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:
_Jim says:
October 3, 2011 at 8:58 am
What do you do about windscreen defrosting – INSIDE? Recall, you exhale WV which immediately freezes on contact with cold glass …
I did specify that I was talking about using the vehicle strictly within the environs of Fairbanks where plugins are widely available, which should allow enough charge to be maintained to run the car’s heaters through the day. You’d need to be quite religious about topping up the charge every night, but the denizens of Fairbanks seem to well indoctrinated in terms of plugging in at every opportunity.
http://www.windsun.com/pictures/Batt_temperature1.gif
A bit late. I should have realised my error. Thanks Anthony.
For those that missed it, this image goes with my post above on battery charge rates in various temps. The vertical axis is % of charge.
Again, Image Credit goes to windsun.com.
*****
George E. Smith; says:
October 2, 2011 at 4:56 pm
The Silicon Valley traffic control algorithm is very simple; a two year old child can make better traffic decisions.
*****
As an engineer I get frustrated at the blatant inefficiency of almost all traffic light operation (but there are rare exceptions, showing that it can be done properly). Traffic sitting endlessly at intersections, everyone looking at each other & waiting. Surely some traffic-engineers should come up w/something that would react much more quickly & efficiently. Or is the nanny/litigation state so intrusive that it wouldn’t be “safe” for engineers to design lights to move traffic so efficiently? That’s my bet.
PS I still see school buses habitually stopping at RR crossings that haven’t had trains cross them in 25 yrs & the rails have been long removed on either side of the road.
Yes, but in Winter, in Fairbanks, Alaska, they can just mount a small solar panel to the roof of their auto-mobile to run the “block-heater”, right?
on K says on October 3, 2011 at 8:14 am
…
I’m surprised no one has mentioned 0W-30 oil.
To the *smart* ones, it is a given (I have to ask, we were all born yesterday?) …
5w-30 within spitting distance of the Montana border….
One last tip or two on this side-subject then I’m off to the mills.
It is also an excellent idea to put two small bottles of gas line antifreeze in a gasoline fuel system a week or so before venturing into the deep freeze. There are many products for naturally aspirated and injected engines, just choose the right one. Just don’t ever add methyl hydrate to a fuel injected system! You will wreck the seals.
Also, when I suggested adding kerosene to the fuel, I was of course talking about diesels only! About 1 litre does the trick most times for temps down to -30. 2 to 5 litres for extreme cold. Most fuel stations up north will have already gone to winter diesel, but sometimes it helps to add a bit when going into severe cold. Anti-gelling juice is wise as well if you expect lower than -35. Howe’s Diesel Treat is a great all around fuel additive for all diesels in all seasons.
The only way I see of having a practical electric vehicle will be after they develop cost-effective nuclear electrical gensets on board the vehicle. NASA has them in use on their satellites with RTG’s and RHU’s. No reason they could not be adapted to help power an EV except for the GreeNazi’s hatred of Man’s innovations.
There is a 1 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Delta Junction that is supplying power into the grid that supplies Fairbanks so technically not all the electricity is fossil fuel powered just most. : ) Also Golden Valley Electric, which supplies Fairbanks with power, is working on building a 24 MW wind farm. http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/2011/09/delta-wind-farm-owners-seek-state-certificate/
For those dishing my use of a heating pad for the engine and transmission, 30 years experience where it can reach 50 below at times. Whats your experience?
Heating with a block heater, warm block cold oil pan. Do a test with a bare hand, feel the block, warm, then feel the bottom of the oil pan, cold.
I have used defiled incandescent light bulbs to warm an engine, bulbs on top, cold block. Bulbs under the engine, warm block. Like I said, 30 years real world experience.
Those heating pads use a lot less energy than block heaters.
There is a 1 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Delta Junction that is supplying power into the grid that supplies Fairbanks so technically not all the electricity is fossil fuel powered just most. : ) Also Golden Valley Electric, which supplies Fairbanks with power, is working on building a 24 MW wind farm. http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/2011/09/delta-wind-farm-owners-seek-state-certificate/
—————————————————————————
when the wind stops blowing you buy power from Plutonic/BC Hydro and the greenies STILL chase loggers off of cutlines locally
Speed says (October 2, 2011 at 5:50 pm): “[quoting WSJ article] I just finished test-driving the Chevy Volt in temperatures that stayed below freezing for nearly the whole time I had the car. As a result the battery’s range fell more than 30%.”
But global warming will fix this problem, right? In a few years Alaskans will be tending their orange groves on electric tractors.
_Jim says on October 3, 2011 at 8:58 am
What do you do about windscreen defrosting – INSIDE? Recall, you exhale WV which immediately freezes on contact with cold glass …
Why would you imagine an EV can not manage a window defroster? Did you miss this earlier:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-antarctica-ice-electric-vehicles.html
I see a number of people who think a garage is a good idea in the north. In reality, it decreases the life of the vehicle, particularly if it is heated. The constant massive temperature fluctuations tends to cause things to break prematurely. That is why you should plug in and leave it plugged in. Also, for those referring to -20C as “Really Cold”. Where I come from we look forward to it warming up to -20C. That’s T-Shirt weather.
ferd berple says: October 3, 2011 at 7:49 am
[…]
The figures I’ve seen say that burning the fuel in the vehicle is better from a CO2 point of view. For every 1 kg of CO2 produced by a modern fossil fuel car, you would get 1.4 kg of CO2 produced at the power plant.[/i]
That’s an odd conclusion. Most people, especially here, know that the average power plant has a much higher energy conversion efficiency than an internal combustion engine: almost 50% for the power plant, higher still for combined cycle plants that use the waste heat, only 25% at best for the ICE and as low as 12%. And that’s just the vehicle efficiency, which still does not count the energy used in refining the petroleum (a large fraction of energy content) or transporting it possibly around the world ending at a local service station.
More figures:
o EIA: 2.095 lbs CO2 from coal power plants per kWh, net over all US coal plants. New plants ~1.9 lbs/KWh
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2emiss.pdf
o EPA: 19.4 lbs CO2 per gallon gasoline combustion.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05001.htm
So:
CO2 (lbs) per mile:
EV (4 miles/kWh – battery to wheel): 0.52 lbs CO2 from coal per mile
ICE Vehicle (25mpg): 0.77 lbs CO2 from petro per mile
And, if instead
o EV power comes from natural gas (soon to be 1/3 US power) cut the EV associated power plant CO2 emissions in half.
o EV power comes from hydro, nuclear, wind (almost 1/3 US power) , all EV emissions, not just CO2, are negligible compared to the ICE Vehicle.
o Refining and transportation are included double the petroleum emissions.
Like many here, I’m not really concerned with CO2 emissions in the near future; I am concerned with the more traditional emissions problems for which again the ICE Vehicle is much worse than the EV: concentration in urban areas already at the margin, NOx, ozone, benzene, etc.
The question of efficiency can be a tricky one. The main issue is that battery efficiency drops off rather quickly, with batteries limited to about 300-1000 cycles.
LiFePO4 batteries going into EVs get 2-4000 cycles. If the battery size is 25KWh/100 miles (Nissan Leaf), battery life is likely 300,000 vehicle miles.
That isn’t very long if you use the car every day. As the battery ages, efficiency goes into the toilet.Not rapidly, at least not for Li Ion. ICE efficiency also falls off with age.
Contrast this with a modern fossil fuel vehicle which has 100+ years of engineering to get the bugs out.No surprise really for a transportation engine that requires thousands of moving parts, rejects ~80% of its energy as heat, requiring extensive cooling, has zero torque at zero RPM, requiring a complicated transmission, on and on. Compare all that to the electric motor’s one moving part and 93% efficiency.
Trying again w/ the markup:
ferd berple says: October 3, 2011 at 7:49 am
[…]
The figures I’ve seen say that burning the fuel in the vehicle is better from a CO2 point of view. For every 1 kg of CO2 produced by a modern fossil fuel car, you would get 1.4 kg of CO2 produced at the power plant.
That’s an odd conclusion. Most people, especially here, know that the average power plant has a much higher energy conversion efficiency than an internal combustion engine: almost 50% for the power plant, higher still for combined cycle plants that use the waste heat, only 25% at best for the ICE and as low as 12%. And that’s just the vehicle efficiency, which still does not count the energy used in refining the petroleum (a large fraction of energy content) or transporting it possibly around the world ending at a local service station. So it does not require much calculation to know ahead of time that even if the power source is coal an EV is going to have less emissions:
More figures:
o EIA: 2.095 lbs CO2 from coal power plants per kWh, net over all US coal plants. New plants ~1.9 lbs/KWh
http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2emiss.pdf
o EPA: 19.4 lbs CO2 per gallon gasoline combustion.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05001.htm
So:
CO2 (lbs) per mile:
EV (4 miles/kWh – battery to wheel): 0.52 lbs CO2 from coal per mile
ICE Vehicle (25mpg): 0.77 lbs CO2 from petro per mile
And, if instead
o EV power comes from natural gas (soon to be 1/3 US power) cut the EV associated power plant CO2 emissions in half.
o EV power comes from hydro, nuclear, wind (almost 1/3 US power) , all EV emissions, not just CO2, are negligible compared to the ICE Vehicle.
o Refining and transportation are included double the petroleum emissions.
Like many here, I’m not really concerned with CO2 emissions in the near future; I am concerned with the more traditional emissions problems for which again the ICE Vehicle is much worse than the EV: concentration in urban areas already at the margin, NOx, ozone, benzene, etc.
The question of efficiency can be a tricky one. The main issue is that battery efficiency drops off rather quickly, with batteries limited to about 300-1000 cycles.
LiFePO4 batteries going into EVs get 2-4000 cycles. If the battery size is 25KWh/100 miles (Nissan Leaf), battery life is likely 300,000 vehicle miles.
That isn’t very long if you use the car every day. As the battery ages, efficiency goes into the toilet.
Not rapidly, at least not for Li Ion. ICE efficiency falls off with age.
Contrast this with a modern fossil fuel vehicle which has 100+ years of engineering to get the bugs out.
No surprise really for a transportation engine that requires thousands of moving parts, rejects ~80% of its energy as heat, requiring extensive cooling, has zero torque at zero RPM, requiring a complicated transmission, on and on. Compare all that to the electric motor’s one moving part and 93% efficiency.
One word: Physics (verily ‘the physics involved’)
Enough?
Please, now fantasize for us a scenario where precious battery power is diverted from locomotion to the simple creation of heat energy for the defrosting of a safety-glass windscreen (I skimmed the first couple pages of the red you cited and could see no end to ‘filibustering’ or PR; a text search on the terms ‘windshield’ and ‘windscreen’ also yielded NO HITS on that page) …
Back over to you for further explanation on how an electric vehicle is going to handle the exhaled breath of occupants considering their very breath will wind up layering the windshield with successive layers of fine, vision-obscuring ice.
.
arcticev says:
October 3, 2011 at 4:10 am
……………………………..
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.
——–
Just a quick question – not intened as being rude or anything BUT
Would that 7.5-9kWH be for refining the amount of crude required to produce 1 (us) gal ?
If so; it is a wrong comparator. Light distillates are almost waste products from the crude oil feedstock; which is used to make chemicals. I know in the 60s & early 70s ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) used to throw its light distillates away – then some bean counter realised they were throwing petrol away – and arranged to sell it instead.
We forget; crude oil is needed/used for far more impotent things than petrol; diesel or light bunkers !
Battery power – heaters? Where is operation of the ‘heaters’ specified via the batteries?
What is the mileage reduction when ‘heaters’ are used?
25 mile range of Chevy Volt becomes 7?
.
No time now to verify, fact-check and possibly refute your every jot and tittle, but, you’ve nicely skipped into a comparison on that last line of ‘apples to coconuts’ without an intervening step of ‘well to wheels’ consideration on that ‘lectric vehicle (the ‘tronics, the batteries, the conversion efficiencies in multiple steps incl power station, xmission lines onto substation then distribution lines onto the pole pig and finallly the ‘charger’ and its thermal losses) …
.
re: heating pad vs block heaters –
“Diesel starting”. I guess you missed that part somewhere …
.
_Jim says October 3, 2011 at 2:45 pm:
One word: Physics (verily ‘the physics involved’)
Enough?
Please, now fantasize for us a scenario where precious battery power is diverted from locomotion to the simple creation of heat energy for the defrosting of a safety-glass windscreen
The motive power required to move a sedan down flat road at 60MPH is about 22KW (30HP), or perhaps 25KW drawn from the battery. What’s the heat load required to defrost a windshield, 0.5 KW? Use 2KW if you like – bleed heat from the e-motor and battery.
… a text search on the terms ‘windshield’ and ‘windscreen’ also yielded NO HITS on that page) …You saw the Antarctic capable passenger vehicle, complete with windshield?
Jim – Keep your petro vehicle as long as you like. I plan to keep mine. I won’t vote to take it way nor even vote for EV subsidies.
nc @ur momisugly October 3, 2011 at 11:25 am
While I credit your ingenuity in providing a ready source of heat to the oil pan — a heat pad will indeed warm the oil very nicely — the problem is that the cylinder heads and block (and all the bits inside) are left icy cold. The nice thing about a properly installed, quality block heater is that it will warm all parts of the engine, including the oil in the pan. Even though the pan feels cool or even cold, the oil has warmed a fair amount, and when pushed through the warmed crank, cams and passages it is further warmed, thus reducing to near zero any chance of damage. Pushing warm oil over an icy cold block will simply cool the oil down to ambient by the time it reaches the heads and other critical parts. That won’t help much. A block heater makes sense after dropping below T-shirt weather, (0 to -20) and is essential for both sweater weather, (-20 to -30) and light winter jacket weather (-40 and below) I may try your idea though, the next time I push past Norman Wells, in February, when a heating pad is needed just to get a good nights sleep.
😉
_Jim says: October 3, 2011 at 2:56 pm
… you’ve nicely skipped into a comparison on that last line of ‘apples to coconuts’ without an intervening step of ‘well to wheels’ consideration on that ‘lectric vehicle (the ‘tronics, the batteries, the conversion efficiencies in multiple steps incl power station, xmission lines onto substation then distribution lines onto the pole pig and finallly the ‘charger’ and its thermal losses) …
In my last paragraph above I’m comparing an ICE to e-motor only in terms of vehicle reliability and simplicity of design, in answer to the comment about “100 years” of innovation. In terms of heat transfer management the automotive engineer has a nightmare of a design task in disposing of the perhaps 80KW of rejection heat in a 60mph sedan: radiator, water pump, belt drive for the pump, overflow reservoir, thermostat, passenger heat firewall, undercarriage keep away from exhaust, on and on, most of that requiring yet more moving parts. Relatively speaking, heat disposal design on an EV is simple. Today’s ICE is a marvel of collective innovation, but it is also no wonder it took a century to get here given its fundamental problems.
With regard to well-to-wheels and total energy consumption / emissions production, yes electric transmission incurs maybe an 8% loss plant to wall outlet, the charger takes another 10%, and the battery-motor controller another ~7% during discharge: still small compared to petroleum refining, transportation, distribution losses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses
Oh Boy…..
Falstaff said…”No surprise really for a transportation engine that requires thousands of moving parts, rejects ~80% of its energy as heat, requiring extensive cooling, has zero torque at zero RPM, requiring a complicated transmission, on and on. Compare all that to the electric motor’s one moving part and 93% efficiency.”
Except one thing…
Your 93% efficient transformer (transforms electricity into rotational motion) requires a power source. That would be one of those imaginary 100% efficient batteries no doubt.
The kind that does not exist…. the kind made from lithium oxide or lead oxide or some other nasty metal oxide that doesn’t last longer than 2 years.
Why didn’t you just say to make cars with already-spinning rubber tires. That way they are 100% efficient. I like rubber tires that are already rotating, no electric motors required!!
By the way, just make every day sunny and 72F, and toss in a cure for cancer.
…(sarcasm)…
One last, last comment here. But this is very much in the vein of _Jim’s comments;
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/april/cars/chevrolet-volt/overview/index.htm
And the following was the coup de grace;
Sounds like a Prius. Which also seems to need the engine virtually all of the time to haul around all those dead batteries.