Electric Cars and a Smarter Grid

ZapcarPeter DaSilva for The New York TimesZapcar electric cars charging in Califorina. Analysts are sanguine about this kind of thing becoming more common — someday.

Electric cars and a smart electric grid have a bright future, according to panelists at a roundtable discussion on the subject that I attended last Friday in Boston.

“I would say that electricity is a vastly superior fuel for the light vehicle fleet,” said Willett Kempton, a professor and alternative energy specialist at the University of Delaware.

And in a true smart grid, electric cars will not only be able to draw on electricity to run their motors, they will also be able to do the reverse: send electricity stored in their batteries back into the grid when it is needed. In effect, cars would be acting like tiny power stations.

“Most days, most cars are going to have lots of extra battery capacity,” said Mr. Kempton, noting that on average, American automobiles get driven for just one hour each day. Electrifying the entire vehicle fleet would provide more than three times the U.S.’s power generation, he said.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates interstate transmission of electricity, is on board with the idea.

“Vehicle-to-grid is, I believe, the salvation of the automotive industry in the United States,” declared Marc Spitzer, an agency commissioner who was also on the panel.

Sven Thesen, the communication and technology director for Better Place, a start-up that is gaining traction (see this recent New York Times article) in its effort to create a network for electric cars in various countries, likened the concept of electric cars to cellphones.

“Fifteen years ago, how many people had a cellphone?” he asked.

Now, people are used to cellphone subscription plans and plugging the phone into the wall at night, Mr. Thesen reasoned, so a switch to electric cars would also be manageable.

And where does Better Place fit in?

“We will own the battery. We will always own the batteries,” said Mr. Thesen. “You guys own the cars.”

He envisioned “hundreds of thousands” of charging spots, as well as a number of stations where drained batteries could be exchanged for fresh ones.

A key thing, he said, will be to recharge the batteries at an acceptable time for the electricity grid — to “make sure people aren’t charging at the very peak, peak time,” like late afternoon when the electricity grid is already weighted down by demands like air conditioning.

Battery recharging would typically take two to four hours, he said.

So far Israel, Denmark, Australia, Hawaii and California’s Bay Area have plans to implement the Better Place model. Mr. Thesen said that a factory in Turkey was being refurbished to be able to produce 100,000 electric vehicles a year.

But a large-scale system of electric cars and smart grids is unlikely to be ready soon.

Asked when there might be one million electric vehicles on the road that could also feed their battery capacity back into the grid in a two-way exchange, the panelists generally said between 2017 and 2020.

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Smart Grid An Invaluable Idea Worldwide /
Buildings could become the new power plants

BRUSSELS ? In the city of the future, could power suppliers be rivalled by innovative construction firms? An embryonic movement is growing in Europe to build “smart cities” that will challenge the status quo.
The vision is fuelled by the fear of climate change and the need to find green alternatives to dirty coal, unpopular nuclear power and unreliable gas imports from Russia.
Such cities would become self-contained units, their buildings gleaning energy from the powerful weather systems sweeping across their roofs and feeding it down to homes below and vehicles in the streets.
Electric cars in the garages would double as battery packs for when energy supplies are scarce. Every scrap of waste food, garden trimmings and even sewage would be used to ferment gas.
Facing up to the end of their traditional business model, utilities are mapping a long-term survival strategy.
“A very different business model will emerge over time,” said Gearoid Lane, managing director of British Gas New Energy, the utility’s green division. “If any energy company ignores the long-term impact on future fossil-fuel-backed energy sales, they will be in for a shock.”
The idea of self-sufficient cities is gaining currency in the European Union, which has set itself the ambitious task of cutting carbon dioxide (CO{-2}) emissions to one-fifth below 1990 levels by 2020 ? the biggest cuts anywhere in the world.
“In 25 years from now, millions of buildings … will be constructed to serve as both ‘power plants’ and habitats,” says writer and economist Jeremy Rifkin, who has advised governments and corporations on tackling climate change and energy security.
At the hub of the system would be a “smart electricity grid” that allows electricity to flow where it is needed most and that dissipates energy spikes as weather systems sweep through.
“The more fluctuating energy you have from renewables, the more it makes sense to have a smart grid,” said Markus Ewert from the new technologies team of German utility E.ON AG. “It would help stabilize the energy flows, so you don’t come up against the limits of the grid.
“Electric vehicles could be connected to the grid and could store energy at times when too much is produced ? and they could feed it back into the grid when there’s not enough.”
While utilities such as E.ON are looking for opportunities, there is also strong suspicion that others are trying to preserve their vested interests and slow the pace of change in Brussels, the main driver of European climate regulation.
That suspicion was fuelled last month when a plan to put €500-million ($797-million) into researching smart cities was scrapped.
“It’s stunning that funding was kicked out, and it’s pretty clear the big electricity utilities were not innocent,” said Green Party member Claude Turmes, who last year helped draft EU green energy policy. “Their influence on policy-making is tremendous,” he added.
The reason the funding was dropped is not clear, but the challenge facing Europe’s big power generators is obvious ? insulating or rebuilding Europe’s rickety housing stock could cut heating bills from 30 to 80 per cent, which would slash demand for their product.
Not only would smart cities slowly reduce energy needs, they would also start producing their own over time.
Much of the technology needed is still a distant dream ? but not all of it.
French construction company Bouygues Immobilier is working on an office in Meudon, western Paris, which uses 4,000 square metres of solar panels to meet not only its own energy needs but also to export surplus energy back to the power grid.
“We have entered an era of breakthroughs and of a technological revolution in the construction sector,” said Eric Mazoyer, deputy managing director of Bouygues Immobilier.
“Because tenants will pay 60 per cent less in electricity bills, we can charge higher rents and we will sell the surplus of electricity back to [French utility Electricite de France] EDF,” he added.
Myriad other examples exist throughout Europe, but at the heart of the plan is the philosophy that energy, ideas and enthusiasm are most easily shared in densely populated urban areas.
“Cities are a perfect for promoting change and renewable energies,” said Mr. Turmes, the politician. “Cities can serve as innovation platforms, creating clusters of businesses around green energy, and they control urban planning and parking slots, so they can promote electric transport systems.”
Environmentalists see another advantage to local entities ? they have a degree of autonomy beyond the reach of federal government and can often make tough decisions: for example, California’s climate goals and London’s congestion charging.
This week, the mayors and deputies of more than 300 mainly European cities are due in Brussels to sign a covenant pledging to cut their cities’ greenhouse gas emissions above and beyond the EU targets.
“It’s a very new way of doing things,” said Gerard Magnin of Energie-Cites, a group of green local authorities. “It’s about giving power to society, so society can put pressure on the institutions. By demonstrating people are ready for change, the cities will help the governments.”
European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs estimates the cities involved will together save $12-billion a year in fuel.
So how do energy companies cope with such upheaval?
Much can be learned from other sectors undergoing similar revolution, such as telecoms, which suddenly hit fierce competition from cable and Internet providers, or the music industry, which is struggling to cope with digital MP3 uploads.
“The MP3 was the first open platform that the music industry couldn’t control,” said Tim Hole of Audio Authority Management, a London music manager who is trying to keep pace with change.
“It took a company from a completely different sector to step in and take control of things ? Apple coming from the computer industry to deliver iTunes and the iPod,” he added. “You may see that start to happen in the energy sector.
“To survive, you have to get closer to your customers, so you can keep up with their changing expectations,” he added.
Many in the energy sector already expect their new rivals to be constructors or property developers like Bouygues.
“We have had some interesting discussions with developers,” said Mr. Lane of British Gas. “Whether they will develop the expertise in-house, or work in partnerships with energy companies, remains to be seen.
“We have 10,000 engineers out there every day, installing and servicing boilers,” he added. “There’s a relationship of trust already. That model will become more and more valuable when it comes to selling renewables and microgeneration.”
E.ON’s Mr. Ewert says one winning technology could be biogas, which can be fermented from farm and domestic waste or even sewage, and then be piped through existing gas networks.
“Biogas can be produced at a much smaller scale than natural gas, and without such huge investments,” he said. “From our point of view, it makes absolute sense to feed the biogas into the gas grid. The infrastructure is already there.”
Rejecting suggestions that utilities are slowing progress, he pointed to the Swedish city of Malmo, where E.ON already provides a cluster of 1,500 homes with renewable energy and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, where it is also involved.
“We want to understand where are the opportunities in smart cities and where are the limits,” he said.
Thank you !

It’s exciting to hear people say vehicle-to-grid has a big future, having hoped for some years that there’s a role for it to play in the developing electric car arena. But after interviewing Ford’s Nancy Gioia at the recent Detroit Auto show, I’m now unsure of both the timescales involved, or how much the power and auto companies are behind it as a fundamental concept.

Gioia, who’s Ford’s Director of Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Hybrid Vehicle Platforms, told me that – according to the power company partners Ford is working with – the electricity grid is a long, long way off being ready to support vehicle-to-grid capabilities. Instead, the focus over the coming years will apparently be on including the vehicle’s battery as part of a local home or office area network. (for more see here: //blip.tv/file/1706075)

One further question I think is fundamental for those involved in this technology’s development to answer, before it can go mainstream, is how the control systems are developed. Consumers will need confidence that – should they need to use their car at an unexpected time – they won’t go out to find its battery has been too greatly drained by the grid…

I don’t think many drivers are going to go for the idea of having their batteries drained by a “smart grid” when the car is parked.

There is no perpertual motion. Charge, drain, repeat is extremely inefficient. Rather than setting up the public for disappointment (see ethanol), plug-n electric advocates should push the very real, if not sexy, advantages.

Where are you going to get enough lithium to make all of these batteries? There are only 3 or 4 countries with lithium. Aren’t we just exchanging one nonrenewable resource for another?

C Dumke

Until we find enough Lithium in this country and then permit the tens of thousands of acres of it that will need to be mined, we should not to to electric cars.
We have no known Lithium deposits that could sustain domestic battery production. Most of the worlds Lithium is located in Bolivia, 50% plus. Which means we would be extremely vunerable to Bolivia for our transportation needs, to a degree which we have never been to a foreign country.
Bolivia is no friend of the USA.

It’s doubtful the current grid configuration could handle any significant demand when the cars of the future are plugged-in. The whole infrastructure needs to be revamped, from electrical generation to transmission of to user sources and, finally, how to make plug-in sites available to city dwellers? And who is going to pay for all this???…..don’t look at me pal I may be out on the street before long.

Let’s not confooze folks who think electric cars are only going to be viable on an exchange grid complex. Most of us are waiting to be able to plug into a 120v line like I do when my tractor battery needs a “refill”.

I liken electric grid and renewable to the economic and political and military fiasco of the Iraq war. The toll has been far greater on soldiers but also contemplate the affect on the budget deficit which created the tax breaks for the super wealthy, the hedge funds to protect the insurance and mortgage industries against a decline and the spending of hundreds of billions on the war machine some of which went to fraud and much of which to rebuild Iraq while our infrastructure has languished.

Alternative is no longer an alternative. Oil is the alternative. Renewable is the energy equations equalizer for the non Muslim world.

It might be more prudent to discuss the future of electric buses (or bus/trams). The hybridization of express and local routing that they represent could potentially serve even our most sprawling cities better than a fleet of electric cars. Pug-in electric cars don’t address the fundatmental problem of traffic congestion and its essential inefficiency both in terms of energy and travel time.

Smart grid great
Dumb govt. not
Combine the two and it will be a long time before anything real exists. ( gov could not
switch to digital Xmission without delay )
If smart grid means cheaper watts for homes
at night why would the electric co. want that?
ELECTRIC CARS super lets drive foward
on that frount without confusing or delaying it with the above.
Finally there may be new energy storage
that requires less lithium.
People that read this are sharper 5than the average bear. Cheers

The real question is, where does all that electricity come from? Are we going to burn more oil, natural gas, or (gasp) coal to produce it?

There are two ways to make our energy use better: Become more efficient (i.e. railways replacing cars and trucks, weatherizing homes, etc.), and tap clean, renewable energy sources.

The cleanest, most renewable energy source that [almost] nobody is talking about is geothermal heat exchange (GHE) systems. Just a few feet underground the temperature is constant, meaning it is much warmer than the air in winter and much cooler in the summer. This temperature difference can be tapped to generate energy to heat and cool homes and offices, and generate electricty. There are about 600,000 GHE installations working in the U.S. alone; that number could be tripled in three years, and millions of homes and office buildings could install GHE systems over the next ten years.

Demand for energy, to heat our buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer, is highest at the very time when supply is also the greatest. The elegance of that is wonderful.

The best part? It is truly cyclical. The heat comes out of the ground in the winter, and goes back in during the summer.

I think this V2G model works for Smart Place where, as they say, they own the battery forever though a company called Think has a better model. Think rents batteries to their drivers and then sells the degraded batteries to utilities for stationary storage once the batteries are no longer useful for transportation.

//money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/08/01/100138830/index.htm

Because the specifications for transportation grade batteries are so demanding, it seems fairly likely that a battery will spend about three quarters of its useful life as stationary storage rather than in a vehicle. If super capacitors that last much longer than their vehicle pan out, then this may be extended even longer.

It would seem that the bulk of storage will come not from vehicles themselves, but from the batteries they are finished with. If that is the case, then there may not be all that much incentive to tap (and degrade) batteries that are still involved in transportation as grid backup. Utilities would have to compensate car owners for both the electricity they provide and the battery degradation. At current transportation battery prices, that is well beyond the cost of spinning reserve. On the other hand, the cost of a used transportation battery will be set by the next cheapest form of scalable dispatchable storage such as air pressure storage less the battery recycle value. So, the used batteries are almost arbitrarily cheap since an arbitrarily large fraction of their cost of production can be loaded on their use in transportation.

Under some reasonable assumptions, batteries cast off from fully electrified transportation can provide about one half day of our total power consumption including electrified transportation. This may be the lowest cost energy storage solution just because we are going to make the batteries anyway.

//mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/roof-pitch.html

No matter how you slice it we need a carbon TAX to accelerate all these important projects. The only question is a carbon TAX the kind of change Obama believes in. Based on his campaign rhetoric and what comes out of The White House so far it seems unlikely.

We may have to wait for the next President unless circumstances and an enlightened electorate ( we can dream can’t we ) forces his hand.

Wireless transmission of electrical energy needs to be funded for effective liberty from petrol based fuel products to occur. Unfortunately, there is very little specific funding for wireless transmission in the stimulus bill that was just signed by the USA President. In fact, almost none at all.

This is an indea that has been on the back burner for some time. The time has never looked better to begin a turn towards distrubuted power and the smart grid, which is something that R. Buckminster Fuller envisioned and ecouraged planners to think about long before our current situation.

At first blush, the smart grid idea is a step in the right direction, but I would disagree profoundly with a system that drained my car battery to feed itself. You’d be legislating mobility, objectionable in a 24-hour region like New York. What if I lived in Brooklyn and worked weird hours in Long Island, for example? What if I needed to drive to a hospital at 3 AM? Our subways don’t shut down at night, our cars cannot and should not.

We definitely need an urban charging grid if the electric car is to find a place in town, where it’s needed most. But it has to adopt to the lives of the people, not the other way around, or nobody will want to use it. Start with car plugs mounted on lamp posts that activate with credit/debit cards. Grow the system with charging plugs at parking lots and existing garages. Go where the drivers are and the drivers will choose the system that works best.

” Electrifying the entire vehicle fleet would provide more than three times the U.S.’s power generation.”

This guy and Madoff should get together.

Are electric cars really more green? — Part I

Before asking the question whether an electric car will become a feasible replacement to the “combustion engine” car, there is a question that needed to be answered first.

Are electric cars really green than combustion engine cars?

At a superficial glance, the answer seems to be straightforward; unlike the “combustion engine” car the electric car does not emit the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases.

Well and good. But there is a caveat to the accuracy of the aforementioned statement, and this would require answering the question:

How is the electricity produced to power the car? At present, there are a number of ways of producing electricity.

The most common methods involve burning natural gas, oil or coal to power the engines to generate electricity. [There are other methods of course, but that will be explored in other postings.] Each of the aforementioned “primary energy sources” generates carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases plus other pollutants coming from the contaminants or byproducts of using these “primary energy sources”. Among these fuels natural produces the least of the “dirty byproducts”, then oil and then coal which produces the most unwanted pollutants.

EFICIENCY OF ENERGY CONVERSION

There is a law in science (more specifically, thermodynamics) that. in layman’s term, would state that conversion of one form of energy to another — in this case the primary energy sources (natural gas, oil and coal) to electricity — is not 100% efficient. The other byproduct of such conversion is HEAT (***see below for more discussion, as well as other factors that affect energy conversion efficiency), usually dissipated into the environment.

In effect therefore, the more energy convertion stages there are the less efficient the process is. To apply the aforementioned law related to energy conversion, assuming all other things being equal (and this is not always the case, but too complex to elaborate here) it would be more efficient (and thus less production of greenhouse gases and other pollutants) to use the amount of primary energy sources directly in this case the production of MECHANICAL ENERGY to run the car:
**********************************
The direct conversion:

NATURAL GAS or OIL –> (combustion engine) –> MECHANICAL ENERGY (to run the car) + HEAT + “unburned NATURAL GAS or OIL”

the above will be more efficient than via ELECTRICITY

NATURAL GAS or OIL –> (electric generation process) –> ELECTRICITY + HEAT + “unburned NATURAL GAS or OIL”–> (electric car) –> MECHANICAL ENERGY (to run the car) + HEAT
**********************************

I think within a very short time the need for electricity will stabilize because of all the changes by conservation, minimal population growth in the industrialized countries, and better transmission from power sources. Wind, solar and nuclear could easily change our electrical sources. Electric car use, power storage from both batteries and compressed air, and stabilized populations(Japan for example is expected to have its population decrease by 50% over the next 40 years) are the answer and mass transit will play a smaller part in the future. We need forward thinking, Gathering energy from solar and wind during the day at home and then charging our cars at night from these sources are ready now . Build the damn cars and watch us change our habits.

I cant wait to charge my car from my own solar panel.

I’ll bet I can get that done long before we have a smart grid, or clean coal, or more nukes.

I appreciate big government green initiatives but inherent in that is slow movement and wasteful spending.

I appreciate our energy company’s trying to do something but they cant really justify it until there is a price on the externalities like carbon emissions.

I appreciate the big US car companies making a hybrid or electric car or two under government duress, but somebody else will likely get my business.

I believe in capitalism, American innovation, our ability to rapidly move an industry forward through entrepreneurship. That will solve these problems, not big government, big auto or big energy. They are all large ships not easily turned.

Are electric cars really more green? — Part 2: Coal in Electricity Generation

Coal as a primary energy source — to generate electricity to power electric cars — has the same theoretical efficiency problems outlined in the previous post (#8). At the same time, the abundance of coal in countries US makes it much cheaper as a mode of generating electricity. The added bonus is that the use of coal — if used more widely in countries like the US and other countries with major reserves — will reduce reliance in foreign oil or natural gas. Widespread use of coal for electricity generation has the potential ripple effect of reducing the potential upward creep of the price of oil and natural gas.

Unfortunately, the current technologies used in the generation of electricity from from existing coal resources produce more greenhouse gases and other pollutants than natural gas or refined oil. Coal use in generation of electricity has been the major cause of “acid rain” that has devastated many forest and aquatic ecosystems as well as a major contributor of the greenhouses gases trapped in the atmosphere. Years of coal use in electricity generation led also to the “black spill from improperly contained coal ash” in states like Tennessee. The coal ash is known to have many toxic metals and other pollutants.

It should be noted that from scientific and technical perspectives, existing technologies as well as further research may develop more technologies that will not only improve the technical efficiency of electricity generation from coal, but even allow more efficient use of heat (a byproduct), as well as improved processing and containment of the greenhouse gases and other pollutants associated with coal. Unfortunately, the Electric Power Industry has resisted the implementation and worked vigorously to block any efforts by the US Congress or local governments of these “green technologies” for more efficient use and less pollution by products from coal.

There is a more significant consideration than the recalcitrance of the Electric Power Industry to adopt or develop green technologies to improve electricity generation from coal. Like natural gas and oil, coal by nature is an organic material; as such during electricity generation, it will always produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

In effect, therefore, coal may prove to be cheapest way to generate electricity to fuel electric cars. However, if the goal is to reduce generation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, coal will not be the most prudent “primary energy source” to produce electricity to fuel cars.

CGC (#18 and #21),

You make an error in not delving into the efficiency of the internal combustion engine (ICE) and that of power generation. Average ICE efficiency might be around 20%.

//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_efficiency

For an electric car, with typical charging efficiency we may be looking at 80%. To electrify transportation, we are looking at new generation so that would be a mix of natural gas and wind. Gas is 60% efficient and wind, in this context, is 100% efficient even with transmission losses. So, we might call the whole thing 80% efficient with transmission losses. that makes the overall efficiency of the electric car 64% efficient while that of the ICE car 20% efficient.

One might think that one could get past the problems with the ICE by going with a gas turbine as in some tanks but it would be very difficult to get a combined cycle going so that the efficiency would still be well below the 60% achieved at power plants.

It would be very bad idea to build new coal plants to power electric cars, but at 40% efficient with 7% transmission loss the efficiency (30%) still beats the average ICE. Going with hybrid technology that runs the ICE in a more efficient manner can help, but then one can also (stupidly) build a better coal plant as well. Super critical steam plants are 48% efficient. Integrated gasification combined cycle plants might do better though it would be better to abandon coal before attempting to find out.

Looking at the efficiency turns out to be very important for understanding if electric cars help. As it turns out, they do.

I say we go back to riding horses.

Close down the oil companies.

Close down all the car companies.

Close down all the companies making weapons.

And let’s just walk and ride a horse.

It’s the only way to save the planet from climate change.

Evert time we go into one of these discussions I can’t help but think the following…

Most energy we have is a byproduct of the sun. The closest to that source is solar. The furthest might be fossil fuels (a long ago byproduct of the sun).

Whenever we take a source, convert it and then use it to generate electricity (usually steam generation) or use it to run an internal combustion engine it seems counter intuitive efficiency wise. (Then we ship that energy long distances to add to the inefficiency.)

How can all that possibly be more efficient than local solar? Is it that all we need is the time and R&D money spent to get solar “up to speed” so to speak?

It’s the only thing we wont run out of, it’s the cleanest source we have, and we can convert it locally and immediately. Running cars on it’s output has so many good points one can’t help but wonder.

If only this would happen!

I personally wouldn’t count on the “Big Three” actually implementing any of these new technologies in the near future. Of course building a new alternative energy infrastructure would put millions of now unemployed people to work, but why rebuild when your not done wrecking everything.

If the “Big Three auto manufacturers aren’t building alternative energy vehicles with the money they’re getting from Congress, then what are they doing with it?

I wouldn’t be waiting around for alt energy infrastructure and smart electric grids, and I wouldn’t wait around for the “Big Three” to actually build a viable automobile that runs solely on electric power. The “Evil Three” go hand in hand with the big oil bankers.

I would however, take a serious look at smaller companies that have developed some very exciting alternative energy technology. Wheego Electric Cars, a division of RTEV, is officially launching its U.S. dealer network. The first car will be the Wheego Whip, which is most certainly not a smart for two, and the plan is to find 50 dealers in America who want to sell them. Wheego
has an exciting line of electric cars that I’d like to see on the roads very soon. The following article has more
info on these great electric cars: //www.alternativeenergynewswire.com/electric-cars#electric-cars