Power usage of Plug in Hybrids?

Question

If all cars in the US were electric or plug in hybrids and charged at night time. Would the U.S have to build anymore power plants to accomodate these vehicles? If more power plants were needed and coal power plants were built. Would the pollution from the coal power plants be the same or more or less then the pollution created by gas power vehicles that are used today?

Answer 1

I know there's a lot of disinformation out there about electric cars, much of it possibly spread by petroleum companies. but take a look at my references, and give this some thought.
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Electric cars DO NOT pollute at anywhere near the level of gas vehicles. To show exactly why, we need to examine the premises of this argument in greater detail.
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The efficiency of electric vehicles, as compared to gas vehicles, is the key.
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Internal combustion engines are 25% efficient at best. The practical efficiency is reduced further by idling, braking, and otherwise running the engine outside of its optimum powerband.
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Gasoline also requires energy to refine - large amounts of electricity is used in this process! Also reducing the efficiency of fuel is the wasted energy of fuel transportation - gasoline must be delivered by inefficient and polluting trucks to thousands of gas stations. After all this, we are lucky to get even 10% of gasoline's energy to the road.
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By contrast, large electric motors are 95% efficient. Battery storage systems are close to 90% efficient. And the power grid is 95% efficient (far more efficient than delivering fuel by truck.) Unlike gas engines, electric engines don't idle, they can recover braking energy to recharge the batteries, and have very wide powerbands - so nearly all the energy gets to the road. Fuel also burns far more efficiently in a large powerplant (nearly 85% in newer plants) than it could ever burn in your car.
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The fact that electric vehicles are several times more efficient means that far less pollution-per-mile is generated, even when dirty fuel is burned at the plant. The story is even better than this, though, since a significant portion of electricity is now generated from clean sources.
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In fact, in the near term, EVs will create NO pollution from powerplants at all - there is currently excess power generated at night (off-peak), because most power plants can't be shut off overnight, even when their power isn't needed. So cars charged at night create no new pollution at all, until EV usage grows to several million, at least. By some estimates, 30 to 50 million cars can charge at night before any new powerplants will be needed. By then, I hope most of us have solar cells on our roofs.
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Electric cars can also be very cheap to operate. Using fuel efficiently means it costs much less to drive. Only a penny a mile in most places! Details here:
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http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-electric-car/
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MY FACTS ARE DOCUMENTED. SEE MY SOURCES BELOW.

Answer 2

The real question is, will it be cheaper than the gasoline you'd otherwise use? The answer is - resoundingly - YES. Your savings will be greater yet if you get a time-of-day meter, and charge at night when the rates are much, much lower because so much generating capacity is surplus. You are misinformed about battery replacements being every 4-6 years. Coincidentally, that is the very frequency that most people have to replace their present car's starting battery. That is a cheaply made lead-acid battery. Compared to all the others, lead-acid is a terrible battery technology. It only excels at one thing: the huge burst of current required to start an automobile engine. That is by far the #1 use of large batteries, so they have dominated the market. Server rooms, homepower, golf carts and forklifts are currently the only market for true storage batteries. That's not enough to justify real innovation in that market; those people simply buy lead-acid batteries and replace them every 4-6 years. However in the past, there was a better market for such batteries. Let's take a look. The Edison cell was specifically designed to be an electric vehicle battery, and it has a practical service life of 40 years. Though, with reasonable care, service life is basically unlimited. A number of railway museums have been able to restore 60-80 year old Edison cells simply by doing the recommended maintenance (change of electrolyte). Our museum has a Boeing Light Rail Vehicle, and its nickel-cadmium wet cell battery can provide auxiliary power for a full hour, even today. The battery is the original one supplied with the car by Boeing in 1978. There are over 1 million Priuses sold over the last 12 years, and Toyota has reported that only about 500 have required battery replacements. Therefore I am puzzled when people assume "Oh, surely you must have to replace the battery every 4-6 years". History does not support that claim.

Answer 3

To answer your question, yes there is no free engery so if you plug in your car instead of running it on gasoline, the energy needs to come from somewhere. So if all powerplants were coal fired, then the pollution would actually be worse. It would be worse because we would be burning a fuel to turn mechanical motion into electrical energy and then transmit that power over lines to your house where it would then be converted back to mechanical energy in your car. Every time it is converted you lose energy in the process. The amount of additional power plants and fossil fuel emissions would be greater than if all cars ran on gasoline.
That is a big reason why we need clean power like nuclear power, hyrdo-electric, solar, wind. etc. In which case the additional power plants would not pollute any more!

Answer 4

Pollution would be the same because coal power plants are base load power plants, in other words, they are always running. Gas fired, and hydroelectric are peaking power plants, in other words, they run only when electrical demand is up. At off-peak hours, there is 5 times less power used than during the peak hours. Most people would be expected to charge up their electric cars when they are at home at night during off-peak hours.

Coal power plants produce WAY LESS pollution than the gas powered cars because of the economy of scale of having to control one source of pollution instead of thousands of sources. Not only that, they don't produce ozone which is the cause of photochemical smog found in most cities. Cars can run for much cheaper on electricity than on gas. If a 30mpg car buys $2.50/gal gas, you get 8 cents per mile. An electric car can get 1 cent per mile.

Answer 5

U need to understand that CO2 is not a pollutant. The environmentalist want u to think that CO2 has increased 30% it has not. Go measure it it is nit there. There is a thing called photosynthesis ,so the plants take care of the CO2 . The plants want CO2 just as much as u need oxygen.

Answer 6

Coal pollutes more than oil, so it would be worse. However if you charge your car only with solar panels or wind generators or even hydroelectric power, that would be better.