The average global efficiency of coal-fired plants is currently 28% compared to 45% for the most efficient plants (see graph).
coal is cheap.
there are 14,000 BTUs per lob of coal. figure about 15 to 20 cents per million BTUs. A coal power plant is about 85% efficient. That’s about as far as I can get. I don’t know the conversion from BTUs to KWh off hand. Figure about 50% line losses in the power lines.
Doing the math, you will find that an electric vehicle is amazingly efficient. But what you are not accounting for is the waste heat off a gasoline engine that is used to heat the car in winter. That 35% efficient gasoline car goes up in efficiency in the winter if you count the free heat, and the efficiency of electric cars goes down even if you don’t heat the car interior.
that was supposed to read
per lb of coal, not per lob of coal
No way, not by a long shot.
You may get the efficiency from the boiler alone, but the overall plant efficiency, energy into the plant versus energy deliveried to the customers is going to be around 30~35%.
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/docs/reports/beer-emissions.pdf
Specialized plants today can reach into the 40's of efficiency, but you still have transmission/distribution losses to get the electricity to the consumer.
Yes, there’s the cabin heat issue. There’s also the energy storage issue, the recharging time issue, the low temp operating issue, the durability issue, and a bunch of others.
It’s almost like the fossil fueled internal combustion engine was arrived at by engineering a bunch of compromises over a long period of time, isn’t it? Naaaahhh, it must be an evil conspiracy by big oil. /sarc
The average global efficiency of coal-fired plants is currently 28% compared to 45% for the most efficient plants (see graph).
1 KWh is roughly 3500 BTUs.