I've seen this meme on the Book of Face, and I an wondering about its accuracy?
I often refer to electric vehicles as "coal powered" because much of the electricity in the US is generated by coal, or natural gas.
How accurate is this meme? Asking for a friend.
Fuel consumption depends on load. Here's a chart for rough guidance.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.generatorsource.com/Diesel_Fuel_Consumption.aspx
So you'd need to know what the charger load is.
OK, the Tesla home wall charger can draw 11.5KW. So unless the meme station is set up to charge 27 cars at a time, a 350KW gensetwould be a really bad match for the job; it would seriously over-muscled, and a fuel waster.
ReplyDelete^^^^ This!
ReplyDeleteFor electric vehicles it depends on where the electricity comes from. I got some thing from my PUD the other day that 70 some odd percent of our electricity comes from Hydro electric sources. Of course some places aren’t like that.
ReplyDeleteNone of this matters. The ONLY thing that matters is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
ReplyDeleteAny time you change energy from one form to another there is a loss. It is absolutely physically impossible for electricity generated from "fossil" fuels to be more efficient than using the original fuel. Any way you slice it, this also means that electric vehicles are, in fact, dirtier that fossil fueled vehicles.
This is all irrelevant with hydro power since the energy harvested would be lost anyway. Unfortunately, hydro supplies a very small part of the grid.
Solar and wind power will not recover the energy inputs required to manufacture them over their useful lives.
Yet the stupid keep leading us onward.
First off, judging by everything else in the picture, that generator is NOT 350kw. My estimate from the size is 40 to 60 kw.
ReplyDeleteSecond, as mentioned above, powering that charger doesn't tak full power and therefore doesn't take as much fuel as claimed.
While the fuel mileage equivalent won't be great, it'll be better than 5.6 mpg.