But the gallon of gas isn’t refined in my neighborhood, every night. It’s made in a centralized location, in advance, and if for some reason that location loses power, another location will make it and distribute to my local gas stations.
If you are having a widespread, long term power outage, those gas pumps will not run due to not having electricity.
Do you live in an area that has frequent power outages, then maybe this would be a concern, but in most areas an outage is pretty rare and are short term. If your area has unreliable power, perhaps they should be putting more power transmission lines underground?
Yes, PG&E cuts power proactively via their PSPS program. It doesn't affect most gas stations though, as they are more centrally located and not in neighborhoods. I believe they have looked into burying transmission lines, but found it to be economically infeasible.
I'm not defeatist, just pointing out that it's an oversimplification to say "it takes as much electricity to refine a gallon of fuel" given that the refining process happens in industrial areas where electricity may well be more reliable and less expensive.
Agreed, the grid will need to adapt to the changing consumption pattern, but the capacity is a solved problem. And we're building much more anyway.
Personally, I've never found gas stations to be the beacon of reliability. They go down quickly in any kind of shortage situation. During the last ice storm here the local station ran out of gasoline in a couple days and diesel right after that. But I was able to buy propane without interruption, so that was good -- it doesn't rely on electricity to be dispensed. This is why my portable generators are now all dual fuel.
