Taken from the BBC site

The 10 gallons of fuel in the petrol tank of an average-sized car contain enough energy to run the electricity in an average-sized house for five years.

Is this right ? And if so how can generating electricity be so un-efficient

We don’t use cars to generate electricity, so don’t worry

I’d say that was a crock of poo.

My sis-in-law used to have a diesel powered generator to provide power to 2 static caravans and it used the go through tons of diesel.

And if so how can generating electricity be so un-efficient

It’s not. Old power station have an efficiency of around 35%, modern power stations can have thermal efficiencies of over 60%. For comparison, a typical petrol car has an efficiency of around 25% with diesel being around 35%.

The internal combustion engine is very very indeicient

10 gallons = 45 litres.
1 litre petrol = 10kWh per litre of energy
45 litre = 450kWh of energy
/ 365 * 5 = 0.24Wh of electricty per day.

That’s the equivalent of a 100W light bulb on each day for 2 and half hours, or an electric kettle for about 5 minutes.

So complete garbage 🙂

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c3/page_29.shtml is a great read for this sort of stuff.

10 gallons = 45litres.

Energy density of biodiesel (only figure I have at top of head) is 9kWh/litre so 405kWh.

Average house with two kids uses 5,480kWh pa
http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/01-02/RE_info/hec.htm

so…..I’d say someone’s figures are wrong somewhere.

Maybe they mean atomic energy 😉

beat me Ian 🙂

EDIT: although you get A- for your units error 😉

/ 365 * 5 = 0.24Wh of electricty per day.

kWh

Thanks for that, couldn’t see how it could be right. Maybe it was a DeLorean ? 🙂

But 45 litres of fuel has a mass of about 32 kilos, so using E=mc2 that’s a grand total of around 2.88 x 10^18 joules or 800 bilion KWh. That’ll keep a few kettles running.

There’s always one.. 🙂
Looking a google it seems to be random cut and past fact wobbling between the bbc site and qi.