Are EVs eco-friendly in India?

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For sometime, the thought troubled me. Electric Vehicles get the juice from power grid so are they really eco-friendly or its just a marketing stunt. Lets analyze:

We need 20KWh at the production site to charge EVs for 100 km run. A coal based thermal plant (in India) emits 980 grams of CO2 per 1 kWh as per CEA considering Gross Calorific Value and Station Heat Rate. So 100 KM by EV emits 19.4 KG of CO2. And the same 100 m run by a Petrol hatchback will emit 13.2 KG ! Oh my my!!!

However, Indian grid does not provide power only from coal based thermal plant. It's still 80:20. Simple algebra will tell us we need 68% power from thermal and remaining from renewable to match the emission level of Petrol Hatchback. 

But renewable need balancing plants to mitigate variability in grid. Normally gas based plants are used for this purpose. Thankfully gas only emits 50% of CO2 than that of coal based plants. So we need renewable plants towards 60% to make EVs "ECO-FRIENDLY". Long way to go. 






Comments

  1. EknathAugust 8, 2020 at 2:05 PM

    It's the same argument that was made 10years back when Solar started to come into main stream.. EVs have scope of improvement.. ICs scope of efficiency improvement is limited compares to EVs, Batteries etc..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sangram Keshari MaharanaAugust 8, 2020 at 2:41 PM

      Yes Solar...that is why I said we have a long way to go to make it really eco-friendly...don't compare with solar power...most argued from economic point of view...those who were considering carbon emission in manufacturing solar cells were dumb in my opinion..they never assessed carbon emission in setting up the plant and coal mining...

      Delete
  2. EknathAugust 8, 2020 at 2:07 PM

    It would be interesting if you could project scenarios considering technology evolution 10years down the line..

    ReplyDelete

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