Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:35:06 GMT | no comments
It is so incredible it is a little hard to get my brain around. Several months ago, without any fanfare, Nanosolar showed off its new production tool that can produce 1GW (gigawatt) of solar cells per year.
To put this in perspective, most plants produce less than 100 MW (megawatts) per year, less than 1/10 of Nanosolar’s 1GW machine. For instance, here is a Masdar plant being built in Germany that will produce 70MW a year and cost $230 million. So it would take 14 of these plants to equal the output of one of the Nanosolar machines.
The cost of the Nanosolar machine? $1.65 million! This is 2,000 times less than the Masdar plant! (While this is a comparison of a production tool to an entire plant, it is still an astounding difference.)
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 23 Aug 2008 04:19:44 GMT | no comments
So how much does it cost to clean the CO2 from a coal-fired electricity power plant? The numbers of FutureGen’s clean-coal project at the 275 MW Matoon Illinois plant gives an indication. The DOE pulled back on the project last December over the concerns of cost overruns that would likely propel FutureGen’s $1.5 billion cost estimate to $1.8 billion or higher.
Let’s look at the numbers here to see how much this carbon capture would cost. Over a 30 year lifetime, if the plant was operating 80% of the time, it would log 210,000 hours (24 * 365 * 30 * 0.8). So the 275 MW (megawatt) plant would produce 58 billion kWh of electricity over this time. (275,000 * 210,000). So the $1.8 billion cost would add about $0.03 to each kWh of electricity produced (1.8 / 58). Since a coal power plant produces electricity at about $0.03 to $0.04 per kWh, this would effectively double the cost of the electricity it produces. And this doesn’t take into account any ongoing costs of sequestering the carbon.
So with all this talk about clean-coal, we have yet to see an implementation of it at a utility scale power plant and it appears that the cost of carbon capture at a coal-fired power plant using today’s technology would make it uneconomical.
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:34:20 GMT | 2 comments
At Plug-in 2008, Andy Grove presented his vision of converting 10 million SUVs, trucks and vans to electric hybrid operation in the next 4 years. Many people in the audience doubted that this goal was achievable, and wondered if the technology to convert an existing vehicle over to hybrid electric operation was even feasible.
However, a company that was exhibiting at the show did exactly this. Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies based in Chicago had on the floor a Ford F-150 truck that they had converted to electric hybrid. They did this by leaving the gas engine alone and adding an electric motor to the back of the rear differential. Then the put a 12kWh battery pack behind the seat and used a controller that would regulate the power to the gas and electric engine to achieve hybrid operation.
The F-150 conversions are currently very expensive running $60,000. However, they hope to get the price down a lot as their volume of conversions increase.
Andy Grove should invest a lot of money in HEVT because their technology might be the key to achieving his vision.
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:21:21 GMT | no comments
Electric Vehicles (EVs) will have limited range at first due to battery limitations. To increase their range, they will use “opportunity” charging, which basically means trying to find a plug wherever they are.
To help with this, Coulomb Technologies announced at Plug-in 2008 their smart charging infrastructure for plug-in vehicles. One of their offerings is the Smartlet Charging Station so subscribers can charge their EV at any Smartlet station using a supplied smart card.
Let’s hope that Coulomb is successful and receives plenty of funds to continue operations while EV usage ramps up. These charging stations will be one of the keys that will make EVs successful.
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:28:28 GMT | no comments
Many of us EV advocates were disappointed by the ZEV mandate revisions that CARB enacted this year. So we are glad to hear that at the Plug-in 2008 conference today, CARB board member Dan Sperling said that he agreed that the revisions this year were too complex and too soft and next year they expect to simplify them and also increase the number of vehicles required – possibly by an order of magnitude. Wouldn’t that be great!
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:52:12 GMT | no comments
Another interesting tidbit of information that I got from Elizabeth from A123 Systems at the Plug-in 2008 conference was why A123 doesn’t sell batteries to hobbyists for use in electric vehicles. Her answer: liability.
A123 is worried that someone will put together an unsafe vehicle and then A123 would be sued when it catches on fire or someone gets hurt. This extends also to organizations like CalCars that is working on plug-in hybrids. So A123 only supplies batteries to OEMs and manufacturers where they can be sure the batteries will be used in a safe way.
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:46:26 GMT | no comments
One downside to current plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) is that the gas motor always turns on when first starting out. At the Plug-in 2008 conference I asked Elizabeth from A123/Hymotion why this was and she said that the engine needed to turn on for about 57 seconds when first starting out to warm up the catalytic converter, otherwise the car wouldn’t pass smog tests. It is too bad that on short trips the gas engine still needs to turn on, but at less than a minute this shouldn’t waste too much gas.
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:59:56 GMT | no comments
It is commonly thought that a large part of the increase in the price of oil is due to the devaluation of the dollar. For instance, since the the euro is now 60% higher than the dollar it seems to make sense that 60% of increase in the price of oil is due to this devaluation of the dollar. However when you look more closely at the economics behind oil pricing, you will find that this is not the case at all. Actually, it doesn’t make any difference what currency oil is priced in because the price would still be the same.
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:00:44 GMT | no comments
If EEStor can achieve what they claim, it will blow open the electric vehicle market which is currently held back only by battery technology. Here is what they claim:
For a 52 kWh unit, an initial production price of $3,200, falling to $2,100.
No degradation from charge/discharge cycles
4-6 minute charge time assuming sufficient cooling of the cables.
Currently, a lithium battery pack this size would cost more than $30,000, would last less than 2,000 cycles and takes at least a couple of hours to charge.
However, EEStor is a private company and is not releasing much information to be able to verify their claims. Let’s hope that they are successful!
Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:45:42 GMT | no comments
There are many ways to distort the truth. One of them is to suggest something as a possibility and then let uncritical minds repeat it as a fact. This is what is happening with Al Gore’s look at a 20 foot sea level rise.