All-electric cars about to be resurrected

[diane in sf]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/27/MN0B174G40.DTL

The all-electric car, which had a brief heyday less than a decade ago and then went the way of the dodo, killed off by the car companies, is about to make a comeback.

Charged up with lighter, more sophisticated and efficient batteries, and competitively priced with gasoline-driven and hybrid vehicles, the new offers will be marketed and sold primarily as second cars - for running errands, taking kids to school and the like. These silent electric autos will be plugged into home outlets at night and during the day will be able to travel 100 miles or more without stopping for a charge.

Nissan said recently it has developed a mas-market electric car, due out by the end of next year, that will seat five and can have its battery charged to 80 percent of capacity in 26 minutes. It will have all the amenities car buyers want, Nissan says, such as navigation, super stereo and heated seats, and will cost between $20,000 and $30,000.

The company is not alone in pushing the resurgence of all-electric cars. On the drawing boards are cars and trucks scheduled to be introduced over the next year or so by Ford, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Subaru, among others, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, a trade group.
...
In the Bay Area, for example, Nissan will provide 1,000 all-electric cars to Sonoma County within the next year.
...

"Batteries now are getting twice the power for half the weight and half the size," Perry said. The new batteries will be made of laminated lithium ion, an improvement, Perry said, over the nickel metal hydride and lead acid batteries of old.

Batteries still need to be charged, however. That is the ultimate tether, compared with the relative freedom of a gasoline-driven car.

That problem could be eased by a 2-year-old state law providing as much as $120 million a year over seven years to set up charging stations around California. The idea is that if these stations were at, say, every rest stop on Interstate 5, drivers could pull in, take a half hour break while the car is being recharged, then continue along for another hundred miles.
...

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. sounds like my kind of car -

I never drive more than 100 miles round trip. I seldom drive more than 400 miles in a month. My only problem is, as an apartment dweller, where would I plug in?

[madokie]

2. We're ready for one when they are available

95% of our driving is less than 30 miles a day, hell most days a ten mile range would be fine for us.

[spin]

3. Batteries need to be charged...

if electric cars became common, how many more polluting power plants would have to be built?

[Sal Minella]

4. Why not a windmill or three on the roof with a plug-in near the ground?

Why should electricity have to travel hundreds of miles over an expensive grid? Home generating wind units are common in England.

[spin]

5. Or a solar roof...big advances are being made in this technology...

The problem is we have to overcome the resistance of Big Oil.

[Sal Minella]

8. Indeed. They will mount an astroturf campaign assuring all of us that solar roofs cause cancer,

and publish "scientific" studies proving that windmill blades turning on a roof cause pregnant women to miscarry and heretofore normal children to become profoundly autistic overnight.

It's hard for me to believe that the BigOilBoys will let the new technology get as far as it needs to go -- I am still haunted by the streetcar lines being bought and torn up by General Motors and Standard Oil and Firestone Tire Company.

=================================
National, which had been in operation since 1920, was organized into a holding company, and General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack, and the Federal Engineering Corporation made investments in the City Lines companies in return for exclusive supply contracts.<1> Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities,<2> including Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles,<3> and replaced them with GM buses.
=================================
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

[kristopher]

6. small scale wind systems are a waste of money

except in all but the most unique situations.

google "economics of small scale wind" and read a bit.

[Massacure]

10. The economics of active solar aren't much better.

This country should be focused on the development of geothermal energy and wind farms.

Edited to clarify active solar. Passive solar has its benefits.

[kristopher]

11. That isn't true.

There are commercial PV systems that have dramatically lowered the $/w in both manufacturing and installation. And whereas solar is set to benefit from cost reductions as a result of mass production, small scale wind is limited by the cost of attaining an altitude where suitable wind exists.


http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2187/83/

[Massacure]

12. SolarBuzz list the cost as 21-46 cents per kilowatt hour for a 500 kW system.

Maybe the costs will come down as you say, but it is not wise for the government to gamble money down that avenue when wind and geothermal are already competitive with coal, and have less issues with availability.

[kristopher]

13. It makes excellent sense

when you factor in resource size and distribution. Distributed and large array solar are an essential component of a renewable infrastructure. Small wind isn't.

[kristopher]

14. PS

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x194081
Solar Power Cheaper than Utilities for First Time in Northeast

BOSTON, April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Alteris(TM) Renewables and SunRun announced a breakthrough program today for powering Massachusetts homes with clean, renewable solar energy. Through its partnership with SunRun, Alteris Renewables is turning home solar into a monthly service, like cable or any other utility. With this new program, upfront costs plummet from $30,000 to as little as $1,000 for customers to be able to install solar electric systems on their homes. Customers will enjoy savings from day one with locked-in rates for the next 18 years - a valuable protection from future electric rate increases. They can also make a good return on their initial investment.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x193870

April 19, 2009
Small windmills put to the test
A real-world test performed by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy place) confirms our earlier analysis that small windmills are a fundamentally flawed technology (test results here, pdf in Dutch). Twelve of these much hyped machines were placed in a row on an open plain (picture above). Their energy yield was measured over a period of one year (April 1, 2008 - March 31, 2009), the average wind velocity during these 12 months was 3.8 meters per second (slightly higher than average). Three windmills broke. Find the disappointing results of the others below.

Wind power rules, but small windmills are a swindle

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Energy Ball v100 (4,304 euro) : 73 kWh per year, corresponding to an average output of 8.3 watts
- Ampair 600 (8,925 euro) : 245 kWh per year or an average output of 28 watts
- Turby (21,350 euro) : 247 kWh per year or an average output of 28.1 watts
- Airdolphin (17,548 euro) : 393 kWh per year or an average output of 44.8 watts
- WRE 030 (29,512 euro) : 404 kWh per year or an average output of 46 watts
- WRE 060 (37,187 euro) : 485 kWh per year or an average output of 55.4 watts
- Passaat (9,239 euro) : 578 kWh per year or an average output of 66 watts
- Skystream (10,742 euro) : 2,109 kWh per year or an average power output of 240.7 watts
- Montana (18,508 euro) : 2,691 kWh per year or an average power output of 307 watts.

Keep in mind that these windmills would perform considerably worse in a built-up area.


47 windmills to power a household
An average Dutch household consumes 3,400 kWh/year. Listed below is the amount of windmills required, and their total cost, to power a Dutch household entirely using wind energy:

- Energy Ball : 47 windmills (202,288 euro)
- Ampair : 14 windmills (124,950 euro)
- Turby : 14 windmills (298,900 euro)
- Airdolphin : 9 windmills (157,932 euro)
- WRE 030 : 9 windmills (265,608 euro)
- WRE 060 : 7 windmills (260,309 euro)
- Passaat : 6 windmills (55,434 euro)
- Skystream : 2 windmills (21,484 euro)
- Montana : 2 windmills (37,016 euro)

An average American household consumes almost 3 times more electricity than a Dutch household. Simply multiply the above figures by three.


Rotor diameter
At first sight, the results seem to indicate that the design of the windmill matters. However, if you combine these figures with the rotor diameter, it becomes clear that the concept of small windmills is fundamentally flawed. The turbines that score best, are simply the largest ones:

- Energy Ball : 1 meter
- Ampair : 1.7 meter
- Turby : 2 meter
- Airdolphin : 1.8 meter
- WRE 030 : 2.5 meter
- WRE 060 : 3.3 meter
- Passaat : 3.12 meter
- Skystream : 3.7 meter
- Montana : 5 meters

Windmills with a rotor diameter of 4 or 5 meters do not fit on most roofs, and are not easy to integrate in a built-up environment.

[Massacure]

15. I agree with you that small wind doesn't make sense.

I'm just saying that big wind makes a heck of a lot of more sense than PV, and geothermal is overlooked.

[kristopher]

16. I understood your point

and it isn't correct. The largest, most widely distributed resource we have is solar and PV is most effective way to harvest the resource. Of course, if you don't want to transition to a renewable infrastructure, you are correct, PV isn't needed. However, if you DO want to get off fossil fuels, then PV is an ESSENTIAL element of the transition. Much, much more so than large scale geothermal, which is extremely limited. As the links in the previous page demonstrate, PV is already an affordable part of the energy mix depending on the way the financing and marketing of the electricity produced is managed; and it is only going to get cheaper.

Using geothermal as a resource for heating and cooling buildings is a very valuable way to dramatically reduce energy used for that purpose.

[kristopher]

7. None until we reach about 75% EV penetration

There is that much excess capacity in the system according to NREL.

[spin]

9. That's good news. Thanks (n/t)