Gasoline's Cost in KWH's

[aerostealth]

Read a interesting piece on the cost to distill gasoline in Kilowatt Hours. Turns out gasoline takes 6 KWH's to distill from crude oil. For example if I get 20 mpg driving at 70 mph this means I am burning 3.5 gallons per 70 miles. Normalized to 100 miles is 3.5 x 1.4285714 = 4.9999999 gallons per 100 miles. Rounding up to 5 gallons (justified here) means it takes 5x6 KWH's = 30 KWH's for me to travel 100 miles in this example. You could compare this directly to BEV and the amount of electricity it would take to drive an electric car the same distance.

When you consider that gasoline has 114,000 BTUs per gallon of energy content then 114,000/3,412 = 33.41 KWH's of energy content plus 6 KWH's to distill. So, your gallon of gas really is worth 39.41 KWH's technically. So if I am using 5 gallons of gas to go 100 miles I am really using 197.05744 KWH's to travel 100 miles in this instance. I am pretty sure if you compare this to any BEV that you will find the amount of electricity needed to go 100 miles is substantially less.

"FOOD FOR THOUGHT" This is just me doing some chicken scratching here. Does anyone have any thoughts on this scenario here? Even a vehicle getting 40 miles per gallon still needs almost 100 KWH's to go 100 miles by this kind of reckoning.

[oldtamiyaphile]

But how many kWh does it take to produce one kWh of electricity?

[hamsterpower]

You could also say that gasoline is not so much an energy "source" but a solar charged battery that took over 69 million years to charge. A day with PV doesn't sound so bad any more.

[IamIan]

Just some other numbers along this train of thought.

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

But how many kWh does it take to produce one kWh of electricity?

AFAIK About 3-4x as many input.

[freebeard]

This is a real eye-opener. Similar to the rule of thumb that f you haul firewood more than 60 miles you're better off burning the gas for heat.

[gone-ot]

Ain't nothing free.

[whatmaycome14]

I'm trying to figure out why this is in the aerodynamics section...

[aerostealth]

Sorry about where it is posted, but it is interesting. This is the reason fossil fuels will go by the wayside however. The storage energy density and cost per KWH of capacity is getting past the tipping point. Internal combustion engines just will not be able to keep up in efficiency as compared to electric drive once the energy density storage/cost problem is solved. We are nearly there.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by aerostealth

Sorry about where it is posted, but it is interesting. This is the reason fossil fuels will go by the wayside however. The storage energy density and cost per KWH of capacity is getting past the tipping point. Internal combustion engines just will not be able to keep up in efficiency as compared to electric drive once the energy density storage/cost problem is solved. We are nearly there.

Some places the tipping point has already passed ... other places will not be far behind.

By 2012 U.S. installed PV cost was a median $5.3/w with larger over 10MW installs ranging from $2.5/w to $4/w Link .. that's a significant drop from the $6.2/w median of just 2010 (previous posted graph).

For those that fell into the $2.5/w installed ... that is effectively getting roughly ~$0.10/kwh electricity ... many places around the country are more expensive than this for fossil fuel grid electricity.

With an BEV that gets roughly ~4mile/kwh ... that's only ~$0.025/mile for fuel cost.

Gasoline @ just $3/gallon (average over the next 20yr) .. would have to have a car getting over 120MPG just to break even with that $2.5/w BEV RE-PV fuel cost per mile.

The US national electric grid had a median cost of $0.0934/kwh in 2010 .. with specific locations varying from as low as $0.0421/kwh to as high as $0.3013/kwh.

Some of those high $/kwh locations are already past the tipping point , and are already cheaper for PV fuel BEV than pump gasoline.... but the others at the very bottom lowest $/kwh in the country will probably be the last places that will pass the tipping point ... to beat both $3/gallon ICE Pump , and the $0.0421/kwh BEV fossil fuel grid cost .. PV in those locations would have to get an installed cost under ~$1/w ... that low will take a while yet.