Without Clean Electricity, Plug-In Vehicles aren’t So Hot
This is something I (and a lot of other people) have been wondering about for a while in regards to plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs, like the Chevy Volt) and pure electric vehicles (EVs, like the Lightning GT and Subaru R1e). PHEVs are not a new thing, and they have been discussed on Gas2.0 before, but there is some interesting news that recently came out of Carnegie Mellon University suggesting that if we don’t make our power generation system less carbon intensive, PHEVs could have little benefit over regular hybrids (HEVs).
More after the jump!
Unfortunately, if you want to see the original article, you’ll have to buy it, but for the rest of us, Green Car Congress has written a good article about the findings and the implications of this study.
There is no doubt that PHEVs result in good fuel economy figures — GM is currently touting its PHEV-to be, the Volt, as getting 150MPG over all. However, they aren’t necessarily super efficient. Instead, they achieve these high numbers by supplementing the power produced by their gasoline engines with power taken from the grid. This has caused controversy lately, as hybrid-opponents often claim that battery production and the use of energy from the grid actually makes these cars bigger GHG polluters. However, if you look at this chart posted by GCC, you can see that both HEVs and PHEVs have a clear advantage over conventional cars, even when battery production is factored in:
This chart assumes the national mix of power from the grid, and as I said, shows pretty clearly the advantage of HEVs over conventional vehicles (CVs), but also shows that with the current mix of power sources on the grid, PHEVs aren’t that much better than your standard HEVs. I don’t say this to suggest that we should be shutting down PHEV research or production, but rather I think we should embrace the ability to consolidate our efforts in “greening” only one particular industry rather than trying to attack every one separately.
What I mean by this is that if our vehicles all drew power from the grid, making the grid more efficient would both improve standard energy usage as well as make motor vehicles less polluting. As it stands now there is a huge rift, where some are trying to improve the grid by adding things like wind power and others are trying to improve vehicle fuel economy or introduce hydrogen cars.
In fact, as noted by GCC, if the grid were low-carbon, PHEVs would reduce lifecycle GHG emissions of 51-63%, something anyone would admit is a huge improvement for motor vehicles.
You can check out this chart (if you can read it, click for a bigger version) to see how the different vehicles compare under different scenarios:
How do you all feel about PHEVs? Are they the new thing of the future or just another set-back on the way to pure EVs? Or is a hydrogen economy in store for us in the future?
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In central NH, one power plant (Bow Power, we call it) burns wood products for steam energy which turns turbines. One has to admit that electrons that were locally nudged into conduction could have been so motivated by alternating current generated at this powerplant and could have reached their Prius. Ah, but electricity is ‘clean’, you say? Well, yeah, but if nothing moves a stream of electrons, zero volts of electricity has zero power to deliver. One could argue that zero volts is still electricity, but we all know that zero volts won’t spin a motor. The cleanest electricity I know of is from non-combustion, non-chemical, non-nuclear sources. Sources like hydro.
First off, I think PHEVs are the way out of our current mess. They have the capability to perform like conventional cars (the technology will likely rapidly expand across platforms to full-sized cars and light trucks) while at the same time providing an avenue to make truly sizable reductions in our oil imports, or to possibly end them entirely. This would not be simple (we’ll still need large amounts of liquid fuel for long haul driving- perhaps a combination of ethanol, domestic oil, and coal-to-liquid fuels could accommodate this), but if it could be done, it would have absolutely profound impacts on our economy, trade deficit, and national security.
While the electricity replacing oil would still need to come from somewhere, increased generating capacity from wind, solar, biomass, and nuclear (sure it produces waste… it’s also the only one of these four that actually produces meaningful amounts of power)could reduce greenhouse emissions at the same time. Nothing is ever perfect, but this technology has enough societal benefits that it should have been pursued aggressively even before the current oil price squeeze… in some ways we are fortunate that economics is bludgeoning us into doing what should have been done out of foresight, anyway.
PS: Spuffler- If you are getting your electricity from biomass burning, congratulations. You are one of the fortunate few who actually does have “clean” electricity, at least in terms of carbon emissions. Burning wood is a net zero emitter of carbon- the wood of the tree is composed of carbon recently fixed from the atmosphere, virtually all of which would be released during decay after death regardless. The thing that is different about fossil fuel burning is that the carbon sequestered there has been out of the atmosphere millions of years, and is therefore additive to the current total supply in circulation.
I don’t give a rat’s butt about the carbon footprint since human activity has very little impact global warming.
This is about decreasing the need for oil. PERIOD.
Actually, the oil companies can kiss my shiny metal behind every time I drive by one of their stations.
If the U.S. had decided to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times, solar/thermal installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It is an oil well that can NEVER run dry! After the millions of murders, and billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and spent, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopathic, rich daddie’s boy, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone else’s weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep!
The article forgot to mention that much power in CA is hydro. Fully 18% of power is nuclear. It also forgot to mention that much power is shipped into CA and does not cause PhotoChemical smog in LA. The grams of carbon per-mile can also be disputed. As another pointed out the big advantage is cost. Crude oil costs about ten times as much as does coal delivered at the powerplant. The C02 per mile for gasoline does not include the CO2 produced at the well by flaring gas or perhaps the CO2 produced in refining or perhaps the CO2 produced in pumping or perhaps the CO2 produced by tankers or the CO2 produced by trucking to the service station. Statistics show that 123 gallons of crude are required at the refinery for 100 gallons of refined fuel. The electric grid loses less than %10 power on the average… ..HG..
Why not just use good old reliable time tested lead acid batteries in electric cars?
Check out this site: http://www.fireflyenergy.com
This guy is teaching an old dog new tricks.
Yes! electric cars powered from the coal powered grid release carbon; this is the first law of themodynamics, but it can be less than that released in a traffic jam where cars are idling at zero efficiency, and the carbon is not at ground level and mixed with other smog chemicals. The installation of nuclear power plants eliminate this CO2 release, in large measure.
All production cars could be modified to use a larger standard battery to run all brakes, fans, pumps, ac, stereo and lights and have an integrated starter-altenator for no-idle operation. Electric powered creeping in traffic jams is posssible and engine overheating in such conditions is eliminated. Every California car should have electric creeping. Air and fuel injection or electric heat can keep the catalysts ready for the start. The battery is usually charged at home and by regeneration when braking or slowing, but the alternator can be turned on for very low battery conditions. Very high current alternators are available for high regeneration energy.
ZEBRA batteries can be used and are simpler to build and maintain than lithium. They need to be kept hot but lithium batteries need to be kept cool which is harder. Failed ZEBRA cells can be ignored. Failed lithium cells can burn up and even ignite other cells.
Except for cost (but this applies to litium batteries too), ZEBRA batteries are the best batteries to use with the Prius and its original battery for plug-in-hybrid operation for long electric distances. Small, derated for safety and cost, flywheels could eliminate the need for the original hybrid battery and have infinite life. ..HG..
The purpose of plug-in-hybids is to reduce the cost of operation and the use of imported expensive crude not to lower green house gases, but the plug-in-hybrids do this as well compared to non hybrids. Grid energy from coal costs about one fifth that of gasoline and can be much less.
Large users of electricity may pay less than half of what home users pay per kilowatt hour, and home owners can get much cheaper night rates in some places. This also lowers CO2 because natural gas plants are idled in favor of hydro or nuclear at night. Nuclear is never shut off because the fuel costs are far lower than any other fuel and water can be usually stored for periods of higher use.