V2G - Power To The People  

V2G (vehicle to grid power) is starting to appear in the wild - The New York Times takes a look in "Power to the People: Run Your House on a Prius".

WHEN Hurricane Frances ripped through Gainesville, Fla., in 2004, Christopher Swinney, an anesthesiologist, was without electricity for a week. A few weeks ago, Dr. Swinney lost power again, but this time he was ready. He plugged his Toyota Prius into the backup uninterruptible power supply unit in his house and soon the refrigerator was humming and the lights were back on. “It was running everything in the house except the central air-conditioning,” Dr. Swinney said.

Without the Prius, the batteries in the U.P.S. unit would have run out of power in about an hour. The battery pack in the car kept the U.P.S. online and was itself recharged by the gasoline engine, which cycled on and off as needed. The U.P.S. has an inverter, which converts the direct current electricity from the batteries to household alternating current and regulates the voltage. As long as it has fuel, the Prius can produce at least three kilowatts of continuous power, which is adequate to maintain a home’s basic functions.

This form of vehicle-to-grid technology, often called V2G, has attracted hobbyists, university researchers and companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and Google. Although there is some skepticism among experts about the feasibility of V2G, the big players see a future in which fleets of hybrid cars, recharged at night when demand is lower, can relieve the grid and help avert serious blackouts.

Willett Kempton, a senior scientist in the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Delaware, said the power capacity of the automotive fleet was underutilized. Mr. Kempton is helping to explore the V2G capabilities of a fuel-cell bus and battery-electric vehicles. The technology is also well-suited for so-called plug-in hybrids, which are being developed by General Motors, Toyota and other automakers. Plug-in hybrids will use larger battery packs and recharge from a household outlet for 10 to 30 miles of electric-only driving. When modified, they can return electricity to the grid from their batteries.

Google has four Priuses with plug-in capacity at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. With some advice from P.G.& E., Google equipped one to supply power to the grid.

Keith Parks, an analyst at the Minneapolis-based utility Xcel Energy, offers what he calls a “pie-in-the-sky vision” for V2G in which a company would offer incentives to its employees to buy plug-in hybrids. The parking lot would be equipped with recharging stations, which could also return power to the grid from the vehicles.

AutoMotoPortal has a look at Volvo's new ReCharge plugin hybrid concept car.

Volvo is unveiling an innovative plug-in hybrid at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The ReCharge Concept is a specially designed Volvo C30 with individual electric wheel motors and batteries that can be charged via a regular electrical outlet. When fully charged the Volvo ReCharge Concept can be driven approximately 62 miles on battery power alone before the car’s four-cylinder 1.6 Flexifuel engine1 is needed to power the car and recharge the battery. The concept car also retains the Volvo C30’s lively and sporty drive thanks to an acceleration figure of 0-62mph in 9 seconds and a top speed of 100mph. ...

Operating costs are estimated to be about 80 percent lower compared to a similar petrol-powered car when using battery power alone and even drivers who cover more than the battery-only range will benefit from the ReCharge Concept. For a 150km (93 mile) drive starting with a full charge, the car will require less than 2.8 litres of fuel, giving the car an effective fuel economy of 1.9 l/100km (124mpg).

The only extra cost will be the electricity used during charging. The Volvo ReCharge Concept can be charged at any regular electric plug socket at convenient locations such as at home or work and a full recharge will take three hours. However, even a quick one hour charge provides enough power to cover just over 30 miles.

Jamais Cascio at "Open The Future" has a long essay on "The Problem of Cars".

Even among many of the generally tech-friendly and realistic bright green types, the automobile remains an irritant. It's not simply that the petroleum-powered internal combustion engine is an ecological disaster; the automobile, historically, has been a catalyst for many of the more damaging developments in our social geography, from the spread of suburbia and exurbia to the elimination (in many locations) of light rail lines, and continues to enable the proliferation of economic and social institutions of dubious long-term benefit (such as big-box retailers). In many ways, the automobile is the canonical example of a trigger for long-term, unanticipated and undesired results. If we think of the car in this way, it's clear that even shifting entirely to electric cars, biofuel cars, or cars that ran on pixie dust, would still enable many of the larger social pathologies that damage our climate, ecological, and social systems.

At the same time, the typical solutions offered in response -- remaking urban design, increased bus and rail use, increased walking and biking -- have significant drawbacks. The first is expensive and slow, and the latter two impose significant limitations to what one can accomplish over the course of the day. I sometimes think that calls for everyone to give up cars are sufficiently unrealistic that they may actually be counter-productive: if the only alternative under discussion is to completely rebuild our cities and make everybody walk to the bus stop, cars will remain firmly in place as the dominant transportation model.

It doesn't have to be that way. I have from the outset considered it a strength of the bright green philosophy that it values workable idealism, and recognizes the futility of telling people that the only way to solve problems is to make their lives viscerally worse. Moreover, one of the cornerstone concepts of bright green environmentalism is a recognition of the strength of distributed solutions over centralized technologies. Telling people just to give up cars is a startlingly old green concept for the new green generation.

To be clear, I'm not dismissing urban redesign and greater access to public transit & walking out of hand; the former is a terrific medium-term goal, and the latter is certain to be part of the solution to the looming climate disaster, especially as better urban designs make non-car transit more efficient. But demands for the immediate adoption of these approaches seem blind to the underlying reasons why the automobile culture is so deeply entrenched in Western society, and why it has become so attractive to nations seeing rapid economic development.

[This is a personal issue for me. Right now, I live some distance from my once/twice-weekly workplace, the Institute for the Future; because of the current housing market, selling our place and moving in closer isn't an option. If I take public transit, I must ride BART to a Cal-Train station, and take that to Palo Alto (fortunately, IFTF is just a block from the station there). If I time it just right, it will take no less than two hours -- longer, of course, if there's a delay and I miss my transfer (which happened the very first time I took the route). If I drive (my hybrid, naturally), it typically takes me 90 minutes, and can take as little as 75 minutes if the traffic is completely clear. Still a very long commute (fortunately, it's not daily), but with greater flexibility as to when I can leave and which route I can take if there's an unexpected delay. For now, I tend to swap back and forth between the two modes of transit.]

One way of re-examining this subject is to stop thinking about cars as "cars," and to start thinking about them in terms of the services they offer. This sort of abstraction is commonplace in the business consulting field -- it's not a carpet, it's a floor covering service. Surprisingly, that simple shift in perspective can sometimes elicit novel ideas. But it's important that new services that replace the old can replicate or improve upon the capabilities of the previous model.

Thinking about cars in this way, I would argue that a car is a way of providing:

* Personal mobility. The most obvious characteristic of the automobile, personal mobility means more than simply getting from one place to another. It encompasses: range and speed (being able to travel for great distances in a reasonable amount of time); carrying capacity (being able to carry items too large, bulky or awkward to carry by hand any significant distance); destination flexibility (being able to travel to one's exact destination, and to change destination along the way); and operational flexibility (being able to use the car for both short and long-range travel, to carry very little or a large amount, and to change uses mid-stream).

* Personal expression. Perhaps less obviously important, personal expression is in reality a key element of how drivers choose their vehicles. While this may seem like a superficial issue, consider: in a world where home ownership is out of reach for many people, the automobile becomes the biggest investment one will personally make -- the desire to have the car reflect one's personality (through color, design, or brand) is a near-inevitable result. As we move to urban models of higher-density shared buildings, such desire for personal expression via automobiles may actually increase.

* Independence. This is related to the previous two, and can best be summed up as: being able to use the car in a way that is not contingent upon the desires and needs of others. Total independence is not possible, of course (at the very least, one is supposed to obey traffic laws), but superficial independence -- being able to choose the radio station, to travel at any time of day or night, to be as messy or as neat as one wishes -- clearly is.

Thought of in this way, it's easy to see why urban redesign, public transit and walking/biking are having such a hard time replacing automobile use for most people. There are exceptions; for some people, these substitutions may be entirely adequate. But even people getting around fine without a car in San Francisco, New York, or London will acknowledge how overwhelmingly abundant cars are in those cities, and they aren't just the cars brought in by people from the 'burbs. ...

Tyler Hamilton at Clean Break has a post on blimp-like wind generators (yet another unusual way of harnessing wind power).

have to admit, at the time I wasn't so sure about Magenn's product, which is a wind generator that floats like a rotating blimp that's tethered to the ground. It's a novel and intriguing concept, based on the ideas of Magenn founder Fred Ferguson, who spent half his life studying and advancing the design of Hindenburg-like airships. Ferguson hired former Ottawa-area high tech guru Mac Brown who was then trying to raise $2 million to develop a prototype. This would form the basis for a range of systems from 1 kilowatt to 1.6 megawatts in nameplate power capacity. The goal was to have the first product available by the second half of 2006. That time came and went and, well, I kind of thought Magenn was limited to being a curiosity up against a barrage of skeptics and unable to raise enough capital.

Hiring Rivard, who you've got to think did his due diligence, brings credibility to the company and much-needed respect -- what it will need to bring in capital. Brown is still around, but he's now chief marketing officer and interim COO.

I had a chance this week to chat with Rivard about the move and his reasons for giving up hydrogen and fuel cells to pursue wind technology. He said Magenn first approached Hydrogenics to inquire about using hydrogen to lift its larger blimps, since hydrogen is cheaper than helium. The more he learned about Magenn and what it was trying to do the more interested he became, particularly at the idea of mass-manufacturing airships and bringing electricity to unserved areas of the world. Here are some select bits from the interview:

Why Magenn?: "It's a really interesting opportunity. It has a lot of potential for rural electrification and developing countries. This technology would allow the use of renewable energy around the clock regardless of siting. You have the opportunity here to electrify 2.1 billion people without electricity. If you have electricity at the village level, you can have vaccinations, refrigeration, water pumps driving water out of wells, an Internet connection, cellular power sites -- you can link it up to these $100 laptops that children could find in these developing regions of the world. All that's missing is electricity." ...

Renewable Energy Access has an article on the improving efficiency of thin film solar cells.

Oerlikon Solar, a global supplier of turnkey solutions for thin-film silicon solar modules, this week introduced its micromorph tandem technology, a combination of amorphous and microcrystalline materials on the top and bottom of a photovoltaic solar cell. Oerlikon claims that the cell will achieve efficiencies of 10% and higher “in the near future.”

The micromorph module technology is comprised of an amorphous top cell, which converts the visible part of the sun’s spectrum. The microcrystalline bottom cell absorbs light in the infrared spectrum. Because of this double layer, Oerlikon says the technology boosts the efficiency level by approximately 50% over traditional amorphous single cells.

“Our new micromorph tandem technology has the potential for efficiencies of over 10% and leads to a further reduction of the cost per watt peak,” said Dr. Uwe Krueger, Chief Executive Officer of Oerlikon. “All materials we utilize in our thin-film technology are non-toxic, low cost and readily available. The embodied energy used to produce our micromorph tandem modules is merely half versus crystalline cells.”

Joel Makower gets my award for bravery this week (and for some of the more mind bending mental images I've had in a while) with his tale of green corporate advocacy at the Burning Man festival - "The Green Man - Burning Questions at Burning Man".

I'll admit to having more than a little trepidation about speaking on this topic at this event. It wasn't my typical audience or venue, to say the least. Moreover, the Burning Man ethos is militantly anti-commercial. Once you buy an admission ticket, there's absolutely nothing for sale at Burning Man except ice and coffee. No advertisements, promotions, or other forms of commercialism are allowed or tolerated. Trading and gifting are the currencies of choice. Hard-core Burners even cover up the corporate logos on their vehicles and other possessions. (Rumor has it that several of the solar companies approached to do demonstration installations at the festival turned down the opportunity when they learned they couldn't display their company's logo.) You couldn't find a more anti-business crowd.

Given all this, how would Burners cotton to my observations about big, mainstream companies' earnest efforts to integrate green thinking into their operations in ways that create business value, not just PR points? Could they see any merit in the current wave of big business pronouncements about their green commitments and performance? I was warned that the audience wouldn't be passive -- they would speak their minds without hesitation -- which added to my trepidation.

The small crowd that showed up at the geodesic dome that served as a lecture space on the very hot Saturday afternoon turned out to be thoughtful, vocal, and anything but close-minded. The conversation that unfolded between Shaw and me -- and, very quickly, with the assembled group -- was gratifyingly constructive.

(Incidentally, speaking at Burning Man turns on its head that hackneyed bit of advice to nervous speakers that they should try to imagine the audience being naked. At Burning Man, there's little need for such imagination, given that some of the audience members actually weren't wearing clothes.)

It wasn't all agreement. There was more than a little skepticism about companies' motivations in "going green," but more than that I was struck by the audience's failure of imagination. I asked the group, which seemed overwhelmingly to dislike Wal-mart, what it would take for that company to be seen as green. No one had a clue. I threw out a few ideas -- "What if every Wal-mart store had a 'small-mart' inside with outlets featuring local merchants and products?" "What if every store was solar-powered, with excess energy fed back to the local community?" -- but there were no takers. Even this relatively creative bunch couldn't envision how a behemoth retailer could ever be an environmental role model. That's a concern -- not just for Wal-mart, or retailers in general, but for any big brand seeking to be seen as a model green citizen.

Time ran out before our conversation did -- always better than the alternative -- and the private discussions that followed suggested that, much as had happened with Shaw, the conversation may have enlightened a few of these souls. That was my goal, of course. I never set out trying to convince anyone about any particular company, focusing instead on the potential of business in general to be agents of change.

And along the way, if the conversation helps even one person understand that the road to a greener economy is neither straight nor smooth, that there will be many roadblocks and detours along the route of even the best-intentioned companies, and that it will require a robust conversation between consumers and companies about each party's expectations of the other as we travel this road together, then I feel it was time well spent.

Score one for "The Green Man."

James Howard Kunstler has a letter from a UK oilman talking about the abandonment of the UK by the oil industry. If North Sea reserves are depleting as fast as some seem to believe (the last report I noticed showed UK production had increased) then it makes sense for the UK and the oil industry to part ways - the UK doesn't have enough military strength nowadays to secure middle eastern or African oil reserves for their own companies, so they need to bite the bullet as fast as possible and switch to alternative energy sources - preferably not ones controlled by Tsar Vladimir. This is one reason why action on global warming is so popular in the UK (and Europe in general) - those with a nasty fossil fuel habit supplied by far flung sources have a large incentive to encourage everyone to switch to clean alternatives as quickly as possible. This is why Gordon Brown is getting out of Iraq - its time to start looking toward the future instead of clinging desperately to the past.

Essentially the oil industry is abandoning the UK. BP has either sold-off or closed all its UK refineries ( the last one to go was their Grangemouth refinery) and now only retains the Forties & Sullom Voe interests. Shell is planning to swap over to Middle-east crude around 2011 at its single remaining UK refinery and is busy selling off most of its European refineries. Any questions as to whether any Middle-east crude will be available to the UK in 2011 are studiously ignored in Shell. The general attitude is one of, 'Since we will need the oil, it will be available'. All of the above points to the oil companies foreseeing a pretty bleak future for their UK and European refining operations....

With much of the thinking inside the UK oil industry often delusional, outside of it we pretty much in La-La land. Both the government and the media are obsessed with global warming. Barely an evening passes without a news item relating to icebergs melting, heat stroke in Polar bears or the sad absence of lichen for reindeer etc. Inside the oil industry it is well known that the UK government is regularly briefed by the oil companies. Evidently the government have made the decision to use global warming as a way of encouraging thrift in oil usage - with absolutely no effect.

What is never mentioned in the media is the crashing of North Sea oil production. A recent documentary about oil exploration in the Arctic managed to completely overlook why such desperate measures might be required. When the oil industry is (occasionally) discussed, it is invariably on the basis that oil now only forms 10 to 15% of the UK economy, given that the City of London has become so important. ( I know that will make you laugh.)

The Washington Post has an interview with William Gibson about his new book "Spook Country".

This post-9/11 frisson fits, as it happens. "Despite a full complement of thieves, pushers and pirates," the Washington Post book review says, " 'Spook Country' is less a conventional thriller than a devastatingly precise reflection of the American zeitgeist, and it bears comparison to the best work of Don DeLillo. . . . With a clear eye and a minimum of editorial comment, Gibson shows us a country that has drifted dangerously from its governing principles, evoking a kind of ironic nostalgia for a time when, as one character puts it, 'grown-ups ran things.' "

"Politics has, like, jacked itself up to my level of weirdness," Gibson acknowledges. "I can work with this," he says, thinking of recent turns of events. "I like the sheer sort of neo-Stalinist denial of reality. That's what makes it work. It's interesting. I'd like to see it get less interesting. But I don't know that it necessarily will."

As uncannily as Gibson has sometimes foreseen the future, there are other times when the events of the real world outstrip anything he could conjure up. In 1998, for example, when Viagra was brand-new and he was presented with a sample, he examined it carefully and responded incisively, "It does what ?"

Behind the hotel courtyard lunch table, a Marine helicopter roars low over the Potomac. Thoughts turn to the future of Washington. Could Gibson have predicted that in 2007, two leading candidates for the presidency would be a white woman and a black man?

That's the problem with his game, he says. "If I had gone to Ace Books in 1981 and pitched a novel set in a world with a sexually contagious disease that destroys the human immune system and that is raging across most of the world -- particularly badly in Africa -- they might have said, 'Not bad. A little toasty. That's kind of interesting.'

"But I'd say -- ' But wait! Also, the internal combustion engine and everything else we've been doing that forces carbon into the atmosphere has thrown the climate out of whack with possibly terminal and catastrophic results.' And they'd say, 'You've already got this thing you call AIDS. Let's not --'

"And I'd say, ' But wait! Islamic terrorists from the Middle East have hijacked airplanes and flown them into the World Trade Center.' Not only would they not go for it, they probably would have called security." ...

Links:

* Always On - The GoingGreen 100 Winners. Overall winner - smart grid infrastructure company GridPoint
* Maine Sunday Telegram - Get plug-in cars on the road
* MSNBC - Buzz Builds For Plugin Cars. Coming soon - the Automotive X Prize.
* Toronto Star - Regen Energy - Toronto firm's gadget imitates how bees solve problems without a central commander. Exotic algorithims for demand management.
* SolarBuzz - BrightSource Energy Files Construction Application for 400MW Solar Thermal Electric Project in California
* SolarBuzz - Ersol Solar Energy Develops "Super Size" Wafers. Increasing the energy return for PV solar.
* WorldChanging - Biofuels Must Be Made Sustainably, Says European Commission
* Transmaterial - Accoya - High Performance Wood. Long lasting and recyclable.
* Technology Review - A Better Gauge on Battery Life. "A new battery-gauge chip could make mobile phones more reliable and help them last longer on a single charge"
* Technology Review - A Better Way to Make Hydrogen?. Using aluminium alloys - I doubt this will ever be energy efficient enough to be worthwhile.
* Der Spiegel - Oil Industry Flares $40 Billion in Gas a Year
* Alt Energy Stocks - War With Iran? Buy Alternative Energy Stocks
* John Robb - Unleashing the dogs of war. "The current degree of corporate participation in warfare makes the old "military industrial complex" look tame in comparison."
* The Guardian - New Gore book to set out inconvenient solutions. "The Path To Survival"
* Open The Future - Visionary (?)
* Mylo - Muscle Car. NSFW. "The events portrayed in this film have no basis in reality. Life is far more colourful".