get to the point that people can't afford to drive to their job. i mean, the giddyiness i felt when $20 filled my tank over 1/2 way. i know I am lucky because i don't HAVE to drive anywhere, really. i can avoid it if i need to. a lot of folks aren't so lucky. one drawback to living in the country, i guess.... not many options. no buses or public transportation system. and it takes an hour to get to buffalo or rochester from my house. about an hour, anyway.