To car-charge, or not?
Posted in Technology on 21. Mar, 2010
Y’know, sometimes this being green thing is not as simple and clear cut as it could be.
Take the simple act of charging your cellphone. Easy-peasy. Just sidle up to your nearest wall socket, charger, adapter and phone in hand, hook the whole lot up, and Bob’s your uncle. Electron flow.
Now, let’s add a twist in the tale. Could we be more green about this? The power in the socket that drives the charging process, comes from somewhere. In South Africa that most likely means a coal-fired (gasp!) power station. Yup, one of those. Belching yucky smoke and harmful green-house gasses. Can we get this dinosaur out of the equation? Well, perhaps.
How about this: We pretty much all drive around for most or part of the day in a nice car, with a very capable and powerful alternator. Capable, in fact, of supplying enough power, for a small, well, car. And some other stuff. If you have a cigarette lighter socket in the car, and you’re not using it….You’re NOT, right?? Then perhaps you could get a fancy do-hickey that allows you to charge your phone on the move, in your car, from the cigarette lighter socket. The engine’s running, right? So the power is for free! Wheee!
Um, not so sure about that. Repeat after me. “There are no free lunches.” That power comes from somewhere. In this case, the fuel that turns the engine. Every little load you put on the alternator, steals a little bit of power from the engine. A small amount of power yes, but all these small amounts add up. And in Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide, too.
So now we have the dilemma. The question is: Is the car engine/alternator/cigarette lighter/car charger combination, more efficient than the Eskom coal-fired power plant/country-wide power grid/wall socket/charger combination? And to be clear. Here I mean, end to end, all things considered, conversion efficiency, balanced with carbon cost….
And the answer is: I don’t know.
A few decades of engineering experience suggest to me that a huge installation like a power plant, would have many design decisions and maintenance engineers dedicated to optimizing efficiency. A 1% inefficiency here translates into big $$$, so my vote is that they’d have it right. Or at least a better shot at getting it right, compared to the engine/alternator of any road vehicle. ‘Small’ engines like road vehicles ace are pretty sucky in terms of efficiency, I think. They make an awful lot of heat from the fuel and shed it through the radiator, and convert substantially less into horsepower.
Tell us *your* opinion in the comments, please. And back it up with some numbers and sources, wouldya? Thanks.
~ André
So, in our attempts to unearth the facts, @pinkhairgirl pointed me to this article: The Daily Green, and asked my opinion.
The writer makes a bold statement:
“The added burden of providing the power to charge your phone will not noticeably cause additional gas to be combusted, therefore the all-important MPG won’t suffer.
Well, as I pointed out above, this is just wrong. EVERY load put on the alternator, uses more petrol. Maybe a very small increase in consumption, agreed, but look at it this way, if the device only requires a tiny amount to charge, then it only requires the same tiny amount to charge from a wall socket as well, right?
See, it doesn’t matter how little it is, it matters how efficient and green the process is that we use to supply that electricity. And that’s the question we’re asking.
I started using my car charger & solar panel charger to charge my mobile as part prepping for our trek up Kilimanjaro in November 2009. Going into remote areas on weekend hikes, Tweeting, uploading pic’s etc. I managed to get through a weekend in the mountains, with a solar charger.
Solar chargers very crappy, however managed to get 60% out of a fully charged solar panel charger exposed to very little sun. Re-charging on car charger driving home. It has become a habit to charge in the car and have fully charged solar panel pack in the car, which comes with most mobile manufacturers specific plugs, and serves as a handy backup.
Is going greener, I hope so. Think I have had about 6 beers which I saved on my Eskom bill.
I will use my car charger to charge my mobile until I have proof that it causes more damage than using normal electricity.