How much power in a gasoline pump?

If a typical gasoline pump flows at 5 to 10 gallons per minute, and the EPA has an equivalence of 33.7kWh per gallon, then your neighborhood gas station is serving up a charge equivalent to

10 to 20 Megawatts :shock:

Something to think about.

GroundLoop said:

If a typical gasoline pump flows at 5 to 10 gallons per minute, and the EPA has an equivalence of 33.7kWh per gallon, then your neighborhood gas station is serving up a charge equivalent to

10 to 20 Megawatts :shock:

Something to think about.

Click to expand...

that is the energy contained in 1 gallon of gas, however, after it is "burned", the resulting power to wheel percentage usually around %15-20 of that number, most of it goes to waste heat & friction loss's, so it's really not a valid comparision to an EV, where the majority of the wattage is used to actually move the vehicle. but, sure, its a lot of power, that's why it's been so difficult to replace gasoline, and find something thats transportable and has a similar power density, thats why there will never be a really great substitue for oil/gasoline

True that.. not much of it makes it to the wheels.

I was just musing about what kind of DC Quick Charge station would be truly at parity with a gas pump.

For my 10gal gas fill, I spend about two minutes coupled to the fuel pump (~10MW).

A comparable DC fast charge for our Leaf would be around 20kWh in two minutes or 600 kW. At 300V that's still 2000 Amps. I'd go to the station twice as often, but the stay would be the same length.

Interesting - I was going through a similar mental exercise this afternoon. But my calculation was based on thinking of L1, L2, and L3 charging in terms of "miles/hour", i.e. miles of driving per hour of charging. So, assuming 100 miles per "tank":
- L1 might be about 5 miles/hour
- L2 might be about 13 miles/hour with a 3.3kW charger
- L3 might be about 160 miles/hour

Then, for a 30 mpg car, at 5 gallons/minute,
- Gas might be about 9000 miles/hour

The gas is only 1/15 th the energy by weight. The rest of the mass is in the air consumed by the ICE.
OK maybe only the oxygen in the air should be counted but still it is not all just the liquid gas.