Curiosity: Report says we have 35x more HP in our driveways than our power plants
It may not be a particularly glamorous definition of the automobile, but it's true on some level that cars and trucks are individual little power generators on wheels, a fact pointed out here by Wired staff writer Alexis Madrigal. Interestingly, when viewed in that light, the United States has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to overall latent power availability.
In fact, Madrigal calculates that the U.S. has 35 times more horsepower sitting there in our driveways than in all our power plants combined. Like numbers? Says Madrigal:
That's mighty impressive, no? While we're not sure we'd follow the logic all the way to the conclusion that we should all be driving Tata Nanos, we do agree that the average passenger car doesn't really need 200 horsepower to get its lone occupant to work on time. We also can't help but consider the potential of a national electric car infrastructure as a way to store excess power that could be called into action in a jiffy if required.Turns out we have something on the order of 51 billion peak horsepower sitting in our driveways. That's an incredible 38,276 gigawatts of power available. That absolutely dwarfs the nameplate capacity of our electrical power plants, which total up to a mere 1,087 gigawatts. In fact, each week of 2008, a horrible year for car sales, almost 38 gigawatts of capacity rolled into the streets of America.
[Source: Inventing Green]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
waiownsyou 11:44AM (8/19/2009)
This mostly came about this decade. Most cars in the early 2000s had less than 200hp. Now even Accords drive around with that.
I say, screw HP. I REQUIRE MORE TORQUE ASAP
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Dondonel 11:49AM (8/19/2009)
Unfortunately this also says that if we want to replace gas with electricity for our cars we need at least 10 times more power plants. We'll see how this turns out.
Polly Prissy Pants 12:32PM (8/19/2009)
You're assuming each car operates at maximum output and does so for 24 hours a day. For each second an Accord is actually pumping out 230 whatever HP, you probably have a thousand where it's maybe putting out 20. This really has very little to do with the feasibility of transitioning to electric powered vehicles and is more a case of interesting trivia, nothing else.
why not the LS2LS7? 12:33PM (8/19/2009)
My house has 100A service at 220V. That's 22kW of power. That's about 33HP.
Even if my house had more modern 200A service I'd still have 66HP service of elecricity. That's less power than any car sold in the US. Additionally, many people have two cars in their garage/driveway, widening the gap even more.
This isn't just a new thing, although it's worse lately.
People don't realize how much power a car engine can produce. This is part of why it takes all night to charge your EV, and why we'll need a smarter power grid as we deploy more EVs. To put in a grid so powerful that everyone can charge their EV at peak rate at once would cost a lot of money. But with just a tiny bit of brains, the peak charging rates can be staggered a bit and reduce the amount of grid capacity needed run support EVs 3-fold or more.
Lemon 12:42PM (8/19/2009)
Dondonel,
Thats exactly what I was thinking
Dondonel 1:37PM (8/19/2009)
@PPP and LS2LS7
Of course I realize that fuel consumption in cruise is diferent than at peak hp. This is why I did not use their 35x factor from the article. Nevertheless, thinking that the current power plant capacity will suffice when most will switch to plug-in hybrids and electric cars is a pipe dream. The moment a household will switch to electric vehicles its power requirement will go up by a factor of 3 to 5.
Then you have the load balancing problems. Again, not everybody will charge at night, quite the contrary. They will charge during the day at work, because most of these vehicles will be bought by an urban population that does not have its own garage or simply because they will prefer to charge the car quicker using an industrial outlet (less than 30 minutes per charge are possible today, who knows how quick will they be in 10 years) than the one in their garage.
In other words, in order to meet all these challenges an increase in power plant capacity by an order of magnitude is a more realistic requirement. I'm optimistic but cautios at the same time.
why not the LS2LS7? 2:11PM (8/19/2009)
Due to the additional power being used at night when demand is low, I don't think it's nearly as bad as you think. I think your assumption of 3-5x usage is true, but since most of the usage at homes comes at night, I think it won't cause the peak draw to go up nearly as much as the total draw (power versus energy here).
As to "on the go charging", it will just have to be smart. Yeah, people will want to charge, but the charging will just have to slow down when a lot of cars are plugged in at lunch. You won't necessarily be able to charge your car in 30 minutes any time you want.
Also, plug-in hybrids are peanuts, especially at night. I don't think we need any grid upgrade for that. Pluggin in a Volt for the night is basically just like running your air conditioner, and since your air conditioner will be working far less hard at night, it just won't matter.
In the end, since power plants can't really increase and decrease their power output per hour as much as you make out, going to 10X for peak usage just isn't realistic. Most large plants take 24 hours to restart if they are turned off.
Compromises will have to be made. That's just basically the end of it.
pmoon 11:48AM (8/19/2009)
What this really points out is the infeasability of transitioning to electric powered vehicles. Even if we cut the average HP of our vehicles in half, we would have to have over 17 times the electrical power generation capacity we currently have to switch everything over.
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why not the LS2LS7? 12:40PM (8/19/2009)
That's incorrect. In reality, since your car is only on a few hours a day or less, the total amount of energy used in cars isn't as large as it seems. If you drive your car 1 hour, then to charge it in 8 hours takes 1/8th of power that it takes when driving it. So if you average 25HP expenditure on the road (which is about right for an EV cruising), then you only need 3.13HP for 8 hours to fill it. 3.13HP is about 5kW, 220V at 24A. It's a lot of power, it couldn't be satisfied by our current grid (I don't believe). But it isn't a 17x increase over our current grid.
The key is to manage the loads so the peak draws isn't as high. This is what you hear about a smart grid.
Lemon 12:52PM (8/19/2009)
Thats a really good point LS2LS7. It's not like the average car with 200 peak hp is operating at 200hp all day long.
Although there will be a significant increase in electricity demand to support BEVs, I see this as an opportunity for a clean energy generation infrastructure to be built up in the near future. It would create tons of jobs and the energy could be home-grown. All the money thats being shipped overseas could stay right here at home and work to benefit our own economy. Just out of curiousity, what are everyone's thoughts on nuclear power generation?
James Sonne 12:59PM (8/19/2009)
Actually, the figure shows peak output for both the electric grid and that of every car engine. Most cars do not run at their redline* non-stop when in use, let alone every car in America at the same time (*or wherever peak horsepower is for that particular engine). Most people drive their cars utilizing about 20 to 30 hp maximum on any given commute, and not everyone commutes at the same time. Also, electric cars will be charging not all at the same time and not all at peak charging rate.
Of course, electric cars would change the way the grid is used, and the grid will concomitantly change how it can be used. This is merely a sensational figure drummed up for political reasons, nothing scientific about it.
John P. 11:50AM (8/19/2009)
It's not how much hp you have, it's how you use it.
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Alex 11:58AM (8/19/2009)
That is actually a very good point. A car's engine has to be able to operate at very wide performance band. From 1 mph to 120 mph and under a large variety of conditions. A car's engine is never working at both peak hp and peak efficiency at the same time. The same is not true for something like a hydroelectric motor. That motor is operating at a specified range and is designed to operate at peak efficiency while in that constant range.
alfaBAT9 12:00PM (8/19/2009)
Agreed!
* resumes washing his Golf *
UH2L 12:01PM (8/19/2009)
Alex,
This is exactly what the Volt can do, operate the IC engine for peak efficiency in any driving condition to extract electric power. Electric motors put out max torque at 0 rpm and it linearly decreases as rpms increase which is exactly what a car needs to drive around, and they don't require as many gears in the transmission.
Mike!!ekiM 5:00PM (8/19/2009)
The legal range is 1 mph to 75 mph. You must not have gotten a highway speeding ticket lately.
Fatima 11:52AM (8/19/2009)
I dont understand why anyone would want to commute from the suburbs to chicago. Where i am i see one person per car. Its ridiculous. I take the metra which gets me to chicago from naperville in 33mins compared 2hrs in traffic jams.
I love cars but i do not take mine to work, its for the weekends and holidays and offcourse going around in the suburbs.
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Alex 11:52AM (8/19/2009)
What about a torque comparison? Huge construction equipment with massive engines will put out 200 hp and 1000 ft/lbs. There is not enough information here to make any kind of legitimate comparison.
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why not the LS2LS7? 12:43PM (8/19/2009)
You cannot compare torque in the way that you mention. It doesn't have any meaning.
Josh Wardell 11:55AM (8/19/2009)
They are probably almost equal if you just ignore Jay Leno's driveway.
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