A simple calculation for the average PH'er
Discussion
bqf said:
There are 34.5 million licenced vehicles on UK roads. The UK's annual electricity output is 393 Terawatt Hours. Lets keep the maths easy and say it's 1Twh per day.
A Nissan Leaf consumes 24KwH to charge fully, so....the UK's electricity output could theoretically charge 41,666,666 Nissan Leafs. So on the face of it, there is plenty of capacity.
There are so many problems with the demand, assumptions I have made, maths etc it's untrue. But I think the answer is theoretically, yes. Might need to think about our domestic energy needs minds
.......But there's not enough capacity to meet current demand AND charge your hypothetical fleet of Nissan Leafs, is that what you are saying?A Nissan Leaf consumes 24KwH to charge fully, so....the UK's electricity output could theoretically charge 41,666,666 Nissan Leafs. So on the face of it, there is plenty of capacity.
There are so many problems with the demand, assumptions I have made, maths etc it's untrue. But I think the answer is theoretically, yes. Might need to think about our domestic energy needs minds
Dan_1981 said:
What happens when its World Cup Final Night,
everyone has driven home from work, in a hurry to make sure they don't miss kick off, used lots of their battery power doing this....
They get home, plug the car in, turn the TV on and settle down for the match, they also turn the refrigerator up a little to chill their beer properly.
The match ends and they flick on the kettle.
BANG
Who chills beer to drink and then boils the kettle? Beer with an Ovaltine chaser?everyone has driven home from work, in a hurry to make sure they don't miss kick off, used lots of their battery power doing this....
They get home, plug the car in, turn the TV on and settle down for the match, they also turn the refrigerator up a little to chill their beer properly.
The match ends and they flick on the kettle.
BANG
I'll do my bit by not watching football. Ever.
Zwolf said:
Dan_1981 said:
What happens when its World Cup Final Night,
everyone has driven home from work, in a hurry to make sure they don't miss kick off, used lots of their battery power doing this....
They get home, plug the car in, turn the TV on and settle down for the match, they also turn the refrigerator up a little to chill their beer properly.
The match ends and they flick on the kettle.
BANG
Who chills beer to drink and then boils the kettle? Beer with an Ovaltine chaser?everyone has driven home from work, in a hurry to make sure they don't miss kick off, used lots of their battery power doing this....
They get home, plug the car in, turn the TV on and settle down for the match, they also turn the refrigerator up a little to chill their beer properly.
The match ends and they flick on the kettle.
BANG
I'll do my bit by not watching football. Ever.
Go look here, and take a look at the grid daily/yearly data graphs:
Grid Watch
From that you can see that currently we have about 60GW of generating capacity, operating, on average at about 90% capacity during the day(16hrs), and only 50% during the night (8hrs), so:
We have a total generation energy output of around 1440 GWhr per day (24hrs x 60GW).
Of which we use approximately 1104GWhr on existing consumers (54GW x 16hs + 30GW x 8hrs).
That means we have a "spare" 336GWhr of energy available every day (assuming we can find a way of sharing out all this energy evenly, and not including weekend days when much more is available because a lot of industry isn't running).
A typical electric car, has a ~35kWhr battery pack (leaf/i3 etc), so 336GWhr can charge 9.6M of these cars every day
The current uk passenger car fleet is around 40M, but of course, not all of those would need to be charged every day!
Grid Watch
From that you can see that currently we have about 60GW of generating capacity, operating, on average at about 90% capacity during the day(16hrs), and only 50% during the night (8hrs), so:
We have a total generation energy output of around 1440 GWhr per day (24hrs x 60GW).
Of which we use approximately 1104GWhr on existing consumers (54GW x 16hs + 30GW x 8hrs).
That means we have a "spare" 336GWhr of energy available every day (assuming we can find a way of sharing out all this energy evenly, and not including weekend days when much more is available because a lot of industry isn't running).
A typical electric car, has a ~35kWhr battery pack (leaf/i3 etc), so 336GWhr can charge 9.6M of these cars every day
The current uk passenger car fleet is around 40M, but of course, not all of those would need to be charged every day!
I can't give a proper answer, but judging by the bulls
t Nissan spew about their Leaf it would somehow magically result in large scale redundancies in the energy industry when we closed half of them.
In actual fact we'd collectively just fking give up going anywhere more than 40 miles from home - which, lets be honest isn't that far, well unless we wanted to take passengers, or go where there are hills, or it's cold, or hot or windy.
I was 90% the way to buying a Leaf last month, I'd justified it by annexing my Wife's car, T reminded myself that Jeremy Clarkson is a narrow minded buffoon who used every trick in the book to knock EVs - I was going to save a fortune and the world at the same time, but they're just plain awful and whenever I see someone driving one they look miserable.
t Nissan spew about their Leaf it would somehow magically result in large scale redundancies in the energy industry when we closed half of them. In actual fact we'd collectively just f
king give up going anywhere more than 40 miles from home - which, lets be honest isn't that far, well unless we wanted to take passengers, or go where there are hills, or it's cold, or hot or windy. I was 90% the way to buying a Leaf last month, I'd justified it by annexing my Wife's car, T reminded myself that Jeremy Clarkson is a narrow minded buffoon who used every trick in the book to knock EVs - I was going to save a fortune and the world at the same time, but they're just plain awful and whenever I see someone driving one they look miserable.
GAjon said:
Even in in theory/on paper there is sufficient capacity, the Uks power stations are dated and can't make thier theoretical maximum output.
So new power station would be required.
You do realise that we have to import electricity now, and that is going up as generation capacity falls?So new power station would be required.
None
An average car does 30 miles per day (based on 12k per year). The energy required to move a car 30 miles is about 9kWh (about the same as running a hob or a shower for 1 hour).
Thats easily within the capacity of current powerstations, unless the power goes out when people use a hob or a shower. Bear in mind that most people will be happy to charge over night, but will generally use a shower or hob at peak times.
In addition the production of 1 gallon of fuel uses about 7kWh of electrical energy, before the fuel even gets to your tank. Cut out the need to refine petrol, and EV's are almost neutral from an electrical energy perspective.
An average car does 30 miles per day (based on 12k per year). The energy required to move a car 30 miles is about 9kWh (about the same as running a hob or a shower for 1 hour).
Thats easily within the capacity of current powerstations, unless the power goes out when people use a hob or a shower. Bear in mind that most people will be happy to charge over night, but will generally use a shower or hob at peak times.
In addition the production of 1 gallon of fuel uses about 7kWh of electrical energy, before the fuel even gets to your tank. Cut out the need to refine petrol, and EV's are almost neutral from an electrical energy perspective.
Edited by 98elise on Friday 31st January 17:23
If you look at the figures (very roughly)...
There are about 30m private cars in the UK covering an average of 10k miles each so that's 300 billion miles per year. An 85kwh electric car can do, say, 250 miles on a charge, so that's 250/85 miles per kwh. So that's 100 billion kwh (100 Twh) of electricity per year to power every private car in the UK.
The national grid's capacity is about 80Gw; 80 * 24 * 365 = 700 Twh per year, of which we use around 360Twh (almost exactly half). So if every private car in the UK was powered entirely by electricity (which will almost certainly never happen) it would only use about 15% of the current total grid capacity, or 30% of the spare capacity, to charge them. If you assume 10% of current private car miles being electric (probably a reasonable maximum in the foreseeable future) it would only use 3% of the current slack in the grid to charge them.
There are about 30m private cars in the UK covering an average of 10k miles each so that's 300 billion miles per year. An 85kwh electric car can do, say, 250 miles on a charge, so that's 250/85 miles per kwh. So that's 100 billion kwh (100 Twh) of electricity per year to power every private car in the UK.
The national grid's capacity is about 80Gw; 80 * 24 * 365 = 700 Twh per year, of which we use around 360Twh (almost exactly half). So if every private car in the UK was powered entirely by electricity (which will almost certainly never happen) it would only use about 15% of the current total grid capacity, or 30% of the spare capacity, to charge them. If you assume 10% of current private car miles being electric (probably a reasonable maximum in the foreseeable future) it would only use 3% of the current slack in the grid to charge them.
MX7 said:
Why would that happen? Did we all go and buy a Prius?
Hypothetical question
Thought experiment
wolfracesonic said:
Can you show the methodology by which you arrived at this answer? More seriously, people seem to be saying that if charging was only carried out at night, sufficient capacity may already be in place?
andy43 said:
Off-topic, but if there are (as stated above) 40m cars on UK roads, it'd be interesting to know what swapping them all for electric versions would do to the prices of the raw materials needed to make enough battery packs.
Depending on the cars in question, that would be something between 1 and 3 TWh of batteries. Say 2 for the sake of argument. You get something like 10kwh per kg of Lithium so you'd need around 200,000,000kg of lithium. 200,000 tonnes. No idea how that compares to the amount required for other purposes?
Mr2Mike said:
MX7 said:
Why would that happen? Did we all go and buy a Prius?
Hypothetical question
Thought experiment
w
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