Post #2210784

Because of Iran and generally the idea of electrification I've been thinking about energy (and power). On a bike, you could get yourself up and running with 100W of power, maybe a bit more when initially getting upto speed. Let's say 200W of momentary energy. I know this is human energy but ebikes will deliver 250W so it's worth keeping the number in mind. I have a homelab, fridge, etc. so my house consumes maybe 300W constantly. Microwave / Oven would be the full 2.4kW. The A/C can use 7kW. Water heater is 4kW but I'm guessing the heat pump ones are 2.4kW. Induction cooktop again is about 5kW. Dishwashing and washing machine are maybe 1kW amortised. A single phase house can deliver about 15kW. Historically that's been plenty but with heating and water and cooking all electrified, you can maybe inch over during high demand. Let's say it's a party, your air con is on, people just had a shower, and now you're cooking and there's a dishwasher cycle. 3-phase is 45kW. OK, when you're in a car and driving at a steady page, you're using maybe 1-2kW (in an EV, obvs in ICE you're using 3x that much as waste heat). That sounds fine, but when you're accelerating, maybe coming off the lights, you will use 20kW. *That's more than your house during a party*. If you're going up a hill, you could use 50kW for that 10-20 second period. This is granny driving btw, not some race car shit which could be over 200kW(!!) Energy aside, literally the most power you ever use as a human being is coming off the lights in your car. That feels crazy to me, especially if on a bike you're using maybe 200W, a car is 100x more power usage than a bike when accelerating. On the energy side of the equation, if you drive 20km / day, and it's 15kWh/100km, that's 2.25kWh per day. My house would use maybe 20kWh / day in Winter. So about 1/10 of your household usage is from your car. Many people drive double or even 4x this, and at that rate it's basically half the energy usage of your house.