Mundo
100 W
Especially if your State/Country is using coal for power plants?
Is charging an EV moving pollution to somewhere else?
- Thread starter Mundo
- Start date
Sunder
10 MW
As compared to what? It's a pretty meaningless question.
Electricity generation even in extremely old power stations is still more efficient than burning fuel for locomotion. Hell, it's so efficient in today's generators, that cars like the Volt and the Outlander PHEV are more fuel efficient running the petrol motor as a generator and charging the battery to drive the electric motor, than driving the wheels directly.
So compared to strapping a 50cc motor to your bike? Definitely. Doubly so when you think that the particulars and VOCs are usually around the city's edge rather than where the people are, so even if there's no difference in output, there's benefits to polluting somewhere else anyway.
Compared to eating food and pedaling? Well, assuming the food is carbon neutral in its production, and you only consider the transport of that food from farm to plate, then it's a bit iffy. That said, the average American had something like 22,000 miles of fat on them, to get from their current BMI, to the bottom of the recommended BMI band. I suspect that some have more than others, so averages can be misleading... I probably only have a few hundred kilometers.
Electricity generation even in extremely old power stations is still more efficient than burning fuel for locomotion. Hell, it's so efficient in today's generators, that cars like the Volt and the Outlander PHEV are more fuel efficient running the petrol motor as a generator and charging the battery to drive the electric motor, than driving the wheels directly.
So compared to strapping a 50cc motor to your bike? Definitely. Doubly so when you think that the particulars and VOCs are usually around the city's edge rather than where the people are, so even if there's no difference in output, there's benefits to polluting somewhere else anyway.
Compared to eating food and pedaling? Well, assuming the food is carbon neutral in its production, and you only consider the transport of that food from farm to plate, then it's a bit iffy. That said, the average American had something like 22,000 miles of fat on them, to get from their current BMI, to the bottom of the recommended BMI band. I suspect that some have more than others, so averages can be misleading... I probably only have a few hundred kilometers.
Samd
10 MW
There's a bunch of points with this:
- Is it all about pollution, or is it about what oil money does to the middle east and other areas. EV's disrupt oil money going to morally bankrupt people such as the saudis.
- If it is about emissions, is it about a bike, or a motorbike - or a car? Because even if I charge my ebike twice daily with the worst coal plant I know (Latrobe Valley Australia) I'd only need to plant half a gumtree a year to offset the energy needed for a tiny amountof watthours needed to run my bike. I could plant two seedlings in ten minutes.
- If I wanted to use a Nissan Leaf for my 20km round trip per day I'd only need a ~1KW solar system and about 3 kilowatt hours of batteries to solar charge. That's based on 250 watthours per mile for a leaf.
- Is it all about pollution, or is it about what oil money does to the middle east and other areas. EV's disrupt oil money going to morally bankrupt people such as the saudis.
- If it is about emissions, is it about a bike, or a motorbike - or a car? Because even if I charge my ebike twice daily with the worst coal plant I know (Latrobe Valley Australia) I'd only need to plant half a gumtree a year to offset the energy needed for a tiny amountof watthours needed to run my bike. I could plant two seedlings in ten minutes.
- If I wanted to use a Nissan Leaf for my 20km round trip per day I'd only need a ~1KW solar system and about 3 kilowatt hours of batteries to solar charge. That's based on 250 watthours per mile for a leaf.
nutnspecial
10 MW
Interesting question, kinda ballsy lol, but straightforward
I certainly wouldn't say it's be all end all for pollution. Some pretty toxic stuff involved with just the manufacture, without even getting into clean coal, nuclear, etc for the initial power source.
Better for the environment to ride a straight up bike, or even walk, and better 4 u 2- that is, if people can get rid of any reasons/excuses not to?
I certainly wouldn't say it's be all end all for pollution. Some pretty toxic stuff involved with just the manufacture, without even getting into clean coal, nuclear, etc for the initial power source.
Better for the environment to ride a straight up bike, or even walk, and better 4 u 2- that is, if people can get rid of any reasons/excuses not to?
Gregory
100 kW
I remember Elon Musk said the electricity grid is trending cleaner day by day.
Old coal power stations upgraded, or mothballed in favour of lower carbon alternatives, or your neighbours installing grid tied solar panels, means an EV is emitting less each day.
Old coal power stations upgraded, or mothballed in favour of lower carbon alternatives, or your neighbours installing grid tied solar panels, means an EV is emitting less each day.
dogman dan
1 PW
They are fighting it, but a big dirty coal plant is planned to be shut down in the 4 corners area of the SW USA. This is the same one that helps ruin the view at Grand Canyon sometimes. To be replaced with gas and renewables.
But switching to natural gas doesn't really help with the carbon. What does help, is a big power plant can burn more efficiently than a gas engine car. So the same number of carbon molecules can actually push that car further down the road by electric.
But what would really make an EV cleaner locally, is having solar at the house. All day your solar runs the neighbors AC or TV, reducing the need to burn gas. Then at night when the fossil plant needs to keep cranking anyway, you put your car on the tit. Everybody happy. Less waste at night, more clean power in the day, most days. At least here in the Saudi Arabia of solar, the SW USA, it will work well.
I've seen it said that making solar panels uses a lot of fossil fuel, making them not so clean when you put that in the calculation. Sure, it could be possible to make enough panels to reach some kind of tipping point, where solar panels make more solar panels. But I'm not holding my breath.
One thing is for sure though, at least in a small locality, switching to EV's can greatly affect air quality in a specific valley. But somewhere, a fossil plant is spewing carbon, even if the nastier shit is scrubbed out at the stack. What really saves the carbon foot print, is changing your vehicle from a 3 ton SUV, to a 100 pound e bike or e scooter. For that matter, save almost as much just switching to a gas scooter, if they put a catalytic converter on them. Right now, gas motorcycles pollute like hell.
But switching to natural gas doesn't really help with the carbon. What does help, is a big power plant can burn more efficiently than a gas engine car. So the same number of carbon molecules can actually push that car further down the road by electric.
But what would really make an EV cleaner locally, is having solar at the house. All day your solar runs the neighbors AC or TV, reducing the need to burn gas. Then at night when the fossil plant needs to keep cranking anyway, you put your car on the tit. Everybody happy. Less waste at night, more clean power in the day, most days. At least here in the Saudi Arabia of solar, the SW USA, it will work well.
I've seen it said that making solar panels uses a lot of fossil fuel, making them not so clean when you put that in the calculation. Sure, it could be possible to make enough panels to reach some kind of tipping point, where solar panels make more solar panels. But I'm not holding my breath.
One thing is for sure though, at least in a small locality, switching to EV's can greatly affect air quality in a specific valley. But somewhere, a fossil plant is spewing carbon, even if the nastier shit is scrubbed out at the stack. What really saves the carbon foot print, is changing your vehicle from a 3 ton SUV, to a 100 pound e bike or e scooter. For that matter, save almost as much just switching to a gas scooter, if they put a catalytic converter on them. Right now, gas motorcycles pollute like hell.
spinningmagnets
100 TW
Yes, but....
Coal plants are not turned off at night and turned on in the morning. They "idle"....right now....every night. If they're going to run anyways, why not charge up electric vehicles at night?
Also, the Polk County (Florida) coal plant was a pilot project to show how clean a coal plant could be come if it was upgraded. There was a dramatic improvement. Switching some of our transport to EVs will centralize the energy generation where it can be dealt with and improved.
Coal plants are not turned off at night and turned on in the morning. They "idle"....right now....every night. If they're going to run anyways, why not charge up electric vehicles at night?
Also, the Polk County (Florida) coal plant was a pilot project to show how clean a coal plant could be come if it was upgraded. There was a dramatic improvement. Switching some of our transport to EVs will centralize the energy generation where it can be dealt with and improved.
anoNY42
10 W
Sunder said:
I like this line, I think this is what I will tell my doctor when he tries to get me to lose more weight...
"No no doc, I'm storing those miles up just in case I can't reach an electrical outlet!"
MrDude_1
100 kW
Thats not exactly true.dogman dan said:
All modern motorcycles have EFI, Cats and meet emissions standards that even cars didnt meet in 2000... My 08 Honda CBR1000RR had an oversize catalytic converter that let it run especially clean... sure it was oversized to ensure flow and performance more than emissions... but it is and remains cleaner than most cars and all US trucks/suvs. Plus it didnt suck to ride. lol
Now, if you're on an air cooled motor with no cats... sure. But that would hardly be a modern motorcycle.
speedmd
10 MW
Even if you have to eat much more? Eating Meat has been attributed to much of the environmental issues lately. Interesting trade off coasting along on a bike /ebike vs pedaling or walking hard. Would be a good analysis.
Drunkskunk
100 GW
Yes. But....
If you're chasing CO2 numbers, then taking every gas car, truck, and motorcycle off the road and replacing it with an equivalent electric car charged from the existing grid would only drop overall CO2 missions by a tiny amount, since the power plants would have to ramp up fuel use to start powering all of the new electric cars. If you invested the money not in new electric cars, but instead in replacing the coal and gas power plants with clean wind, solar, or geothermal plants, you would cut the CO2 emissions by many times more.
But if you are after lowering over all pollution, replacing gas with electric cars gives bigger benefits. It's still a small fraction of our over all pollution, but you'll see a much larger reduction in the things the media doesn't tell people to care abut, like Methane, NOx, SO2, Carbon Monoxide, and various Hydrocarbons from evaporating gas and oils. Even Coal Power plants do a much better job at reducing these emissions than a car does.
Drunkskunk
100 GW
speedmd said:
IIRC, it takes something like 40 calories worth of energy to get a meal raised on a farm, transported, stored, prepared, and served to a person for every 1 calorie in food value. That's 2.5% efficient
and humans can produce about 1 calorie worth of work for every 4 we consume. So for every calorie worth of work we do, we actually used 160 calories of total energy.
160:1 = 0.625% efficient
So walking would be the least efficient form of transportation. This is useful info because I can be lazy as F**k, and now I have a solid eco-friendly excuse not to go walking around the mall with my eco aware girlfriend.
A bad Ebike would be much better. Assuming the worst for the power grid, a power plant might only deliver 50% of the energy it consumed to your wall outlet. Assuming you have the worst charger and a badly built Ebike, you might only be able to use 50% of the power you consumed from that outlet. So for 4 calories worth of power used by the power plant, you can produce 1.
4:1 = 25% efficient
MadRhino
100 GW
Pollution that is caused by transportation is more a matter of distance than type of motorisation. We are consuming a lot of transportation distance in food and goods, that is the first thing we need to change. Free trade exchange that our politicians are fond of, is a major factor of pollution growth because more and more products are traveling long distances to the consumer. When we believe that we are saving on the price of imported items that we could buy for a little more if made locally, we are not considering the real environmental and social cost of this.
craneplaneguy
10 kW
I have been producing ALL my power for the last 38 years, first off grid, for the last 9 years grid tied (where I produce MORE then I use, I currently have over 11,000 KWH "stored" with my local utility. It's a paper exercise, my excess power in the summer months when the hydro system is running, along with the usual wind and solar systems, was not put or stored somewhere to wait for me to consume come the winter months, when my production falls behind my consumption (I have an all electric home, no propane, rare for this rural area). Rather, that power was consumed that day by the next neighbor downstream (electrically speaking") from me, nonetheless, the utility owes me for that excess power I put into their system.
Where it get's a bit fuzzy if I overthink it, is in the winter my utility gets some of their power from a coal plant, most from hydro, so when I need to use "my" power in the winter, it may be coming from a coal fired plant in Wyoming even though I initially produced that power with my renewable system. This all makes my head hurt.....I long ago just decided to produce all my own power, eventually producing the excess I now have, and let the chips fall as they may! One good thing is I now have a small sideline business selling and installing solar gear of all types, this is partially why I have the excess power, I am showing off when I show my power bill with the huge energy credit to a potential customer!
So, when I charge my recently purchased Trail Viper, all I can tell you for sure is that the electricity is coming out of the wall socket, initially produced by a combo of wind/solar/hydro, and IF I am charging while actually producing this excess, it is as clean and direct as it can be. If, like at the moment, I'm using more then producing, it's partially coal fired power. I don't stay up nights thinking about it, it is what it is for me anyway.
Buy all the PV you can as soon as you can, (don't talk about it someday, do it NOW) it will pay you back for the decades to come, money given to a utility is pissed away, buy your own power system and reap the benefits for the rest of your life, I have.
Where it get's a bit fuzzy if I overthink it, is in the winter my utility gets some of their power from a coal plant, most from hydro, so when I need to use "my" power in the winter, it may be coming from a coal fired plant in Wyoming even though I initially produced that power with my renewable system. This all makes my head hurt.....I long ago just decided to produce all my own power, eventually producing the excess I now have, and let the chips fall as they may! One good thing is I now have a small sideline business selling and installing solar gear of all types, this is partially why I have the excess power, I am showing off when I show my power bill with the huge energy credit to a potential customer!
So, when I charge my recently purchased Trail Viper, all I can tell you for sure is that the electricity is coming out of the wall socket, initially produced by a combo of wind/solar/hydro, and IF I am charging while actually producing this excess, it is as clean and direct as it can be. If, like at the moment, I'm using more then producing, it's partially coal fired power. I don't stay up nights thinking about it, it is what it is for me anyway.
Buy all the PV you can as soon as you can, (don't talk about it someday, do it NOW) it will pay you back for the decades to come, money given to a utility is pissed away, buy your own power system and reap the benefits for the rest of your life, I have.
dogman dan
1 PW
Nice, I'm jealous of ya. Especially the micro hydro. Too bad you don't get a check for that excess you put in. Then buy batteries with it and stop using that coal at all.
For sure though, if a coal plant is running anyway, spewing heat rather than generating with the steam, the best thing we can do is use that power to charge something at night. Your car, your house storage, whatever.
My own situation is weird, most of EPE's power is natural gas fired. But some is nuke, from Palo Verde in AZ. Since the power line goes past here on the way to El Paso, in effect all my power is nuke power.
So not much carbon for my charger to run. Although, I'd have to say nuke power pollutes more, in a different way. Some day maybe, bye bye Phoenix.
For sure though, if a coal plant is running anyway, spewing heat rather than generating with the steam, the best thing we can do is use that power to charge something at night. Your car, your house storage, whatever.
My own situation is weird, most of EPE's power is natural gas fired. But some is nuke, from Palo Verde in AZ. Since the power line goes past here on the way to El Paso, in effect all my power is nuke power.
So not much carbon for my charger to run. Although, I'd have to say nuke power pollutes more, in a different way. Some day maybe, bye bye Phoenix.
MrDude_1
100 kW
dogman dan said:
Not to go off topic, but if everyone could get over their ignorance of nuclear tech, we could build MODERN plants instead of continuing to run these 1960s era crap.
Hell, build a molten salt plant and use just the WASTE from the other plants to make power.. then the waste only stays radioactive for 100 years instead of thousands AND you have plenty of cheap fuel, AND its safer.
It would be one hell of a nice way to supplement solar, wind and wave power.. nice and constant and can be ramped up or down as needed.
ebent
10 kW
As already mentioned power plants run day and night. So the night time electric goes to waste. I bet the future will be about charging our lithium closet overnight. The cocktail question will be how big is your lithium closet. Some electric companies have a varied rate opportunity and offer power cheaper at late night. It is very green to use the power that was going to waste.
Alan B
100 GW
Sunder said:
I don't know about the Outlander, but the Volt is NOT always a generator, they changed the design before production to increase efficiency, so the motor can drive the wheels directly because it increases efficiency. Otherwise they would not be competitive with other modern hybrids.
Another factor here is that electric vehicles in general are much more designed with efficiency in mind compared to their gas counterparts which are designed to be low cost. Plus the available electric vehicles in general force the consumers to buy a smaller more efficiency type vehicle than they would otherwise buy. So there are many ways in which the efficiency increases.
Sunder
10 MW
Alan B said:
The Outlander "can" directly drive the wheels above 80km/h, but in my experience, it rarely does, unless you're towing or accelerating hard up a hill.
I'm uncertain if it's because the electric motor cannot deliver the required torque, or because it's more efficient.
liveforphysics
100 TW
Charging an EV certainly can just be shifting where pollution happens.
Alternatively, it can be done from clean renewable sources like solar/wind/geothermal etc.
EV's are as dirty as you let them be. Vehicles that partially burn carcinogenic mutagenic solvents and spray the waste products into this one atmosphere we all share don't have the luxury of potentially being clean, or getting cleaner if you add some solar to your roof etc.
It's not expensive or difficult today (at least in the bay area) to put up enough solar to supply your whole home and EV's and be supplying the grid more energy than you're using. This is the nightmare the centralized status-quo systems, yet none the less it will either happen rapidly or the human-beings-on-earth experiment ends rapidly.
Alternatively, it can be done from clean renewable sources like solar/wind/geothermal etc.
EV's are as dirty as you let them be. Vehicles that partially burn carcinogenic mutagenic solvents and spray the waste products into this one atmosphere we all share don't have the luxury of potentially being clean, or getting cleaner if you add some solar to your roof etc.
It's not expensive or difficult today (at least in the bay area) to put up enough solar to supply your whole home and EV's and be supplying the grid more energy than you're using. This is the nightmare the centralized status-quo systems, yet none the less it will either happen rapidly or the human-beings-on-earth experiment ends rapidly.
sendler2112
100 kW
EV drivetrains are 80+% efficient wall to wheels. The best cars peak at 35% and are most often operated well away from their peak. Take the same gallon of gas through a 60% efficiency mixed cycle generator and use it in an EV at a net of 48%. The car would be lucky to turn 20% of that gas into forward motion. And that is just the fosssil fuel case. Green energy sources can be used by an EV. Cars only run on fossil fuel.
craneplaneguy
10 kW
Many electric appliances approach 100% efficiency, as compared to propane/natural gas ones. For instance, an electric boiler that only "fires" when the circulator pump is on, and the volume of water contained in the boiler is so small (a gallon or 2 ) that you get almost instant heat, with NO FLUE LOSES! An added benefit is no worries about carbon monoxide. Another: when you're building a new house, it's simpler and cheaper to run wiring then gas venting. It was a happy day when I realized that prior to starting work on my new (small, almost tiny, no McMansion, but real efficient) home on new acreage I moved onto a while back (the start of my grid tie life, and the end of being off grid) that it was going to be 100% electric. I put an ad in the local penny saver and sold my 500 propane tank cheap, good riddance.
One thing I always get is : "so you have power when the utility goes out, cool." My system is a pure grid tie, no batteries whatsoever. That saves money initially and for the life of the system. Not so, at least around here the power goes out so rarely and for such short periods, candles and the wood stove suffice. Getting rid of batteries for good was as happy a day as getting rid of the propane tank! Batteries are not very efficient, you don't get all the power out you put into them, and then you have stand by losses, at least in the big lead acid banks off grid homes use. My last battery weighed 1200 lbs, and required maintenance: watering, keeping the connections clean, it also took up a lot of room. Idaho Power is my battery now, 100 % efficient as far as I'm concerned, of infinite size, needs no maintenance, and takes up no room! All this for 5 bucks a month basic hookup fee, what a deal. If the power stays off for several weeks or months, it's the end of the world anyway, so screw it. I get calls all the time from survivalist types, fearing The End, usually mixed with politics or religious views, I tell them (just to get them to hang up "hell, when the closet store runs out of cold beer, it's all over anyway". As we all know, battery tech is moving forward fast, but Musk isn't going to be giving away his whole house batteries.... I'll stay with the pure grid tie setup for the foreseeable future and just keep a few candles handy.
One more thing (honest) I just completed a 24 KW grid tie solar system for a guy with a Tesla, we never ran the numbers, he or I don't care if it cancels out his Telsa power usage. It was more of a "I did all I could, let's move on". He and his wife put 50,000 miles on the Tesla the first 9 months they owned it, traveling the USA giving forums on the car and some other subjects. They recharged at campgrounds and slept in the car, they ride bikes otherwise. I have an idea that the whole E-bike thing has escaped his attention to date, I plan to bring it to his attention soon!
One thing I always get is : "so you have power when the utility goes out, cool." My system is a pure grid tie, no batteries whatsoever. That saves money initially and for the life of the system. Not so, at least around here the power goes out so rarely and for such short periods, candles and the wood stove suffice. Getting rid of batteries for good was as happy a day as getting rid of the propane tank! Batteries are not very efficient, you don't get all the power out you put into them, and then you have stand by losses, at least in the big lead acid banks off grid homes use. My last battery weighed 1200 lbs, and required maintenance: watering, keeping the connections clean, it also took up a lot of room. Idaho Power is my battery now, 100 % efficient as far as I'm concerned, of infinite size, needs no maintenance, and takes up no room! All this for 5 bucks a month basic hookup fee, what a deal. If the power stays off for several weeks or months, it's the end of the world anyway, so screw it. I get calls all the time from survivalist types, fearing The End, usually mixed with politics or religious views, I tell them (just to get them to hang up "hell, when the closet store runs out of cold beer, it's all over anyway". As we all know, battery tech is moving forward fast, but Musk isn't going to be giving away his whole house batteries.... I'll stay with the pure grid tie setup for the foreseeable future and just keep a few candles handy.
One more thing (honest) I just completed a 24 KW grid tie solar system for a guy with a Tesla, we never ran the numbers, he or I don't care if it cancels out his Telsa power usage. It was more of a "I did all I could, let's move on". He and his wife put 50,000 miles on the Tesla the first 9 months they owned it, traveling the USA giving forums on the car and some other subjects. They recharged at campgrounds and slept in the car, they ride bikes otherwise. I have an idea that the whole E-bike thing has escaped his attention to date, I plan to bring it to his attention soon!
Dauntless
100 TW
Mundo said:
Or even if a large percentage of your power comes from out of state, as with California.
If you're asking strictly a yes or no question, yes. If you're wondering if it's really that important in a world where more than a quarter of California air pollution comes from China, I can't say that it is. Most air pollution embarks on a world tour, regardless of where it originates.
There, doesn't that make you feel better?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/asia/china-pollution-baoding/index.html
dogman dan
1 PW
Yes, new design nuke is needed. But Palo Verde is a 60's design nuke. On the bright side, it's not a 50's design like Chernobyl.
The real elephant in the room for your carbon footprint, is your brand new house, 2500 square feet, that still got built with only r 11 walls, r 16 roof. Unbelievable that at least r 16 walls are not code yet.
What we use in our cars is nothing by comparison. But of course a shitty car can pollute like hell, and living in the burbs can mean a lot of using that car.
If the politicians could stop blocking it, we'll build a new power line to LA, so all those big poorly insulated houses can get cooled on a summer afternoon, with solar power from the sunny deserts here in NM. But in fact, they could fill a lot of land between Palm springs and El Centro with solar if they chose to, and have about the same solar potential per day.
The real elephant in the room for your carbon footprint, is your brand new house, 2500 square feet, that still got built with only r 11 walls, r 16 roof. Unbelievable that at least r 16 walls are not code yet.
What we use in our cars is nothing by comparison. But of course a shitty car can pollute like hell, and living in the burbs can mean a lot of using that car.
If the politicians could stop blocking it, we'll build a new power line to LA, so all those big poorly insulated houses can get cooled on a summer afternoon, with solar power from the sunny deserts here in NM. But in fact, they could fill a lot of land between Palm springs and El Centro with solar if they chose to, and have about the same solar potential per day.
MrDude_1
100 kW
If it helps, when I am not riding my homemade EVs, I also ride a CR500.
But I use natural castor oil, not that artificial synthetic....
so atleast its pollution smells good. :lol:
But I use natural castor oil, not that artificial synthetic....
so atleast its pollution smells good. :lol:
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