Eschew Obfuscation

Long Distance EV Driving

Max Dunn — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:59:00 -0800

Some people envision that a network of public charging stations would allow EVs to make long trips. However, I am not so sure.

Even though the Leaf claims a 100 mile range, this is only possible with non-freeway driving. For the normal American driving habits, the EPA gives a range of 73 miles which is in-line with my Leaf experience. Also, if I drive hard on the freeway, then my range can be as low as 60 miles.

This means that when driving a far distance, you could drive for about an hour, then have to stop and DC fast charge for 30 minutes. Since the DC fast charge fills up the battery to only an 80% level, the next leg would be even shorter. Driving the 400 miles LA to from San Francisco normally takes about 6 and a half hours in a gas car, but an EV would require at least 6 recharges and take about 10 hours. Doable, but not very efficient.

EV Public Charging Cost

Max Dunn — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:58:00 -0800

David Herron asked a question today on LinkedIn about the cost to charge an EV at a public station. For those of you not on LinkedIn, here is the answer.

Currently, most public charging stations are free, but you sometimes need to pay for parking. For instance, when I am in SF, I usually park my Leaf at Pier 27 and pay $15 ($10 at night and weekends) to park. A 2-hour charge costs them about 75 cents in electricity, so it is cheap for them. But, they have 2 spaces reserved for EVs and these are often empty and so overall, they are probably losing money.

A company called 350Green is installing charging stations at Walgreens. Walgreens pays for just part of the cost and 350Green will make revenue by selling charging subscriptions for about $70 a month. Coulomb Technologies is also planning on charging too, at about the same rate.

Why does it cost $70 a month? Well it is expensive to install a charging station. EVs take about $35/month in electricity so a $70 subscription leaves $35 for equipment and profit. A networked charging station costs about $2,000 but installation can be expensive depending on how far the power lines need to run. So figuring another $2,000 for installation means a total cost per charger of $4,000. Most people that buy a monthly subscription probably can’t charge at home (maybe they live in an apartment and park on the street) so they will probably want to plug-in while they are at work. This means there can only be one subscription per charger, which will take about 5-years just to pay for the charger and installation before the company makes any money at all.

Cloud Server Load Testing

Max Dunn — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:10:00 -0800

I have been working on the RealMealz site and am now looking for a suitable host server. Currently, RealMealz is in beta and has just light use, but we expect that once released the use will go up dramatically, so we want to be able to easily scale. I looked at Amazon EC2, Heroku and RackSpace Cloud Servers and the table below summarizes my findings:

Test: Login, hit Discover page 5 times
Use a 5 second ramp up

Average Discover page load time (Apache + Passenger unless otherwise indicated)

Server	1 user	5 user	10 user	Cost/Mo
EC2, Micro	2s	20s	40s	$9
EC2, Micro, Thin	2s	23s	42s	$9
EC2, 3-Micros, balanced. Apache/Passenger	2s	6s	9s-18s (40s max)	$44
EC2, hi-cpu medium	2s	4s	6s	$75
EC2, hi-cpu medium, Thin	2s	5s	10s	$75
BlueBox	2s	2s	5s	$79
Heroku, 1 dyno, Thin	2s	3s	6s	$15
Heroku, 2 dynos, Thin	2s	3s	4s	$50
Heroku, 3 dynos, Thin	2s	2s	6s (20 users!)	$86
Rackspace	2s	7s (max 66s)	40s+	$22
Rackspace, Thin	2s	4s	9s	$22
Rackspace, Unicorn	2s	4s	8s	$22

Notes.

1. Users are concurrent users

2. I selected the Discover page since this is our most CPU intensive page. This test is not that realistic in actual use, but serves as a worse case example.

3. The Rackspace server had only 512Mb of memory and for the 10 user case for Apache it started swapping out. If I was using their next size up with 1Gb of memory, the cost would have been $44 per month but wouldn’t have suffered this performance issues as drastically.

4. The Amazon Micro instances provide bursts up to 2 ECUs, but if used at a high level for more than a few seconds, get throttled back greatly for about 15 seconds. This is why the 10 user case was so high, even for the 3 instance, load balanced case.

4a. The Amazon servers are a little underpowered. Even the hi-cpu instance that provides 5 ECUs is not all that impressive. My BlueBox server which has 4 VPSes on the server performed better.

5. It wasn’t clear how the Rackspace Cloud Servers could be easily scaled since RackSpace doesn’t seem to provide a load balancer for them.

6. Amazon’s EC2 instances are a bit of a pain to scale. You can’t add an extra instance to an existing load balancer, so you need to delete the current one then create a new one. There is an autoscaling feature, but this only works from the command line and I didn’t test it.

7. Heroku offered pretty amazing performance and was super easy to scale by just typing “heroku scale web=3”. The prices include $15/month for the larger database, although under 5Mbs is free.

8. With 3 dynos, Heroku was able to handle 20 concurrent users where the other tests were only with 10.

9. A disadvantage of Heroku is that it doesn’t offer shell access and there is no way to access the database natively. We do have some table manipulation built into our program, but if there are major changes or corruptions, we will need to export the data, fix it, and then re-import.

In the end, we are going with Heroku because it has great performance, easy to scale and is low cost.

Vinod Khosla's Five-Second Slide Rule

Max Dunn — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:22:00 -0800

One of my goals while at Presidio Graduate School was to get really good at giving presentations. Since slide decks are required for most presentations, making good slides is vital for good presentations. But the slide deck is not the presentation – you are the presentation. So if your slides are complicated and people need to take time to study them to figure them out, that means that the focus is on the slide and not on you. So it is important to make slides that can be grasped quickly.

How quick? Well Vinod Khosla likes to aply a five-second rule. He puts a slide on the screen and then removes it after 5 seconds. He then asks the viewer to describe the slide. If they can’t, the slide is too complicated.

How about your presentations? Can all your slides be quickly grasped with 5 seconds? If not, then go back and simplify them until they can.

(From: Forbes, Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule)

EV Electricity Costs With PG&E

Max Dunn — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:49:00 -0700

Figuring out how much electricity your electric vehicle (EV) will use is pretty easy. From the wall, 1kWh of electricity will power the Leaf about 3.5 miles (and a similar amount for other EVs). So for a normal 1,000 mile a month usage, it would take about 300kWh of electricity each month (rounding up).

This should add about $35/month for electricity at the average price of $0.11 per kWh. However, for most users it will push them up into higher tiers and be at least twice that. For us, we went from a $70/mo electric bill to $170/mo!

But wait, it gets more complicated. EV owners are required to contact PG&E and go on a special E-9 time-of-use rate plan.

The great thing about this plan is that off-peak, you can charge your EV for $0.05 to $0.06! The bad thing about this plan is that the bottom tier only goes up by 30% and then all times have higher costs. For instance, after 130% of base usage is reached, off-peak charging goes to $0.16 and then at 200% goes to $0.20!

We just switched over a few months ago and are still analyzing our bill, but it looks like it was reduced from $170 to about $120. We think with some reduction (turn off those lights kids!) and shifting our dishwasher to after midnight we can get it down to about $100, which means the EV will cost about $30 per month. Just where it should be!

Startups in Stealth Mode - Just Stop

Max Dunn — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 07:25:00 -0700

(Advice from Jason Freedman)

Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. Stop doing your start-up. You’re not ready.

Let me a share a few reasons why you don’t need to be in stealth mode:

Execution is more important than the idea.
This is the easiest lesson. Your ability to create a product is far more important than your ability to think up a product. This is a hard lesson if you’re not the one that will do the building, because it means that your contribution is not as valuable as you thought.
Someone else has the exact same idea.
The adage is that if you have a good idea, there are 5 other people already doing it. If you have a great idea, there are 15 other people already doing it. One of the reasons you’re foolishly in stealth mode is probably because you haven’t done enough market research to realize that people are already working on this.
Totally unique ideas generally don’t make it.
If you have a 100% totally unique idea, you’re either too far ahead of the market or you’ve picked a market so small that no one cares. Either way, you’re in for trouble.
The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence, not losing to the competition
Start-ups are really hard on so many levels. The likelihood that you execute beautifully but then lose out to someone that stole your idea is so incredibly low, you shouldn’t think about it. The likelihood that you build a product that missed the mark, is an almost certainty. Optimize around the problems most likely to shut you down. Paul Graham always told us to focus on the one enemy that matters: the back button.
You desperately need real feedback
Perhaps the biggest reason not to be in stealth is that you’re robbing yourself of great feedback. Most companies miss the mark on the first product. The great companies learn quickly and iterate. Skipping the learning part by being secretive just reduces the time you’ll have to iterate before running out of money.
First mover advantage is just silliness
The obit has been written on first mover advantage. It rarely helps. Facebook wasn’t the first to social networking, Google wasn’t the first to search, YouTube wasn’t the first to video, yada yada. First mover advantage was a flawed theory that helped pre-product internet companies raise billions of dollars in the 90s.

I could go on, but this is a fool’s errand. If you’re reading this and don’t agree, you’re probably just not ready to do a startup and all the rationalizing in the world won’t help.

(From Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice.

Per Capita GDP and Oil Consumption

Max Dunn — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 09:25:00 -0700

In Peak Oil in 2012, I looked at the strong link between worldwide GPD and oil consumption. But what about per capita oil consumption? It turns out that there is a very interesting story there too.

As reported by Frank Holmes in Seeking Alpha, China currently consumes 2 barrels of oil per per per person. At the same PPP level of $5,000 per year, Japan consumed over 18 barrels, Taiwan 6 barrels and Korea 4 barrels!

Since China currently consumes about 10 million barrels a day, just doubling their per capita usage would require an extra 10 million barrels a day, which is 12% of the world total. Since oil production has been relatively flat since 2005, it is unlikely that additional oil production will ever be able to provide that amount.

This is just another indicator that our worldwide oil supplies will never again be able to meet our total oil demand.

How Much Oil Do We Use ?

Max Dunn — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:13:00 -0800

How much oil do we use in the United States and where does it come from? This is a question that hasn’t been exactly clear for me until I read this article on the Energy Information Administration (EIA) website. Here is the quick answer.

The US is the largest oil consumer using 19.1 million barrels per day (mbpd). We are the the third largest crude oil producer at 5.5 mbpd. In addition, we produce 3.9 mbpd of biofuels, natural gas liquids and processing expansion. This means we need to import about half our oil, or 9.3 mbpd.

Contrary to popular belief, two of our largest oil suppliers are Canada and Mexico. Overall, Western Hemisphere nations provide about half of our imported petroleum.

Now you have it. While the US uses about 19 mbpd, we produce 5.5 mbpd of crude oil and create another 4 mbpd of fuel products so the 9 mbpd we import is about half our usage.

References:

EIA. (November 29, 2010). How Dependent Are We On Foreign Oil? U.S. Energy Information Administration. Retrieved March 12, 2011 from http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_brief/foreign_oil_dependence.cfm

EIA. (March 8, 2011). Short-Term Energy Outlook. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Retrieved March 11, 2011 from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html

U.S. Census Bureau. (March 10, 2011). U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services. January 2011 U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. CB11-41, BEA11-09, FT-900 (11-01). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf

Note: All numbers for 2010 except oil additions for 2009.

Li-Ion Battery Cost Breakdown

Max Dunn — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:58:00 -0800

It would seem obvious that lithium is the most expensive part of a li-ion battery. However, it turns out that lithium contributes only 10% to 14% of the battery cost, while the separator is responsible for 40% to 60%! Here is the breakdown of how each material in a li-ion battery contributes to its overall cost:

Anode: Made from carbon, 5% to 15%
Cathode: A metal oxide, 5% to 11%
Electrolyte: A lithium salt in an organic solvent, 10% to 14%
Separator: Made from polyolefin, 40% to 60%

It is very surprising that the plastic polyolefin is the most expensive part of a li-ion battery!

(From the Pike Research blog post Lithium-Ion Battery Materials: Japan Dominates in the EV Era

Fiji "Greenwashed" Water

Max Dunn — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 20:06:00 -0800

Hah – I see that Fiji Water is being sued for greenwashing!

In the Sustainable Design class I took in October 2008 through Stanford Continuing Education, we studied greenwashing, which is to promote a company’s products as environmentally friendly when they are not.

TerraChoice provides a good greenwash metric with their Six Sins of Greenwashing:

The Sin of Hidden Tradeoff – Promoting a single green factor of a product without any attention to other important issues.
The Sin of No Proof – Unsubstantiated claims. For example, claiming a product was not tested on animals, but with no third party certification.
Sin of Vagueness – Poorly defined or overly broad claims, such as “chemical free.”
Sin of Irrelevance – A claim that may be true, but is either unimportant or otherwise irrelevant.
Sin of Fibbing – Claims of certification that are false.
Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils – A claim that may be true, but distracts from greater environmental impacts.

For my greenwashing analysis, I chose to write about Fiji Water. While Fiji Water does have a lot of sustainability programs in place, their business model of shipping water from Fiji in itself is not environmentally friendly at all!

So I was gratified today to see that others share my concern about Fiji Water and that they are actually being sued for greenwashing. The lawsuit claims that Fiji Water’s claim of being carbon negative is not true because they are using a discredited carbon accounting method known as “forward crediting.”

While I didn’t know about this when I wrote my paper, I feel justified to have identified Fiji Water as a greenwasher over 2 years ago!

Public EV Charging Station Ratio?

Max Dunn — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:57:00 -0800

In previous analysis, I relied on the Better Place estimates that initially there should be 4 public charging stations per electric vehicle (EV) and that this number could drop to 2 to 1 as the EV population grew.

However, new numbers from Pike Research suggest that we only need 1.15 to 1.3 charging stations per EV.

While these numbers are all guesses, it is important for anyone trying to determine how much revenue they could expect from installing EV charging stations since at 4:1 there will be a lot more unused charging time at each station than at 1.15:1.

(Source: Pike Research – Charge Spotting: Determining the Right Mix for Public EV Access)

Making Money From Public EV Charging Stations

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:14:00 -0700

Electric vehicles (EVs) will soon be available in large numbers and will need to be charged daily. This is no problem for half of the US population that can charge at home, but the other half that park on the street or in apartment complexes will need public charging stations. Is it possible to make money from EV public charging stations?

There are several ways to do this. One is to add a percentage surcharge over the price of electricity used (although this maybe prohibited by some PUCs), another is to charge a fixed fee every time a charging station is used and a third is to charge a monthly fee.

Nissan Leaf to Retain 40% of Value

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:39:00 -0700

There has been some concern that electric vehicles (EVs) will not hold their value as much as gas powered cars because of the high cost to replace the battery pack. However, a new report by CAP (a leading Europe-based vehicle valuation firm) forecasts that the Leaf will retain 40% of its value after 3 years and 30,000 miles. Their reasoning:

The Leaf should have a shallower depreciation curve than conventional cars; the electric motor has fewer moving parts than an internal combustion engine so when mechanical issues and wear and tear begin to affect other cars, the Leaf should still be running well.

For my Leaf, I ordered the SL option package and the fast charger but got a discount from North Bay Nissan. With tax and everything, my out-the-door cost will be about $37,000. However, with the $7,500 federal rebate and the $5,000 state rebate, my net cost will be $24,500. So if it retains 40% of its original price, the real depreciation after 3 years would be about $10,000. Not bad!

(Source: AutoBlog Green)

Electric Cars Best Way To Reduce U.S. Oil Dependency

Max Dunn — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:11:00 -0700

A new report from Rice University confirms what I have been saying for a long time – electric vehicles (EVs) are the best way to reduce America’s oil dependency.

The report found that if only 30% of vehicles are electrified by 2050, oil usage would be reduced by 2.5 million barrels a day and carbon emissions cut by 7% – even if the electric generation mix remains the same as today. They also found that a carbon tax of $30 a ton would actually increase US dependence on foreign natural gas!

So even if our government is not able to get its act together and institute a comprehensive renewable energy policy, the widespread adoption of EVs will do the job anyways.

(Source: AllCarsElectric.com)

BioEnergy Atlas

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:59:00 -0700

For all of you energy geeks, especially ones involved with biofuel/energy projects NREL has released this fancy interactive map that shows biomass feedstocks and biopower by location. You can select biomass/biopower/feedstock layers and see it on an overlay map of the US. Pretty interesting to see the graphical depictions. (From Jeff Milum.)

BioEnergy Atlas

This is a really cool tool – thanks Jeff!

3.2 Million Plug-in Electric Vehicles to be Sold Worldwide by 2015

Max Dunn — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:30:00 -0700

Pike Research released a new report “Plug-in Electric Vehicles” which estimates that by 2015, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) will total over 3 million worldwide with over 800,000 sold in the U.S. While I think these numbers are conservative, they are higher than Pike predicted just a year ago.

Energy Flow Diagram

Max Dunn — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:37:00 -0700

Have you ever wondered where energy comes from and where it goes? Well, wonder no more – here is a great energy flow diagram from Lawrence Livermore Labs that presents this information in a straightforward way:

Comparing the tiny, thin lines from solar, geothermal and wind against the big, fat lines from fossil fuels shows us that we have a long ways to go to a sustainable energy infrastructure!

Cheap Solar PV

Max Dunn — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:52:00 -0700

Prices of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have come down drastically in the last few years. Many solar modules can now be purchased for less than $2 per watt. There has been some speculation that these low prices are due to a glut of solar capacity that is causing manufacturers to sell below their cost. However, a tidbit in a Pike Research blog entry revealed this:

First Solar’s 11.2% efficient modules cost $0.76/W to make according to company reports, and total manufacturing cost of c-Si modules produced by the most competitive companies has plunged to about $1.20.

So in actuality, the solar manufacturers can still make a healthy profit by selling their modules at $2 per watt. Let’s hope that prices comes down even further!

Around the World With No Emissions

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:52:00 -0700

Five teams from four continents started the ZERO Race on August 16th in an attempt to drive their electric vehicles (EVs) around the world in 80 days using only renewable energy – which means they will produce no emissions at all!

It is not a race about speed, but the start to creating a greener planet and a better place to live for future generations by making small, efficient vehicles popular. The team with the smartest, most efficient, most reliable, most usable and most popular concept will be the winner.

Zapino Li-Ion Conversion: Cost

Max Dunn — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:25:00 -0700

I have been putting off this post about the cost of converting my Zapino electric scooter to lithium batteries because it was certainly more than I would have liked to spend. But anyone that is considering doing the same conversion should know about the cost, so I am going to bite the bullet and put out the numbers.

Thundersky 40ah batteries, balancers and charger: $1,476
Battery box conversion: $200
Total: $1,676

Whew, that wasn’t as bad as I thought!

I considered saving $300 by not buying the charger, but I am glad that I got it. Besides being 3 times faster than my current charger, it also works great with the battery balancers by providing pulsed charging at the end to equalize all the batteries.

Also, with care these batteries should provide about 60,000 miles of use, which works out to about $0.03 per mile. So even though the purchase price was high, the lifetime cost will be about 1/3 that of the cheaper lead-acid batteries all while providing higher performance.

Zapino Li-Ion Conversion: First Ride

Max Dunn — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:08:00 -0700

Putting in lithium-ion batteries in my Zapino scooter was a big investment and I am still a little nervous about how well they will work and how long they will last. But I just went for my first ride on my newly converted Zapino and came back with a big smile on my face after covering 18 miles!

I had planned on just riding to the library and back which would have been about 6 miles, but it felt so good after I got there that I decide to ride down to Los Gatos along the long stretch of Hwy 9. The entire trip, the acceleration remained peppy as the voltage on the batteries never sagged below 60 volts. I could also feel the difference that the 80 lb lighter weight made in acceleration and handling. I passed one radar speed sign and it said I was doing 37 MPH. The whole way the voltage of each battery pack remained very similar, which was a good sign.

I am estimating that with the new lithium batteries and lighter weight, I should be able to get about 40 miles out of my newly converted Zapino. Next up, a longer trip to test this range!

Elite Power Thundersky Balancers

Max Dunn — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:40:00 -0700

This post is very specific about the new Elite Power Solutions Thundersky battery balancers. I am posting it in order to help other people that might have the same questions I did about how to mount them.

First off, here are the old battery balancers that Elite Power Solutions provided for Thundersky batteries:

Notice that the circuit boards have a short wire attached. This makes it easier to mount and allows both LEDs on the board to be seen. However, some might think that the wires look a little sloppy.

Here are the new battery balancers:

Zapino Li-Ion Conversion: Battery Box

Max Dunn — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:06:00 -0700

I finally did it – I got Li-Ion batteries for my Zapino and started the conversion! This will reduce the battery weight from 150 lbs to 70 lbs and increase the range from about 20 miles to about 40 miles. While quite a bit more expensive than lead-acid AGM batteries, they will last more than 3 times as long so the lifetime cost will be less.

The first challenge I ran into is that the batteries are slightly taller so the two in front wouldn’t fit. The fix for this was to take the Zapino to my mechanic and have him reweld the battery box to add about 2 inches to it. This worked fine, but does reduce my clearance so I will need to be more careful about speed bumps and going up curbs.

Before

After

Batteries Mounted

Oil Company Tax Breaks

Max Dunn — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:05:00 -0700

I have long heard that oil companies get a lot of special tax breaks, but no-one has ever been able to explain clearly what those tax breaks actually are. Now an article in the New York Times As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies provides the best explanation I have seen. Some of these tax breaks are:

Moving corporate headquarters offshore to avoid taxes in the US
Capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general
Leasing rigs, like the Deepwater Horizon, to take advantage of a special oil industry tax break that allows them to write off 70% of the leasing cost
A lingering provision from the Tariff Act of 1913 that allows many small and midsize oil companies based in the United States to claim deductions for the lost value of tapped oil fields far beyond the amount the companies actually paid for the oil rights
Reclassifying the royalties charged by foreign governments to American oil drillers as taxes which entitles the companies to subtract those payments from their American tax bills

While some of these ploys are also employed by other industries, like moving their headquarters outside the US, the US tax code makes it especially easy and profitable for oil companies to employ these tactics.

Furthermore, many of these tax breaks no longer have any valid reason for existence since they were enacted a century ago to encourage oil exploration in the fledgling industry and then later in the 50s to decrease Soviet influence in the Middle East.

It is estimated that these tax breaks averaged $12 billion from 2006 to 2008. While this is a large number, it is only a small fraction of the $280 billion the oil industry was taxed in this period.

Nonetheless, with a growing deficit, dismantling these archaic tax breaks for the oil industry would raise badly needed revenue and help reduce the unfair advantage that the oil industry holds over cleaner forms of sustainable energy.

Toshiba SCiB EV Battery Lasts Longer Than 4 EVs

Max Dunn — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:55:00 -0700

Battery life has always been a big concern of electric vehicles (EV). Being the most expensive element of an EV, if they don’t last long it would drastically increase the cost of owning an EV. Early ead acid batteries last about 300 to 500 cycles, which is good for only a year or two of driving. Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries are much better, lasting about 1,500 cycles and with a 100 mile range, this would give a life of 150,000 miles, or about the same as the life of the car.

However, Toshiba has been working on a new battery technology with a greatly increased life span of 6,000 cycles. This would give an EV a lifetime range of about 600,000 miles, or enough to swap into 4 different EVs! Imagine that you buy an EV and 10 years later it is starting to fall apart, but you can use your batteries for your next EV greatly reducing the cost of your subsequent EVs.

Another advantage of the SCiB technology is that it is safer and can withstand fast charging. Now word on price or when it will be available, but they are working with Mitsubishi and several other partners to bring it to market.

Source: AutoBlog Green: Toshiba partners with Mitsubishi for development of li-ion SCiB EV batteries

US Military Warns of Oil Shortages by 2015

Max Dunn — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:13:00 -0700

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command.

It adds: “While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India.”

(From: guardian.co.uk)

Shale Oil Extraction Energy - Put In EVs Instead

Max Dunn — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:17:00 -0800

There was an interesting article today on The Oil Drum today titled Using heat to refine kerogen from oil shale. The basic idea is that in order to get oil out of shale you need to heat it up, but then the oil can flow away and water can flow in. So first, it is necessary to create an ice wall around the site.

However, both the freezing and the heating takes tremendous amounts of energy. The article states:

“It has been suggested that the technology would need a dedicated power source of some 1.2 gigawatts, in order to yield a production of 100,000 bd.”

Let’s look at these numbers: 100,000 barrels of oil contains 4.2 million gallons of oil and if this were all converted to gas and used in standard cars that get 20 miles per gallon, it would power cars 84 million miles.

However, a 1.2 GW power plant would produce about 28 million kWh of electricity per day and if used for a standard electric vehicle (EV) which gets about 3 miles per kWh (plant to wheels) then it would power cars for 86 million miles.

So why spend all that effort and energy to extract oil from shale when the same amount of energy would power EVs farther?

Lithium batteries - $450 kWh

Max Dunn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:43:00 -0800

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery prices are dropping rapidly and automakers are already seeing quotes of $450 per kWh for next year.

This is a huge drop from the historical price of $1,000 per kWh and even better than this year’s price of $650 per kWh.

In addition, this new report by Deutsche Bank not only predicts that performance of Li-ion batteries will double in the next 7 years, they also predict the price will decline by another 50% in the next 10 years.

At $450 kWh, the 16kWh battery in the Chevy Volt would add only an additional $7,200 to the price of the car which will pay for itself in the gas savings after 90,000 miles – or sooner if gas rises above $3 per gallon.

(Source: GM-Volt.com. Report Reveals Lithium-ion Battery Prices Already Dropping Steeper Than Expected.)

We mistook an energy shock for a financial crisis

Max Dunn — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:52:00 -0800

I have often thought that the recession was really caused by the high price of oil and not by subprime mortgages. However, I haven’t seen any credible source to back this up until I read a post by Jeff Rubin today called: We’re all PIGS now.

Rubin worked for nearly 20 years as the chief economist of CIBC World Markets and here is what he believes:

It wasn’t subprime mortgages but triple-digit oil prices that brought down the world economy. And unless that economy started to wean itself off an ever-depleting supply of affordable oil, there would be other recessions to follow as economic recoveries would simply push oil prices right back into triple-digit range.

While I took exception with a lot of what Rubin said in Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, here he is in the territory he knows best – economics – and I think his conclusion that record oil prices caused the recession is right on the money.

EV Charging Controller

Max Dunn — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:33:00 -0800

Electric utilities are are scared of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles (EVs) – scared they will all plug-in to recharge after work on a hot summer day and bring down the grid.

As long as EVs are charged off-peak, there is more than enough power to charge about 160 million EVs without building any new power stations. Below is an outline of some of the ideas I have about making sure EVs don’t charge during peak times but instead, actually help the electric grid.

Petrobras: Peak Oil in 2010

Max Dunn — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:39:00 -0800

The CEO of Petrobras gave a presentation in December of 2009 which shows world oil capacity peaking in 2010 because new oil projects won’t be able to offset the decline in existing oil fields.

These statements are in line with other oil company like Aramco that believes world oil production is on a peak plateau, and Total that doesn’t see global oil production ever exceeding 89 mbd.

(Reference: The Oil Drum: World Oil Capacity to Peak in 2010 Says Petrobras CEO)

Is the Global Warming Movement Dead?

Max Dunn — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:58:00 -0800

There is more evidence coming out that some of the catastrophic claims put forth by global warming advocates and the IPCC do not have a lot of scientific basis.

The Globe and Mail just published ‘The great global warming collapse’ by Margaret Wente that posits: “as the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement.”

Walter Russell Mead agrees that “the global warming movement as we have known it is dead.”

Regarding the IPCC claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035, Wente states that “the claim was rubbish, and the world’s top glaciologists knew it.”

Wente describes Climategate as “a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties.”

Wente continues:

“Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming . . . but the sole source for that claim . . . was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article ‘a mess.’”

“None of this is to say that global warming isn’t real, or that human activity doesn’t play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren’t valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.

“By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they’ve discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe.”

Unfortunately, I have to agree with her conclusion.

Nissan Leaf Electric Car

Max Dunn — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:23:00 -0800

The Nissan Leaf electric car is making a 22 city tour and stopped at Stanford yesterday for a lecture and viewing of the car (although we didn’t get to drive it). The car looked – well, like a car – and the most of the information was standard electric car stuff. For instance, a 24kWh Li-ion battery pack with a 80 kW (106 HP) motor will propel it up to 100 miles with a top speed of about 90 MPH. They covered the usual stuff about 95% of all trips in the US being less than 100 miles and 80% of the charging will be at work and home. The also estimated that it will save about $1,400 a year in gas costs, which just about covers the cost of the battery over the 10-year life.

They are working hard to be the first affordable EV. They expect to start taking orders in Spring of 2010 and start delivering cars later that year.

For me, the most valuable information from this lecture is that they are collecting zip codes of people interested in the Leaf on the web site and sharing these statistics with the electric utilities and some utilities are starting to upgrade the transformers in the areas that will likely have a lot of EVs. They also mentioned that some places can be very difficult to get permits to install the charging stations in personal garages. They said that the Mini-EV program gave up trying to setup the electric car program in New Jersey because of these problems. The reason this was interesting to me is that it points to a possible business opportunity!

For more information, see my detailed notes.

Demand For Oil Likely To Beat Supply Next Year

Max Dunn — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:20:00 -0800

Oil demand is predicted to rise by 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) next year to 85.9 million bpd, according to a Reuters poll of the ten top oil-tracking analysts and organizations. This bodes ill for the prospect of meeting the world’s oil demand, which is feared to erode the huge crude stockpiles which resulted from the global recession.

Even though major US crude ETFs like the United States Oil Fund LP (NYSE: USO) and oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) are not showing robust results today, if the demand curve beats the supply curve next year, these stocks will see a major upgrade. "The key question for prices is supply," Barclays Capital analyst Costanzo Jacazio said.

Investment banks Goldman Sachs and BofA-Merrill Lynch have the most bullish outlook for demand, projecting 86.4 million bpd and 86.7 million bpd respectively. This is good news for the likes of USO and XOM.

(Posted on 11/24/09 at 1:45pm by Ed Liston on Benzinga: The Stock Idea Network. Demand For Oil Will Likely Beat Supply Next Year)

Electricity vs Water

Max Dunn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:03:00 -0800

What is better – to save water or to save electricity? This is a tradeoff that businesses and industry concerned about sustainability often need to make, and it is not an easy one.

However, an article in the November 6th, 2009 edition of The Economist called Current thinking: Cheaper desalination provides this tidbit: “Even the best reverse-osmosis plants require 3.7 kWh of energy to produce 1,000 litres of drinking water.”

Converting to gallons, this means that 70 gallons of water can be produced from salt water with 1 kWh of electricity. So there we have it – a way to compare water savings to electricity savings.

Windmill Net Energy is Very Good

Max Dunn — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:26:00 -0700

Here is a study that looked at Energy Return on Invested (EROI) of windmills and found they returned over 20 times the energy use to make them, which is favorable with fossil fuels, nuclear and solar power.

Meta-analysis of net energy return for wind power systems

Money Doesn't Motivate

Max Dunn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:10:00 -0700

Many business are built entirely around extrinsic motivators – carrots and sticks. That’s actually fine for many kinds of 20th century mechanistic tasks. But for 21st century cognitive tasks, monetary rewards just don’t work.

This has been confirmed over and over again. Dan Ariely found that when tasks called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance. The London School of Economics reports: “We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”

What does work? Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Find out more in this fascinating and important talk by Dan Pink on TED.

Solar PV Energy Payback

Max Dunn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:25:00 -0700

Some people claim that more energy goes into making a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel than it will ever produce. While years ago that may have been the case, it certainly isn’t true any longer.

The US Department of Energy looked at several studies and concluded that multi-crystalline PV has an energy payback of less than 4 years and this will likely go down to below 2 years soon. Thin-film technologies have an even shorter payback period. With an estimated 30-year life, solar PV is actually a very good energy investment!

Definition of a Business

Max Dunn — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:05:00 -0700

John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods, has a great definition of what a business should be:

“Business has noble purposes: to provide goods and services that improve its customers’ lives, to provide jobs and meaningful work for employees, to create wealth and prosperity for its investors, and to be a responsible and caring citizen.”

(From: Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business)

Smaller Cars Are Safer

Max Dunn — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:29:00 -0700

What would you think is the safer car to drive – the Toyota Camry at 3300 pounds or the Ford Explorer at 4800 pounds. Would you believe the lighter Camry?

Safety statistics show this to be true. For every million Camrys on the road, 41 Camry drivers perish in crashes and an additional 29 people die in accidents involving Camrys. However, for every million Ford Explorers on the road, 88 Explorer drivers die and it kills 60 other people. So driving an Explorer is twice as dangerous as driving a Camry!

Why is this? The bigger Explorer can’t avoid accidents as easily as the nimbler Camry and is more prone to rollovers.

So next time someone says they feel safer in a big car, point out that the smaller car is actually safer.

References:

Cost of a Solar Panel Factory

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:19:00 -0700

When looking at the economics of building solar panels, one important factor is how much the factory costs.

By comparison, the fuel for a nuclear power plant is very inexpensive and the main reason why nuclear power is so expensive is that the nuclear plants cost so much to build. Is this also true for solar panels? Do solar panel factories costs so much that even if the marginal cost of producing a solar panel comes down, will the cost of the factory still keep the prices high?

If the recent announcement of a thin-film solar panel factory is any indication, then solar panel plant costs are very low.

This factory will cost about $150 million dollars and produce 100 MW of solar panels per year. Over 10 years, this will add only $0.15 per watt to the cost of the panel. Considering that we only need to get solar power down to about $2.00 per watt to be competitive to coal, the cost of the factory is not a problem.

So it appears that the cost of solar panel factories will not be the limiting factor in bringing down the cost of solar power.

Why a Scooter and the Prius Get the Same MPG

Max Dunn — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:57:00 -0700

A friend of mine recently got a 400cc Suzuki Burgman scooter and loves it. He gets 53 MPG which is pretty good, but realized that it was about the same as a Prius that gets 48 MPG. “Why is this?”, he asked. The Prius weighs about 3000 lbs while the scooter is only 400 lbs.

Let’s look into this.

Regenerative Breaking

Even though the scooter is a lot lighter, the Prius captures about 50% of the energy when breaking and uses it to accelerate. So this brings the effective weight of the Prius down to 1500 lbs.

Wind Resistance

Even though the scooter has a frontal area 4 times smaller than a Prius, a scooter is not very smooth going through the air. It has a coefficient of drag (Cd) of about 0.9 versus about 0.26 for the Prius. Adding this up, the total drag coefficient (Cd x A) for the Prius is 6.24 and the scooter is 5.4. This means that the scooter takes almost as much energy to overcome wind resistance as the Prius!

Motor Efficiency

Small engines are not very efficient, while Prius engines are very efficient.

Conclusion

Add them up: the extra weight is not as significant because of regenerative breaking, the wind resistance is about the same and the motor is much less efficient. Given all this, it is not surprising that the scooter and the Prius get about the same gas mileage!

Oil Production Energy vs EVs

Max Dunn — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:54:00 -0700

One of the factors that we often forget when comparing Electric Vehicles (EVs) to gas powered cars is that it takes a lot of energy to extract and refine oil into gas.

For instance, in California it takes about 14kWh of electricity to get a barrel of oil out of the ground, and about double that to refine it. About half a barrel of oil gets refined into gas, which means this 20 gallons of gas takes about 21 kWh of electricity.

It also takes a lot of natural gas to refine oil, and if this natural gas was used instead to produce electricity, it would produce about another 20 kWh of electricity.

Therefore in a typical gas car that 20 gallons will last 400 miles. But if we just left that barrel of oil in the ground and used the electricity and natural gas for an EV instead, we could go about 120 miles or about 30% of the distance of the ICE car.

So the next time a comparison is made between the efficiency of gas cars and EVs, remember even before the gas gets into the tank, we are already giving up 30% of the energy that we could have used to power an electric vehicle.

Coal Supply May Be Vastly Overestimated

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:11:00 -0700

- Michael Reilly, Discovery News, May 11, 2009 – Forget peak oil, a series of new estimates of the world’s coal supply suggests reserves may be vastly overestimated, and if the planet isn’t running on a majority of alternative energies within the next few decades, we could be facing an unprecedented global energy crisis.

On the flip side, a dwindling supply of coal could also throw the breaks on global warming, some argue.

Common knowledge about coal is that major producing nations like China, the United States and Australia, have enough to last hundreds of years, far beyond the reach of oil, which may already be in its twilight years. But worldwide coal production could plateau as early as 2025, according to one new estimate, and a growing group of scientists are concerned that fossil fuel supplies may begin dwindling by mid-century.

Last year, David Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology analyzed the coal production patterns of five regions around the world – eastern Pennsylvania, France, Germany’s Ruhr Valley, the United Kingdom and Japan – each of which was producing at less than a tenth of its peak levels.

He found that each of the depleted regions followed a rough bell curve of production; initial production was followed by a steep ramp-up, a plateau near peak levels, and then a consistent decline.

When he applied the same formula to coal data from around the world, the results were startling: the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s maximum estimate for extractable coal is about 3,400 billion tons. Rutledge’s calculations suggest just 666 billion tons.

Peak oil, not speculation

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:53:00 -0700

by Steven Kopits, Managing Director, Douglas-Westwood, New York, 5/11/2009

NEW YORK: In seeking to explain the run up in oil prices from 2004 to 2008, commentators often turn to “speculation” as the primary cause. While speculation – or at least a kind of piling-on – may have explained the very late stages of the oil price rally, the willingness to attribute oil prices primarily to financial investors – as the CBS news show ‘60 Minutes’ did a few months back – risks drawing the wrong lesson from the period. Let’s re-wind the clock and recall the events of the time.

Paper versus Polystyrene Cups - Again

Max Dunn — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:46:00 -0700

Many organization are looking for ways to reduce their garbage and increase composting of the disposable cups. However, it turns out that the styrofoam (also known as extruded polystyrene foam or XPS) versus paper question is more difficult than it first appears.

One big problem is that the coating on the paper cups which keeps it from leaking also makes it difficult to recycle or compost. And the cups themselves contain very little recycled paper.

An old study from Science shows that on almost every count, except cooling water and biodegradability, the styrofoam cups are more eco-friendly.

A newer study also concludes that to process the raw materials about six times as much steam, 13 times as much electric power, and twice as much cooling water are consumed to produce the paper cup as compared to the styrofoam cup.

The same study found that landfill disposal of the two items under dry conditions will occupy similar landfill volumes after compaction and neither will decompose much. Under wet conditions, styrofoam will not readily degrade but may help other materials to do so, while the paper will decompose giving off methane, a significant greenhouse gas.

Another possibility is to recycle the styrofoam cups, although this is hard to find. There are mail in recycling centers in Redwood City and Hayward that take them and Imagine Surfboards makes surfboards out of used styrofoam cups.

It is too bad that there isn’t an easy solution to making disposable cups more eco-friendly.

A Real Market for Negawatts!

Max Dunn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:39:00 -0800

Negawatts is term coined by Amory Lovins to describe “negative watts” or conservation. It makes sense – instead of constantly building power plants to add more megawatts to the grid, why not let people bid on saving power through negawatts? That’s what New England’s independent system operator started doing last year.

In its Forward Capacity Market, the ISO projects how much power the region will need three years ahead and then runs a descending-clock auction for the right to provide it. The ISO doesn’t care whether it gets its power from increased production of megawatts or from conservation through negawatts. Result: money saved in power plants and wires, more stable electricity bills, and a homegrown incubator for getting bright green ideas off the drawing board.

(Source: Wired Magazine Trade – Electricity Like Pork Bellies)

Wind, Water and Sun Best Energy Alternatives

Max Dunn — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:29:00 -0800

A recent study by Mark Jacobson at Stanford ranks clean energy options and found that wind was by far the most promising. The best to worst electric power sources Jacobson found were:

Wind power
Concentrated solar power
Geothermal power
Tidal power
Solar photovoltaic
Wave power
Hydroelectric power
Nuclear/coal with carbon capture

Jacobson also comes down hard on biofuels, “Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels.” He added, “Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels.”

(Reference: Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds)

Tesla Efficiency

Max Dunn — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:39:00 -0800

I admit it – I am a numbers geek. I love to play around with numbers and think about them, and no more so than with electric vehicles. So imagine how happy I was too see some fantastic numbers about the Tesla Roadster!

The first of these graphs shows how much energy it uses at different speeds. The fact that energy goes down to a certain point is not surprising – all cars have a sweet spot where they operate most efficiently – but what is surprising that it is about 20 MPH versus about 55 MPH for gas cars. Another interesting point is that at 65 MPH the Tesla uses about 280 Wh per mile. This is measured from the battery to the wheels, so adding in the charging losses will decrease it to about 3 miles per kWh, which is the figure I normally use.

Electric Generation Costs

Max Dunn — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:30:00 -0800

What does it cost to build a new electric power plant? Here is a graph that shows this:

However, you do need to adjust this for utililization, since nuclear operates about 90% of the time, while solar operates only about 20% of the time:

(Source: What does Sustainability Mean for Energy?)

Peak Oil in 2012!

Max Dunn — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:24:00 -0800

Sometimes people talk about "running out of oil", but the world will never completely run out of oil. There will always be some oil remaining somewhere that can be scavenged from old fields, reclaimed from tar sands or stripped from oil shale.

There is, however, a limit to how fast we can pull oil out of the ground. Peak Oil will occur when the world hits this peak in production – and this will likely happen soon!

Oil Usage Graph

Max Dunn — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:18:00 -0800

Previously, I posted a table showing how oil in the US is used. Here is a graph that shows the same information in a prettier form:

(Reference: Year 2000 data from Ending the Oil Age)

Li-Air Battery - Fill-er up!

Max Dunn — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:11:00 -0800

A lithium air (Li-air) battery with a novel structure is looking very promising for use in battery-powered vehicles.

One problem with battery-powered vehicles (and an argument for hydrogen fuel-cells) is that it takes a while to recharge the batteries. While this is fine for city driving (since the batteries can be recharged overnight) it makes it tough to drive a long distance, like driving from San Jose to ski at Lake Tahoe.

This Li-air battery could solve the problem of long charge times by allowing service stations to replace the liquid electrolytes and metallic lithium cassette, allowing battery-powered cars to be driven continuously.

Then the metallic lithium can be electrically regenerated from the used liquid electrolyte making the process sustainable.

This Li-air battery could prove very useful in making battery-powered vehicles more practical.

(Reference: AIST Develops New-type ‘Li-air Battery’)

Coal Tax Needed

Max Dunn — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:00:00 -0800

I just went to an interesting talk about distributed solar and found out that prices of solar PV panels are dropping dramatically. Soon, PV will be about $4 per watt installed (in large installations) which works out to about $0.17 per kWh.

By comparison, coal-fired electricity sells for about $0.05 per kWh. This includes about $0.02 for the coal itself ($2.15 per MMBtu and 1 MMBTU produces about 100 kWh) and $0.03 for all other expenses.

Adding in a $30 per ton CO2 tax would add about $0.03 per kWh to this price, (coal produces about 2 lbs of CO2 per kWh) for a total of $0.08 per kWh.

So even with a CO2 tax, coal electricity will still be half the cost of PV.

Therefore, for coal electricity to cost about the same as PV electricity, a tax of 400% would need to be added to coal!

Electric Power Plant Cost Comparison

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:43:00 -0800

While looking for the external costs of coal, I ran into a great table that shows how much it costs to build and run various types of electric power plants.

It is interesting to note that while a convention coal plant costs much less to build than a solar thermal plant, the coal plant costs more to maintain so over 30 years, the total costs would be equal.

Table 1: Specification of electric power technologies used in GMM model. All costs are given in $(1998). The progress ratio (pr) is the rate at which the cost declines each time the cumulative production doubles. The data presented in the table comes from various sources: IIASA MESSAGE model database, literature reviews. Characteristics of technologies with CO2 removal are adopted from [8].

(Reference: Internalisation of external cost in the power generation sector)

Hydrogen Hype

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:17:00 -0800

Natural Capitalism is a terrific book. But it got one thing wrong – its hope for hydrogen cars. Dan Neil at the LA Times put it well: "Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars." (Ref) Here are a few of the reasons why hydrogen won’t work:

Hydrogen is only an energy carrier. It is not an energy source. (Ref)
Hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. And this will likely be the case for the next several decades. (Ref)
Hydrogen production produces CO2. (Ref) For instance, the Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen car indirectly produces 176g CO2/mile while the Toyota Prius hybrid produces less CO2 at 167g CO2/mile. (Ref)
Hydrogen cars are very expensive. The FCX Clarity costs several hundred thousand dollars and it will take many years to even drop below $100,000. (Ref)
Hydrogen leaks. A hydrogen car left in an airport parking lot for two week could lose 50% of its hydrogen. (Ref )
Hydrogen isn’t very efficient. (Ref) Only 20% to 25% of the energy needed to make hydrogen can be recovered. (Ref) Even using renewable energy, battery powered vehicles can still go 3-times further on the same electricity than hydrogen vehicles. (Ref)
Hydrogen cars fill up slowly. It currently it takes about 30 minutes to fill up a hydrogen tank. (Ref)

In the long-term, maybe the challenges with hydrogen cars will be solved. However, it is also likely that the few remaining problems with battery powered vehicles will be solved too. Physics will then remain firmly on the side of battery powered vehicles and it will be easier and more efficient to just transfer renewable electricity over power lines to charge battery vehicles than to convert the electricity to hydrogen, ship it, and convert it back into electricity again.

Sustainable Banking - Lending Club

Max Dunn — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 11:35:00 -0800

With the recent financial breakdown, it was refreshing to hear of a new type of bank at the VLAB event Upside of the Downturn on January 20th, 2008.

Renaud Laplanche, Founder & CEO of the Lending Club described how normal banks pay 2-3% but collect 16%. Lending Club lenders on the other hand, get 10.29% while borrowers pay 13% on average. The Lending Club narrows the spread rates by transacting over the Internet and having people lending to other people. As a lender, you can choose which borrower to lend to which creates a connection and social responsibility among users. Borrowers are also carefully screened and 85% are declined, so only prime borrowers are accepted. This leads to a low default rate of 2.7% and a late rate of 3.8%. The Lending Club is experiencing high growth rates of 50-100%, and in December of 2008, $2.5M was placed.

Maybe this is a new model for more sustainable banking!

Carbon Indulgences

Max Dunn — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:21:00 -0800

In the late thirteenth century, the church came up with the idea of indulgences, which was paying someone else to do the good works demanded of you. Church officials argued that clergy were doing more good works then they needed to, so why not sell them to raise money?

Are carbon offsets like these medieval indulgences? Just reducing our guilt without really helping the planet? Let’s look a little more closely at them.

Lithium Supplies Are Adequate

Max Dunn — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:32:00 -0800

There has been some worry that there wouldn’t be enough lithium production to meet the rising demand for Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles. However, a recent study has concluded that due to the recession, demand for lithium will drop and there will be adequate supplies at least through 2020.

(Reference: TRU Presentation Lithium Supply & Market)

The True Cost of Gas

Max Dunn — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:35:00 -0800

The price we pay for a gallon of gas at the pump doesn’t include all the costs associated with it, like environmental costs and tax subsidies. One older study found that if we included all of these, we would be paying and extra $5 to $14 per gallon!

However, if we look at just the cost spent on military defense of oil in the Persian Gulf, it would be less than this.

One rough estimate would be to assume that 15% of the $430 billion DoD budget was spent on defending our oil interests in the Persian Gulf. Spread over the 142 billion gallons of gas we use each year, it works out to $0.46 per gallon.

Of course the hard number to determine is how much of the military budget goes to just protecting oil in the Persian Gulf. The $65 billion seems to fall in the middle range of what is spent on that region, but there is a lot of differences in opinion over how much spending would be reduced if we didn’t need to protect the oil there.

Here are some of the studies and what they determined we would need to add to the price of a gallon of gas to cover the cost of protecting oil in the Persian Gulf:

$0.02 to $0.20: Mark A. Delucchi, 2007. Resources for the Future: The Cost of Protecting Oil in the Persian Gulf
$0.03 to $0.15: Mark A. Delucchi, James J. Murphy, 2008. Institute of Transportation Studies: US military expenditures to protect the use of Persian Gulf oil for motor vehicles
$0.35 to $1.05: Ogden, J.M., Williams, R.H., Larson, E.D., 2004. Institute of Transportation Studies: Societal lifecycle costs of cars with alternative fuels/engines

So don’t assume the price you pay at the pump is the true cost of gasoline. There are a lot more costs hidden away in making that gasoline available and in the environmental problems it causes that you pay for elsewhere.

Coming Chaos? Maybe Not

Max Dunn — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:24:00 -0800

Here is an interesting article written by Michael W. Foley, a former professor in the social sciences, that looks at various examples around the world where there was social breakdown, what the factors led to ensuing violence, and how the US might react given a similar crisis situation:

Coming Chaos? Maybe Not

He found that while there were many cases where economic and ecological collapse led to violence, there were also many cases where it didn’t. The major determining factors were:

Political motivation
Police
Leadership
Community

His conclusion is that prospects for violence in the US following a “hard landing” are very small, except in some isolated locations where police and community support break down.

Cost of Reducing CO2 with Electric Vehicles

Max Dunn — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:33:00 -0800

There are some questions about whether electric vehicles (EVs) actually reduce the amount of CO2 emitted, especially when electricity is produced by coal. However, we have seen that EVs in clean energy states produce only 1/6 as much CO2, and even in the worst case, produce no more than a regular gas car.

Providing more evidence of this, a new study by Boston Consulting Group not only shows how much less CO2 electric vehicles produce, but also puts a figure on how much this costs:

While this report shows that the cost of reducing CO2 with electric vehicles is not cheap, costing between $7,000 and $14,000 to reduce CO2 in half, the CO2 savings far surpass anything possible with advanced gas (ICE) engines. And the CO2 emissions caused by electric vehicles is only going to get lower as electric power generation becomes cleaner and the premium for electric cars will continue to fall as batteries become cheaper.

(Reference: The Comeback of the Electric Car)

Climate Change Recalculated - Saul Griffith

Max Dunn — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:41:00 -0800

On January 16th, the Long Now Foundation sponsored a very interesting talk at Fort Mason by Saul Griffith entitled “Climate Change Recalculated”.

Saul first went through a calculation of his energy usage. However, he did it in a different way – instead of using energy (kilo-watt-hours or kWh) he used continuous power expended (kilo-watts or kW) because this made it easier to add up and compare.

After adding up all his plane trips, driving, food, energy usage and embodied energy in the stuff he buys (which accounts for 1/4 of his energy use), he calculated that he used 18kW. By comparison, a person in Qatar uses 27kW but the average person in the US uses 11kW and the global average is 2.2kW. So he uses a lot more than the average American and way more than the global average. So he decided to shoot for 2.2kW and see how he would have to change his life.

First, he would be able to fly to the East Coast only once per year, and fly to Australia only once every 5 years. He would need to have a car that got 100 MPG, and then could only drive 20 miles per day. He could eat meat only once a week and would need to buy 1/10 of the stuff he does now and make it last 10 times longer. He isn’t quite there yet but has cut down on his travel and the stuff he buys and now is using only 12kW. Interestingly, this has also increased his quality of life. For instance, he isn’t traveling as much so is spending more time with his family.

Next he talked about climate change and what would be necessary to hold CO2 to 450 ppm. Humanity currently uses 16TW (tera-watts or 10^12 watts or a million-million watts) and in order to hold the CO2 limit, we can only burn 3TW of fossil fuels. Since 1.5TW already comes from renewable resources we would need an additional 11.5TW from new renewable sources. To meet this, we would need to produce 2TW of power each year for the next 25 years (not sure how he got this from the 11.5TW figure?), and this would require installing:

Photovoltaic: 100 m2 per second
Solar thermal: 50 m2 per second
Wind: one every 5 or 6 seconds
Nuclear: one new plant every 3 weeks

This is a lot! However, if GM and Ford stopped making cars and started making just wind turbines, they could meet the goal of creating a wind turbine every 5 seconds.

Summary: We need to reduce the power we all use – which we can do but is not easy. We also need to dramatically increase the amount of renewable power production – which we can do but it won’t be easy.

(For more details, see Climate Change Recalculated)

The next by the Long Now Foundation is Social Collapse Best Practices on February 13th and features Dmitry Orlov who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and how it survived and applies these insights into how the US might not be able to cope as well with a similar collapse. Should be interesting too!

Crazy RAV4-EV Prices

Max Dunn — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:32:00 -0800

The prices that people are paying for RAV4-EVs are a little crazy. Last year, several sold on eBay for over $45,000.

Today there was an auction for a 2003 RAV4-EV with 97,000 miles – which means the battery pack will need to be replaced at a cost of about $15,000. Nevertheless, the sale price was $32,600, so the total cost will be over $47,000 – crazy!

I mean the RAV4-EV is a great car, but it makes more sense to wait for another year or so when the new electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt will be available and will likely be less than $40,000.

Real Electric Vehicle Costs

Max Dunn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:42:00 -0800

Interested in what it really costs to operate an electric vehicle? Here is what one RAV4-EV owner estimated his costs to be, including replacing the battery pack:

First 115,000 miles:

$30,000: Original price minus $20,000 rebate
$5,000: Charger, solar panels, some grid power
$4,000: Tires, brake pads, minor dent removals, AAA, rear glass, seat covers, registration
$6,000: Insurance
$45,000: Total, or $0.39 per mile

Next 120,000 miles:

$15,000 battery pack replacement
$3,000 electricity
$5,500 tires, registration and others
$4,000 insurance
$27,500 total, or $0.23 per mile

The takeaway from this is not just that the total per mile cost of an electric vehicle will be lower than a regular car, but also that replacing the battery pack can be done economically.

Source: RAV4-EV Archives (registration required)

Biggest Threat to Polar Bears

Max Dunn — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:22:00 -0800

With all the talk about global warming, we sometimes forget that man is damaging the planet in far worse ways. Take for instance, polar bears. They have become a cover issue for global warming and are prominent in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. One study found a decline of 15 bears per year in the western coast of Hudson Bay and there was a sighting of 4 drowned bears after an abrupt windstorm. Both of these have been attributed to global warming.

However, in Baffin Bay the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board will allow 105 bears to be killed this year, even though biologist feel that the quota should be 64 or less to avoid overhunting.

Whatever the number, whether 64 or 105, it is obvious that man is responsible for directly killing more polar bears than are harmed by global warming.

Toyota and GM Canoe Race

Max Dunn — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:35:00 -0800

Here is a little humor to brighten your day. (I don’t know where it originally came from because it has been floating around the Internet for a while.) And while its barbs are aimed at the scoundrel of the moment, all businesses are sometimes guilty of this too.

—-—-—

Toyota and GM decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River.

Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

BUT on the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So American management hired a consulting company referred to them by the US Government and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

The consultants advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized into 3 steering supervisors, 1 area steering superintendents, 1 publicity manager, 1 HR diversity coordinator, 1 union rep, and a rower.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program”, with a lunch and a free company pen for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and performance-tied bonuses but that decision was held up in committee.

BUT the next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment.

The money from all sales and all forecasted moneys saved from further competition was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India.

Military Cost of Oil

Max Dunn — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:43:00 -0800

It is well known that a large part of our military expenses goes to protecting the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. What has not been as clear is the actual cost of this protection. However a recent study sheds some light on this hidden expense.

In this study, Mark Delucchi of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis estimates that American taxpayers spent between $27 billion and $73 billion in 2004 (which was the most recent year data was available) for military protection of US oil interests in the Persian Gulf region.

While this is a huge number by itself, it works out to only $0.03 to $0.15 cents per gallon of gas for motor vehicle use.

180,000 Battery Miles

Max Dunn — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:44:00 -0800

One of the arguments against electric vehicles (EVs) is that the batteries won’t last very long and are expensive to replace. However, even the 10-year old NiMH batteries in RAV4 EVs can last up to 150,000 miles and we now we have test results showing that Li-ion batteries can last over 180,000 miles.

Since batteries can now last longer than the car itself, this argument can finally be put to rest.

Paper versus Polystyrene Cups

Max Dunn — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:29:00 -0800

I just finished my Sustainable Design class in the Stanford Continuing Studies program taught by Mark Martin. It was a really interesting, well taught class and I learned a lot.

One of the main points that Mark made was that it is difficult to tell how eco-friendly a product is without a in-depth study. As an example, he had us discuss which we thought was more eco-friendly: paper or polystyrene coffee cups. (Polystyrene is sometimes called Styrofoam or Polyfoam.) We all pretty much all agreed that paper cups were better, and then Mark showed us this study:

On almost every count, except cooling water and biodegradability, the polystyrene cups are more eco-friendly.

In a more recent study polystyrene was also found to be better:

In raw material requirements the paper cup required about 2.5 times its finished weight of raw wood and about the same hydrocarbon fueling requirement as is needed for the polystyrene foam cup. To process the raw materials about six times as much steam, 13 times as much electric power, and twice as much cooling water are consumed to produce the paper cup as compared to the polystyrene foam cup. Emission rates to air are similar and to water are generally higher for the paper cup.

Another interesting ramification this study pointed out is that in a wet landfill, the polystyrene will remain stable while the paper will decompose giving off methane gas and contributing to the instability of the land surface.

This just goes to prove what Mark taught in this class – it isn’t always obvious which products are eco-friendly.

Oil Price Fluctuations, Part 2

Max Dunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:25:00 -0800

Previously we discussed oil price fluctuations in terms of non-elastic supply and non-elastic demand. Here is a short video that graphically illustrates this same principle:

CFL versus LED bulbs

Max Dunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:05:00 -0800

I have always thought that LED bulbs should provide the best energy efficiency and lowest lifetime cost of any bulb. However, looking into this more, I am not so sure.

An article on Salon by Ask Pablo (who happens to be a graduate of the Presidio School of Management) showed this comparison:

Bulb	Cost	Output	Power	Efficiency	Lifetime Bulb Cost	Lifetime Power Cost	Lifetime Total Cost
CFL	$7	500 lumens	10 watts	50 lumens/watt	$35	$55	$90
LED	$60	500 lumens	7 watts	71 lumens/watt	$60	$38	$98

(Note: Lifetime is 50,000 hours, and I used an electricity cost of $0.11/kWh)

Even though LED bulbs are much more expensive than CFLs (compact fluorescent), they are also about 40% more efficient, so adding in lifetime electricity costs their total cost would be about the same.

However, there is a catch. If an LED bulb is used 4 hours per day, it would last almost 35 years – and what is the chance that over those 35 years the LED bulb gets broken or there is a power surge that damages it? Probably pretty good! So assuming that LED bulbs actually last on average only 10 years, this would make them twice as expensive as CFLs.

So until the cost of LED bulbs come down quite a bit, CFLs will still be the better buy.

U.S. Renewable Electricity At 11%

Max Dunn — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:25:00 -0800

According to the EIA’s Monthly Electricity Review, net US generation of electricity from renewable energy sources surged by 32 percent in June 2008 compared to June 2007.

Renewable energy (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for 11.0 percent of net US electricity generation in June 2008 compared to 8.6 percent in June 2007.

Hydropower still accounts for a large part of this renewable energy, but over this period wind power leaped by 81.6 percent and solar surged by 42.6. Now non-hydroelectric renewables account for just under three percent of total net U.S. electricity generation.

Oil Price Fluctuations

Max Dunn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:36:00 -0800

Oil went up to $147 per barrel and is now down to $64. Does this mean that the oil shortage is over and that we can go back to driving SUVs? No, not unless you can afford to drive your gas hog when the price of gas goes back up over $4 per gallon. Actually, this type of wide oil price fluctuation is to be expected.

The reason for these fluctuations is the inelasticity of both the supply and demand for oil. On the supply side, nowhere in the world is it possible to just turn up a tap and pump more oil – everyone is pumping as much as they can. (Saudi Arabia and Iran do have extra capacity for heavy, sour crude, but that doesn’t help.) So in order to increase the supply of oil, it is necessary to drill more wells or employ advanced extraction techniques, all of which take time.

On the supply side, demand is very inelastic as well. When the price of gas goes up, you don’t immediately ditch your SUV and buy a Prius or find a job closer to home. In the short term, you still need to drive to work, take the kids to school and heat your house, so you pay whatever it costs.

So now we have an inelastic supply meeting an inelastic demand and what do you get? That’s right, wildly fluctuating prices! As soon as demand creeps just a little bit above supply, the price shoots up. Then when the supply goes up just a little, and demand goes down just a little, prices fall.

This is a classic pattern and one that we have seen before with whale oil. Whale oil mimics closely what we are seeing with fossil oil in that techniques to extract it got better and better and overran the natural supply. As the supply started to peak, prices went through some wild fluctuations too:

So don’t be fooled by the current low oil prices. They are not a sign that all is well, but only a sign that the worst is yet to come.

(For more information, see Peak Oil and EVs)

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES)

Max Dunn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:10:00 -0800

Much of the criticism of solar and wind energy is that they don’t produce power all the time and that we don’t have any good way of storing electricity. There is some pumped hydro storage, but it is only able to contribute less than 3% of the power, and it is not likely that we will be able to build more.

However, another way of storing energy is to compress air underground. There are a lot of areas that can be used for this underground air storage including underground aquifers, carved out salt caverns, depleted natural gas wells and old mines.

The air is compressed using an electric turbine which can be driven by solar, wind or even off-peak electricity. Then when it is needed, the compressed air is fed into a natural-gas fired electric plant which normally would need to use a lot of energy to compress the air. This makes CAES systems almost 3 times more efficient than single cycle gas-fired plants, and almost twice as efficient as combined cycle plants. In addition, CAES equipment is simpler and has lower operating costs.

Currently there are two CAES plants in operation around the world. A 290 MW plant in Germany operating since 1978, and a 110 MW plant in Alabama operating since 1991. Now, there is a third 200 MW CAES plant being built in Central Iowa (ISEP) that received a federal funding earmark in 2009 for $1.5 million.

CAES is a very promising technology that can make sustainable energy much more practical and we should be working harder and faster and devoting more money to develop this technology.

References:

Does Protecting Old Forests Help Reduce CO2?

Max Dunn — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:31:00 -0700

In a previous post, I discussed some of the problems with carbon credits. Here is another example of a project that doesn’t seem like it is really reducing CO2.

The Garcia River Forest project is a certified carbon offset project that PG&E is sponsoring and protects trees that would otherwise be harvested. This seems like a good thing – leaving forests standing rather than cutting them down seems like it would reduce CO2. Right?

However, there is a problem. A growing forest sequesters a lot more carbon than a mature one. Of course, if the forest was cleared by burning, that would be bad because it would release a lot of CO2. But, if the forest was responsibly and sustainably harvested to make lumber, the CO2 would effectively be sequestered and then the young forest would soak up additional CO2.

So for maximum CO2 sequestration, it would actually be better to harvest as many forests as possible for lumber and re-plant them! Of course forests offer a lot of other benefits besides just CO2 sequestration, so we would never want to cut them all down. But the point is, if we really want to make a dent in CO2, we have to look carefully at all the effects of our efforts and not just make quick assumptions.

Growth of Wind Power

Max Dunn — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:07:00 -0700

Many people are dismissing wind power as irrelevant in solving our energy problem since wind power has been in production for a long time but the total output is still relatively small. However, it is useful to compare the ramp-up of wind power to nuclear power:

It is interesting how closely these two growth curves align! In the US today, nuclear provides about 20% of our electricity so it is not unreasonable to assume that wind power can be ramped up to eventually provide the same percentage of power.

(References: The Oil Drum – Making the case for wind, again and Pure Power – Wind Energy Scenarios up to 2030)

GCEP Fourth Symposium

Max Dunn — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:45:00 -0700

The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) held its fourth annual energy research symposium at the beginning of October.

GCEP is an interesting group based at Stanford University that seeks new solutions to one of the grand challenges of this century: supplying energy to meet the changing needs of a growing world population in a way that protects the environment. With funding of $225 million from Exxon, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota, GCEP supports a lot of diverse high-risk and high-reward projects in areas such as solar energy, batteries, cellulosic ethanol, hydrogen, CO2 capture and storage, advanced combustion and more

This was a fantastic symposium where researchers from Stanford and around the world discussed GCEP’s projects. Some of the highlights for me were:

Burning coal in super-critical water to capture all CO2 and other emissions
The benefits of using miscanthus for cellulosic ethanol (which is better than switchgrass)
Using nano structures to improve photovoltaics
Using biological organisms to split hydrogen
Various techniques to make fermenting cellulosic ethanol a reality
Improvements in lithium-ion battery cathodes

For more information, see my notes of the symposium presentations..

Zapino Lithium Battery Update

Max Dunn — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:52:00 -0700

I just talked to Bob in customer service at Zap. He said that they are testing Lithium (Li-ion) batteries for the Zapino scooter right now and that they should be ready in 4 to 6 months. The cost will be between $1,500 and $2,000 and will include the batteries and charger, but no battery management system (BMS).

So for now, the best option will probably be to use Thunder Sky batteries from Elite Power. They have a package of 20-40Ah batteries and charger for $1600 that should work well in the Zapino. While half the weight of the current lead-acid battery pack, they are a 1/2 inch higher so there might be some rework needed to fit them in.

Offshore Drilling - Not A Solution

Max Dunn — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:44:00 -0700

If anyone still believes that offshore drilling will significantly increase our oil supplies, take a look at the map below. The areas in blue are those that are already being drilled and also those with the most oil. The areas in white are the ones they might open for drilling, but these areas aren’t expected to yield much oil anyways:

If that isn’t enough, consider that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling. Their conclusion:

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.

(References: The Oil Drum – Offshore Drilling Debate, Climate Progress – EIA Bombshell)

Nanosolar 1GW Machine

Max Dunn — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:21:00 -0700

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.)

[Also: Higher-resolution download of video (6.5MBytes)]

How Much Does Clean Coal Cost?

Max Dunn — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:07:00 -0700

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.

Converting Trucks to Hybrids - HEVT

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:24:00 -0700

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.

EV Charging Infrastructure by Coulomb Technologies

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:57:00 -0700

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.

CARB ZEV Standard to be Raised

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:24:00 -0700

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!

Why Can't Hobbyists Buy A123 Batteries

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:49:00 -0700

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.

Why PHEV Engines Always Turn On

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:40:00 -0700

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.

Oil Price Increase Due to Dollar Devaluation?

Max Dunn — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:49:00 -0700

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.

EEStor UltraCaps - Too Good To Be True?

Max Dunn — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:56:00 -0700

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!

(Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor)

Slight of Hand - 20 Foot Sea Level Rise

Max Dunn — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:58:00 -0700

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.

Price Elasticity of Oil - Short Term and Long Term

Max Dunn — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:17:00 -0700

When the price of something goes up, it makes sense that demand for it should go down and production should go up. But in the case of oil, that doesn’t seem to be true. Oil prices have gone up 400% over the last 5 years while consumption has been flat in the US and global oil production has been relatively flat for the last 3 years.

Proven Oil Reserves - Fact or Fiction?

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:33:00 -0700

When people attempt to prove that the world has plenty of oil left, they often quote oil reserve numbers. But can we really trust these numbers?

Here is a graph of the commonly accepted ‘proven’ oil reserves:

Will Increased Shipping Costs Decrease Globalization?

Max Dunn — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:09:00 -0700

There is speculation that the increased cost of shipping due to rising oil prices will reduce globalization since it will be cheaper to make products locally than ship them all over the world. For some bulk items where shipping is a major component of the price, this could be true. But for many high-value items, manufacturing them in low-cost countries and then shipping them by boat will still be more economical than making them locally.

eVolvo - Electron Hog

Max Dunn — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:30:00 -0700

You have heard of a “gas hog”? Well my eVolvo is an electron hog!

Most electric cars get between 2 and 4 miles per kWh. The ones that are light and streamlined and have efficient AC motors with regenerative breaking get the best mileage – and my car is none of these. It is a heavy car with a big DC motor and no regenerative braking. It does have a lot of zip, but at the cost of poor electron mileage.

Battery to wheel, I get about 2.5 miles per kWh. This is based on my maximum range so far of 25 miles, the battery pack of 15 kWh maximum, and a Peukert effect that reduces the useable energy from the lead-acid AGM batteries to about 10 kWh.

However, the Soneil 1206S chargers that are being used are not very efficient, probably around 75%. That combined with charging efficiency of the batteries which is probably around 85% gives a charging efficiency of only about 64%. So from the wall to the wheels I am getting about 1.6 miles per kWh. This figure is consistent with the data I have been collecting:

Miles	kWh	Charge Time	Miles/kWh
22.2	14	–	1.6
6.6	4.3	–	1.5
4.6	3.4	6 hrs	1.4
13.3	8.4	17 hrs	1.6
18.3	11.9	–	1.5

eVolvo Specs

Max Dunn — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:49:00 -0700

For those of you wondering what is in my eVolvo, here are the specs:

Batteries: Deka AGM 8A31DT 105AH @ C/20. 144 volts: 4 batteries in front, 8 in back
DC-DC converter 55 amp: IOTA DLS-55
Auxiliary battery: Deka Gel 8GU1H 32AH
Charger: 12 – Soneil 1206S 3amp (one on each battery)
Motor: Advanced FB-4001a (19 HP continuous, 85 HP peak)
Controller: Auburn Scientific PWC600-144 Kodiak water cooled
Brake vacuum: Thomas 107CDC208
Belt: A/C, Steering, Alternator

Top 5 US Oil Importing Countries

Max Dunn — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:59:00 -0700

What are the top 5 countries that the US imports its oil from?

Most people would probably guess that Saudi Arabia is on the list, but they might also think that Russia is on it too, which it isn’t. (Russia is at number 14.)

Surprisingly, Canada is at the top of the list with 1.9 million barrels per day (mbd) and Canada exports more oil to the US than it uses itself. It gets about half of its oil from tar sands, and while there is a lot of oil locked up in tar sands it takes so much natural gas and water to get the oil out that it is unlikely that the daily production can be increased much more.

Saudi Arabia is second on the list and while it exports a total of about 9 mbd, the US gets only 1.5 mbd of this.

Mexico is third at 1.2 mbd which represents 80% of their exports, but their production is falling. The Cantarell field was the second largest producing oil field in the world before it peaked in 2004, and since then its output has fallen by an ominous 50%.

Would you guess that Nigeria is the 4th largest importer to the US at 1.1 mbd? It is, however Nigeria is a very unstable country and militant attacks routinely cause production to fall below its maximum potential.

Lastly, at number 5 is our friendly South American neighbor Venezuela at 1.0 mbd.

This list often surprises people. Most wouldn’t know that Canada is the top provider of our imported oil and that Nigeria is close behind at number 4.

References:

Do Oil Companies Make Too Much Money?

Max Dunn — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:08:00 -0700

According to the accounting firm Ernst and Young, in 2007 the average manufacturing company made 8.9 cents per dollar of sales. The U.S. oil industry did slightly worse at 8.3 cents per dollar of sales, even though this was a record year for them. Contrast that to beverage and cigarette companies that earned 19.1 cents and drugmakers that earned 18.4 cents. So even though oil prices have skyrocketing, are oil companies really making too much money?

(Source: Forbes June 2, 2008 Page 30 Shooting Ourselves in the Foot)

25 Watt Fuel Cell - Only $5,000

Max Dunn — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:26:00 -0700

With all this talk about fuel cells, I have been wondering if it is possible to actually buy one. Here is one I stumbled across a reformed methanol fuel cell that puts out 25 watts. With the standard 12 oz cartridge of methanol, it will produce power for about 7 hours. One drawback is that it takes between 12 and 30 minutes to start-up, not very convenient if you need to get someplace quick. However the real kicker is the price – $5,000! If you wanted enough of these to power a car which takes about 15,000 watts, it would cost over $3 million! Or course this is a methane fuel cell and not a hydrogen one, but it provides another reason to believe that fuel cells are not the answer to the future of transportation.

Book Review - Zoom, The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

Max Dunn — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:03:00 -0700

ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
by Vijay Vaitheeswaran

I wanted to like this book – I really did. With a name like "Zoom" and the promise to show the car of the future, I was excited to read it. But in the end, the book turned out to be at best a dud, and at worst misleading and harmful to the future of transportation.

Easy CO2 Calculation for Vehicles

Max Dunn — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:05:00 -0700

Sometimes you will hear that electric vehicles produce more CO2 than gas vehicles, however, this isn’t true. Let’s look at an easy CO2 calculation to see why.

Burning a gallon of gas creates 20 lbs of CO2. So a car that gets an average of 20 MPG produces 1 lb of CO2 per mile. Ok so far?

Electric cars get an average of 3 miles per kWh and 1 kWh creates an average of 1.3 lbs of CO2. So an electric car produces about 0.4 lbs of CO2 per mile. So electric cars produce only about 40% as much CO2 as gas cars. Easy, right?