Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ
The motor in the car is 80% efficient, sure. How efficient is the power station, the power station's fuel extraction/transportation methods, etc?
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It will vary from plant to plant ... but if it is a modern co-generation power plant ... about ~80% Energy Efficiency... and they pollute less per wh of energy output.
Although ... the Electrical power plant is effectively the 'refinery' for the source to output electricity ... to include the power plant 'refinery' losses one should also include the 'refinery' losses to get the gasoline... to be fair anyway.
If you want to compare transportation costs ... and efficiencies ... a lot of energy is spent shipping / pumping / etc that gasoline ... In general I suspect that the transportation from source to load energy wh output is significantly better for electricity than gasoline to get the same wh of energy output at the load over the same distance.
Almost all industrial / commercial facilities I know of use electrical motors for HVAC ... for Beam Saws ... for CNC Machines ... assembly lines ... etc ... not because a gasoline or diesel ICE couldn't be built to do the job ... but because the ICE can not come even remotely close to being as cost effective to produce the same Wh of mechanical work energy done at the load.
The only reason I see the transportation has lagged behind ... is due to the 'range' issue of energy storage for a given amount of weight... for this Fuels like Gasoline with very high energy densities can be effective ... but that singular benefit only goes so far for all the other negatives / compromises it has.