I enjoyed Brian Potter’s Energy infrastructure cheat sheet tables over at Construction Physics, it’s a great fact post. Here are some of Brian’s tables — if they whet your appetite, do check out his full essay.
Energy quantities:
Units and quantities
Kilowatt-hours
Megawatt-hours
Gigawatt-hours
1 British Thermal Unit (BTU)
0.000293
iPhone 14 battery
0.012700
1 pound of a Tesla battery pack
0.1
1 cubic foot of natural gas
0.3
2000 calories of food
2.3
1 pound of coal
2.95
1 gallon of milk (calorie value)
3.0
1 gallon of gas
33.7
Tesla Model 3 standard battery pack
57.5
Typical ICE car gas tank (15 gallons)
506
1 ton of TNT
1,162
1 barrel of oil
1,700
1 ton of oil
11,629
12
Tanker truck full of gasoline (9300 gallons)
313,410
313
LNG carrier (180,000 cubic meters)
1,125,214,740
1,125,215
1,125
1 million tons of TNT (1 megaton)
1,162,223,152
1,162,223
1,162
Oil supertanker (2 million barrels)
3,400,000,000
3,400,000
3,400
It’s amazing that a Tesla Model 3′s standard battery pack has an OOM less energy capacity than a typical 15-gallon ICE car gas tank, and is probably heavier too, yet a Model 3 isn’t too far behind in range and is far more performant. It’s also amazing that an oil supertanker carries ~3 megatons(!) of TNT worth of energy.
Energy of various activities:
Activity
Kilowatt-hours
Fired 9mm bullet
0.0001389
Making 1 pound of steel in an electric arc furnace
0.238
Driving a mile in a Tesla Model 3
0.240
Making 1 pound of cement
0.478
Driving a mile in a 2025 ICE Toyota Corolla
0.950
Boiling a gallon of room temperature water
2.7
Synthesizing 1 kilogram of ammonia (NH3) via Haber-Bosch
11.4
Making 1 pound of aluminum via Hall-Heroult process
7.0
Average US household monthly electricity use
899.0
Moving a shipping container from Shanghai to Los Angeles
2,000.0
Average US household monthly gasoline use
2,010.8
Heating and cooling a 2500 ft2 home in California for a year
4,615.9
Heating and cooling a 2500 ft2 home in New York for a year
23,445.8
Average annual US energy consumption per capita
81,900.0
Power output:
Activity or infrastructure
Kilowatts
Megawatts
Gigawatts
Sustainable daily output of a laborer
0.08
Output from 1 square meter of typical solar panels (21% efficiency)
0.21
Tesla wall connector
11.50
Tesla supercharger
250
Large on-shore wind turbine
6,100
6
Typical electrical distribution line (15 kV)
8,000
8
Large off-shore wind turbine
14,700
15
Typical US gas pump
20,220
20
Typical daily production of an oil well (500 barrels)
35,417
35
Typical transmission line (150 kV)
150,000
150
Large gas station (20 pumps)
404,400
404
Large gas turbine
500,000
500
Output from 1 square mile of typical solar panels
543,900
544
Electrical output of a large nuclear power reactor
1,000,000
1,000
1
Single LNG carrier crossing the Atlantic (18 day trip time)
2,604,664
2,605
3
Nord Stream Gas pipeline
33,582,500
33,583
34
Trans Alaska pipeline
151,300,000
151,300
151
US electrical generation capacity
1,189,000,000
1,189,000
1,189
This observation by Brian is remarkable:
A typical US gas pump operates at 10 gallons per minute (600 gallons an hour). At 33.7 kilowatt-hours per gallon of gas, that’s a power output of over 20 megawatts, greater than the power output of an 800-foot tall offshore wind turbine. The Trans-Alaska pipeline, a 4-foot diameter pipe, can move as much energy as 1,000 medium-sized transmission lines, and 8 such pipelines would move more energy than provided by every US electrical power plant combined.
US energy flows Sankey diagram by LLNL (a “quad” is short for “a quadrillion British Thermal Units,” or 293 terawatt-hours):
I had a vague inkling that a lot of energy is lost on the way to useful consumption, but I was surprised by the two-thirds fraction; the 61.5 quads of rejected energy is more than every other country in the world consumes except China. I also wrongly thought that the largest source of inefficiency was in transmission losses. Brian explains:
The biggest source of losses is probably heat engine inefficiencies. In our hydrocarbon-based energy economy, we often need to transform energy by burning fuel and converting the heat into useful work. There are limits to how efficiently we can transform heat into mechanical work (for more about how heat engines work, see my essay about gas turbines).
The thermal efficiency of an engine is the fraction of heat energy it can transform into useful work. Coal power plant typically operates at around 30 to 40% thermal efficiency. A combined cycle gas turbine will hit closer to 60% thermal efficiency. A gas-powered car, on the other hand, operates at around 25% thermal efficiency. The large fraction of energy lost by heat engines is why some thermal electricity generation plants list their capacity in MWe, the power output in megawatts of electricity.
Most other losses aren’t so egregious, but they show up at every step of the energy transportation chain. Moving electricity along transmission and distribution lines results in losses as some electrical energy gets converted into heat. Electrical transformers, which minimize these losses by transforming electrical energy into high-voltage, low-current before transmission, operate at around 98% efficiency or more.
I also didn’t realise that biomass is so much larger than solar in the US (I expect this of developing countries), although likely not for long given the ~25% annual growth rate.
Energy conversion efficiency:
Energy equipment or infrastructure
Conversion efficiency
Tesla Model 3 electric motor
97%
Electrical transformer
97-99%
Transmission lines
96-98%
Hydroelectric dam
90%
Lithium-ion battery
86-99+%
Natural gas furnace
80-95%
Max multi-layer solar cell efficiency on earth
68.70%
Max theoretical wind turbine efficiency (Betz limit)
59%
Combined cycle natural gas plant
55-60%
Typical wind turbine
50%
Gas water heater
50-60%
Typical US coal power plant
33%
Max theoretical single-layer solar cell efficiency
33.16%
Heat pump
300-400%
Typical solar panel
21%
Typical ICE car
16-25%
Finally, (US) storage:
Type
Quads of capacity
Grid electrical storage
0.002
Gas station underground tanks
0.26
Petroleum refineries
3.58
Other crude oil
3.79
Strategic petroleum reserve
4.14
Natural gas fields
5.18
Bulk petroleum terminals
5.64
Total
22.59
I vaguely knew grid energy storage was much less than hydrocarbon, but I didn’t realise it was 10,000 times less!
I enjoyed Brian Potter’s Energy infrastructure cheat sheet tables over at Construction Physics, it’s a great fact post. Here are some of Brian’s tables — if they whet your appetite, do check out his full essay.
Energy quantities:
Units and quantities
It’s amazing that a Tesla Model 3′s standard battery pack has an OOM less energy capacity than a typical 15-gallon ICE car gas tank, and is probably heavier too, yet a Model 3 isn’t too far behind in range and is far more performant. It’s also amazing that an oil supertanker carries ~3 megatons(!) of TNT worth of energy.
Energy of various activities:
Power output:
Activity or infrastructure
This observation by Brian is remarkable:
US energy flows Sankey diagram by LLNL (a “quad” is short for “a quadrillion British Thermal Units,” or 293 terawatt-hours):
I had a vague inkling that a lot of energy is lost on the way to useful consumption, but I was surprised by the two-thirds fraction; the 61.5 quads of rejected energy is more than every other country in the world consumes except China. I also wrongly thought that the largest source of inefficiency was in transmission losses. Brian explains:
I also didn’t realise that biomass is so much larger than solar in the US (I expect this of developing countries), although likely not for long given the ~25% annual growth rate.
Energy conversion efficiency:
Energy equipment or infrastructure
Finally, (US) storage:
Type
I vaguely knew grid energy storage was much less than hydrocarbon, but I didn’t realise it was 10,000 times less!