Nissan Leaf

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

What is obvious (to me) is that we’re not going to get to a certain date when all ICE vehicles are suddenly replaced by BEVs.

True - and it won't be sudden either.

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

They don't tend to burn oil for creating power. It's pretty bad at that as it tends to burn rather than explode, which is what is good for creating power. (Which is why car engines compress it, to make a bang). It's gas, or renewable. There are refineries running off of solar.

That, however, is besides the point as nobody said they were not contributing the grid. That doesn't change what I said - you cannot do a 100% efficient energy conversion. Energy is lost out of the system during the conversion from electricity to petrol. It takes 6kwh of electricity to refine 1 gallon of petrol. If you stop refining petrol, you gain back 6kwh of energy for every gallon you do not refine. Not that due to the fuel type (liquid), you then need to refine diesel to power the lorries which transport the petrol. Petrol is in a unique position that it requires a similarly powered vehicle to transport the fuel. Whilst gas an electricity have grids, which means they don't need to double dip on the energy spent to distribute the energy.

Whether the refineries add to the grid or not doesn't matter. If the refineries weren't there then instead of 75% of the power they consume being used to produce products, 100% of it would go to power production.

Note that the 75/25 split is a randomly chosen number. It doesn't matter what the number is, because even if only 1% of it is spent and 99% is put back into the system, it is still a net loss.

Your post only works on the basis that the hydrocarbons being used by the refinery would cease to exist when looking at it from my point of view. But they would not.

Or let's put it another way. If you have a battery charger and you plug it into the wall and it charges the batteries. Unplugging it from the wall does not suddenly lose the energy which it would have taken. It still exists in the system. It's just going somewhere else now.

They do not use 6KWh of ELECTRICITY to refine a gallon of petrol.
Electricity is much too expensive to use for the heat for the furnaces .
So cutting down the amount of petrol refined would not leave more power in the grid .
In fact there would be less as part of the refining process produces electricity which is fed into the grid . One of the last big refineries to close down , Corytown , always ran on oil . When the refinery part shut down they left the CHPs there as a power station . Although I believe it has now changed to gas energy .

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by Alfaholic

Small point - dualling the important bit on the Felixstowe branch line around the Trimley area (which I can see from my bedroom window) was only around £60 million, with a similar amount being spent on the "bacon curve" at Ipswich.

Yes , when I read it up they were quoting all of the rail line improvements
so the whole system could take more freight .As well as the Felixstowe branch line there were others over the country .

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

They do not use 6KWh of ELECTRICITY to refine a gallon of petrol.
Electricity is much too expensive to use for the heat for the furnaces .
So cutting down the amount of petrol refined would not leave more power in the grid .
In fact there would be less as part of the refining process produces electricity which is fed into the grid . One of the last big refineries to close down , Corytown , always ran on oil . When the refinery part shut down they left the CHPs there as a power station . Although I believe it has now changed to gas energy .

The process of refining petrol takes an entire refinery, not just some furnances. There are a lot of bits of equipment that do require pure electricity to power them. Even right down to the office block and workshops which the staff use. When calculating the power that something takes, you need to also include the support systems around it. If you did not refine petrol, you would not require those support systems.

It takes 6 kwh of electricity to refine a gallon of petrol.

Not that this matters. Petrol will run out. Electric cars will have to replace petrol simply because we won't have petrol.

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

The process of refining petrol takes an entire refinery, not just some furnances. There are a lot of bits of equipment that do require pure electricity to power them. Even right down to the office block and workshops which the staff use. When calculating the power that something takes, you need to also include the support systems around it. If you did not refine petrol, you would not require those support systems.

It takes 6 kwh of electricity to refine a gallon of petrol.

Not that this matters. Petrol will run out. Electric cars will have to replace petrol simply because we won't have petrol.

You will believe what you want to believe .
But the simple fact is that it does not take 6KWh of ELECTRICITY to refine a gallon of petrol .
Part of any refinery is the electrical generation system , which produces more than enough electricity for all of its own use , & puts the extra into the grid .

And as for running out of petrol , it is not something anyone alive today needs to worry about . Current worldwide reserves are plenty for the next 70 years worth , & the big oil companies don,t even bother looking for more until they are down to about 20 to 30 years of reserve left .

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

You will believe what you want to believe .
But the simple fact is that it does not take 6KWh of ELECTRICITY to refine a gallon of petrol .
Part of any refinery is the electrical generation system , which produces more than enough electricity for all of its own use , & puts the extra into the grid .

What I will believe is a well formed, researched and referenced article published on the matter.

In the absence of that here - then how about extracting some of the facts from an EC Staff Working Paper that accompanied a 'COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS' dated 17 Nov 2010, titled 'Energy infrastructure priorities for 2020 and beyond - A Blueprint for an integrated European energy network'

Facts (as of the date of the paper):
'In the 1990s, when EU demand began to switch from gasoline to diesel, gradually more investment went into hydrocracking units, although catalytic crackers are still the dominant configuration in Europe'
'Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC) units were the main choice of European refineries in the 1970s and 1980s when there was a strong growth in demand for gasoline.'
'Conversion refineries such as FCCs [...] typically require more energy per unit of crude intake compared to hydroskimming refineries. They would therefore also generate more Green House Gases (GHG) per unit of crude oil intake.'
'Complex refineries are more energy intensive, and emit more CO2 than simple refineries. Every additional cracking process and every additional desulphurisation step needs energy and thus increases CO2 emissions.'

In summary, throughout the article there is a recognition that Refineries are a consumer of Energy as part of their process, not a contributor.

This is backed up by 'Ignasi Palou-Rivera, Jeongwoo Han, and Michael Wang' paper of 2011 that evidences the fact that US Petroleum Refineries were a consumer of 46,227,000,000 kWh of ELECTRICITY from external grids in 2010.

If the refineries were producing their own electricity as part of their processes, why did they buy in so much of it?

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

What I will believe is a well formed, researched and referenced article published on the matter.

In the absence of that here - then how about extracting some of the facts from an EC Staff Working Paper that accompanied a 'COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS' dated 17 Nov 2010, titled 'Energy infrastructure priorities for 2020 and beyond - A Blueprint for an integrated European energy network'

Facts (as of the date of the paper):
'In the 1990s, when EU demand began to switch from gasoline to diesel, gradually more investment went into hydrocracking units, although catalytic crackers are still the dominant configuration in Europe'
'Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC) units were the main choice of European refineries in the 1970s and 1980s when there was a strong growth in demand for gasoline.'
'Conversion refineries such as FCCs [...] typically require more energy per unit of crude intake compared to hydroskimming refineries. They would therefore also generate more Green House Gases (GHG) per unit of crude oil intake.'
'Complex refineries are more energy intensive, and emit more CO2 than simple refineries. Every additional cracking process and every additional desulphurisation step needs energy and thus increases CO2 emissions.'

In summary, throughout the article there is a recognition that Refineries are a consumer of Energy as part of their process, not a contributor.

This is backed up by 'Ignasi Palou-Rivera, Jeongwoo Han, and Michael Wang' paper of 2011 that evidences the fact that US Petroleum Refineries were a consumer of 46,227,000,000 kWh of ELECTRICITY from external grids in 2010.

If the refineries were producing their own electricity as part of their processes, why did they buy in so much of it?

I don,t know much about American refineries from your rather obscure link , but I believe some of the older ones still use coal as the primary energy source .
But here is a link to the Conoco Phillips Immingham refinery , which uses its CHPs to supply up to 734 MW to the grid .
https://www.modernpowersystems.com/f...s-biggest-chp/

[Tel 911S]

Another one . Grangemouth refinery supplies up to 145 MW.

https://www.ineos.com/sites/grangemo...p-from-fortum/

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

But here is a link to the Conoco Phillips Immingham refinery , which uses its CHPs to supply up to 734 MW to the grid .
https://www.modernpowersystems.com/f...s-biggest-chp/

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

Another one . Grangemouth refinery supplies up to 145 MW.

https://www.ineos.com/sites/grangemo...p-from-fortum/

In both your examples, the CHPs are a separate installation to the refinery.

The CHPs have been constructed to provide steam (and power) to the refineries. The fact that the CHPs exist at all demonstrates that the refineries require a source of energy to operate.

Grangemouth. Burns gas, and produces 257MW of heat and 145MW of power to feed the refinery. Excess is fed to the grid.

The CHPs are not part of the refineries, but a necessary energy source to fuel them.
'Commissioned in 2001, the Grangemouth power plant's power generation capacity is 145 megawatts (MW) and heat generation capacity of 257 MW. It provides electricity and steam to INEOS’ petrochemical operations. '

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

Another one . Grangemouth refinery supplies up to 145 MW.

https://www.ineos.com/sites/grangemo...p-from-fortum/

Nobody is saying they don't add to the grid though.

Do we need to bring out the cookie analogy again? A refinery uses energy AND adds to the grid. If it did not user energy and only added to the grid then you have MORE energy. Even if it took 0.1kwh it's still using energy to produce the petrol.

It's not a difficult concept to understand.

[VIVA GT]

This is (honestly) a very interesting & technical discussion in which the subject matter, information and calculations are way over my head, but thanks guys, I am finding it interesting.
Down to a more practical level...
The village housing estate where I live was built about 30 - 35 years ago some houses have a garage and maybe a driveway that can take 1 or 2 cars (the bigger the house, the bigger the driveway). A number of the integral garages have been converted into additional rooms, so there's on parking space gone straight away. I would say that on average there are at least two cars to every house (some housed with grown up children have more than 4) meaning that there is a lot of roadside parking. How are these cars going to have their electric fuel tanks re-filled? I have heard suggestions of charging points installed in lamp posts but that would still mean leads stretched all over the place which hardly sound like a good idea. There are many issues relating to changing to BEV's, some of them highly complicated as have been discussed over the last few pages, but there are also some very simple, practical issues that will also need to be resolved before this idea can work too.
Anyway, don't let me stop you boffins, please continue

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by VIVA GT

This is (honestly) a very interesting & technical discussion in which the subject matter, information and calculations are way over my head, but thanks guys, I am finding it interesting.
Down to a more practical level...
The village housing estate where I live was built about 30 - 35 years ago some houses have a garage and maybe a driveway that can take 1 or 2 cars (the bigger the house, the bigger the driveway). A number of the integral garages have been converted into additional rooms, so there's on parking space gone straight away. I would say that on average there are at least two cars to every house (some housed with grown up children have more than 4) meaning that there is a lot of roadside parking. How are these cars going to have their electric fuel tanks re-filled? I have heard suggestions of charging points installed in lamp posts but that would still mean leads stretched all over the place which hardly sound like a good idea. There are many issues relating to changing to BEV's, some of them highly complicated as have been discussed over the last few pages, but there are also some very simple, practical issues that will also need to be resolved before this idea can work too.
Anyway, don't let me stop you boffins, please continue

The lamp post idea doesn't work with current infrastructure. It's more for when you build new estates and streets that the posts should be in certain positions (optimum distance between each other, or away from driveway entries, for example), and placed correctly (kerbside, to avoid trip hazards). So its more as we replace aging hardware, we get smarter with the new stuff.

Another scheme is workplace charging. For those who drive to work and park in a company car park, your car then sits there for 9 hours. Why is it not charging at work? Some companies have schemes which give cheap electricity (commercial rate) and can charge employees a flat rate for electricity which would be cheaper than charging at their home. There's a few oil companies in the Aberdeen area doing thing.

Oil companies are also making up a good majority of those involved with wind farms too. Just to show this isn't a fad. E-On, Repsol, Equinor, Petrofac, etc. All heavily involved.

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by VIVA GT

This is (honestly) a very interesting & technical discussion in which the subject matter, information and calculations are way over my head, but thanks guys, I am finding it interesting.
Down to a more practical level...
The village housing estate where I live was built about 30 - 35 years ago some houses have a garage and maybe a driveway that can take 1 or 2 cars (the bigger the house, the bigger the driveway). A number of the integral garages have been converted into additional rooms, so there's on parking space gone straight away. I would say that on average there are at least two cars to every house (some housed with grown up children have more than 4) meaning that there is a lot of roadside parking. How are these cars going to have their electric fuel tanks re-filled? I have heard suggestions of charging points installed in lamp posts but that would still mean leads stretched all over the place which hardly sound like a good idea. There are many issues relating to changing to BEV's, some of them highly complicated as have been discussed over the last few pages, but there are also some very simple, practical issues that will also need to be resolved before this idea can work too.
Anyway, don't let me stop you boffins, please continue

The idea of lamp post chargers is often talked about .
But the problem is , an average urban street about 1 mile long with about 40 lamp posts will be on a 60Amp circuit . That can only take 1 3.6 KW charger .
A couple of towns have changed all of the street lights to LED , then it is possible to have 2 3.6KW chargers , or 1 7KW unit . But in the places that have done that the cost has then been approx £25,000 per unit .

So , without digging up every street & uprating the cables , uprating all of the substations , [ about £150,000 a time ] , and uprating the grid then it is never going to happen to have many street chargers .

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Do we need to bring out the cookie analogy again? A refinery uses energy AND adds to the grid.

Except they don't.
The power plants built to provide energy to the refineries (located on the same complexes) feed their spare capacity to the grid.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Except they don't.
The power plants built to provide energy to the refineries (located on the same complexes) feed their spare capacity to the grid.

Yeah, but to be fair, those are often operated a single entity. Shetland Gas Plant for example, is for gas processing. It has a power plant, but realistically it only exists to service the gas plant.

That's what Tel 911S is meaning. But as you've pointed out, if it needs its own power plant then it's a massive hint that it consumes a lot of power.

[ScotsBrutesFan]

Guys the thread title here is Nissan Leaf, I appreciate there can be a bit of drift, in a thread, but it's getting to the point where this has become a thread on petrol/diesel refining and electrical distribution networks.

Yes relevant to Motoring in general, but if that's a conversation you want to have then please start a thread about it in the correct area.

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by ScotsBrutesFan

Guys the thread title here is Nissan Leaf, I appreciate there can be a bit of drift, in a thread, but it's getting to the point where this has become a thread on petrol/diesel refining and electrical distribution networks.

Yes relevant to Motoring in general, but if that's a conversation you want to have then please start a thread about it in the correct area.

Or simply change the thread title- outside my remit unfortunately! TBH, how many more pages of interesting discussion can the rather derided (unless you own one) Leaf generate...

I’ve been driving a pure EV for nigh on three year, and drive classics and old race cars for fun. (Appreciate not everyone can afford to do that.) I have friends using Teslas as everyday transport for over 6 years, and one in particular now uses a Model X to tow his race cars round the UK. Another (complete petrolhead) is waiting for delivery of a new I-Pace, spurred on in his case by the BIK tax advantage! I realise that we’re talking ‘high end’ cars here, but then look at the new UP and Citigo. Small cars perfectly suited to an Urban environment. As for charging, some car parks / park and ride parks now offer free charging while you’re using them. OK, only 7kw, but the odd one has 50kw that can be paid for. The big Norwich Lidl (Pod-Point) usually has cars charging evenings and weekends as well as during open hours,

So as we advance towards the 2030s we are learning how to adjust to a world of GRADUALLY REDUCING numbers of petrol and diesel engined transports. IMO we will adapt as we always do to change. Personally I find the odd ‘doom’ posts based on (sometimes dubious) statistics very anti, but you’re never going to change some people’s viewpoints.