loses up to 60 percent of energy in the conversion steps.
Meanwhile, assuming that we store our solar energy in form of compressed dead ferns and dinosaurs stored deep underground...
Typical thermal efficiency for utility-scale electrical generators is around 37% for coal and oil-fired plants, and 56 – 60% (LEV) for combined-cycle gas-fired plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_stationAnd that doesn't include losses related to extraction, transport, refinement, transport again.
A human on a bicycle, by the way, is only 10-20% efficient, with the rest of the energy being lost to heat.
So, yes, you just need to have a lot more energy than you plan to use whether that energy is coming
- from the sun and getting converted into electricity and then into rust, or...
- from the sun via a highly convoluted and inefficient process of being made into ferns and dinosaurs and being converted underground under massive heat and pressure then extracted millions of years later or..
- from the sun via chlorophyll making solar energy into glucose and creating bananas (or in a two-step process whereby it then gets converted very inefficiently into grass then into burger storage units) and having the bicycle power plant eat them and convert them to fat and glycogen. We're talking h-bikes here, obviously, as g-bikes and e-bikes fall into the first two scenarios.
