
Gas Station Power Output
A gas station does not produce energy, but it transfers it into cars. The energy is in the form of gasoline. As we will see in this article, one might intuitively underestimate just how much energy can be stored in gasoline.
Uncle Thorsten raised an interesting question: If a gas station fills up the tanks of several cars simultaneously, how much energy is it transferring? Or in other words: What’s the gas station’s power output? Clearly, the gas station does not produce the energy, but appreciating how it can output a lot of energy so quickly is fascinating. So let’s dig into the numbers…

A random gas station in Waiblingen needs about 40s to fill the tank of my dad’s car. It took in 25 liters.
The volumetric flow rate is
The combustion of a liter of gasoline releases about
In comparison, a Tesla supercharger outputs a peak of

Back to the gas station: How much energy does it output in total? A small one – like the one we visited today to measure the flow rate (and refuel the car) – has six fuel dispensers. It would transfer a whopping

The Hoover dam in comparison has an installed capacity of
As a last data point for comparison, consider nuclear power plants. An average one in the US outputs about