Maybe it's time you upgrade your home fuse.

[RIT]

The actual amount of additional electric I predict will be miniscule. What people forget is all the energy used in converting oil into Petrol and Diesel. We also curtail over capacity of both wind and solar to allow a minimum generation level for gas. This over capacity will get far greater as wind and solar penetration increases. Obviously the surplus could be used in power to gas schemes but its far more efficient for the surplus to be used direct in EV's.

There are a lot of misquoted numbers regarding the amount of electricity needed to refine Petrol and Diesel, I think from a few EV backers who want to spin a story. The refining process uses a lot of energy, but most of it comes from burning additional oil or gas rather than the use of electricity. In the UK this most likely means that as we reduce our need for Petrol and Diesel we will reduce or natural gas needs, which will be good as both the oil and gas will become imports at some point. This article provides some background.

     https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-more-electricity-electric-vehicles-do

[kristen]

I think the National Grid will need dynamic load controls - to increase or decrease consumption automatically to balance generation.

Won't smart meters be sufficient? i.e. divert excess into car batteries whenever there is excess?  Off Peak is fine too of course. 90% of my EV charging could happily be done 1AM to 6AM, the other 10% is, currently, consumed day time because of need to charge mid-trip on a couple of days a month. But a slightly bigger battery and that would change to once-a-year, maybe less, and then 99.nnn% of my charging would be off peak. (If I come home empty tonight, and therefore fail to get to 100% (at 7kW) by 6AM tomorrow, I almost certainly don't need mega-range two days in a row, so getting back up to 100% the following night(s) is usually fine)

Possibly small 3 cylinder plugin hybrids are a good transition, allowing say 10 years for the UK to switch from oil to electric.

I'd be very happy with range-extender generators in cars, so they could have smaller batteries (i.e. that are sufficient for 100% of 90% of the journeys). Right now I (unreasonably/selfishly, i think) have a huge battery that I lug about on all trips, and am depriving one or two other cars of having any - whilst industry is battery-constrained.

[brackwell]

So we will not count the cost of oil exploration,mining,shipping,transport to the pumps just that of refining and then pretend that the only power input is leccy.  I am sticking with the 6kwh per gallon of petrol at the pumps and think that is probably low.

[RIT]

So we will not count the cost of oil exploration,mining,shipping,transport to the pumps just that of refining and then pretend that the only power input is leccy.  I am sticking with the 6kwh per gallon of petrol at the pumps and think that is probably low.

Regardless of how much energy all of that uses - very little will be in the form of UK electricity that can be retasked for other needs as we reduce our dependence on Petrol and Diesel.

The wider issue is that all these numbers are being thrown around for PR reasons, where people pick and mix the numbers to best fit their argument. So if Elon Musk wants to claim figures regarding the electricity costs of refining one gallon of gasoline it is fair for someone to debunk the claim without then being expected to expand their reply to include the 101 things that were not included in the original claim.

This article goes into more detail about how complex the whole thing is

     https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasoline-costs-6kwh.html


With any luck, we can move away from lithium and cobalt before the ff industry gains much traction regarding how poor the production cycle is for these items.

[kristen]

... how poor the production cycle is for these items.

I'm optimistic about both reuse of EV batteries (e.g. static storage) and also recycle at end-of-life.

Doesn't help with mining more raw materials though ... but may increasingly help a bit in the long-tail.