Re: Power production

["Peter VanDerWal" <peter_v@primenet.com>]

                                       >
>> Anyway one gallon of fuel oil produces 14.29 kwh of
>> electricity, after
>> transmission losses (7%) that's 13.29 kwh of power
>> at your outlet.
>    An electric car puts this energy to use at 70%
>eff.  A hybrid eff. is only 20 to 50% eff. with the
>same energy, re the Prius only getting 37 to 50 mpg
>when tested by real people.
>


Well if the power company converts fuel to electricity at 40% and gets it
to your house lossing another 7% , 70% of that is only 26% over all
efficiency.  That's right at the low end of your figure for hybrid
efficiency.

Also your figure for 70% efficiency assumes a good charger and batteries
that are 90% efficient (both of which are do-able) but ignores equalization
charges.

For what it's worth comercial EVs (like the EV1) driven by average people
only get about 4 miles per kwh (from posts to this list), that's about the
same as a Prius gets (per gallon of fuel).



>                        >
>> Now we've had this discussion on the list several
>> times and as I recall the
>> best full sized EV gets about 5 miles to the kwh
>> (from the outlet) and the
>> worst gets about 2 miles.
>     Most production built  ev's get under 150 whrs/
>mile. Mine should get under 100 whrs/ mile. On 14kw
>that's 140 miles. Try that with a Prius type hybrid.

    From the outlet or from the battery pack?  battery pack doesn't count
since it misses charger efficient and battery storage efficiency.
    A while back someone (can't rember who) posted the number of kwh used
9as measure by a seperate charging meter) vs miles driven.  As I recal it
averaged out to near 250 whrs/mile.

>   Wind is a good way to go as it only cost 6 cents/
>kw. Hemp and other biomass is another good source.


I seem to recall reading that biosmass isn't a good source of large scale
energy production because it would require to much realestate.  Currently
biomass accounts for less than 1% of electricity generated and the majority
of that is from wood waste products (a source not likely to increase much)



Still supposedly there is enough wind resources to provide all of our
current electricity needs.