While most Americans were enjoying the holiday break, Congress was called in for a special session to try and work out a deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff." A compromise was reached, a deal was passed, and while nobody is particularly happy with the "American Taxpayer Relief Act", a number of green energy credits were extended for at least another year.
The Senate version of the bill, which was passed by the House and signed by President Obama late last night, includes 12 green energy credits or extensions for the year 2013. In no particular order, these credits are;
Credit for energy-efficient existing homes is extended to 31 December 2013.
Credit for alternative fuel vehicle refueling property is extended to 31 December 2013.
Credit for 2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles. In the case of a qualified 2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicle, up to 10% of the cost of the qualified 2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicle, or $2,500 may be allowed as a credit.
Qualifying 2- or 3-wheel vehicles need a 2.5 kWh pack (down from 4 kWh), are capable of achieving a speed of 45 mph (72 km/h)or greater, and must be acquired after 31 December 2011 and before 1 January 2014.
Extension and modification of cellulosic biofuel producer credit. The extension now carries through to qualified production beginning before 1 January 2014. Algae is treated as a qualified feedstock.
Additionally, the section strikes the term cellulosic biofuel in favor of "second generation biofuel".
Incentives for biodiesel and renewable diesel are extended to 31 December 2013.
Extension of production credit for Indian coal facilities placed in service before 2009 for an 8-year period rather than a 7-year period. The amendment applies to coal produced after 31 December 2012.
Extension and modification of credits with respect to facilities producing energy from certain renewable resources. Among other provisions for municipal solid waste, hydro, and biomass facilities, production tax credits for wind facilities are extended to 1 January 2014.
Credits for energy-efficient new homes are extended to 31 December 2013.
Credits for energy-efficient appliances are extended into 2013.
The special allowance for cellulosic biofuel plant property is extended to 1 January 2014. In addition, algae is treated as a qualified feedstock for such.
The special rule for sales or dispositions to implement FERC or state electric restructuring policy for qualified electric utilities is extended to 1 January 2014.
Alternative fuels excise tax credits are extended to 31 December.
These tax credits go along with Obama's "All of the Above" energy strategy, but do we really need an extension of the status quo? Or would Americans be better served by more forward-thinking initiatives with more support but a more narrow focus on a select few technologies?
Project expected to provide up to 1,300 Jobs in Tennessee
Washington D.C. --- U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today that the Department of Energy has closed its $1.4 billion loan agreement with Nissan North America, Inc. to retool their Smyrna, Tennessee factory to build advanced electric automobiles and an advanced battery manufacturing facility. The two projects are expected to create up to 1,300 American jobs and conserve up to 65.4 million gallons of gasoline per year – an amount equal to six times the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
"This is an investment in our clean energy future. It will bring the United States closer to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and help lower carbon pollution," said Secretary Chu. "We are committed to making strides to revitalize the American auto industry and supporting the development of clean energy vehicles."
Nissan plans to use the proceeds from the loan to produce its all-electric vehicle, the LEAF, at its existing Smyrna, Tennessee plant. Nissan will offer electric vehicles to fleet and retail customers, and plans to ramp up production capacity in Smyrna up to 150,000 vehicles annually.
Nissan is pursuing a global strategy of transitioning to electric vehicles. Building a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Smyrna, to produce 200,000 battery packs annually, is a significant part of that strategy. Nissan is also laying the groundwork in developing an infrastructure in the US to support electric vehicles. The company has formed partnerships with states, counties, municipalities, and electric utilities to prepare markets for the introduction of electric vehicles including the installation of charging stations.
Today’s announcement marks the third loan arrangement agreement signed by DOE with an advanced technology vehicle manufacturer. In September 2009, DOE signed its first loan agreement for $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Company. Last week, DOE also signed a $465 million loan agreement with Tesla Motors, which will be used to build manufacturing facilities in California for electric power-trains and Tesla's Model S electric sedan. The Department has also signed a conditional commitment with Fisker Automotive to build plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Tenneco, Inc. became the first advanced technology component manufacturer to obtain a conditional commitment from DOE in October of last year.
The Department was provided $7.5 billion for credit subsidy costs by Congress to cover up to $25 billion in direct loans to companies making cars and components in US factories that increase fuel economy at least 25 percent above 2005 fuel economy levels.
The agreement was negotiated and signed through the Department’s Loan Programs Office, which supports the development of innovative, advanced vehicle technologies to create thousands of clean energy jobs while helping reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
Projects Supported by DOE Expected to Create Over 1600 Jobs in California
Washington, DC – Today, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the Department of Energy has closed its $465 million loan with Tesla Motors, Inc. for construction of a manufacturing facility in southern California on the Model S electric sedan and a power-train manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, California. The Palo Alto facility will assemble electric vehicle battery packs, electric motors, and related electric vehicle control equipment, both for Tesla’s own electric vehicles and for sale to other automobile manufacturers.
The agreement was negotiated and signed by the Department’s Loan Programs Office, which supports the development of innovative, advanced vehicle technologies to create thousands of clean energy jobs while helping reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
“This is an investment in our clean energy future that will create jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said Secretary Chu. “It will help build a customer base and begin laying the foundation for American leadership in the growing electric vehicles industry. This is part of a sustained effort to develop and commercialize technologies that will be broadly deployed throughout the American auto industry.”
Tesla’s planned Model S will consume no gasoline and will not produce any tailpipe emissions. It is being designed to offer a variety of range options depending on the battery pack used, from 160 to 300 miles on a single charge. Volume production of the Model S is planned to begin in 2012 with a target production capacity of 20,000 vehicles per year by the end of 2013. According to Tesla, the Model S project and power-train manufacturing facility are expected to create over 1,600 jobs.
Today’s announcement marks the second loan arrangement agreement signed by DOE with an advanced technology vehicle manufacturer. In September 2009, DOE signed its first loan agreement for $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Company. The Department has also signed conditional commitments with Nissan North America, Inc. and Fisker Automotive. Tenneco Inc. became the first advanced technology component manufacturer to obtain a conditional commitment from DOE in October of last year. Nissan plans to build electric cars and battery packs at the company’s Smyrna, Tennessee manufacturing complex, while Fisker recently announced plans to build plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by reopening a shuttered GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Department of Energy was appropriated $7.5 billion by Congress to support up to $25 billion in loans to companies making cars and components in US factories that increase fuel economy at least 25 percent above 2005 fuel economy levels. The Department plans to make additional loans over the next several months to large and small auto manufacturers and parts suppliers up and down the production chain. The intense technical and financial review process is focused not on choosing a single technology over others, but is aimed at promoting multiple approaches for achieving a fuel efficient economy.
A USATODAY news article suggests California utility prepares for surge in plug-in electric cars which made me wonder what the other electrical utilities are doing. Electrical utilities have a role in clean transportation as being the provider of choice of the electricity that would power electric vehicles. A couple concerns known to me are whether the electric grid can handle the increased demand for electricity, and what will be the environmental effect of increased electricity demand. Let's take a look at the situation.
Utility companies could be big winners in the shift to electric transportation. The money flowing to the oil companies is largely for transportation, and clearly the oil companies receive massive megadollars of revenue. This flow of money could be diverted to the utility companies. Electric vehicles are thought to generally be recharged at night when there is excess electrical generation capacity.
California ISO is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation charged with operating the majority of California’s high-voltage wholesale power grid. They therefore play a critical role in distributing electricity, and their website has massive quantities of information. The vast majority concerns the markets they run to handle payments between power suppliers and utility companies. There is not anything on the site directly concerning environmental concerns. Still there is very useful data that can be consulted to grok energy demand in California.
The Lassen Municipal Utility District provides a map of energy utilities operating in California. It shows there are three primary utilities, and a handful of smaller ones, and for this posting I'll only look at the three big ones: PG&E (central and northern California), SoCalEdison (LA Basin), and SDGE (San Diego).
PG&E's Environment program says they "we are committed to being an environmental leader and demonstrating this through our actions. We pledge to think creatively, work cooperatively and be results-oriented in our environmental stewardship efforts." What they're doing is:
Putting Energy Efficiency First: Using energy more efficiently is the fastest, most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat global climate change.
Clean Energy Solutions: exploring harvesting energy from the sun, ocean waves, tidal currents, and agricultural waste, and are involved in state-of-the-art, cleaner sources of fossil-fuel based power.
Fighting Climate Change: reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and to providing customers with tools to shrink their "carbon footprint."
Greening Vehicles: They apparently have a long track record of pushing for clean vehicles, for consumers and for themselves. They have a plug-in Prius (yes, just one). Most of their words in this section discuss supplying compressed natural gas (CNG) as a fuel to their own fleet plus other fleets.
Promoting Stewardship: managing lands and waters in a responsible and environmentally sensitive manner. Their infrastructure traverses unique and sensitive habitat.
Supporting Communities: Solar Habitat Program, Solar Schools, Partnering for a Greener San Francisco
Buildings and Operations: Greening their own buildings
Let's look more closely at their green vehicles program. This is pretty disappointing.
They show a picture of their plug-in Prius, and the car has a sticker saying "100 MPG" and "I can't remember the last time I filled up". Okay that probably just means they drive the car around San Francisco within the battery-only range, right? It's disappointing that they have only one of these cars.
They use both compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) for their heavy duty vehicles. They operate 37 PG&E-owned-and-operated CNG fueling stations supplying fuel to their own vehicles and various commercial fleet customers.
But the overall picture is they're doing very little in the way of studying electric vehicles or planning for accommodating them on the local power grid. They do have a 'Vehicle to Grid' (V2G) program but I couldn't find where it's discussed.
Environmental Commitment: Helping to protect the environment in which we work and live.
Smart Grid: Nation’s most advanced neighborhood electricity circuit.
Edison SmartConnect™: A smarter, cleaner energy future with our customers.
Electric Transportation: Nation's largest electric vehicle fleet.
Power Generation: Dedicated to operating safe and environmentally responsible facilities.
Transmission Projects: Strengthening system reliability throughout our service territory.
Their various programs look interesting in various ways. The SmartConnect program offers customers more information about their power use supposedly to give them better awareness of their impact which may steer customers to making better choices. Let's focus on their electric transportation program.
Their Electric Transportation Vision is pretty well described and thought out. They obviously have spent some effort to understand the issues such as national energy security, environmental issues, etc. It's amusing that the picture leading the page shows lines of golf carts and fork lifts so their vision is to keep electric vehicles used only for low speed vehicles? C'mon, electric vehicles don't have to be boring golf carts.
Near-Term
Vehicle to Home: Charging vehicles (mainly plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles) during nighttime (off-peak) hours, and using that stored energy occasionally for peak emergency backup or peak shaving to avoid higher electricity costs during critical peak usage days.
Home Energy Storage: Identifying and evaluating new stationary applications for advanced vehicle batteries, such as a home energy storage device.
Mid-Term
Excess Grid Capacity: Using the electric grid’s nighttime excess capacity to charge volumes of plug-in and other electric vehicles, helping lower customer rates by spreading fixed generation plant costs over more energy use.
Long-Term
Vehicle to Grid: Tapping into the potential ability to move stored energy from plug-in and other electric vehicles back into the electric grid as part of the “smart grid of the future,” helping enhance power grid quality, reliability and cost-effectiveness.
Their Electric Vehicle Technical Center conducts state-of-the-art testing and evaluation, they have a "garage of the future" evaluation platform to plan for recharging electric vehicles at home and they do cutting-edge work with electric-drive technologies.
Tests battery-electric, hybrid-electric, plug-in hybrid, plug-in hybrid fuel cell and fuel cell propulsion systems for on- and non-road applications.
Evaluates and tests advanced battery modules, battery packs, battery management systems and various types of chargers.
Supports the development of more energy-efficient battery charging systems.
Evaluates advanced batteries and other energy storage technologies for stationary applications, such as home energy storage, telecommunications and emergency backup power.
Partners with government and industry to demonstrate hydrogen and fuel cells and understand the safety and electrical system impacts of hydrogen generation, compression, storage and delivery.
Provides consulting services for industry.
This looks very good and comprehensive on their part. They appear to be doing all the right things to understand and plan for electric vehicles.
Clearly one of San Diego's main assets is abundant sunshine. What's that song? Actually the first time I was in San Diego it was overcast and cold (for June) and rainy, so obviously it does occasionally rain in southern california. Their service area also includes the deserts to the west of the mountains, and I believe SDGE is investing in solar power plants in those deserts to provide electricity to San Diego.
In Sept 2008 they announced results of study: Plug-In hybrid electric vehicles excel on MPG and emissions reductions, SDG&E study confirms "SDG&E tested the performance of two 2007-model standard hybrid vehicles and then converted them into plug-in hybrids, using a lithium-ion battery conversion kit. When compared with the standard hybrid, the plug-in hybrid achieved a 60-percent increase in gas mileage, a 37-percent decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) tailpipe emissions, and an 18-percent reduction in fuel costs. When compared with conventional gasoline-fueled vehicles that average 22 miles per gallon (MPG), the fuel cost savings jump to 57 percent. "
Unfortunately their page has very few specifics to understand what they're doing. They discuss electrification of the following useful areas to address, but with no details as to the actual programs being pursued.
Non-road Electric Vehicles
Fork lifts, materials-handling equipment, personnel carriers and cleaners
Airport ground support equipment (electrification of ground support equipment at San Diego International Airport)
Electric Idling Initiatives - Electric idling initiatives, which involve substituting electrification for petroleum-fueled idling operations, include:
"Cold ironing" (Port of San Diego cruise ship and cargo terminals)
Locomotive electric idling (San Diego Sante Fe Train Station)
An earlier posting about Miles per gallon ratings with plug-in hybrid vehicles begs an interesting question. Just how does one measure "fuel efficiency" in a vehicle that runs on electricity and hence doesn't consume a fuel? The miles/gallon figure is what our society is accustomed to from over a hundred years of gasoline vehicle usage. An electric vehicle doesn't burn a fuel, it consumes electricity. Electricity has no weight and does not take up space in a container. Electricity is held in a battery but neither the size nor weight of the battery changes as the battery discharges. Yet a given battery can contain a given quantity of electricity, which determines the vehicle range and speed.
Electricity quantities are measured in kilowatt-hours. One watt is the electricity equal to one volt and one amp (watts = volts * amps). For example most handheld hair dryers use 750-1500 watts, and on a 120 volt circuit 750 watts requires 6.25 amps of current whereas 1500 watts requires 12.5 amps. Outside the U.S. where 220 volt circuits are more common the same 750 watt hair dryer requires 3.4 amps of current and at 1500 watts requires 6.8 amps. A kilowatt-hour is 1000 watts consumed over an hour of time. This is covered in more depth in: Overview of batteries and electric vehicles, Electrical Basics covering batteries in electric vehicles and Power Density in Batteries and Electric Vehicles
Why is this important? We are being asked to believe large miles/gallon efficiency claims for plug-in hybrid vehicles and we need to understand how to interpret those claims. If those claims are bogus then our society will have been fooled into a false solution to our transportation problems.
Miles/gallon to miles/kilowatt-hour are not directly comparable. My mind echo's with my high school science teachers yelling from across the room that you're comparing apples and oranges. What's going on is driving the vehicle down the road consumes energy. The different forms of energy are not directly comparable because one is gallons of gasoline, the other is kilowatt-hours of electricity, and the units are all different. In science class however the practice is to convert from one unit to another, leading my fellow classmates to convert all speeds to furlongs per fortnight. The U.S. Department of Energy has published a chart giving conversion factors and says that: Every fuel has different energy density. The most common way to measure how much petroleum is displaced through the use an alternative fuel is to convert the energy density of an alternative fuel unit to the energy density in a gasoline gallon. (Converting Alternative Fuel Units to Gasoline Gallon Equivalents (GGE))
Said chart shows one kilowatt-hour is convertible to .03 gallons of gasoline. Or 33.56 kilowatt-hours is convertible to 1 gallon of gasoline. Hence miles / 33.56 kilowatt-hours is equal to miles/gallon in this conversionary math system.
For example Tesla Motors publishes a chart showing Well-to-Wheel efficiency where they claim an energy efficiency of 177 W·h/mi. After a bit of calculation wikipedia converts this to 190 miles/gallon equivalent. Another interesting conversion is the cost per mile, assuming $.10 / kilowatt-hour to buy electricity, .177 kilowatt-hours consumed per mile is $.0177 per mile for the electricity.
I have a couple examples closer to home and more affordable than the Tesla Roadster (ahem). I talk of my electric motorcycle and electric bicycle. Last year I observed the electricity usage for my daily commute - 10 miles over very flat terrain in Silicon Valley. The motorcycle routinely consumed 3 kilowatt hours for the 10 mile trip while the bicycle routinely consumed 0.3 kilowatt hours for the same trip. Of course being a bicycle I pedaled to provide part of the power, meaning there is unmeasured energy input from my leg muscles, also meaning that it provided personal exercise benefits. In any case let's crunch these numbers a bit.
The motorcycle consumed 300 watt hours per mile (.3 kwh/mi), less efficient than the Tesla Roadster. However applying the same conversion derived by the wikipedia page, (1/300)*33705=112.35 meaning my motorcycle gives over 112 miles/gallon equivalent fuel efficiency.
The bicycle however consumed 30 watt hours per mile (.03 kwh/mi). Applying the same conversion, (1/30)*33705=1123.5, meaning my bicycle gives over 1120 miles per gallon fuel efficiency.
Getting back to my high school science teacher and apples and oranges. Saying my bicycle gets 1120 miles / gallon can be misleading, since it doesn't burn gasoline. Or putting it another way, to say a Tesla Roadster gets 190 miles/gallon fuel efficiency may keep the mind focused on improving miles/gallon and lead one to continue looking for high miles/gallon efficiency.
The problem here is not to achieve the most efficient burning of gasoline, instead the problem here is our need to transport our butts around town. The chosen popular transportation technology requires liquid fuels which are due to become in short supply soon, leaving us potentially unable to transport our butts around town. If we look at the problem purely through the lens of miles/gallon efficiency of burning gasoline, we remain stuck in the mindset of burning gasoline to solve the problem of transporting our butts around town. We need to focus on the energy efficiency of different forms of transportation, and we need to remain unattached to specific solutions of the need to transport our butts around town. This mathematical conversion technique simply helps us compare energy efficiency across different units of measurement.
In todays context we face two major challenges both of which stem largely from the abundance of gasoline driven cars on American roads. On one hand the U.S. and the world is facing high oil prices a looming shortage of oil as oil fields around the world go into depletion. On another hand the whole world is facing a global environmental catastrophe that's destabilizing environmental conditions world-wide. On yet another hand (we must be from Mars) the U.S. style of building cities is wasteful of land and ties our hands to possible solutions because of the highway infrastructure. There is a huge need for change in the transportation technologies common in the U.S.
Why specifically the U.S.? It's that factoid, that we have 6% of the worlds population, have 3% of the worlds oil, yet use 25% of the worlds resources, and consequently do a huge portion of the worlds environmental damage.
Wasteful of land? The highway system, as a way to transport people from place to place, is very flexible but at the same time has a very low density of people per square mile of road surface. By contrast any mass transit system has a much higher density of people per square mile. The issue is the need for cars to maintain a safe following distance. Cars on a highway must be far enough apart so they can stop if the car ahead of them needs to stop.
Looming oil shortage? I'll just say 'peak oil'... It's a scientific model that describes the depletion of oil fields and the inability, as a field ages, for oil companies to extract more oil from the field. This model shows that despite there being lots of oil left in reserves, it is increasingly harder to extract that oil, and in the future the amount of oil available will be less than it is today. That last is because it's expected there are no large oil fields left to discover, and that no large oil fields have been discovered for over 40 years.
Now that I've gone over the incentive to moving to radically different transportation technologies, let's discuss some of them.
Gasoholic Hybrid Todays hybrid cars could be best called "gasoholic" as they do nothing to reduce our dependency on fossil oil. They run on gasoline, and the driver of todays hybrids are still 100% addicted to it. They are in my mind a bunch of hype especially when you consider there are modern cars with higher gas miles per gallon efficiency than the hybrid vehicles.
However the presence of gasoholic hybrids is what enabled ...
Plug-in Hybrid By being able to plug-in the user is enabled to begin to be weaned off gasoline. They are a step forward in reducing dependence on fossil oil, because recall that there is looming peak oil situation which will make it hard to find gasoline. There are several plug-in hybrid vehicles due to come on the market "soon" and lets pray that this does happen. The plug-in hybrid vehicles would not have occurred if it were not for dedicated individuals who developed plug-in hybrid conversions of the gasoholic hybrids, got lots of attention with their plug-in conversions, and caused enough ruckus and interest that the car companies decided to make their own.
The difference between gasoholic and plug-in hybrids is the plug-in variety allows the user to plug the car in to a wall socket to charge the battery pack. The pack is also large enough to drive the car for a significant distance. Since most people drive less than 40 miles per day it's very possible that by plugging in they could drive soley on electric power and not touch the gasoline at all, except on long trips.
There are two variations of hybrid vehicle technology. In the parallel hybrid the gasoline motor and electric motor are both directly connected to the wheels and directly drive the car. In the series hybrid the gasoline motor is used soley to drive a generator that in turn recharges the battery pack. Some of the car makers have taken to using the term 'extended range EV' when referring to their series plug-in hybrid designs. I think these car makers are thinking to burnish their image after being accused of murdering the electric car, and they have to have some way to be selling something they can call an 'electric vehicle'.
Battery Electric A battery electric vehicle has only a battery pack and is recharged typically by plugging into a wall socket. Electric vehicles offer 100% freedom from oil and there are no emissions, from the vehicle. Of course the emissions are moved over to the power plant which created the electricity, however the thing about electrons is they can come from a wide variety of sources. Even though the majority of electricity in the U.S. is generated from Coal, it's very feasible to generate electrons from other sources, and in any cases studies show that even if the electrons are generated from Coal the resulting emissions are less from an EV than from an equivalent gas car. Why? Electric motors are far more efficient than gas motors, there is little transportation cost to move electrons from place to place, and finally the power plants can burn their fuel more efficiently than a gas car burns gasoline.
Ethanol, Biodiesel, other biofuels Biofuels offer an interesting way to sidestep the looming peak oil issue, because the fuel doesn't come from fossil sources. Biological material grows all over the planet and there are well known methods for making alcohol or extracting oil from biological materials. Diesel engines can burn pretty much any oil, it is trivial to convert a gas car to burn ethanol, and Ethanol can be made from a zillion different plant species. Research is going on to bioengineer crops or algae etc to make biofuel production even more efficient, etc.
There's concern now that biofuel production diverts crops and have caused high food prices and food riots around the world. The truth about this is a bit murky. However there is a concern about the total output of biofuels which can be grown agriculturally especially as most land in the world is desert. In some rain forests they have been chopping down the rain forest to plant palm plantations, so they can harvest palm oil, and make biodiesel. Uh, was this the desired result?
Bioengineered biofuels may offer a different way to skin this cat. For example studies have been made of funneling smokestack output into algae vats, the algae absorbs the carbon emissions sequestering the carbon into its body, and the algae can later be harvested to make biofuel which is in turn burned in the power plant.
Fuel Cell Fuel cells have been 10-15 years away for the last 30 years. Sigh. They offer such great hope, you feed them hydrogen and oxygen and get water vapor and electricity. By the way if you're paying attention you might realize that a fuel cell car is an example of a series hybrid vehicle in that the fuel cell is used to recharge a battery pack, and the battery pack is used to drive the electric motor.
I think fuel cell cars are a bit of a boondoggle in it is a wasteful extra step to generate hydrogen. Hydrogen is in a zillion different chemical compounds around the world and is very abundant, but it is extremely rare as an element. Except in stars and interstellar gas. Maybe when we're living in tin cans in orbit we can have hydrogen collectors to gather interstellar gas to drive a fuel cell. But here on planet earth it takes a lot of power to extract hydrogen from any of the compounds it is in. It takes more power to extract the hydrogen than the power which comes out of the fuel cell, meaning fuel cells are a net loss situation. Because it takes electricity to extract hydrogen, why not just use the electricity to run a battery electric vehicle and dispense with the extra complication of the fuel cell?
I believe the best use for fuel cells is in power storage. There are a many alternative electricity technologies that are intermittent.. such as solar energy or wind energy. The wind doesn't always blow when you most need the electricity. If there were an excess of electricity one day the electricity could be used to extract hydrogen from something like water, the hydrogen stored in a tank, and then later run through a fuel cell to generate electricity.
Liquified Hydrogen Some car makers have build internal combustion engines that run on liquified hydrogen. I guess they listened to that 'hydrogen economy' phrase a little too literally. The phrase was meant to refer to fuel cells but gosh you sure can burn hydrogen in a specially constructed ICE engine. But as I just said, why bother, it's a net loss situation.
Compressed Air A small number of companies are developing vehicles that use engines that run on compressed air. The vehicle has a compressed air tank, and to drive you release the air, it flows through pistons, drives the engine, and the car moves. It's a way of storing energy in compressed air and extracting that energy by decompressing the air. Very ingenious.
Compressed air doesn't require any magical breakthroughs in battery technology, doesn't require extracting hydrogen, etc. It just requires using a well known technology to compress air. One qualm is the danger of highly compressed air tanks especially in an accident. The same concern exists for fuel cell and liquified hydrogen vehicles, as both use tanks with compressed gas. The higher the compression the more the energy that's stored in the tank, but also the higher the danger in case the tank breaks.
Water Some cockamamie videos have circulated the Internet claiming to show water being used as a fuel. Sigh. Suckers are born every minute I guess.
Fuel efficient motorcycles Why does American imagination for transportation fixate on boxes that ride on four wheels? There are a number of technologies outside the box (so to speak) of four-wheeled cars, and motorcycles are one of them. There are many motorcycles which get very high gas mileage. My Honda Rebel gets 75 miles per gallon and the Vespa's often get 100 miles per gallon or more. Vespa is due to begin selling a hybrid electric motorcycle that will get 150 miles per gallon efficiency.
There are a few considerations about motorcycles, and these considerations feed into the normalthink mantra which stops a lot of Americans from adopting motorcycle use. A motorcycle rider is unprotected against accident, true, but then that just behooves the motorcyclist to be extra careful and as the motorcycle safety training classes say, to look ahead, scan the traffic around them, evaluate the potential dangers, and plan ahead. Another issue is weather (rain, snow, etc) and it is both a safety and comfort concern. Perhaps it is best to not ride a motorcycle in the snow, but in general comfort is easily taken care of by wearing the correct motorcycle garb.
In many countries around the world two-wheelers (motorcycles, bicycles, scooters, etc) are in the vast majority of vehicles. Clearly it's possible to do this, to have roads that are full of two wheelers rather than roads clogged with four wheelers.
Two-wheeled vehicles can carry more people per square mile of road.
Small four-wheelers or three-wheelers Europe has the Quadricycle vehicle classification, which are small four wheelers that are highly efficient. There are also a range of three wheeled vehicles coming on the market in the U.S. and generally they are high efficiency and sometimes have a cabin to protect the rider from the elements. The Xebra, Aptera and Triac are all three wheeled electric vehicles which have enclosed cabins.
In the U.S. a three wheeled vehicle is considered a motorcycle and as a motorcycle doesn't go through the rigorous safety inspections that four wheelers undergo. This makes it easier for vehicle companies to get into the market due to not having the onerous crash testing expense. There's a consideration that perhaps the vehicle is less safe as a result of not having had testing.
Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) are low speed electrically driven four-wheeled vehicles. They often look like regular cars (such as the ZENN) but are limited to low speeds. Like the three wheelers this means less safety testing requirements and it is easier for the vehicle marker to come to market.
Electric Motorcycles or Scooters There's a wide range of electric motorcycles and scooters available. They look like their gas burning cousins but there's no tailpipe, no gasoline, etc, just a battery pack and an electric motor. All the things said about gas motorcycles apply to electric.
Electric Bicycles If you get out of the mindset that bicycles are only for recreation .. and start embracing bicycles as a utilitarian vehicle, that can carry cargo, can be used for commutes, etc, it makes sense to add a motor to a bicycle. This has been done for over a hundred years and a MOPED is literally a motorized bicycle. Electric bicycles abound, you can buy kits to convert a bicycle to electric, or you can buy pre-electrified bicycles. Electrifying a bicycle makes it far more practical to ride one, because it extends the useful range of the bicycle, it helps you arrive less sweaty at your destination, etc. Electric bicycles offer commutes at a fraction of the energy cost of any other type of vehicle.
http://visforvoltage.org - is a very good place to learn about electric motorcycles, scooters and bicycles
Mass Transit Why travel in a personal vehicle at all? Why not take a bus or train? In the U.S. we allowed our cities to be built for the convenience of cars, and this resulted in urban sprawl that makes it hard for mass transit systems to have enough population density to generate enough ridership such that the transit system has enough riders to be worthwhile. But in places where there is enough population density, mass transit systems make a lot of sense and are widely used. Manhattanites for example regularly do not own cars because they can get around using the subway or bus system. The same is true in European cities where the people were enlightened enough to not rip out their mass transit systems in the first place.
Robotized Cars Some have suggested that cars with robotic intelligence could automate driving tasks such that individual people would not be driving the cars, and it would be safe to pack cars at a greater density on the road than if humans were doing the driving. This would resolve the issue of wasteful land use. It's also easy to envision the roboticized cars as a service where people rent cars as needed rather than owning cars. This is because a roboticized car could be dispatched as needed perhaps via a cell phone transaction, the robotocized car could drive itself to wherever it's needed, drive the passenger to their destination, then whiz off to the next passenger. Robotocized cars could be electric and automatically seek out a charging station when they need recharging.
Telecommuting and Telepresence Why drive at all? With improvements in communications technology we can only expect online communication quality to increase as time goes on. If telecommunication improves a few more stages it may be possible to have what is effectively a face-face meeting with a hologrammatic image (a la Star Wars) and not even have to drive to your office. Of course a lot depends on the sort of work you do or whatever reasons you have for traveling.
VW is getting ready to collaborate with Phoenix Motorcars to build EV's in Mexico. VW has operations in Mexico which among other things build the old-style VW Bug for sale in Latin America. The old-style Bug cannot be imported to the U.S. because of emissions standards. "The plant for the venture, called Pristine International, will be built in Puebla, Mexico. It is unclear what kind of vehicles these cars will be."
A few years ago I attended a ZAP shareholders meeting at which they discussed a plan for ZAP to work with VW of Mexico. They would import gliders (engineless cars) from Mexico (made by VW) and convert them to electric drive. The thinking was that with the "New Beetle" there would be a resurgence of nostalgia for the old Beetle, and an electric Beetle would add another level of saleability. Obviously Zap never consumated the agreement, however in Zap's used car sales division they've long had one or two Beetles which had NEV characteristics. (25 miles/hr max) Since the Beetle is a four-wheeler it has to meet DOT crash safety standards but by keeping it an NEV they could sell it without going through crash testing. ZAP since started selling the Xebra under the same business model.
It's unclear from the linked article just exactly what the agreement is. However Phoenix Motorcars has expertise with LI-ION batteries and therefore can bring to market a more appealing car. They also have to have been doing crash testing on the SUV they've designed.
Who says a hybrid vehicle has to burn gasoline? It's probably the oil companies pushing that idea. A hybrid vehicle is one driven with multiple power sources, such as electricity and gasoline. But that's only one model for hybrid vehicles, and today I have another model to discuss.
In the 1990's a Norwegian company, Pivco, designed and built a small electric vehicle, the Think Citi. It was attuned to being used in a city and its limited range and speed made it unsuited to America where we've installed superhighways with speeds above 70 miles/hr. But at the same time California had enacted a requirement that some percentage of all vehicles sold in the state must be zero emissions, which sent the car companies scrambling to find an electrically driven alternative. Ford's solution was to buy Pivco and import the Citi's, and within a couple years they drove it into bankruptcy. Fortunately some investors in Norway saw an opportunity and bought the remains from Ford, resurrecting it into a new company.
The reborn company is now ready to unveil their new car, and is it a doozy.
The design is simple enough they make parts from around the world, and can have simple assembly plants that are built near to where the vehicles will be sold. Rather than build a large centralized factory from which vehicles are shipped worldwide, it appears they plan to have a distributed production stream.
The base vehicle should cost $15,000 (or so) but that's without the battery pack. Part of their plan is to radically change how vehicles are made and sold. The battery pack they are using, derived from the Lithium-ION pack designed by Tesla Motors, will be very expensive. The cost for the battery pack would make this simple little car out of reach for all but the most well heeled of buyers, and the well heeled buyers wouldn't be interested in a simple vehicle like this. To enable a mass market for the Think vehicles, they are leasing the battery pack and bundling into the lease maintenance and replacement services.
The hybrid portion of the car is a Stirling Engine designed by Dean Kamen. Dean Kamen is a super rich inventor who made a splash with the Segway, and has his sights set on redesigning how vehicles are powered. Stirling engines take heat and create rotary motion, and is a design dating back to the 1800's. Stirling engines, however, have never been harnessed in a commercially viable way to produce useful work. But according to these articles Dean Kamen has worked out a way to harness a simple Stirling engine that can take any fuel and produce electricity. The vision is for a Stirling engine to be mounted in these Think vehicles, and used to charge the onboard battery pack.
The CNNMoney article discusses how they intend to market the car through carsharing programs. First, the car would fit well with a carsharing program because of its leased nature. If you encounter their car through a carsharing program, and like the car, you can then order your own if you wish. Hmm, interesting possibility except I don't think there's many people using carsharing programs. This may be a questionable part of their plan, one I think most Americans will have difficulty overcoming.
In any case the overall vision is that the car company will be offering a range of services related to the vehicle, and charging a monthly fee. This includes car insurance, maintenance, wireless internet access, and more. The CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, has described a meeting he once had with car company executives. The exchange started with the question, what's the monthly lease or car loan payment for the typical car. Then he asked how much in monthly fees would be required for a car company to give the car away for free. His point was that if a gadget maker could offer enough services bundled with the gadget, the gadget could be given away for free, and the customer is obligated to continue paying for the services.
The Think is coming close to this model. They're offering to sell the base vehicle inexpensively, and bundle with that vehicle a range of services.
A thought in my mind is, who owns the vehicle itself. There have been instances of computer companies selling a cheap or zero-cost computer, expecting to make a mint by in monthly service fees. But instead the geek crowd bought the cheap computer, didn't buy the service package, and installed Linux on the cheap computer, driving the computer maker out of business because they lost their shirt giving away hardware.
If the customer owns the Think vehicle who says they have to buy battery service from Think?
The Green Car Club unites owners and enthusiasts of environmentally cleaner cars.
Greener vehicles are here - and they’re not just for environmentalists! They are “no-compromise” cars. As performance has soared, so has popularity. Advanced cars, SUVs, pickups, and buses offer better performance, more convenience, and lower driving costs. The Toyota Prius has received numerous awards including the “2004 North American Car of the Year.” The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has heralded hybrid vehicles and new clean gasoline vehicles as the “first fruit of California’s zero-emission program.” CARB has certified most hybrids as meeting their stringent AT-PZEV (Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emission Vehicles) standards.
Your source for news and information on the rapid advances in natural gas, biofuel, battery-electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. The Alternative Fuel Vehicle Group newsletters are the most widely read and respected publications covering alternative fuel vehicles. Each newsletter includes a searchable archive of back issues.
Provides a model for more evenly determining the efficiency of different transportation methods. It is difficult to compare efficiency because of the number of variables. For example if you have two bicyclists riding the same electric bicycle, what is the relative efficiency? One might be a strong cyclist and able to pedal more than the other, and thereby use less power to go the same difference.
Efficiency is determined by estimating the number of passenger-kilometers obtained per unit of thermal energy present in the fuel consumed.
James Lovelock is an independant scientist who has been nurturing the Gaia model of understanding the earth. He's published a string of books claiming the planet we call Earth is a living being he names Gaia. e.g. Gaia : A New Look at Life on Earth He began this work as a space scientist advising NASA on how would they determine whether there was "life" on other planets, such as Mars. That is, given the sparse set of instruments we can send to Mars, which ones should be sent to make the measurements required to determine whether "life" exists there. The question sent him to pondering life on this planet, leading him to recognize the planet as a whole being a living organism.
I say this to help give context to an article he has written fortelling a disastrous change in Gaia. The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years He's saying that the global warming phenemona is Gaia developing a "fever", that the historical record of this planet shows several fevers which occurred, and that in the past those fevers took 100,000 years to heal.
When earth has a "fever" it undergoes a climate change with an expansion of desert lands, the heat around the equator becoming unbearable for most life (including humans) and that as a result he expects billions of humans to die.
This may very well be what will occur. We are beginning to see alarming signs such as the melting of the permafrost in the arctic.
However in the recent few days I've heard a couple spiritual teachers talking about the apocalypse period described in the Book of Revelations. That book is a set of visions an early prophet received about the future of humanity. It's a rather disturbing part of the Bible since it describes a horrible war, disease, famine, environmental problems, and more. But the book also ends with a great deal of hope, with a "New Heaven and New Earth". The book is also hard to interpret and understand.
These two teachers, Ron Roth and Gregg Braden, have both studied the ancient writings of a wide range of traditions. They both said a similar thing about the Revelations. First, that many of the predictions in it have already come to pass. e.g. The Ukranian name for Chernobyl means "Wormwood" which, in Revelations, was a star that burned on the earth, which is essentially what happened at Chernobyl.
They both teach about the power of prayer, in an authentic form of prayer practiced by ancient mystics. Both, especially Gregg Braden, talk about the cycles of history recorded in the ancient texts and how the ancient teachings talk about a cataclysmic time which will happen about now. It's not just the book of Revelations, but other ancient traditions predicted apocalypse. But they all suggested prayer as the way humanity could avoid the fate.
Why can't we make a bold project like this in the U.S.??? Why instead do we have to beat up smaller countries for their oil??? NO FRENCH TRAINS WILL USE FOSSIL FUELS BY 2026, SAYS PRESIDENT CHIRAC French President Chirac has declared that France will move towards electric trains, and biodiesel powered trains. That they'll improve their nuclear plants going to a third and fourth generation design. That they'll accelerate development of solar energy, biomass fuels, etc. And that the result will be zero usage of fossil fuels to run the train system.
It's interesting to look at an investors viewpoint on "energy" and the oil supply issue. The Potential Emerging Energy Crunch (by Sol Palha) He lists several potential energy sources and points out how they all have problems preventing wide use right now. The issue is the high oil prices we saw over the last year, and he is trying to say the energy prices will continue to be high for the forseeable future, and that there is one solution: Uranium and Nuclear Power.
Hurm. Apparently Uranium is a hot thing to invest in right now ... my office-neighbor who's a serious day trader type of investor, he's really focussed on Uranium right now.
His reasoning about Uranium is there's a serious growth in Uranium demand around the world, not only from new reactors but also from stockpiling activities.
That may be, but I find his reasoning overall suspicious. First, Uranium and Nuclear Power is not a substitute for oil. No-way-no-how will you ever drive up to a fueling station and ask to fill-er-up with Uranium.
Uranium and Nuclear Power can only provide heat, from which they make electricity. Hence, Nuclear Power can run our homes and factories, but not our cars unless we convert to electric cars.
The energy price problem of the last year is oil prices. It is for oil we are fighting the wars in the Middle East. That's because the U.S. has stupiedly made a dependency on oil to run our economy.
In fact all the energy alternates he discusses produce electricity and aren't suitable for vehicles unless the U.S. were to convert to electric cars.
He does miss out on one glaringly important alternate energy source that's currently a rising star: Biodiesel. Biodiesel has an interesting advantage that it can be grown "anywhere", is simple to make, and can easily drive a diesel engine.
Now, back to the author of the post above. He's clearly an investment advisor. It's well known that investment advisors are more often than not pushing "products" which will drive investment transactions regardless of how sound an investment they are.
A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries—and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. The details of the technology, already licensed to BetaBatt Inc., appears in today’s issue of Advanced Materials.
They're talking about using it for low-power-demand things like pacemakers. So it's probably not suitable for an EV.
