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. 

The Ultimate Energy Saving Tool: Trust

October 10, 2009

Here is an odd leap from the abstract to the concrete. It will make sense, though, if you follow the thinking. Trust me.

To found a construction project in trust is to save money (and energy, more on this later). This I know in my bones from having lived on projects founded in trust, that go on to be successful by all the usual measures: budget, function, grand opening dates, reputation of the facility, reputation and profitability of the organizations that put it up. On the other hand are projects shaped by people who are niggardly in advancing trust to the undertaking, where collapse and failure is the inevitable, miserable result.

Rex Miller et. al. just published The Commercial Real Estate Revolution, which I've just begun, but can already tell is on target about much of what ails the construction industry, described by the book as "broken." On the first page Revolution claims there is a 50 percent waste factor in the $1.3 trillion U.S. construction market (need more proof though to swallow that 50 percent number). And that a good portion of the waste results from lack of trust.

Paperless

October 04, 2009

We went paperless. 

On the construction project just completed, we used a paperless submittal process. For those not familiar with how a commercial construction project is managed, the submittal process is a last check before materials are ordered and building components fabricated. Subcontractors provide shop drawings, cut sheets, and samples to ensure the right things are procured, and to coordinate the work before a dozen guys with tools are standing around ready to install them.

The submittal usually involves lots of big paper (think of the blue lines you see architects rolling out in TV ads or movies) in multiple copies, and the byzantine, time consuming practice of transcribing notes (by hand!) to each of those copies. 

Photo: ღĴęNňζ™(OFF) on flickr

Sequestering Carbon: the Answer Could Be at Our Feet

September 26, 2009

Went to a meeting of the North Texas Energy & Environment Club, a well attended affair with a nice mix of students, staff and faculty from the University of North Texas. Met Greg Hawk, who whispered in my ear that he knew a little something about a process (possibly carbon negative, possibly market worthy) that would sequester carbon in an agrichar (see biochar). I leaned in. He said "I'm sure you're familiar with pyrolysis." I nodded yes, because maybe this is something that I should be familiar with (and, assuming I caught the word correctly, I would look it up later, so when I nodded yes what I really meant was that I would become familiar with pyrolysis shortly).

Hmm? What? No one told me about a new, carbon negative way of sequestering carbon. The last time I paid attention to carbon sequestration, it was all about deep sixing CO₂ in the Marianas Trench or the Norwegian North Sea, which came with big price tags and fretting about the CO₂ leaking from its sequestered places. Now it appears we can just burn up some agrichar and throw it in the dirt, where it remains, inert and sequestered.

Try This Pairing: Big Companies and Urban Wind

September 20, 2009

Urban wind offers much: power made where it's used in dense urban settings, a new layer stacked atop the traditional renewable offerings, no big transmission obstacles to choke an urban wind project and keep it from seeing the light of day, wind dovetails well with the other urban renewable: solar (which of course is at work when the sun's up, whereas wind is usually working harder at night when the sun is down and the night breezes blow).

Meanwhile, corporations everywhere are setting up green storefronts, then scrambling to put product behind their "we are sustainable" storefront. As they do, urban wind struggles on in the "garages" of so many start-ups. 

You two ought to get together. 

Appliance Makers are the Good Guys

September 15, 2009

Toby Considine calls himself an "integrator of the un-integratable." He works as an infrastructure analyst, an in-house consulting resource to the Facilities Services group at the University of North Carolina and occasionally advises building owners and engineering companies on business strategies.

In a recent blog, Energy Collisions and Autonomous Appliances, he points out that appliance makers, "are starved for information," particularly when it comes to pricing energy in applicances that work in a smart grid. As Toby sees it, the appliance makers are the good guys and the energy suppliers the curmudgeon defenders of old world, fixed-price electricity. The energy suppliers need to give it up, and provide the price signal information the appliance makers crave.

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

How to Buy the Road

September 12, 2009

The mileage fee is a sensible plank that belongs in any platform developed to remake the way we use energy. Among its other virtues, the mileage fee creates a way to incentivize efficient use of a constrained resource: the road.

In Bern Grush's blog dedicated to exploring the mileage fee (where he responds to this old PowrTalk post) he identifies a complex of purposes that would try to shape road policy, then argues that the mileage fee is the one tool capable of addressing them all:

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

Big Fat Roof

September 01, 2009

Oh yeah, the guy with the big fat walls? He has a big fat roof too. Three quarter inch concrete shingles that contribute to his skinny little utility bill. 

When neighbors replace their roofs on account of hail damage, he doesn't.