Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I recently had the great pleasure of going back for a week to Alaska, where I’ve spent many exhilarating summers. I was reminded of the winter cold by seeing all of the electrical outlets by the parking meters in Fairbanks. Every car that is parked there in the winter plugs in their “block heater”. This is an electrical heating element that keeps the engine block of the car from getting so cold that the engine refuses to start.
Figure 1. Fairbanks monthly temperatures, averaged by decade. You can see the huge change in these sub-Arctic temperature over the last eighty years … or not …
That started me thinking about how much energy it might take to heat a car in Fairbanks, versus the energy to drive it around. Here’s how I would do a back of the envelope calculation for a place like Fairbanks, just below the Arctic Circle.
Block heaters run from about 500 watts to a high of 4,000 watts. Most seem to be in the range of one thousand watts, a kilowatt (kW).
In Fairbanks, the average temperature is below freezing for seven months out of the year. So to calculate total use, we could estimate that heater usage will average out to say four months of the year, fulltime. So the car will be drawing a kilowatt at all times except when it is being driven. Call it 23 hours a day.
So 23 hours / day times 1/3 year times 365.25 days / year times 1 kilowatt = 2,800 kilowatt-hours (kW-h) per year.
The price of residential electrical energy in Fairbanks is about 19 cents per kW-h. So that’s about $500 worth of electricity per year …
Gas (petrol) prices in Fairbanks were about US$3.80 per gallon when I was there. Assume 10,000 miles driven per year, and say 25 miles per gallon fuel efficiency for the car. That’s 400 gallons of gas, worth about $1,500.
My envelope tells me that the Fairbanks car might have a total energy cost of say $2,000 per year.
So car-owners of Fairbanks, when the EPA Police want to arrest you because you haven’t kicked your evil fossil fuel habit, tell them they’re too late — a quarter of the energy to run Fairbanks cars is already electrical, you are already so green it hurts.
(Don’t tell them that due to local conditions and US opposition to nuclear power, Fairbanks electricity all comes from fossil fuels … those kind of folks need their illusions.
w.
PS—Before anyone accuses me of being paranoid about the EPA Police, consider this:
Ian L. McQueen says:
A word on block heaters: it is more effective to heat the oil in the crankcase than to heat the block. If the oil is warm and thin, the engine will turn over and start. Heating just the block will still require the battery to turn the crankshaft through molasses-like oil.
A heater and trickle charger for the battery will also help by keeping the battery up to full strength.
My father had a diesel Mercedes back in the 60s. It did not like to start in the cold, and he had to bring a truck-size battery indoors to keep warm if he wanted to be sure that the car would start in the morning. Truck batteries are heavy!!
In the case of a diesel you may need to keep the fuel tank warm as well as the engine. So as to prevent wax and/or ice precipitation. Which would otherwise cause blockages.
Spinifers says:
If your car fails when it’s 60 below and you’re not right in town, you’re as good as dead (unless you’ve got a lot of survival gear, which, granted, is always wise to have anyway).
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Don’t forget the risk of polar bear attack! But I guess that /could/ be considered Gais’s revenge by some people.
My city of Bathurst NSW is blessed with six lane roads, courtesy of planners considering bullock carts doing a ‘U’ turn in the founding days. Before controls, intersections were difficult for both pedestrians and motorists but now with roundabouts or traffic lights, I agree with E.M.Smith about centre block crossings being safer than light controlled ones.
We used to have pedestrian right of way centre block crossings which were a pain for motorists as people strolled across at will. Now we have refuges each side and centre at the crossing, with motorists having right of way, no problem, three or four paces to cross a lane. With centre parking for trucks for delivery, and angle parking each side, plus covered parking under the malls, the city has virtually no parking problems. Since being nearly skittled by a light runner at a controlled intersection I never use them. And no, it doesn’t entail more walking, as the malls have entrances nearer the block centre than intersections.
Although heat is more of a concern than cold here, I do get temperatures down to -12°C sometimes, and find that a battery as large as I can Make fit makes starting easier, as the nearest service station is 35Km away.
With a diesel engine and some glo-plug failures, I found an easy-start spray can mounted to spray into the air intake controlled by a ‘choke’ pull in the cab made cold weather starts possible.
Vermont during the winter of ’96 was -30 cold and our hire car refused to start. Locals kept their engines running all night and were welcomed in the morning to a warm car with no icy windows. Though I did see a Land Rover Defender there start and drive away with no problem, and no block heater.
Pssh, electricity doesn’t exist in Alaska. Pure propaganda!
The one point I get stuck on is that the only cheap [pmsl] Electric cars are the ones that have all the limits on use and the conditions they will put up with as they are built to a price.
Great in London/Milan but the further north you go the more expensive and risky it gets for EV use, but the main problem is many up here cannot afford them ever, an old Jeep is what ? a couple of thou a Nissan leaf is £23.000+£5,000 tax payer sub and the price will not fall for years if at all as which car maker want to cut their own profits? so they will want big government subsidy or tax [which we cannot afford?] and second hand well who wants a 3 year old car with duff battery’s that cos loads to replace ? .
The Monster says:
October 2, 2011 at 8:05 pm
“A word on block heaters: it is more effective to heat the oil in the crankcase than to heat the block.”
Combine this with an electric oil pump you can turn on every so often to keep the oil circulating, and you have a really good solution. Even at warmer temperatures, I’ve often thought it would be helpful to have the normal starting mode for a car engage the oil pump for a short time before the starter kicks in, to make sure of maximum lubrication during starting, which is normally when an engine gets its worst wear precisely due to the fact that the oil has mostly drained into the bottom of the crankcase. Add a small electric heating element that can be plugged in when the car isn’t in operation, and you have a winner.
I wonder if any of the car companies have thought about building this into the vehicles as factory standard.
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Any modern, actual aircraft engine uses what is called a “pre-oiler” from stock, to pump oil through the oil-galleries to the bearings prior to firing up the engine, to vastly reduce wear.
Older aircraft engines may be retro-fitted with this set, which may also be adaptable to larger-volume car-engines, too (c/o V8’s…).
http://www.oilamatic.com
But then there is THIS one http://www.automotoroiler.com , which is calibrated for use in smaller-volume car-engines from scratch.
English Pensioner says:
October 2, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Its nice to see that the US still has “Wanted ” posters
We can’t have them in Britain in case we infringe a criminal’s Human Rights!
Most UK police feature “wanted” persons, with pictures, on their websites.
Get it right.
Nice to see that the EPA is now a “police” organisation: Mission-Creep anyone ?
Guess, why all ski-doos still use to have two-stroke-engines these days?
Because a two-stroke with pre-mixed fuel and oil is the PERFECT cold-start-engine.
Would the cars do less environmental damage to the planet if they remain in Italy? No, they’d do the same damage. The extra damage would be through the energy used to transport the cars to the US. So the EPA’s logic should be to ban the import and export of cars to/from the US ;>)
Philip Bradley says:
October 2, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Very cold climates are one of the places electric cars have an advantage over petrol vehicles, precisely because they can start in very cold temperatures.
After thinking about it i tend to agree a place like Fairbanks might be the ideal one to own something like the Leaf, especially if you could afford to use it as a dedicated urban runabout. In that environment any ICE powered vehicle is always going to be a continuing PITA during the extended Winter months, making the electric’s startup ability a definite plus. And as Willis points out the plugin infrastructure is already in place, so you cloud probably find a plug at nearly every stop during your day. Though I’d have to do some further research to verify it, I suspect the regenerative braking system might do a better job of slowing the vehicle in slick conditions. When the lockup threshold gets seriously low ABS brake systems on conventional vehicles can get pretty useless. If I had to venture out into the hinterlands on a regular basis, I’d probably want a different car, but for tooling around Fairbanks a Leaf might be just the ticket.
Philip Bradley says:
October 2, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Very cold climates are one of the places electric cars have an advantage over petrol vehicles, precisely because they can start in very cold temperatures.
There have always been niches where electric vehicles made sense. More than 50 years ago in the UK, our and everyone else’s milk was delivered by an electric vehicle that drove the same fixed route every day, with a large number of stops and starts.
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Back in the mid-1960s I worked as a milkman in UK. During the coldest months, there were many occasions when those electric milk carts out of my depot had to be towed back in by a diesel truck. Cold and batteries don’t mix well.
Here in Finland some people I know have been driving with their electric cars with lithium batteries around the year, even in -20 to -30 degrees Celcius temperatures. Some as long as 8-10 years now. If the battery pack is properly insulated (unlike in most of the commercial cars), they usually have no trouble to work in extreme cold. Even the driving range is not reduced that much.The charging alone provides usually enough heat and the insulation keeps the temperature in the battery case nominal. It would also be possible to add some electric heaters or blankets to warm the battery case, but they’re usually not needed if the insulation is thick enough. For the interiour heating usually an electric heater (which uses up some of the range) or a gasoline heater is used. The gasoline heater consumes only small amounts of fuel in the winter (just a few gallons should last through the winter) as it’s pretty efficient.
So it’s like with a human being. You need to put some “clothes” on. You can’t just run naked outside when it’s raining snow.
We also use heater blocks and indoor electric heaters in our regular cars, usually timed about 2 hours before we need to drive them. That usually does the trick.
What’s more efficient? Burning fossil fuel to create steam which turns a turbine which crrates electricity and then transport this electricity for mikes over wire to a home and then into a battery charger to charge a bank of electric car batteries. Use this energy to drive the car and heat the car. OR…. burn the fossil fuel right in the car turning some of the energy into movement and use the waste to heat the interior.
What’s more efficient? One large electric power plant – or millions of small and very inefficient power plants driving around? And in one stationary power plant all the emissions are much more easily contained and filtered.
When the full “well-to-wheel” analysis is taken into account with all the losses in the electric grid, battery charging and electric motor, the electric car is still more than twice as energy efficient as the best hybrid. The internal combustion engine wastes a huge amount of energy and only a portion of the heat generated can be used to heat the interior.
And usually these analysis don’t take into account all the energy needed to extract, refine and ship the gasoline to the pumps. Just as an example, a gallon of gasoline requires 7.5-9kWh of energy, enough to drive Leaf for 30 miles. And this is just the refining.
Also here in Finland a large portion of the excess heat in our fossil-fueled power plants is used to heat our houses. The losses are minimal compared to internal combustion engines in our cars.
I viewed a commercial touting the Nissan Leaf, an electric car that retails for around $28K after a hefty federal tax rebate. Using clever computer graphics, the feature imagined a world where a myriad of personal appliances were run by internal combustion engines, with the attendant pollution of course. Well and good. The Leaf looks like a nifty little car–if you don’t have to run a lot of accesories like heat and/or air conditioning. And that electric power likely comes from a nasty, CO2 producing coal fired generator.
Some info on temperature and charging/ discharging of Li-On and other batteries. Don’t even think about charging below freezing unless you have a pack specifically designed for that. Among other things you would void the warranty.
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Li‑ion batteries offer reasonably good charging performance at cooler temperatures and allow fast-charging in a temperature bandwidth of 5 to 45°C (41 to 113°F). Below 5°C, the charge current should be reduced, and no charging is permitted at freezing temperatures. During charge, the internal cell resistance causes a slight temperature rise that compensates for some of the cold. With all batteries, cold temperature raises the internal resistance.
Many battery users are unaware that consumer-grade lithium-ion batteries cannot be charged below 0°C (32°F). Although the pack appears to be charging normally, plating of metallic lithium can occur on the anode during a subfreezing charge. The plating is permanent and cannot be removed with cycling. Batteries with lithium plating are known to be more vulnerable to failure if exposed to vibration or other stressful conditions. Advanced chargers, such as those made by Cadex, prevent charging Li-ion below freezing.
Manufactures continue to seek ways to charge Li-ion below freezing and low-rate charging is indeed possible with most lithium-ion cells; however, it is outside the specified (and tested) limits of most manufacturers’ products. Low-temperature charging would need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis and would be manufacturer and application dependent. According to information received from university research centers, the allowable charge rate at –30°C (–22°F) is 0.02C. At this low current, a 1,000mAh Li-ion could only charge at 20mA, and this would take more than 50 hours to reach full charge.
Some Li-ion cells developed for power tool and EV applications can be charged at temperatures down to –10°C (14°F) at a reduced rate. To charge at a higher rate, Li-ion systems for automotive propulsion systems require a heating blanket. Some hybrid cars circulate warm cabin air through the batteries to raise the battery temperature, while high-performance electric cars heat and cool the battery with a liquid agent.
More: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_at_high_and_low_temperatures
When I lived in Alsaka we not only had headbolt heaters we also took the battery in every night. The cold also froze any synthetic rubber, such as was in the master cylinder of the brake – you got to use your brakes once per day and had to dismantle the brake cylinder and thaw the rubber every night. Of course we would have been better off with a heated garage.
@John McGuinness says:
October 3, 2011 at 1:35 am
“English Pensioner says:
October 2, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Its nice to see that the US still has “Wanted ” posters
We can’t have them in Britain in case we infringe a criminal’s Human Rights!
Most UK police feature “wanted” persons, with pictures, on their websites.
Get it right.
Nice to see that the EPA is now a “police” organisation: Mission-Creep anyone ?
(emphasis added)
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It’s worse than you thought. The EPA is packin’ heat now. (Don’t get caught littering.)
http://www.epa.gov/oecaerth/criminal/investigations/index.html
Same thing has happened in Australia. Traffic lights required on roundabouts. Small volumes of traffic have no chance against large volumes of traffic.
And the more important thing. 80% of drivers have, or will never have any idea of how to use a roundabout.
I have no experience re living in cold climates except a good friend of mine who worked in Alaska in an oil exploration camp related this story. At the onset of winter the camp management started 50 gensets. Over the winter period the gensets would slowly die because of some problems. If the number of running gensets reduced to less than 6, the staff in the camp became very nervous. No gensets = death to all in the camp. I would rather live in the desert where it’s 48+ degrees.
The lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries used in automotive use are quite a different breed of batteries than the typical Li-Ion batteries you’re used to in laptops and cellphones. They are usually rated for use in -20°C to +60°C and with proper insulation this can be extended even further. Of course they will loose some range if not properly insulated so that their actual operating temperature don’t drop to ambient temperatures. This has been proven in practical use over here during last full decade of winters. It’s not just some speculation. The batteries used in these examples have been manufactured by Thundersky, who rated these older celltypes from -25°C to 75°C. Currently they rate their cells to operate from -45°C to 80°C. Quite bold claims, but even the earlier ones work just fine if they’re properly sealed from the outside.
Note that NONE of the electric car companies have brought up the subject of what happens when you turn on the heater or air-conditioner in the car. If you’re not living in a perfect climate you can watch that battery indicator drop fast enough to make your head swim. Your 100-mile range instantly becomes “OMG can I make it to the grocery store and back”.
Li-po battery packs do not like excessive cold or heat and you can count on having to replace the pack a lot sooner, too. The TRUE cost of ownership of electric vehicles over real-world conditions has never been truly addressed because they know it would sour any thought of adopting them.
“In Fairbanks, the average temperature is below freezing for seven months out of the year. So to calculate total use, we could estimate that heater usage will average out to say four months of the year, fulltime. So the car will be drawing a kilowatt at all times except when it is being driven. Call it 23 hours a day.”
That’s not realistic at all IMO. First of all many of these cars will be garaged most of the time and inside a garage a block heater wouldn’t be needed at all. Secondly a block heater only needs to be operated for a few hours before starting the vehicle not 24/7 as a few hours is all that’s needed to closely approach whatever equilibrium temperature it’s going to attain under the circumstances. Third, parking lots usually cycle the electricity on/off with a 50% duty cycle to lower the cost.
I grew up somewhere where it got very cold from time to time (-20F). Gasoline engines don’t have any trouble in temperatures down to -20F. In cold weather starts for these the problem, if any, is almost always the battery. The number of amps the battery can deliver declines with temperature and at the same time the motor becomes harder to crank as the temperature declines due to rising viscosity of the oil. So if your battery isn’t in prime shape it won’t crank the engine over long enough or fast enough to start it.
Diesels are are far more troublesome and engine block heaters are a necessity in very cold climates. This is because diesel fuel viscosity rises with falling temperature. Newer diesels come standard with at least a fuel pre-heater for all climates and with block heaters and option for colder climates.
The grade for this article:
FAIL
Internal combustion engines use excess heat to heat the passenger cabin. I lived in northern Maine while in the Air Force, and when it’s really cold out, the engine takes a very long time to warm up. So where do EV’s get their heat for the passenger cabin? How much drain would that put on the battery?