Doing Volt Math at the Cracker Barrel

November 04, 2009

Project Get Ready emailed me a summary of their latest efforts to get cities ready to put electric vehicle charging infrastructure in place. One thing they've done is put together "Plugging In: A Stakeholder Investment Guide for Public Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure" to help organizations figure out the costs, the pros, and the cons of deploying charging stations for electric vehicles.

A scenario that has always intrigued me is places like Cracker Barrel providing free charging stations (like the free wi-fi you get at a coffee shop). It's cold and rainy and you're hungry, so you stop at a Cracker Barrel to get a warm meal by their fireplace. You plug your car into their electric hitching post, in front of the rocking chairs there on the porch. Part of the draw to choose Cracker Barrel is that they're going to provide you with a free fill up.

Car Batteries, Dreamers and a Voice of Reason

October 17, 2009

The dreamers are dreaming up the Holy Trinity, a vision where electric vehicles, smart buildings and the smart grid come together in a synergistic marriage that transforms the way we use energy; that lets us ditch the oil-powered car. It is an intoxicating view that offers to solve multiple problems, and create whole new worlds of human enterprise and purpose. But the dream is hampered by at least this issue: finding a cost effective, production scale energy storage solution to help power those electric vehicles. Current thinking focuses on the lithium ion battery.

John Peterson, an energy sector lawyer focused on "guiding small growth-oriented companies through the corporate finance process" offers a sensible, constructive critique that the electric vehicle actually derails our quest to end our oil dependency. 

Battery Swap, Time Me

September 13, 2009

Better Place has a deal with Japan's government and the country's largest taxi operator to work out the details of doing a battery swap on an electric vehicle. 

Two things worth noting:

• Government support creates a welcome landing spot for Better Place, that could foster opportunities for the hosting country to produce and enjoy the technology Better Place deploys.

• Using a taxi company makes sense because it subjects the battery swap testing to the rigors, to the discipline, of an operational business enterprise. There's an implicit litimus test of being at least as quick as a gas station fill-up, and a taxi operation will demand that the swap meet this test.

Photo: Better Place on flickr

iCar

September 03, 2009

The day of the car that does what you want is coming. The iCar if you will. Ford is developing 21 Escapes that do vehicle-to-grid communication, where the driver gets to program "when to recharge the vehicle, for how long and at what utility rate" when it is connected and recharging from the grid. 

Good.

Cars that give you the option to get there fast or get there efficiently, to charge quickly or cost effectively, to secure a parking spot in a crowded central business district? 

Better.

And then, to top it off: "Dr. Jasna Tomic with CALSTART estimates that the national grid would only need 7 percent additional capacity to off-peak charge 100 million electric vehicles.Those same vehicles could provide 70 percent of the national grid’s needed peak power."

Best.

Make driving better. Tackle big energy issues.

Photo: Georg Hoermann on flickr

Ford CEO Paints the Future Electric

August 17, 2009

NPR's interview with Ford CEO Alan Mulally this morning painted a titillating vision where captains of industry coalesce around an electric car future. The wrap up to this morning's session with an American automaker was unfathomable even less than a year ago. Alan said this:

[go to the "Continue reading >" link below the ratings section]

Counting Plug Ins

July 13, 2009

There are so many plug in vehicle types now that Plug In America created this webpage to keep track.

Next: charging stations everywhere (like at this McDonald's), so plug in makers need to make lots of vehicles.

 

Matchmaking, Better Place and the Mileage Fee

June 21, 2009

Here's a little marriage that wants to be arranged: the Mileage Fee and Better Place's software platform.

The Mileage Fee offers a unique opportunity to put the traffic jam on a diet, and it is gaining traction as a way to deal with dissappearing gas tax revenues as people drive less, drive more fuel efficient cars, or eventually drive cars that don't use gas at all (read the preceding link commentary to feel the gaining traction part). To be deployed broadly, however, the mileage fee needs GPS systems to be manufactured into new vehicles.

Smart Garage

May 17, 2009

Consider these rather large silos of development:

• the electrification of cars
• renewable energy 
• smart, interactive buildings that use less energy (and sometimes even produce energy--the trend towards net zero and net plus)
• a smart, interactive electrical grid

The Most Important Mistakes Are Made On the First Day

April 04, 2009

"The most important mistakes are made on the first day of the project." This durable piece of thinking from the world of the architect and builder underscores the importance of setting off in the right direction. The cost of being a few degrees off, of setting up on the wrong bet, can multiply painfully as a project progresses. 

We are at the whistle clean beginning of so many monumental projects: the Smart Grid, the recharge grid for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, an array of renewable options, electric rail, the mileage fee; none existed at any sort of scale, even in our imagination, at the turn of the century. Yet all are being conceived and planned and implemented at a torrid pace, right now. We are ripe for making our biggest mistakes... RIGHT NOW.

Take the vehicle recharge grid. Several companies are developing charging stations and the attendant infrastructure for cars (Better Place, Electricite de France, Portland General Electric). If they got distracted by their focus to emerge from the array of technical possibilities with the best solution, or to be victors in the marketplace, we might make the important mistake of overlooking what is best for broad implementation of a charging infrastructure for cars. 

For example, not standardizing the charging station interface (the plug and the receptacle) to let any car use any station, the world over. Different car makers, different grid operators, maybe dozens of plug and receptacle types. A confounding interoperability impediment avoided simply by clicking a few degrees right or left, by agreeing to collaborate around a standard.  From the missed opportunity to collaborate, a recharge grid with features so messy and costly that a decade and a million charging stations down the road it is dismissed by the fickle consumer, with no marketplace victors.

Hopefully, attitudes like Better Place founder Shai Agassi's will permeate these undertakings. (When Wired asked Shai whether he was worried that competitors might steal his ideas, he responded: "The mission is to end oil, not create a company.") From such visionary underpinnings, the ventures launched today may well be driven by minds geared to avoid the most important mistakes. 

The most important mistakes are made on the first day of the project.

We are on the first day of the project.

Photo: W.J. Cendak II showing just a little of the iron and muscle that follows the first day of the project, bringing up a tower crane.

Prime 7 Brings on the Night, Darkly

March 02, 2009

So if nighttime electricity went from being cheapo Economy 7 stuff to costlier Prime 7 stuff (because it fuels the national fleet), how might the skyline be transformed?

Imagine complex algorithms underlying the Smart Grid that offer up easy ways for businesses to structure their nighttime electricity use. The grocery store unlights its sign between 2 and 5 a.m. because there's not enough eyeballs to justify the cost. A commuter tells her car to charge between 3 and 5 a.m., recharging at the day's best rate to get to work and back. LED lights in widespread use because they cost out in the pricier Prime 7 cost structure (remembering that nighttime electricity is no longer a waste by-product of daytime production, it is the new "expensive-as-electricity but cheap-as-vehicle-fuel" commodity). Parking garages with occupancy sensors lighting occupied areas only (actually improving security by highlighting areas where the people are). Central business districts now quiet and dark, save for the special occasion: a holiday, or the championship victory.

Darker nights in trade for less expensive, clean, secure, home-grown vehicle fuel. Hardly seems like a compromise. Especially since most of us are in bed, asleep, anyway.

Photo:  Mr-Pink 007 on flickr