MJJ_ZX6RR:
You are entirely correct about cost, however cost and efficiency are entirely different things. Charging an EV is a comparative cost to fuelling an ICE currently because electricity is more expensive than petrol right now. The Ukraine war being one of the biggest factors to this. The argument was very different 3 years ago when electricity unit price was a third of what it is today.The simple fact is that for the whole end to end process, generating electricity to power an electric car is multiples more efficient (from an energy perspective) than extracting oil, to refine into petrol/diesel, to power an ICE car.
Perhaps an analogy to describe how the cost flip side would look like :
Let’s say you wanted to live in an off-grid house. You could use a large commercial diesel generator to power your new home, or you could invest in the required amount of solar panels and power storage batteries to cope with the fact that the sun does not always shine.The solar/batteries will be much more expensive to buy in the first place, perhaps £50,000. They will be free to run from then on (discounting the maintenance needed for both solutions) as the fuel is free from the sun.
The generator will be cheaper to buy, perhaps £5,000. It will require fuel every day, perhaps £15 per day, to run and generate power.
Cost is straightforward, and a decision based purely on cost would be working out the payback period and comparing to how long you expect to live in the house.
Efficiency is something entirely separate. The solar panels are essentially 100% efficient, generating very little waste heat whilst converting sunlight to electricity. The solar panels emit no CO2, particulates nor any other harmful emissions during their use. The storage batteries, inverters, DC to AC converters and all the rest easily run at 90% efficiency.
The diesel generator is at the normal ICE level of efficiency, 30-40% and easily evidenced by how much heat is expelled by both exhaust and cooling pack. The diesel generator emits many tonnes of CO2 per year, many KGs of NOx, particulate matter and other known harmful emissions during its use.
Carryfast:
As for CO2 you mean the inert gas that provides our oxygen supply assuming there’s enough CO2 to sustain photosynthesis and 0.04% of the atmosphere is at the bare minimum for that.
A so called greenhouse gas that froze Mars.I assume you don’t agree with the significant body of scientific research proving CO2 driven climate change? You never know, in a few hundred years, history may well prove you correct here. I would not bet much on that outcome myself however.
Martin.
Firstly I’m suggesting that the ‘cost’ of electricity at the meter is the result and proof of the fact that your claims of efficiency are at best ‘off’ .Or at worse deliberate lies by the electric utopia proponents.I don’t see any reason for the supposed jump from 30% efficiency regardless of generation fuelling method coal or nuclear or renewables bearing in mind that even biomass ( burning trees ) is classed as a renewable.
It’s obvious that they stand to gain assuming that they can pull off this all electric captive market scam being sold to the public as a utopian solution to a non existent problem.
At best what you’re selling us is an energy policy based on wiping out farmland under solar panels, burning living trees in the form of biomass instead of dead ones in the form of fossil fuel and the risk of nuclear disaster. At 50p per kWh + taxes for the privilege.
All based on a convenient lie that CO2 cooked Venus when Mars proves that it’s no greenhouse gas.
As for the diesel generator ironically this all electric utopian nightmare will obviously wipe out the skills and incentives to manufacture and maintain internal combustion engines and the production and storage and distribution infrastructure of the fossil fuels to fuel them.
So that’s our energy and transport security gone.Together with our food production buried under solar panels.
Who needs enemies when we’ve got this type of sabotage within.