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Power networks could struggle by 2030 under soaring electric vehicle popularity ET

There is a lot written regarding the replacement of fossil fuelled (petrol and diesel) cars with electric cars. Some suggest it is easy, others suggest it is impossible. I decided to look briefly at the electricity requirements required to do this (This is based on Germany but I would expect the figures would be similar for the UK).

First step how much petrol and diesel is currently used?

From the IEA
www.iea.org/.../GermanyOSS.pdf
Germany petrol and diesel consumption 2010-2011.
Petrol 450 000 barrels per day
Diesel 1050 000 barrels per day

As a cross check on the total consumption:
world.bymap.org/OilConsumption.html
Total consumption petroleum consumption for Germany 2015
2 372 000 barrels per day

Next step what is the electrical energy equivalent of 1 barrel of Petrol/Diesel? From a couple of sources:

peakoil.com/.../how-much-energy-is-there-in-a-barrel-of-oil
1 barrel (crude) is 1,700 kilowatt hours 

letthesunwork.com/.../barrelofenergy.htm
A barrel of oil contains about six gigajoules of energy. That’s six billion joules or 1667 kilowatt-hours

If we take 1.7 MWh per barrel for petrol annual automotive energy input is:
Petrol 765 000 MWh per day= 765 GWh per day = 279 000 GWh = 279 TWh

Assuming an efficiency of 20% for a petrol vehicle the energy required for petrol automotive use in Germany is 55.8 TWh per year.

Taking an overall efficiency for an electric vehicle to be 80% (electricity transmission losses, battery charging efficiency) replacing the petrol vehicles with electric vehicles would require 70 TWh per year.

What proportion of the diesel is for automotive use against road or rail transport is not obvious. Suggesting a total of 100TWh for the annual automotive consumption seems reasonable.

If all the diesel consumers were replaced by electric vehicles the annual electricity consumption would increase by around 220 TWh per year.

 Currently Germany produces around 600 TWh of electricity annually.
www.cleanenergywire.org/.../germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts

 Increasing this to 700 TWH to allow for the charging of electric cars is not trivial, nor is the reinforcement of the distribution infrastructure. Increasing to 820 TWh to replace all fossil fuelled transport is probably impossible in the suggested time scales.


Is this a reasonable assessment or have I as usual dropped a 0 somewhere?


Best regards


Roger


Parents
  • Thank you Peter - I can see the truth of your forecast for the future. Whether we qualified or not (my home did not) - we all paid through increased energy tariffs for the 'free' loft insulation to be topped up to reach 270 mm of mineral wool. We are all still paying for the 'free' smart meter 'roll out'. My feeling is that my solar powered wrist watch is an 'appropriate' use of technology, as is my solar powered PIR security lamp outside my back door. I.E. their functionality is wholly independent of any external source of energy (save that used in their manufacture and eventual eco - friendly disposal/recycling at end of their useful life). However, upwards of 10 million x 75Kg employees in the UK driving to work each day in 1500 Kg motor vehicles is clearly an unsustainable modern luxury - regardless of the motive force (Petrol or Diesel ICE or BEV or Hydrogen/Battery/Hybrid etc). Such behaviour was unaffordable for most families in the early 1960s when hoards of cyclists could be seen streaming away from the local factories at 5 pm every weekday. In essence, the use of motoer cars to travel to work is NOT an Appropriate use of technology. I do not advocate widespread 'working from home' (due to the  inevitable domestic distractions) other than as a temporary measure on a transition path to the building of fully equipped local telecommunications centres for 'remote working' for all those who typically spend all day on the phone and/or on a desktop PC. Recent events re cyber attacks on major corporate servers and valuable central databases - show that the current obsession with a centralised office working environment is not actually inherently more secure than distributed/remote client-server arrangements. Surely it is up to UK Government (and global governments) to step up and take the lead in this and insist that corporate employers provide/facilitate/encourage 'remote working' whenever and where ever feasible as appropriate - if we really want to substantially reduce the current excessive generation of CO2, NOx, Particulates etc in an attempt to stabilise our climate and improve air quality ?

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Reply
  • Thank you Peter - I can see the truth of your forecast for the future. Whether we qualified or not (my home did not) - we all paid through increased energy tariffs for the 'free' loft insulation to be topped up to reach 270 mm of mineral wool. We are all still paying for the 'free' smart meter 'roll out'. My feeling is that my solar powered wrist watch is an 'appropriate' use of technology, as is my solar powered PIR security lamp outside my back door. I.E. their functionality is wholly independent of any external source of energy (save that used in their manufacture and eventual eco - friendly disposal/recycling at end of their useful life). However, upwards of 10 million x 75Kg employees in the UK driving to work each day in 1500 Kg motor vehicles is clearly an unsustainable modern luxury - regardless of the motive force (Petrol or Diesel ICE or BEV or Hydrogen/Battery/Hybrid etc). Such behaviour was unaffordable for most families in the early 1960s when hoards of cyclists could be seen streaming away from the local factories at 5 pm every weekday. In essence, the use of motoer cars to travel to work is NOT an Appropriate use of technology. I do not advocate widespread 'working from home' (due to the  inevitable domestic distractions) other than as a temporary measure on a transition path to the building of fully equipped local telecommunications centres for 'remote working' for all those who typically spend all day on the phone and/or on a desktop PC. Recent events re cyber attacks on major corporate servers and valuable central databases - show that the current obsession with a centralised office working environment is not actually inherently more secure than distributed/remote client-server arrangements. Surely it is up to UK Government (and global governments) to step up and take the lead in this and insist that corporate employers provide/facilitate/encourage 'remote working' whenever and where ever feasible as appropriate - if we really want to substantially reduce the current excessive generation of CO2, NOx, Particulates etc in an attempt to stabilise our climate and improve air quality ?

    .

Children
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