AND 
100-Fold Lithium-ion Battery Breakthrough
A battery research group out of MIT and led by Dr. Gerbrand Ceder just published remarkable research findings in the journal Nature.
The scientists were able to develop a new formulation of lithium iron phosphate that allows for extremely rapid charging, and massive specific power.
In the typical lithium ion cell when a current is applied to charge the cell, lithium ions move away from the cathode compound and are trapped at the anode storage medium. When the battery discharges producing current , those ions travel back to the cathode medium and in so doing produce current flow.
Speed of charging in typical lithium-ion cells is slowed by virtue of the fact that it takes time for the lithium ion to move off the cathode material. Various techniques have been tried to increase that speed including the nanoparticle doping strategy that A123 Systems uses. However recharge times still can take hours, and specific power is limited.
The scientists noted that lithium iron phosphate forms a lattice that creates small tunnels through which the lithium ions flow, but that although the cathode seemed ideal it still took some time for those ions to travel.
The novel solution they devised was to create a lithium phosphate glassy surface to coats these tunnels. This glassy surface acts as a speedway of sorts rapidly transporting the lithium ions on and off the cathode.
The result was startling.
Per the article “extremely high rates can be achieved for the active material: at a 200C rate (corresponding to an 18-s total discharge) more than 100mAh g can still be achieved, and a capacity of 60mAh g is obtained at a 400C rate (9 s to full discharge). Such discharge rates are two orders of magnitude larger than those used in today’s lithium ion batteries.”
The authors note that “Typical power rates for lithium ion battery materials are in the range of 0.5 to 2 kWkg. The specific power we observed for the modified LiFePO4 (170kWkg21 at a 400C rate and 90kWkg at a 200C rate) is two orders of magnitude higher.”
At this point the researchers have only tested the cells to 50 cycles but have noted no degradation.
The authors note that this new ability to charge and discharge lithium-ion batteries within seconds blurs the distinction between batteries and ultracapacitors, and may result in radical lifestyle change in terms of consumer electronic devices and plug-in cars.
Besides being able to charge one’s cellphone in seconds, this will have a major impact on electric cars.
The authors note that if electric grid power was available, an electric car with a 15kWh battery could be charged in 5 minutes. This would require the delivery of 180 kw of energy in that time frame. Further those cars could have extremely powerful acceleration and be useful in other power applications such as towing.
Lead author Ceder said “If manufacturers decide they want to go down this road, they could do this in a few years,” and noted the technology has already been licensed by two companies one of which includes, you guessed it, A123 Systems.
Source (Nature) and (ArsTechnica)
March 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Cool.
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March 11th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
sick, if they can make it affordable this could be huge for almost anything that uses rechargeable batteries that you can think of
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March 11th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
It sounds too good to be true. I sure hope it can make the transition from the lab to the real world (packaging, mass-production, safety, reliability, etc.).
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March 11th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
>>The authors note that this new ability to charge and discharge lithium-ion
>>batteries within seconds blurs the distinction between batteries and
>>ultracapacitors,
I wonder if this is something similar to what EEStor claims it has…
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March 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
This is getting better and better – I can see gas stations have quick charge ports- I might be so inclined to stop for quick fix instead of using gas for my 110 daily commute. – I could envision carrying a re-charger-in my trunk
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Unbelieveably good!
The Gen 3 Volt should be a very capable car if it uses this technology.
Yippeee!
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Maybe we really will get off of imported oil someday. Or at least use a whole lot less. The impact on our blance of payments, not to say world security, would be huge. Anything which helps our balance of payments will help in the rescue and future viability of our economy. One dares to hope.
I think that it was ThombDbhomb who commented on the previous thread that this research was sponsored, all or in part, by the US Govt. If so, I cannot think of a better use of public money. President Obama has pledged to strongly support such ventures in the future. More power to him.
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Umm…wonderful idea for the battery but 5 minutes charge time isn’t even close to practical for the grid. To deliver 180kW for 5 minutes (15kWh) at 240VAC would require 750 amps. Most residential service is only 100-200 amps.
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I have just calculated that one standard Volt will be able to tow my 30 foot Bayliner over Pikes Peak at 100 miles per hour.
Who needs a Hummer now?
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Wow how long before we can store energy from a bolt of lightning…way cool!
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Thats a good point Vincent, how much energy is there in a bolt of lightning…..a new form of renewable energy perhaps..
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
#8 Dave – But you don’t NEED a 5 minute charge time at your house; you need it at the public recharge station, which can have a 460V 3-phase feed into a high capacity charger. You can afford to lounge around for a half hour at your house while your electric car recharges. This breakthrough is HUUUGE and now potentially puts GM on top, since they have done the most to design the advanced electric drive train concept. This is awesome. The electric car is really coming!
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
From the article: The authors note that if electric grid power was available, an electric car with a 15kWh battery could be charged in 5 minutes.
————————————————————————————–
IF electric grid power was available… Big IF.
It would probably take trillions of dollars to expand out electrical grid to handle fast-charging if electric cars go mainstream. Our electric bills could be triple what they are today to pay for it.
By contrast, our current grid can support tens of millions of plug-ins, if they are all charging overnight. With a typical driving pattern, assuming you only charge overnight:
Vehicle ……………… Gallons per year
Volt ………………….. 37
Prius ………………… 228
30 MPG car ………… 380
20 MPG car ………… 570
In other words, for a typical driver, an EREV with a 40-mile range already converts 80-90% of your gasoline consumption to electricity, all without any changes to our electrical grid.
2/3 of our oil consumption is for transportation, but that includes planes, trains, ships, and large trucks. None of these will work with batteries. We’ll need bio-fuels to move these away from oil. If we need bio-fuels anyway, then we can also use this to fill the 10-20% gap in gasoline consumption that EREVs don’t cover.
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Great news, good bye Saudis, Middle east, Hugo Chavez and OPEC. Welcome the new Volt generation.
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
So instead of a 375 pound battery, this breakthrough, (if longevity remains constant with the original chemical properties of the A123 technology), you might have:
Voltec technology at about 30% less cost, a Volt maybe 10% less overall,
A Volt weighing around 3,200 pounds,
Higher efficiencies in regeneration, and on and on.
This also could pave the way to some sort of cost averaging.
Breakthroughs like this, if reliabilities remain the same, not only can make the storage of excess wind energy feasible, but, the elimination of peak-demand problems for emergency situations where you needed to charge off-peak during the day.
Although I doubt that one could bank so many of a perfected product that you could harness lightning, it would not surprise me that MIT might want to consider that as well.
Dan Petit. Austin, TX
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Isn’t a lightning bolt “127 jigga watts” ? Just enough for a ‘flux capacitor’….?
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
I love what I am seeing. Back in the 70s when I built a car very much like the volt I just got laughed at. Now that we have seen $4 gas the game is changing. Now that people are thinking about batteries instead of gas the game is changing. Just think of the changes we have seen in the few years we have been here. I think the gatekeepers may have finally broken down. The move to battery powered cars could be in our future. Just keep your eyes on this project—-Williston Basin. It could be the game changer. JMHO
Take Care
Arch
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March 11th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Thanks, Dave G @13, to keep us grounded in the facts.
He is dead on correct, I think.
Now if this could be used to convert trucking to electric drive…… we might have something.
We need to keep a global view of the oil problem. This type of news, however cool it is, tends to take our eyes off the real, less sexy advancements that need to be made to actually fix our oil dependency.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Good news !
Don’t fuss over the little details.
It will all work out in time as this new age develops.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Did anyone notice that they quoted power capacity, but not energy capacity. A electric vehicle battery needs to provide both power (for acceleration) and energy (for range). Lots of chemistries have high power rates, but fall short on energy. In addition, I’m suspicious about the number of cycles this can handle. It’s curious to me that this is a battery that can charge and discharge in 5 minutes, but they stopped the testing and generated a press release after only 50 cycles. Couldn’t they have built a second battery and cycled that one 1000 times over a week?
To me, even with it’s current potential limitations, this would be an extremely useful battery for data center battery backups. Data center backups need a very high power rate and a relatively small amount of energy (since they only have to keep the computers going until the diesels start up in 2-3 minutes).
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
“It would probably take trillions of dollars to expand out electrical grid to handle fast-charging if electric cars go mainstream. Our electric bills could be triple what they are today to pay for it.”
As far as electricity costs, the increased demand will call for more supply. There will be more power plants built if there is more demand. There aren’t going to be 20 million EVs over night. It’s probably going to take 20 years to switch over. There are more and cheaper more modern power plants being built all the time to keep up with the demand. Besides, EVs will help make electricity cheaper since cars will be charging at night subsidizing the cost of electricity during the day, and of course there would be huge amounts of stored electricity if there were spikes, so it helps even out crests and troughs of demand usage.
Even if we installed 1,000 quick charging stations per state, and they cost $1,000,000 each, that’s only $50 billion. What IS costing trillions is how much we spend on foreign oil and how much it costs to fix our financial system when oil spikes hit. Philips, Chevron and Exxon could pay for all those in just one year’s profits without even blinking. It’s not like it would come out tax dollars (or it wouldn’t NEED to anyway).
This is awesome. I love MIT. I hope A123 incorporates this technology into their new battery production facilities they are building. This is coming at a great time. I just hope we don’t license the technology to the Japanese. Our economy needs all the help we can get. We share too much scientific and technological breakthroughs with our economic enemies (even though they may be politically friendly).
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
They’ve only tested 50 cycles, but it only takes 18 seconds per half cycle??
I would expect to hear some follow up results real soon with 1000 cycles or more, after all it should take 100 times less to test a cycle if automated.
Indeed the limiting factor is likely the time required to automate the tests (I suspect the first 50 were not automated). If it takes a year to test a standard cell it should only take a week to test one of these for the same number of cycles.
If the power density problem is solved, that just leaves energy density.
Also solving power density allows batteries and vehicles to be sized primarily for energy capacity, without needing to keep the battery artificially large just to maintain discharge capability (power).
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
According to managers at Austin Energy, (the local, publicly-owned and rated “Best Green Utility”) there is enough total combined electrical generation capacity overnight (nationwide) to recharge 158 million E-REVs such as the Volt.
But an additional interesting thing is that if indeed there is no degradation of the chemistry, (I mean to the extent of an ultra-cap), this suggests that V-2G (vehicle to grid) storage of power to temporarily “lend” power back to the grid during peak-demand times in the Summer months might certainly not only be feasible, but, that it might also be feasible for there to be utility “buy-ins” to buy that occasional capacity from your Volt in the form of some sort of extra incentive.
Although it is my understanding that V-2G is not desirable by OEM’s even if the economics are worthwhile, and, if warranty problems would not occur, lack of degradation might keep that possibility on the table in the form of an optional “add-on” module of some sort per authorization of GM in as far as the Volt is in or out of factory warranty.
Dan Petit. Austin TX
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
The electric car will not reduce the dependancy on oil anytime soon but a recent commentator on The OIl Drum claimed that the oil price instability we see is influenced by the lack of a range of alternative transport fuels. He had used computer modeling to study the effect.
If so , electric cars may help reduce the deficit and stabilise oil prices.
Its a start.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Lead author Ceder said “If manufacturers decide they want to go down this road, they could do this in a few years,”
Seems like we hear stuff like this all the time and “a few years” turns into a few decades. I’ll get excited when the rubber actually hits the pavement.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
SWEEET!!
I hope GM can use this technology to their advantage, over the persistant Jap Traps…
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Bob G #3
It does sound too good to be true. If it works commercially it could be the kind of change that puts a smile on your face to have seen it in our lifetimes. Revolutionary change that seems so obvious that kids may look at us soon and say what you guys didn’t have that, your generation was primitive.
Dan Petit # 15 “So instead of a 375 pound battery, this breakthrough, (if longevity remains constant with the original chemical properties of the A123 technology), you might have:
Voltec technology at about 30% less cost, a Volt maybe 10% less overall,
A Volt weighing around 3,200 pounds,
Higher efficiencies in regeneration, and on and on.
This also could pave the way to some sort of cost averaging.
Breakthroughs like this, if reliabilities remain the same, not only can make the storage of excess wind energy feasible, but, the elimination of peak-demand problems for emergency situations where you needed to charge off-peak during the day.”
Wow all that from making recharge/discharge faster and maybe more efficient at the cell level. IMHO there would have to be an equal advance in storage cost/density measures before all of these things could occur.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
21 omnimoeish
I am with you on that. The grid will expand at the rate of demand. Why would we NOT want the ability to charge at as fast a rate as possible. The capacity will be available for a price.
This is very exciting news, but like eestor, we need to get more information on vital statistics such as:
Manufacturability
1) Energy density (KW/Liter)
2) Thermal cycling degradation
3) Storeage life
4) Does it need to be cycled occasionally to prevent degradation
5) Safety will probably be a big issue with something capable of providing such a large amount of power in a small amount of time. Maybe small atomic blast appears if one lets loose?
6) Cost per KW
7) Material availability (quantity and deposit locations)
Just a brief list of items to be evaluated, before any type of “success” can be branded on this new chemistry.
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
This lithium breakthrough is good news for EV motorcycles.
The local Mobil station has premium at $2.67 now. Will be $3 by August.
The Volt range is said to be “hundreds of miles”.
340 miles minus the first 40 on battery = 300 miles.
Divide by 50 mpg = 6 gallons.
6 gallons times $3.34 per gallon cost $20.
I can live with a $20 fill up from completely empty.
BTW: 15 gallon tank @ $3.34 = $50
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
holy monkey butts
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March 11th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
omnimoeish 21
This is awesome news if it pans out in a couple years. Doesn’t sound as difficult as a lot of technology problems and it is possible it could make battery manufacturing easier and less expensive in the long run. Could this also signal more efficient charging due to lower resistance.
I could envision getting your 40 miles or what have you each day by plugging in at night time rates, and if you have a different route or schedule than usual then getting a quick re-charge from someplace convenient. Ideally batteries would get smaller and lighter and for me I’d like to have a 60 to 100 or more AER cheaper than the Volts planned batteries.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
They should get it up and running for the Volt.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I know that conservatism is good and numbers are fun but the Volt is becoming a reality partly because a group turned up on this site during 2007 and simply started shouting.
Mostly they shouted abut the EV1, but they got some attention from GM and helped get the Volt on the road.
This is a similar problem, if we simply start shouting “its good, get on with it” it may happen.
Well..thats what I think…
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Edit for #31 Doesn’t sound as difficult as a lot of technology [transfer] problems…
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Sounds pretty revolutionary.
Besides A123, I wonder who that other licensee is ?
I hope the development can be accellerated and we get a chance to buy vehicles using it within 5 years.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
#13 Dave, I read your post, and thought about it for a second.. The government LOVES to bail out all these companies, so they could ALSO build the infrastructure for all these plug-ins!! Hey, they have the printing presses going non-stop now, so what’s a few more trillion?
Truth be told though, I wouldn’t mind higher taxes for building the infrastructure, but to fight a pointless war, the bail-outs, and every hick-up along the way is getting old VERY quick!!
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Black shavings on a stick. The claims are mostly pure theory at this point. This kind of news has no business in a production forum until they at least have made a fully packaged battery. Otherwise it could well be just another EEStor or Cold Fusion…
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
If they can charge/discharge in a matter of seconds, why have they only performed 50 charge/discharge cycles?
Edit: Looks like Marc Bartosik @ #22 beat me to this point.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
This is some truly exciting stuff. In a matter of years, the gas hogs (energy hogs) could be those that charge up at stations during the day rather than at home on off-peak. Now THAT would be a shift in the mean!
With this, two corner pieces of this puzzle have now been found. We still need to make it sustainable and make it cheap, and while these won’t be easy, this latest one was a BIG hurdle to clear. Electric cars without a change in lifestyle? If they’re affordable, that’s all the common consumer needs to buy them.
The ball is about to be put in play…
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
It doesn’t matter if the power grid can’t handle the amps for that fast a charge. Your charger can regulate the current flow, and you can take it as slowly as you need. This battery technology just has a higher capacity than we can take advantage of. No problem. Perhaps a charger could even have a slow/fast switch, or varying degrees of charging speed, in case you want to save energy and charge it while you sleep over 8 hours.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Just imagine what it must have been like when electric light poles were first starting to be introduced in Small-Town USA and people were first being introduced to this amazing new technology…
It’s kinda like what we are seeing now with the VOLT and electric cars in general. Mostly a curiosity for the average person. Then it dawns on them what the implications are for the future!
It’s the Dawn of A New Age.
Lyle needs to come up with a name for it.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Monroe # 40
Your service panel capacity will limit your charging rate at home.You would have to build a small substation to end up having these concerns. Your power provider wouldn’t be happy with industrial sized power fluctuations coming unpredictably from random houses either. Maybe this technology can reduce battery resistance, and energy wasted by 220 volt charging that occurs now though, especially above 30A.
I would be concerned though with the new dangers presented by building a 16 kWh battery with a supercap discharge rate…Ouch
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I heard about this on another forum, it’s exciting news.. my future looks bright in terms of viable transportation
And another note.. I love the comments about oil.
Who do you think is the biggest exporter of oil to the united states?
I’ll give you three guesses, and based on the comments I’ve read on various threads here, you’ll get it wrong and be quite surprised.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
#36 Adam Says: Hey, they have the printing presses going non-stop now, so what’s a few more trillion? Truth be told though, I wouldn’t mind higher taxes for building the infrastructure,
————————————————————————————–
So let me try to understand this.
You’re willing to spend trillions more in taxes, which correlates to tens of thousands more per tax payer, to build a new electric grid which can support an infrastructure of fast charging stations for the masses, all to get rid of that last 7% of our oil consumption that the Volt and other EREVs won’t cover.
Meanwhile, you don’t seem to want to spend anything to alleviate diesel and jet fuel consumption for planes, trains, ships, and large trucks, which accounts for 22% of our oil consumption.
How about we go after the low hanging fruit first…
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
43
Um..Alberta, just a guess. I always say gets us off of overseas oil does tat count.
Then Mexico and Venezuela. Not sure if I spelled that last one right.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Sounds like a cool development. Thanks for the article Lyle…it is a welcome distraction.
—-
However….(and you knew it was coming)
The barrier to EVs is price…not hesitation on the part of purchasers because they take a long time to charge. So unless this press release is followed by the statement, “and this development can be both easily and cheaply adapted to current packs,” this (and many are other fancy things) are useless to us.
/unless of course of your names happened to be on the Forbes billionaires list released today. I checked for my name a couple times…no luck.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/worlds-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires_land.html
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
MIT has just a tad more credibility than EESTOR.
I guess it’s a good thing GM decided not to get into the battery cell making business, huh?
Unanswered questions include: how much does it cost to line all those nano-tunnels with phosphate glass (or whatever)? What will it take to go from overcooked mushroom shards in a petri dish to a prismatic cell (and over what time scales)?
And whatever happened to Silicon Nanowires, anyway?
There is a downside to the speed with which this lithium technology is developing; by the time a commitment is made to actual products, it’s within a couple years of obsolescence.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Statik # 46, if you get really bored sometime, see my comments on the last post @ 130 & 166.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Jackson 47 “There is a downside to the speed with which this lithium technology is developing; by the time a commitment is made to actual products, it’s within a couple years of obsolescence.”
Yeah, but don’t tell anybody, at least not until they get some on the road!
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
A pretty impressive technology that seems very well understood, which leads one to assume that the two year to market claim is probably doable. The upshot is a battery that has the physical
capability of meeting the requirements of a battery-only electric
car, but we have yet to see the cost of this technology. There are of course, two main questions on the economics : 1) how much? and 2) do we also need to restrict charge and discharge levels like the Volt in order to obtain a long lifespan? Until we know the answers to that, we’re not yet in a position to make any solid predictions as to whether the technology will indeed bring forth the much desired (and simpler/cheaper) battery-only electric anytime soon. At current Volt battery prices, even if we could discharge and recharge completely, at 5 miles per kWhr (which wouldn’t change much even if 400 pounds were lost) to get an acceptable range (roughly 250 miles) , we’d need 50 kilowatthours, or a $35,000 battery pack.
If we had to use the Volt strategy, then the cost doubles. Neither
figure allows for widespread adoption. But the high output would make the battery packs of value for Fisker type hi-po EVs. We simply need more info before getting too enthused. At worst, in the Volt, such a pack would mean a really big punch. And faster recharging. And possibly longer life, allowing a larger portion to be tapped, resulting in extra range, or the same range and lower costs. That is something worthwhile.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Hmmm . So I need a 240v outlet and 50amp breaker . even have one but not in the garage . I can change out the 40 amp one for a 50 have to refigure the wire gage but at five feet it may do .
Hey that is what it takes to run my five ton air unit .
not bad .
God Bless
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
______________________________________________________
That is a very BIG development!
Say goodbye to gas for consumer cars if this charge/discharge glass raceway technique can be modified to be applied to the higher capacity lithium chemistries.
The stuff that comes out of MIT research is real..unlike the Fantastic Cheese.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22280/
_____________________________________________________
Electric Cars + Nuclear Power = American Energy Independence!
_____________________________________________________
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
This could be the last link in the chain required for electric auto racing. Some experience there may subsidize and inform passenger car needs and use.
Edwin @ 51 that 240 volt charge will still take over an hour to charge your Volt.
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March 11th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
At the right price point for this battery, it would be absolutely NO problem to have a home fast charger. All you need is another set of batteries in a home charging unit.
It charges up at 110v/15a at the cheapest electricity rate at night, and when you recharge your car, it just dumps the stored charge over into the car battery.
No need to rewire your home.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
54 Nixon “No need to rewire your home”.
Rewiring your home will cost a couple grand, at most usually, and requires no further maintenance. Haven’t priced 8 kWh of lead acid batteries in a while but I bet it’s a lot.
Why would you do this at home, where you’ll be for hours at a time, wouldn’t you want to quick charge on the road.?
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
If there is anything worthy of federal stimulus money to pay future strategic dividends, improve national security and reduce trade imbalances, this is it. As such, I expect our government to completely ignore this and increase funding for pig odor research.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
All the battery developments are nice but statik has it right that the issue right now is one of cost rather than power. The current Volt battery should deliver sufficient power and should be able to handle regen demands. What would be great is a much less expensive battery not a more powerful one or even one which is faster charging. Remember that the E-Stor promise had more to do with cost and maintenance than with power.
But who knows? Note that at 400C 50 charge cycles is equivalent to a minimum of 4000 charge cycles on the Volt battery or 160,000 miles. If there is in fact no degradation then the cost becomes less of a concern because the battery pack would last a very long time indeed.
Dave G’s point about the power draw is a good one. if nothing else, the draws would be very taxing on the grid and quite dangerous. However, these are technical problems that can be addressed so they are not show stoppers in the medium term.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Bruce G.
Do you REALLY want to risk your life trying to tow a 30 ft Bayliner with a Volt?
My truck weighs 7200 pounds empty. My boat (30+ foot Monterey) weighs 10,000 pounds with the trailer and I bet your Bayliner is close to that weight. It takes the diesel engine at near full power and 4 wheel drive engaged to tow it out of the water. If you try to launch or recover a 10,000 boat with a compact car, you may want to invest in a scuba rig because you are going to get wet.
Back to the subject. I hope they can perfect this technology at an affordable price. I suspect the government will make charging at home illegal otherwise they can’t collect road taxes like they can at a public charging station.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
“It would probably take trillions of dollars to expand out electrical grid to handle fast-charging if electric cars go mainstream. Our electric bills could be triple what they are today to pay for it.”
These statements are without foundation, pure fiction. Say a 1000 MW nuclear plant costs 4 billion.
As a practical matter, a rapid charge would only need to be 100 KW for 6 minutes to “pump” 10 KWh into a battery.
So for 20 billion, which is what Bush spent simply to delay the bankruptcy decision for 3 months, we could have bankrolled 5 nuclear plants able to simultaneously recharge 50,000 cars every 6 minutes, or 500,000 cars per hour.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
@CorvetteGuy 41
“Lyle needs to come up with a name for it.”
Here’s a name “The VoltAge”, get it “VOLT AGE”?
@jeffhre
From the previous thread, sorry bro, twas a beer induced and chicken wings rant.
Every household “Could” charge with the massive magnitude of charge 700Amps. Charge stations can do it in a grand scale. Just store an equivalent of charge in old Gel or Flooded cell batteries. Those will be cheap as he11 in a year. Those can charge slowly when you aren’t using it at night and as soon as you get home from work, plug it into the stored energy and in 5 minutes you Volt is charged and in the evening your storage cells will charge. This also opens the ability to use Solar panels to charge your storage batteries. There are many possibilities. Just have a few beers and some crazy shlt will come to mind. In college they called it “Brain Storming”.
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
55 jeffhre — the point is you wouldn’t need to buy any lead acid batteries, you would get batteries like the one in this story. (read the topic post).
And while I agree that there is little point in having a fast charger at home, it apparently is a fixation on every board I’ve ever been on that discusses BEV’s. So whether they will be needed or not, there clearly is a market for them. So why not prove the market for a fast charger can be satisfied while still drawing electicity from the grid only at night, if the price point on these batteries eventually become low enough?
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
EEstor….yuck, phooey.
It’s like that play “Waiting for Godot”
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Why does everyone assume that the process they invented for these new batteries is so expensive?
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March 11th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
#58 solo2500nt
Not only was Bruce G. going to tow his Bayliner with his Volt, he was going to do it up Pikes Peak at 100 miles per hour…obviously, he was was kidding. He made me guffaw.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:03 am
#7 noel park
Yes, the work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Go science!
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:06 am
#41 CorvetteGuy: “It’s the Dawn of A New Age. Lyle needs to come up with a name for it.”
The VOLT AGE.
Come on, people. These puns are like big, fat slowballs.
Gas is past, electric is current.
I can keep this up all day…
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:07 am
@Nixon 63
“Why does everyone assume that the process they invented for these new batteries is so expensive?”
Because it’s new, they’ll probably patent it and they need to recoup their R&D costs. When was the last time new technology was inexpensive when first discovered?
Just an fyi, we probably will not see this readilly available for the next 2-5 years. Nanotech and Lattice is already 2yrs old Lithion tech and it’s just now being “Readily Available” to the regular joe schmoe. However, if you’re a joe schmo like me, I asked to purchase a few cells, 14 of them, from both A123 and Valence and they said my quantaties we not enough for them to sell to me.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:12 am
61 Nixon
Good point, maybe it’s like range anxiety. Another problem I need to solve no matter how much it cost, even though I’ve never experienced the problem personally, it would be so terrible if it happened that eliminating the use of overseas oil, lowering the balance of trade and national deficits and debt or saving some obscure planets ability to sustain life and stuff like that will have to wait till later.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:19 am
@ 65 ThombDbhomb
“Yes, the work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Go science!”
See what happens when you let a “Kimmy” run rampant! Edit: you didn’t cite your sources
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:24 am
@Lurtz
“Gas is past, electric is current.”
Correction…
Gas is passed…….rrrrip…..electric is current
lol
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:28 am
CaptJackSparrow, you magnificent bastard.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:31 am
For those that apparently don’t know it. This is good news. Stop complaining that this battery will be able to recharge faster than you can recharge it. Jees… isn’t that what you want… to be limited by something other than the batter??? Something that doesn’t need a scientific break through to upgrade.
If you are dumb enough to think you need super fast charge at your house then spend a couple thousand and upgrade you house so that you can charge your car in 15 to do minutes.
Once demand for less gas and more electricity is a big time reality then the upgrades will happen. I would imagine that by the time these batteries are in wide use solar and wind and gas and hydro and geothermal and cleaner coal will have advanced as welll.
Who gives a blank if the power grid today would allow FULL advantage to this battery. I don’t want it today I want it when it becomes available.
Gas stations will probably have a few plugs (increasing over the years) and some form of large capacitor to store energy so that the grid isn’t hit all at once.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:32 am
I got quotes (below) from “How stuff works”. Is this fly in the ointment?:These problems still exist. What we have now is regular batteries which need good, light and cheap ultracaps. . Most of the comments I see were the same as those made when EEStor first announced. There is no panacea, just comprimises.
BTW: Look at the announcement on Ultracapacitors.org that came out a few days ago. (Reticle Carbon) A good comprimise.
About Li-ion batteries from “How Stuff Works”.
“They start degrading as soon as they leave the factory. They will only last two or three years from the date of manufacture whether you use them or not.
They are extremely sensitive to high temperatures. Heat causes lithium-ion battery packs to degrade much faster than they normally would.
If you completely discharge a lithium-ion battery, it is ruined.
A lithium-ion battery pack must have an on-board computer to manage the battery. This makes them even more expensive than they already are.
There is a small chance that, if a lithium-ion battery pack fails, it will burst into flame.”
And, I see no figures on energy density. Mui Importnate!
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Larry #37
Glasslike chords under a metallic skin.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:55 am
#73 JackM asks “Is this fly in the ointment?”
The short answer is “no”. The longer answer is that the article is discussing Li-ion batteries used in laptop computers and, of course, by Tesla in its Roadster and by Smart for its leased electric smart. But the Volt and “real” EVs will use a battery pack with much different chemistry that doesn’t have these problems.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:56 am
#58 solo2500nt,
Yes, it would be dangerous to tow a bayliner with a Volt, let alone lift it out of the water.
I was just reflecting on the worry sessions of towing and long climbs that we have had on this site.
These discharge rates seem to me equate to horsepower if the energy density is Ok.
Are we looking at the ability to have electric trucks to 250HP for example?
Or electric escalade’s?
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:01 am
I perhaps have been a little light hearted but the battery developments are such a relief after watching the world and GM go bankrupt over the past few months.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:06 am
In thinking about this, one interesting benefit of fast charging for the manufacturers is that the California Air Resource Board gives huge, absolutely huge, credits for fast charging vehicles. Acquiring these credits may be the reason Honda has released the FX Clarity — hydrogen is fast charging so you get lots of credit for every one on the road.
Car manufacturers may therefore want faster charging batteries. In fact this is one reason why some speculate that Phoenix Motorcars is interested in using the very fast charging (35 kWh in ten minutes) but expensive AltairNano batteries — so they can sell credits to companies that need them.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:16 am
DonC 75
Energy density has always been the fly in the ointment. If you had a 1 cubic foot box that weighed 75 lbs and had a 200 kWh charge, it would be game over regardless of whether your charging rate ever improved or not!
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:50 am
cruze first drive :
http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/FirstDrives/Chevrolet-Cruze-1.8-LT/238647/
Its great to see lot different Lithium ion battery technologies out, way to go, lets get a less expensive Volt which can chaged in 2 minutes and drive a 500 mile only on battery.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:52 am
It requires 180 KW?!!! This has probably been brought up earlier, but 180 KW at 240V single phase (standard household voltage) is 750 AMPS!! The standard household electrical service for the entire house is 150-200 AMPS. So while interesting, highly impractical. It’s as impractical as having an electric car with a 100 extension cord instead of a battery!
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:00 am
WAIT!
If you read the last line in the MIT article it says “This battery is good for acceleration, but not as much for long range.” http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22280/
Great for drag races but not for long trips. Perhaps a combo of two battery types is best.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:18 am
#
solo2500nt Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Bruce G.
Back to the subject. I hope they can perfect this technology at an affordable price. I suspect the government will make charging at home illegal otherwise they can’t collect road taxes like they can at a public charging station.
Don’t worry about the government collecting road tax fees.
They will just charge the fee when you get your license plate at the DMV.
They should start charging one dollar a cc engine displacement to encourage conserving oil now . ( some countries are already doing this )
Pure EVs should only pay a basic fee of something like twenty dollars a year .
License plate for a Volt at this rate would only be one thousand four hundred dollars a year , while a three liter engine gas sucker would cost three thousand dollars to license for a year . It would hurt some people but it is a voluntary tax , nobody says you must drive a car with a big engine .
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Keith,
It would be useful to have fast charging for the Volt at public stations.
However, have you run your eye over the socket requirements.
Even at 400 volts the plug would be ,to say the least, substantial.
At 2KV it would be frightening.
I am still more interested in the discharge rates, the Volt would be lightning fast between the traffic lights, or on the on ramp.
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March 12th, 2009 at 5:51 am
#
bruce g
Yes , I agree with you Bruce , it is something to be concerned about no doubt about it .
The quick charging sounds good and convenient , but the amount of electrons ( amps ) transfer is something to take under serious consideration .
Any way you slice it , that is a lot of energy to transfer in a short time.
The only thing that I know that can be almost instantly and reliably be charged up with electricity millions of times right now are capacitors.
BoostCaps by Maxwell look like these would be perfect , but I like the idea of driving a considerable distance on electrical power then using gas .oh well in time I hope .
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:08 am
I was wondering
If you were to lay an A/C high voltage electricity cable directly under the motorway/highway surface, then by utilizing induction a transformer on board of a vehicle passing over this cable and through the magnetic field produced could recharge. At 80mph a 7mile cable would provide 5mins of charging time. So there would be no need to stop and recharge, and the more common these charging strips were to become the less demand there would be on the range extender petrol engine. On board computers could record the times and current drawn from such a system and automatically relay this info via mobile phones for billing/payment etc.
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:34 am
I should go find the article, but I wondered about the dissipation rate in such a fast charge cycle. I wonder how hot a full-size battery would get?
Some people seem to think that IF you can charge in seconds, you have to do so. I’m sure you can charge at whatever rate your system can deliver. A 15-minute charge versus 6-8 hours is a significant technical difference! I’m assuming there is no change in energy density with this design, but a minutes versus hours charging time would be quite important, I think.
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Until some prototype cells are engineered, there’s only speculation about automotive use of this scientific lab development, even though it is an interesting one. That is, we have nothing yet on size, weight, cost, energy capacity, temperature control, fire risk, lifetime or any of the other critical factors for automotive use.
So it is fun to think about it, and let’s hope it is great news, but let’s not count on it just yet.
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:41 am
This is a potential game-changing development, especially for the Volt, and not necessarily in a good way:
IF the cost of these new batteries is manageable and IF they hold up for a nominal 10-year life cycle, they make pure EVs much more practical. (And those are two big “if’s”)
To its credit, GM’s Volt team ( I think it was either Weber or Lauckner) has said that the Volt could be a bridge to pure EVs. But I don’t think they were counting on the bridge potentially being crossed before the Volt hits the road.
Even if all this pans out, I suspect there will still be a market for the Volt. Range anxiety isn’t going away. But, that market could be smaller than it would have been otherwise.
And if GM wants to look for the silver lining, a development like this could make more ER-EVs practical without aerodynamics dictating every styling cue. Yes, even an ER-EV Hummer might be possible… letting Americans have their SUVs and drive them, too!
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:46 am
The actual article is listed below. No mention is made of safety????
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/full/news.2009.156.html
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Awww c’mon RB @88, you’re spoiling the fun for everyone.
So the question I have for anyone who has done R&D is this: will throwing more money at this line of research help bring it to applicaton significantly faster, or would it just be a waste? Is it safe to assume that the licensing fees are enough, or would this be an effective place for government support to help us move off oil more quickly?
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:54 am
#90 Cautious Fan Says:
The actual article is listed below. No mention is made of safety????
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/full/news.2009.156.html
This is a news report, not the article.
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Sorry, here is the article, but you need a login or make a payment to read it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7235/full/nature07853.html
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:02 am
My question for the science gurus – This improves charging time, and increases discharge rates, but does it improve power storage? Don’t we need the latter to have a real price breakthrough?
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Edwin Mang Says: So I need a 240v outlet and 50amp breaker… Hey that is what it takes to run my five ton air unit .
————————————————————————————–
This would charge the Volt’s battery pack in around 45 minutes, provided GM upgraded the Volt’s charger. And most people’s existing home service would probably support this.
But think about what this would do to our electric grid. On hot days, when people turn their 5-ton central air conditioners to max, the grid can’t handle it, and we have power failures and blackouts. If plug-ins go mainstream, and people charge with 220v 50amp circuits on hot days, that’s going to double the peak load on the grid. Replacing all the power lines in the grid to handle that much peak load will cost a huge amount of money, which will could triple our electric bills.
And what do we get for that? Being able to charge in 45 minutes vs. overnight would save a few gallons a year for trips after work.
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Considering only one concept serially-at-a-time developmentally before serially-considering-another concept to be proven completely in market, one-at-a-time is patently the definition of failure. Lack of technical orchestration is “too-little-too-late”.
Mentally processing and maintaining continuity regarding at least 20 to 30 related technological advancements at a time instead is necessary.
Discussing repeatedly in advance, right here, the potentials of advancements of proven institutions such as MIT and A123 bring forward to far more of the industrial administrators whom may happen to read this critically-important site to keep those potentials in their minds and for them also to learn more about these advancements are a tremendous credit to everyone discussing everything here (*****for them*****).
While seemingly, any intent to facilitate failure of E-REV, for example, backfires, since in the seeming opposition of the widespread awareness of advancements, being impatience, vested competing interest, vanity, and, well, quitting,…
these feelings are the mile markers of the tragic past, and count toward the picture also.
Discussions on this site, I’ll bet anyone, have done so far more to advance green electric motoring than any other site, period.
The disappointments and impatience are also important because they are a reflection of the fossil-status-quo which has already gone such a far way toward the destruction of the livability and sustainability of the planet.
I trust absolutely in the scholarship of MIT. I have tested their incredible and safe battery chemistry with the 6 cells I purchased from them (as the A123 form factor 26mm cells) as a “developers pack” several years ago, and, the respect that GM has for their advancements impresses me to no end.
Dan Petit Austin TX
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:19 am
AWESOME.
Glad to read some news like this for a change…thanks Lyle.
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Some worry that the electrical grid will not be able to handle the peak power with such fast charging batteries. Well, did you ever wonder that such batteries could also be used by the power companies to store power for peak demands.
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:51 am
This will have a massive effect on the power grid and power plant requirements. We will need and effort like the Manhattan Project to bring new power plants on line and upgrade the grid.
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Yes, to take advantage of this reported breakthrough, you would need to use 480V 3 phase power. 480 V welding machines are plugged in so while the extension cord is about 1/2 inch in diameter, it is as easy to handle as a gasoline pump nozzle. This outlet would not provide enough power to recharge in 5 or 6 minutes, but would allow recharge in about 30 minutes
In summary, with this battery in your Volt like electric vehicle, you could drive 30 plus miles to work on the power from a 2 and 1/2 hour charge at 220 V at your home, and drive home on the power of a public charger located near your work.
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Why for sake did Volt engineers not think about this car to be a set of distinctive components interfacing together by open-standard? I would be more than happy to choose, for example, what kind of batterie of which brand I may use…
same for the engine… the ICE is a simple Generator. A box that generates electricity. Why will I be condamned to sit on my gen1 volt car when, when time goes, newer and more efficient ICE generator may come into the market?
The volt initiative is great, but I have the feeling, when I get to buy this car, I’ll be condamned to not being able to have it evolving / updated during all it’s total lifecyle.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:04 am
#95 Dave G says But think about what this would do to our electric grid. On hot days, when people turn their 5-ton central air conditioners to max, the grid can’t handle it, and we have power failures and blackouts. If plug-ins go mainstream, and people charge with 220v 50amp circuits on hot days, that’s going to double the peak load on the grid. Replacing all the power lines in the grid to handle that much peak load will cost a huge amount of money, which will could triple our electric bills.
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This concern seems California-centric. Most of the rest of the country handles air conditioning without any systematic problem. California has wished to have adequate power without building power plants and adequate transmission without building transmission lines. It is a state issue to reconcile these conflicting aspirations.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:06 am
This may be great news for cell phones and lap tops however, I don’t see how this is really going to help the Volt (which doesn’t need to be recharged quickly).
Maybe we’ll see a BEV Volt in the future ?
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:19 am
98 Joe – You make a good point and at least 1 other poster noted batteries may also be installed ‘at home’.
Folks on this site seem oblivious to the fact that new battery technology(assuming improvements in cost and density) will RELIEVE load on the grid since it will make it possible to economically store solar power and wind power and even grid power and save it for times when it is needed. So you may be able to power your house and your cars and just use the grid for reserve(or to sell power back).
Nuclear generation will still be needed for heavy industrial and commercial loads. Looking forward, the grid is probably already overbuilt and we don’t need to waste billions to subsidize “TBoonedoggle” windmill schemes, but we probably will.
The ‘grid’ that people love to talk about is usually a radial(single source) feed at 7200 Volts or higher that meanders over hill and dale to your home transformer. There is plenty of unused capacity on these lines since a ‘peak’ demand only occurs once a year at a temperature extreme. Smart chargers can use power as needed simply by monitoring temperature and avoiding the extremes and using a random distribution to allocate the needed charge quantity over some interval.
Very encouraging research from MIT – hope something pans out.
Thanks for the info Dr. Dennis.
There’s no such thing as 110 or 220 it’s 120/240V. A kilowatt is little k Big W – kW, just so some folks know.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:22 am
#70 Captjacksparrow, #66 Lurtz,
“Gas is passed…….rrrrip…..electric is current”
____________________________________________________
This is the perfect “catch phrase” for GM-Volt.com, or, indeed, electric car enthusiasts everywhere.
It’s a beautiful thing to see the creative process aired out right here on this web site. Lurtz floated the idea out there and CaptJack aerated it into it’s final form. Good work by both.
I recommend that everyone has a bowl of beans for lunch and then start “sounding off” with the new catchphrase to anyone who will listen.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:28 am
#89 FME – I disagree with your proposition that this may be “bad news” for the Volt. The Volt is an electric car with an on-board gas generator to recharge the battery. The beauty of this design is that if an advanced battery comes on the market, GM can yank the range extender to create a pure electric car without a heck of alot of re-engineering.
Plus, don’t underestimate the amount of open space in this country. Range anxiety is real, whether your car charges in 5 minutes or 60 minutes. Charge time doesn’t matter if you have no place to charge it. And getting to the point where we have a dependable network of charge stations will take decades, and the Volt is the bridge to get us there.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:34 am
One other thing to consider with the faster charging time is that more energy can be recovered through regenerative breaking. As I understand it now, one of the limiting factors in the amount of energy recovered is not stressing the battery too much with a large, quick input current that would come from the regen breaking. (sure you could use a setup of ultracaps and batteries to get around this, but I’m not sure many car manufacturers do this).
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:51 am
I am a skeptic…this is not the first time a group from MIT has made remarkable claims on lithium battery. Until an independent 3rd party verifies the claims it will not interest me. Remember EESCAM, I mean EESTOR, since 2004 they have been making remarkable claims how their ceramic battery is going to revolutionize the world. As of this date no one outside Dick Weir’s dream world has seen a prototype ceramic battery which meets the patent specs.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Rapid charging does NOT require grid upgrades!
Each charging station could have banks of batteries or capacitors which accumulate and store power from the grid. An automatic control system could monitor which banks are charged and make them available to shunt their power to the packs in the cars on demand just like a gas pump.
As EV numbers increase, more banks could be added to the station for more charging locations. These banks could be mass produced in a factory and placed on skids or in shipping containers and they could be stacked/added to each station as needed.
Modularity = efficiency = lower cost!
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:57 am
So how is this any different from li-titanate batteries that offer fast recharge times? Phenoix-motors was suppose to use a li-titanate battery from Altairnano for their vehicles and it didn’t seem to pan out like they wanted. I also wonder why GM didn’t look at li-titanate battery technology for the GM volt..
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:59 am
#72 omegaman66 Says: For those that apparently don’t know it. This is good news. Stop complaining that this battery will be able to recharge faster than you can recharge it. Jees… isn’t that what you want…
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No, I don’t want fast charging. The cost of the infrastructure to support it is way too high, and the benefit is relatively low.
U.S. oil consumption breaks down roughly as follows:
• 44% gasoline (mostly for passenger vehicles)
• 17% diesel (mostly for heavy duty long distance travel)
• 5% jet fuel
• 15% fuel oil (home heating and industrial)
• 19% other (petro-chemical, plastics, fertilizer, etc.)
Batteries are not practical for heavy duty long distance travel. EREVs and EVs target mostly gasoline. Yes, there are some diesel cars, but there are also gas engine delivery trucks, so I believe it’s safe to say that EREVs and EVs only target 44% of our oil consumption.
With a typical driving pattern, an EREV with 40 miles of all-electric range will eliminate around 85% of our gasoline consumption. But since gasoline is only 44% of total oil, the remaining 15% of gasoline that EREVs don’t cover corresponds to only 7% of our total oil consumption.
To convert that last 7% of oil consumption over to pure BEVs, we’ll have to double the power lines in our electric grid, and create a whole new infrastructure of fast changing stations. This will be expensive.
Meanwhile, diesel and jet fuel account for 22% of total oil consumption, and this can’t be replaced by batteries. Without bio-fuels, we will never be energy independent, and CO2 levels will continue to rise. Why do people keep ignoring this?
The good news is that small start-ups have found ways to make bio-fuels viable. Vertigro has pioneered algae closed-loop photo bio-reactors. Coskata has pioneered cellulosic gasification. None of these affect our food supply. None require fossil fuels for production.
Since bio-fuels are necessary to become energy independent, then why not also use bio-fuels for that last 7% of oil consumption that EREVs don’t cover? That would be much cheaper and easier than expanding our grid and creating a whole new infrastructure of fast-charging stations. In other words, I don’t believe EREVs are a transition to a world of pure EVs. Given the facts above, a combination of EREVs and bio-fuels is the end-game.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Haha, I knew there was a good reason to install that 230VAC 40Amp circuit last year to my garage.
With this cathode and Dr Cui’s silicon wire anode, life looks good.
Joe @98, we would not use them for peak power demands. What we would use them for is to replace IR (Instantaneous Reserve) where a power plant is kept running at full power ready to be hooked into the grid. With this sort of power draw down we could use the batteries to cover the load for the five minutes it takes to ramp up a gas (NG) plant from warm standby, and replace SR (spinning reserve) with its 30 second ramp up as well.
This would save lots of money in fuel burn and maintenance over a year. It should take 4kWh out of a Volt sized battery as well. Rock on Version two, or three?
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:07 am
#109 Tim Says: Rapid charging does NOT require grid upgrades! Each charging station could have banks of batteries or capacitors which accumulate and store power from the grid.
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I’m already assuming fast-charging stations would require batteries. That’s what makes them expensive. But these won’t be big enough to only charge at night and discharge during the day. Batteries that size are not practical. So fast-charging stations will double the average daytime peak load, and that will require doubling the power lines in the grid.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:10 am
#69 jeffhre
My source was the MIT News office
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/battery-material-0311.html
What is a “Kimmy?”
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I have not had time to read all of the comments. I do have a question to ask. If the battery in the Volt could be recharged in 15 minutes or so, does the cost to recharge or the amount of electricity used remain the same as if it took 6.5 hours? I assume to do the fast recharge you would need some type of super fast recharge device capable of pulling the needed power from the electrical system. So, does this mean it will still cost about the same amount to recharge, but will be much faster?
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:12 am
#102 RB Says: This concern seems California-centric. Most of the rest of the country handles air conditioning without any systematic problem.
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Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and Ontario, Canada on Thursday, August 14, 2003, at approximately 4:15 pm…
I remember this day. It was very, very hot.
Most other blackouts in the northeast have also happened on very hot days.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:16 am
#115 N Riley Says: So, does this mean it will still cost about the same amount to recharge, but will be much faster?
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Even if the efficiency of fast-charging is the same, expanding the power lines in our electric grid to support fast-charging for the masses would probably triple our electric bills.
It’s a bad idea…
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:21 am
#111 Dave G said:
No, I don’t want fast charging. The cost of the infrastructure to support it is way too high, and the benefit is relatively low.
…and then you talk about why the Volt is a the ‘hot tamale’…and bio fuels
======================
Not going to get into the Volt is the solution part, but I tend to side with you on the argument that fast charging is not really a good thing now, the costing vs benefit is way to high.
Sure it would be a lot more convenient (and also render the ’sweet spot’ of the Volt’s 40 mile range a lot less sweet), but we are still in a place where you can’t get anything…and where customers are willing to pay a 50%-100% premium on their cars just to get one now…and then suffer with limited range (whether you are talking about 40 for a Volt, or 100 for the iMiev).
If the consumer is willing to make such huge sacrifices, wave dollar bills in the air and line up to get these things, then fast charging’s time in not here…not now.
I think the infrastructure situation is not as big a issue perhaps. I’m thinking that the individual will bare most of that brunt in something like self-storage….at least in the early stages
ie) a secondary storage device at the home/business that charges throughout the day/overnight, which is then transferred on mass when it is required…that would seem to be the easiiest solution. (ala off the grid solar systems…collection during peak hours, then dispersing it as required later)
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:28 am
#116 Dave G said:
#102 RB Says: This concern seems California-centric. Most of the rest of the country handles air conditioning without any systematic problem.
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Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and Ontario, Canada on Thursday, August 14, 2003, at approximately 4:15 pm…
I remember this day. It was very, very hot.
Most other blackouts in the northeast have also happened on very hot days.
=====================
I was in that blackout myself in Toronto
…not to be difficult, but that ended up to be a lack of grounds crew maintenance somewhere in Ohio…trees arced the system, and because the failsafes…well, sucked, a couple hundred other stations got shutdown.
We got mad power here in Ontario, lol, the only reason we go down is catastropic failure.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Dave #13
“2/3 of our oil consumption is for transportation, but that includes planes, trains, ships, and large trucks. None of these will work with batteries.”
None of these will work with batteries, but take that: trains can work with direct grid electricity! Just remove that damned tax on electric overhead wires then get busy at electrifying the entire rail network. Last step, put all trucks on trains for distances > 100miles. That should help a lot.
Honestly, we can find oil alternatives for most means of transportation. Airplanes can use fuel produced by algae. Same for ships.
There is only one major industry that I don’t see surviving without oil. Pharmaceuticals. But they only use a small quantity anyways, right?
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:38 am
#119 statik Says: I was in that blackout myself in Toronto…not to be difficult, but that ended up to be a lack of grounds crew maintenance somewhere in Ohio…
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Yes, that was the tipping point, but the larger issue that day was that the grid was operating right at capacity because it was really hot outside.
My point is that most blackouts in the North East occur on very hot days, so this is not California-centric issue as #102 RB suggests, but rather a systemic issue for the whole of North America.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:42 am
#121 Dave G
Yes, that was the tipping point, but the larger issue that day was that the grid was operating right at capacity because it was really hot outside.
My point is that most blackouts in the North East occur on very hot days, so this is not California-centric issue as #102 RB suggests, but rather a systemic issue for the whole of North America.
==========================
I agree with you, most issues to occur on very hot days…I was just been a jackass on your example, hehe.
(=
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:42 am
#120 Silvio Says: Just remove that damned tax on electric overhead wires then get busy at electrifying the entire rail network.
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Sounds expensive.
Are you aware what’s happening with algae?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNeBQCRv1c
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Dave G (#113)
The grid is NO excuse! Electricity is NOT hydrogen and we have an infrastructure.
According to DOT’s research, 78% of ALL trips are less than 40 miles, 85% are less than 50 miles, 90% are less than 60miles, and 93% are less than 70 miles!
http://www.gm-volt.com/2007/12/06/how-did-gm-determine-that-78-of-commuters-drive-less-than-40-miles-per-day/
E-REVs like the Volt won’t need rapid charging and most people will recharge each night at home because it will be FAR less expensive than daytime rapid charge at a station.
The higher cost will mean that daytime rapid charge will only be used for those occasional long trips and those who forget to plug in at home. I doubt they will forget to plug-in a second time.
We can upgrade the grid slowly over time using advancing technology, but not all at once and not before EVs are widely available. EV Load-Leveling will help the grid, lower the cost of electricity and the efficiency will help the utilities afford the upgrades because their assets & fuel will be better utilized with less spinning reserves.
Advancements are being made every day regarding increasing the efficiency in producing, transmitting and storing electricity.
Example: Researchers from Rice University and the University of Oulu in Oulu, Finland, have found that carbon nanotubes could significantly improve the performance of electrical commutators that are common in electric motors and generators. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/03/nanotube-struct.html#more
The Variable Input Electrical Generator (VIEG) is a permanent magnet, brushless, direct drive system. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while significantly increasing their power output. A single VIEG generator can be built to scale up and down with available energy in a way that would take almost 70 individual generators to match. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:ExRo_Technologies#Official_Website
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Will fast charging stations double the daytime peak load? Nope Will we have to double the grid capacity? Nope Will 480 V 3 phase power outlets for fast charging require local battery to smooth out the load? Nope.
Will Volt like cars eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel? Nope. But wide spread adoption along with building a 100 or so nuclear plants will eliminate our dependence of foreign oil. Where is the initiative to convert all the homes depending on home heating oil to natural gas?
This would reduce our consumption by 15% according to the info posted above. And if we reduced our gas usage by 2/3 using Volt like vehicles, that would cut it by another 30%. Then hybrid buses and trash trucks and the like could cut another 5%. Then if we replaced another 10% with biofuel, voila, we are no longer dependent on foreign oil.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:48 am
To those nay sayers arguing about the cost of expanding the grid, try re-arranging your thinking a bit. Huge modifications to the grid are unnecessary. What’s needed are banks of capacitors that store up energy at fueling stations. When a driver pulls up they tap the capacitor bank, not the grid. The capacitor bank is recharged gradually during off peak time.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Dave G (#123)
Invisible, Underground HVDC Power Costs No More Than Ugly Towers
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/03/invisible-underground-hvdc-power-costs-no-more-than-ugly-towers?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-March11-2009
Again, upgrade over time, using rapidly advancing technologies paid for with efficiency savings instead of taxpayer debt. (paying interest sucks!)
Act in haste then repent in leisure. Measure twice, cut ONCE!
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:48 am
China is already marketing a dual mode car which runs on electric motor and has a generator similar to gm’s volt. Besides that the company uses Lithium Phosphate batteries. The name of the company is BYD. This company specializes in lithium batteries and markets for laptop and cell phones and they have entered auto business. It is worthwhile to check on this site
http://www.byd.com I have been following on gm volt, but they are too slow the car should have been in the market up and running, by the time we get a hand on this car we might be dead. There is so much of talk and just building hopes. I have no confidense in the U.S as they are still controlled by the oil tycoons rogues.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I do hope this is true and not ‘cold fusion’. About the early bio-fuel fuel to go with this… I have said it before, the Volt should of had a diesel engine. Not just because diesel is a ‘greener’ oil fuel, but because of the super easy conversion to bio-fuel.
Now, if Bio-fuel catches on you would need a whole engine (if not car) to take advantage of it. Therefore, you have ‘wasted’ your first investment.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
N Riley @ 115 says: I do have a question to ask. If the battery in the Volt could be recharged in 15 minutes or so, does the cost to recharge or the amount of electricity used remain the same as if it took 6.5 hours? I assume to do the fast recharge you would need some type of super fast recharge device capable of pulling the needed power from the electrical system. So, does this mean it will still cost about the same amount to recharge, but will be much faster?
The enemy of efficiency is heat, so the closer to the capacity of a cable you get the more the line loss. It is safe to assume any high capacity charge would be at or near the line capacity so would be more inefficient. On the other hand, a 120 VAC charge at home on a thin wire at the other end of the house would be not very efficient either. So, it all depends . . . .
/I should become an economist with stuff like this.
LJGTVWOTR
NO plug, NO sale.
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
#79 Jeffhre says “Energy density has always been the fly in the ointment.”
Yes, this is the larger issue. Power density is addressed by current technologies but energy density is still inadequate. This is why NZDavid’s reference at #112 to the Silicon nanowires that came out of Ciu’s lab is right on point. But, even if energy density goes up by a factor of five or ten, cost will remain as an over riding factor.
Dave G & RB
I think we can agree that the current grid would not support the kind of huge power draws we’re talking about here but we should also be able to agree that, if the demand was there, the electirc utilities would find a way to make it work, even if the electric system in houses will never have the capability of handling 100K watts.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:00 am
“#120 Silvio Says: Just remove that damned tax on electric overhead wires then get busy at electrifying the entire rail network.
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Sounds expensive”
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Well at least Europe has it already. Japan too. And China is building it. If they did it, then we can. Or are they superiour in some way?
Thanks for the link about algae! No, I wasn’t aware of that! Wow, 10% of New Mexico!!!!
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
So, now we are GPEC (gas is passed…electric is current)?
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Since the regen mode for energy recovery would presumably be far, far more efficient, the logical outcome would be a greater electric range, since, the regen electric recovery “load” field could be counter-rotated (opposite the rotor) faster with a better “learned” program via “learned” location and road decline/incline characteristics and traffic braking characteristics of the driver. Higher “learned” efficiencies with a faster storage capability, (as compared from my viewing the regen characteristics in the waveforms within small hybrids), might actually get the electric-only drive range up another 5 to 7 percent in very may cases.
That would need to be run through mathematical models already in place, but every single proven advancement counts for one more great leap forward for the Volt.
Dan Petit Austin TX
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:05 am
#124 Tim,
You make some good points. If everyone slow charges at home only at night, if people only fast charge for longer trips, and if EVs roll out fairly slowly, then the grid may not be an issue.
But then you have multiple people right here on this thread talking about installing 220v 50amp circuits in their home so that they can charge as fast as possible.
In addition, I believe fast-charging stations will require batteries to even out the load, and this will make them fairly expensive. So rural and remote areas will take many years to upgrade to fast charging stations. If you want to be able to drive in these areas, you’ll need a car that runs on liquid fuels.
Then there’s the issue with planes, trains, ships and heavy trucks. Without bio-fuels, we will never become energy independent, and carbon emissions will remain high. If bio-fuels are required anyway, why not use them for longer trips in passenger vehicles? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier and less expensive?
By the way, I’m not alone on this. Check out http://www.setamericafree.org/solution.html. Their plan is a combination of plug-ins and bio-fuels.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:16 am
#129 Adrian Says: Now, if Bio-fuel catches on you would need a whole engine (if not car) to take advantage of it.
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What?
Bio-fuels include ethanol and bio-diesel.
The Volt will run on E85. Within the next 5 years, most or all new cars will be FlexFuel.
Anything that runs on diesel will also run on bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is exactly the same as regular diesel, it just comes from a sustainable carbon-neutral source.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am
This is a wonderful battery development.
However, I can also install a swimming pool for you that can be filled in a few seconds as well. As for how you decide to do it, that’s up for you to figure out.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:25 am
One interesting challenge that will arise as the time it takes to charge batteries is reduced, is power “theft”. If I can charge my car in a few seconds or minutes — even if the cost of the electricity is relatively nominal — it increases the odds that people will steal electricity from any outlet they can find. It’s one thing to have to leave a car hooked up for hours. It’s quite another if I can recharge in a few minutes. Even with a longer recharge time, I can forsee hotels with ground level rooms having extension cords hanging out of them to the parking lot. Then, hotels could actually justifiably charge an energy fee. I’d expect that over time, we’ll see metered electrical outlets installed in parking lots, in cities, etc.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Tim @127. Thanks for the link. From the article HVDC connection losses are only about 3% per 1000 km plus 1.5% for two voltage converters.
In NZ we have a HVDC cable, pole two can handle 700MW, but due to heat issues has a 15% loss. Running at 600MW the losses are as above. So, effectively, the last 100MW transmitted results in 27MW extra at the other end.
Pole one was shut down after insurers refused to provide cover for the old style mercury switches it uses.
Dave G, it would be very simple to put a frequency checker at the charge point, so as frequency drops so does the rate of charge. The bigger the amperage, the more stable the system.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I’d like to say that I totally misjudged CFO Ray Young. Sure he is still a awkward public speaker…but he is the man.
GM asked the gov’t for a surprise extra $2 billion a couple weeks ago…knowing full well their fate is decided by March 31st. Now today, they come out and say, “hey that EXTRA cash we said we needed only a couple weeks ago…you go ahead and keep it, our cost cutting is starting to work”
This is genius, get all the money that is coming to you (13.4b), then just sprout off and surprise everyone by immediately asking for more…then wait a couple weeks and spin the whole thing of not taking the money (that no one had any intention of giving them) as a positive!
Ray Young +1
————————————–
Here is the realese from AP:
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors Corp.’s chief financial officer says the company will not need the $2 billion loan installment for March that it requested from the U.S. government in February.
CFO Ray Young said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press that GM told the Obama administration it won’t need the money so soon because its cost cuts are starting to take hold.
GM borrowed $13.4 billion from the government earlier this year. Last month, it said it would need up to an additional $16.6 billion to keep operating, including $2 billion in March and $2.6 billion in April.
Young would not say when the company will need more government loans or whether it would reduce its total financing request.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/GM-says-it-doesnt-need-2B-apf-14617368.html
============================
Looking at from our angle is more than slightly nauseating…but from GM’s angle, it is genius.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Don C; Do you mean they will not use Li-ion in the EV’s? Then what is all the discussion about? It looks like the Reticle Carbon Ultracap (AS seen on Ultracapacitors.org), with minor changes, could get 100 KW/Kg and cost far less with none of the problems with Li-ion.
I still think the present solution is a good battery with a good, light, and cheap Ultracap. We could do it within 12-18 months at worse.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:39 am
TBA @ 138: You can’t take power faster than the outlet will handle or the breaker will disconnect. A 120VAC 10amp outlet in your hotel room would still take 6.5 hours to charge your Volt.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:39 am
@TBA 138
“it increases the odds that people will steal electricity from any outlet they can find.”
Shhhhhhh!!!!!
Dammit, that’s what I was going to do!
Big mouth.
=o|
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I would assume any charging station would consist of a large battery from which other batteries are charged. This would work at home as well. A battery in the garage can be charged all the time with any available power. When needed the stored energy could dumped into your car fast. No need for change to the grid.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:46 am
@Dwayne 144
See my post 60
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:50 am
“Just remove that damned tax on electric overhead wires then get busy at electrifying the entire rail network. Last step, put all trucks on trains for distances > 100miles. That should help a lot.” Sounds like a plan, silvio.
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:59 am
You guys are way over my head. Keep it up. I will just read along today. It does seem this announcement by MIT would be a boon to home solar/wind stations using batteries as storage devices for later use when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. Both does happen pretty often. Plus the added benefit of selling excess power back to the grid.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Hey, my second choice EV Th!nk City might make it to the US after all,,
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/03/12/th-nk-details-u-s-manufacturing-sales-plans-hopes-to-sell-cit/
But the battery lease thingy kind of sucks.
Before anyone starts flaming on the range, remember, I only drive 10miles one way door to door for my work commute. That’s all I need and for under 20K, shlt, I have enough aluminum cans and bottle to recycle for the down.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:01 am
ThombDbhomb “My source was the MIT News office
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/battery-material-0311.html”
My bad, I thought you had written that you were more of a Journal of Chemistry and Engineering gentleman v. a Tech Review guy and kimmy is phonetic for ChemE readers. I don’t know if this will get through the filter, without common spellings as it assumes I’m using proprietary terms.
Jack M @ 141 Isn’t the energy density is still way too low to be practical for EV’s?
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:03 am
voltny # 14 “Great news, good bye Saudis, Middle east, Hugo Chavez and OPEC. Welcome the new Volt generation.”
Say hello, Mexico. Time to make nice with the Mexicans, with their photon rich Sonoran Desert!
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:04 am
#144 Dwayne Says: A battery in the garage can be charged all the time with any available power… No need for change to the grid.
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It’s the all-the-time part that’s the issue. Anything other than night-time charging will be a problem for the grid if this goes mainstream.
But here’s the real question: Why do you want to fast charge at home anyway? With a typical driving pattern, assuming you only charge overnight:
Vehicle ……………… Gallons per year
Volt ………………….. 37
Prius ………………… 228
30 MPG car ………… 380
20 MPG car ………… 570
So I really don’t see the value here. Why not just use bio-fuels to cover this?
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:10 am
#141 JackM asks “Do you mean they will not use Li-ion in the EV’s?”
Ultracaps are too expensive.
On the batteries, some EVs might use something different but most will use Li-ions. But these Li-ions are not like those used in laptop computers and their behavior is very different. All Li-ion move lithium ions between the anode and the cathode, but different variations of the batteries have different electrolytes, anodes, and cathodes, and these differences lead to quite different behaviors.
For example, laptop batteries deteriorate over a few years, but the Li-ion batteries used in the Volt will not. Likewise, the battery described in the news article here can be charged very fast but a laptop battery could not be.
You can find a fuller discussion of all the different variations here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrolytes
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Dave G #151
That is an awesome chart but I have been searching for the comments you posted about the miles and habits that make up the typical driver you are showing. Could you show that data again please.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Since they’re using lithium ion phosphate crystals, maybe they should just go ahead and market the batteries as “Dilithium Crystals”
http://tinyurl.com/yc6hgx
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:14 am
#147 N Riley Says: It does seem this announcement by MIT would be a boon to home solar/wind stations using batteries as storage devices for later use when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. Both does happen pretty often. Plus the added benefit of selling excess power back to the grid.
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If your home is connected to the grid, then it’s much better to forget about batteries for solar/wind. All electric meters run both ways (backwards and forwards). Any extra electricity generatered by solar/wind will go back into the grid. At the end of the year, if you’ve generated more electricity than you’ve used, the electric company will write you a check.
In the case of home solar panels, the electric company loves this because it helps them most right during their peak load, on hot summer days.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:18 am
#36 Adam:
Maybe if we had invested the $trillions in getting off of oil we could have avoided squandering $trillions on pointless wars, thus avoiding the need for bailouts and/or having the $trillions to pay for them.
Thank you.
#41 CorvetteGuy:
Yeah, or how about the “horseless carriage”, the root cause of all of this angst. I was taught that, at the beginniing, they were only allowed to go at walking speed, preceded by a walking man with a red flag, to avoid frightening the horses.
#146 D:
Amen. I still keep a photo I found of an electric locomotive pulling a freight train in India (!). I used to show it to the railroad guys when they told me it wasn’t feasible to electrify railroads in the LA basin to save those who get sick and/or die prematurely from the diesel particulates. Not that it did any good.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:23 am
@ Dave G
“if you’ve generated more electricity than you’ve used, the electric company will write you a check.”
Here in CA, I spoke to both PG&E and SMUD and they both say that if you generate more than you used in the year, it’s a wash. They don’t cut you a check, you get a pat on your back and a big thank you. That’s why most solar installers will always tell you to size your soalr package to reduce your monthy charge, not eliminate it, because you can never get a 0 balance. Why? because both companies charge you 5$ for connectivity to the grid and you get nothing back for overtime.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Dave G 154 “In the case of home solar panels, the electric company loves this because it helps them most right during their peak load, on hot summer days.”
They should show us that love and cut us, as property owners, a better deal for putting energy on the grid. Incentives, especially in the sun belt would lower cost by upping the scale of installations. Right now installations are minuscule compared to Germany and they don’t have sun for half the year (%, relative).
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Whoo Hoo! A new fantastic battery technology to wait for! Let me guess, it’s many years off and more research is needed, so please send MIT some money now. Quick charge, awesome! High power density, awesome! Cost, availability, reliability, scaleability… anyone?? Don’t ask questions, just send money.
What we really need right now is a breakthrough where somebody comes out and says “I can make a Li-Ion battery that isn’t any better, but can be made a factor of two cheaper and produced faster.” That’s the research that seems underfunded, actual manufacturing of batteries.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:25 am
#153 Jeffhre Says: That is an awesome chart but I have been searching for the comments you posted about the miles and habits that make up the typical driver you are showing. Could you show that data again please.
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Sure. No problem.
As plug-ins go mainstream, charging during the day will wreak havoc on our electrical grid. Plug-in experts agree that we should only consider charging overnight. So any typical driving pattern should be expressed as miles per day, for each day of the year. Since there was no data of this type available, I made up the following template as a rough typical driving pattern:
• 30 days at 8 miles per day
• 50 days at 16 miles per day
• 240 days at 30 miles per day
• 30 days at 60 miles per day
• 3 days at 450 miles per day
This accounts for yearly vacations, long drives on weekends, daily commutes, shorter trips after work, and shorter trips on weekends. It totals 11,309 miles per year, which is very close to the 12,000 miles used by many others for typical driving patterns. The driving pattern also accounts for 12 days of no driving, which seams reasonable.
Using this template, I devised a spread-sheet to calculate gallons per year of any PHEV, EREV, or regular gas engine car:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzenu6hr/ebay_pictures/GallonsPerYear.xls
The spread sheet requires 3 inputs:
• miles electric assist range
• MPG during electric assist
• MPG after electric assist
For a PHEV (Prius plug-in, Vue plug-in), the gas engine still has to turn on for acceleration and high speed driving, so it’s better to specify the electric boost as something like 150MPG for the first 10 miles, and then 50MPG after that (i.e. miles electric assist range=10, MPG during electric assist=150).
For an EREV, you have infinite MPG during the all-electric range, so I just use a big number for that (i.e. miles electric assist range=40, MPG during electric assist=1000000000).
A regular gas engine car has no electric range/boost (i.e. miles electric assist range=0).
I realize these are rough calculations, but given the data we have today, I think that’s all we can do at this point. So while it’s a ballpark estimate, I think it’s clear that the Volt is in a whole different league.
Feel free to modify the spreadsheet to your own tastes.
Hope this helps.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Dave G (#135) said:
“So rural and remote areas will take many years to upgrade to fast charging stations. If you want to be able to drive in these areas, you’ll need a car that runs on liquid fuels.
Then there’s the issue with planes, trains, ships and heavy trucks. Without bio-fuels, we will never become energy independent, and carbon emissions will remain high.”
YEP, electricity, biofuels, coal, nuclear, oil, wind, wave, tide, geothermal etc will all be with us for the foreseeable future. Good change takes time and over time, we will see the RATIO of each type of fuel and its use change as technology and our habits change.
In the beginning, EVs will be our second commuting cars with our primary cars being flex fuel. The ratio change over time as rapid charge becomes commonplace and the grid naturally improves due to changing energy economies. This change from ICEs to EVs will be faster in the cities than in the rural areas and faster in some transportation sectors that others. Some (like heavy hauling) may NEVER fully make the change and will stick with some form of hybrid drive.
Necessity IS the mother, but profit motive is the father of invention!
It took us 50 years to get hooked on foreign oil and it will take a dozen or more to get clean and sober on domestic energy. EVs are the least course of resistance and the most logical choice because of the daily commuting statistics I mentioned above.
By the way, we here are the early adapters. We are more willing to accept new technologies than the average bear. People in general HATE change because they fear the unknown. Range-anxiety is just one example. If the automakers stopped making ICEs TODAY, it would take at LEAST 10 years just to turn over the fleet.
Every journey begins with but a single first step and one never knows where each footfall will land or exactly how the trip will end.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:34 am
CaptJackSparrow
My comment yesterday, Synopsis, trailer park, chillaxing, off-grid, huge stack of faded cells fast charging – blocking view, guy in next space not happy, comment eaten by filter.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
#156 CaptJackSparrow Says: Here in CA, I spoke to both PG&E and SMUD and they both say that if you generate more than you used in the year, it’s a wash.
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I guess that varies from state to state. Thanks for letting me know.
What’s more, for the states that do pay, they pay you a lot less than they charge per kWh.
Yes, most solar systems are sized so that you won’t generate more than you use over a year, so this is rarely an issue. But the concept does help to show why batteries are not really necessary for home solar/wind systems.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Dave G
Thank you @159. The E-rev difference really is amazing when you see it in this form.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Awesome development!!! Now I can drag race from recharging station to station. Just hit the electro-nitro switch, like Mad Max.
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:47 am
#160 Tim Says: Necessity IS the mother, but profit motive is the father of invention!
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Hey, that’s good! I never heard that before. Did you make that up?
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March 12th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Jeffhre:and Don C:
If you look at the article on Ultracapacitors.org you will see that this technology is not expensive. It looks like a new way to consolidate activated carbon to preserve its innate qualities of surface area and conductivity.
With a few mods, as follows this technology could equal the performance of the one in the Li-ion study.
If they could increase the voltage to 2 volts and the capacitor to 300F/g and the discharge time to 2 seconds, you could get 100Kw/Kg. From what I see from the paper all of this could be possible.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
#160 Tim Says: By the way, we here are the early adapters. We are more willing to accept new technologies than the average bear. People in general HATE change because they fear the unknown. Range-anxiety is just one example.
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Most people will embrace something new as long as it doesn’t force them to change. For example, computers started selling with CD-burners back in 1998, but they still included floppy drives for another 8 years.
This is why I’m so excited about EREVs. They don’t force you to plug-in. So if the price is reasonable, I think EREVs will catch on really fast, much faster than most people are predicting.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
All meters do not run both ways.
You are not permitted to feed into the power company without an agreement and the proper equipment to prevent fault damage,fire hazard in your home and electrocution of linemen from feedback.
As pointed out very many times, there is an abundance of daytime capacity available for charging when the temperatures are moderate, and off the daily peaks when they are not.
I don’t think anyone is opposed to biofuels from waste carbon but it does nothing to solve the global warming chimera.One might ask how can you solve a problem that doesn’t exist? Or given man-made global warming exists, how does one know a little of it is not good for us? Why does the use of biofuels reduce carbon emissions? What’s wrong with nuclear power? What is the ratio of the daily peak to the average daily load? What is the ratio of the average daily average peak to the annual peak? Do you see that there is a lot of capacity available for use and will you stop insisting that there is not? Please? I fear you are misinforming a lot of people that have a limited knowledge of the electrical system.
Many utilities have winter peaks especially in the north.
A tree was felled into the line to cause the big outage and there followed a cascade of relaying errors that kept dumping load.
You oppose batteries at home consistently for some odd reason. You can maximize the potential of home solar systems and possibly get off the grid in the future by using the hoped for improvements in battery technology. The power company will not pay you fairly for your generation – you will sell it to them for 5 cents and they will sell it back to you for 10 cents, so you are better off to keep it.(despite a few odd ball incentive programs where the customer is paid a huge amount for on-site generation< these schemes cannot exist in general)
I hate to post this but … there is too much insistence on points that are somewhat shaky.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Shawn Marshall # 168 “Please? I fear you are misinforming a lot of people that have a limited knowledge of the electrical system”
______________________________________
Which comment(s) are you referring to?
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
#156 CaptJackSparrow said:
Here in CA, I spoke to both PG&E and SMUD and they both say that if you generate more than you used in the year, it’s a wash. They don’t cut you a check, you get a pat on your back and a big thank you. That’s why most solar installers will always tell you to size your soalr package to reduce your monthy charge, not eliminate it, because you can never get a 0 balance. Why? because both companies charge you 5$ for connectivity to the grid and you get nothing back for overtime.
============================
Part of the frustration with mass adoption of solar in the US is the state-by-state rebate/incentive programs. Some are great…some are ‘teh suq’
Clearly this is a national project (and priority) and should have a national benchmark set.
I know I have said this before, but when I set up my system, there was little no incentive to defer the cost, (other than not having to pay tax…and a couple other minor things), but they give a fabulous buyback rate of .42/kWh, which encourages not only solar adoption, but overproduction.
As point of reference, Ontario electric power is relatively cheap to buy (because we have a lot of infrastructure)…about .05/kwh (before fees).
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
#168 Shawn Marshall Says: Or given man-made global warming exists, how does one know a little of it is not good for us? Why does the use of biofuels reduce carbon emissions? What’s wrong with nuclear power?
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Bio-fuels are carbon neutral. They absorb carbon-dioxide to grow, and release it when burned. Bio-fuels from non-food sources require no fossil fuels to produce.
I’m an advocate for nuclear power, and I think you will see more nuclear power advocates as the climate change problem becomes clear.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s, the U.S. and Russia were testing many hydrogen bombs above ground, and global radioactive fall-out was getting to be an issue. At the time, many people said a little bit of radioactivity in the atmosphere was good for us. I don’t think anyone believes that now.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I think the $7500 tax rebate you get should be used for getting PV panels on your home. That should be enough for at least a .8 or 1.0KW system. If in CA you get at least 9hrs of full son with southern exposure. My trailer park/home has that. You’d get more than half charge from Solar and half from the grid.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
#168 Shawn Marshall Says: The power company will not pay you fairly for your generation – you will sell it to them for 5 cents and they will sell it back to you for 10 cents, so you are better off to keep it.
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This is misleading. The power meter turns both ways. If you generate power during the day and then use the same amount at night, your electric meter will just show that you’ve use no electricity. The power company doesn’t keep track of how much you generate vs how much you consume.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Side post to jeffhre:
We new we were going to see something out of the House panel on the market to market today, and here it is:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/House-panel-gets-FASB-pledge-apf-14619069.html
I read it as, we are going to lighten up…but our members, ‘in real life’ aren’t really that smart to be able to handle this job…so we have to go talk to our aides and pay some other people to come up with some good ideas on guidance on it. We’ll catch you in three weeks or so.
/hope your making money today my friend, (=
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Here’s an example of the rebates for CA.
Think about it, if you generate enough, you’ll be charging your Volt FREE. Now that’s what I’m talking about. OK, so you’ll have to pony up for the PV but hell, if you never move, you’ll never pay to charge.
http://akeena.com/cm/solar%20network/Sacramento%20Solar%20Power.html?gclid=CP6AqtH2nZkCFRwDagodLEsVUA
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Bio fuels IMO could be carbon neutral if vehicles, vessels and aircraft scrubbed their carbon to return all reactants back to the soils for the next generation of bio fuels, instead of using synthetic fertilizers, and if carbon emitting dead zones in the oceans from fertilizer run off were eliminated. Just an incipient thought with no calculations to back it up.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
#156 CaptJackSparrow
Re: Extra power to grid
Here, they cut you a check if they owe you at the end of the year. Why is CA (PG&E and SMUD) so backwards?
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
So I see, if we all burn wood for heat, electricity and steam engines there would be no carbon problem?(and we probably will when they do c(r)ap and trade)
We are subjected to radiation at all times are we not? Should we not take measures then to eliminate all sources of radiation because we think it might be harmful?Normal background radiation from earth elements? I’d especially like to get rid of cosmic rays – they are messing up my flux capacitor. I think Russia irradiated all of Europe in those days and judging by the results, I agree with you, all nuclear testing should be banned.
#169 Mostly the thing that you cannot charge in the daytime – that is a bogus oversimplification. But also, the continuous insistence that home batteries will not have a role in the future. It is my hope to get off the grid someday or only sell to it.
Further, I submit that all waste carbon be sequestered and not emitted to air – all power to the people from nukes. Wonder if farmers could plumb a cow’s arse to a ground hog hole?
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
#175 CaptJackSparrow Says: Here’s an example of the rebates for CA… OK, so you’ll have to pony up for the PV
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You may not have to pony up anything…
There is a company in California named SolarCity that claims they can install solar panels on your roof for no money down and lower your total monthy payments for electricity from what you’re paying now. They say that 1/3 of the homes in California would qualify for this plan.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Guess you never heard of a detent meter.
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
#156 CaptJackSparrow & #157 jeffhre:
Southern California Edison is the same. I was going to cite statik’s past comments on the Canadian incentives, but he beat me to it at #170. I agree with him that that we have to have a national standard, if this is ever going to happen. If the President is serious about this energy independence stuff, he will push for same.
#158 DaV8or:
Even more basically, what we need now is a !@#$%^ car, with whatever the state of the art barrery is now. Otherwise, it is as CaptJack often says, “Blah, blah, blah, I want my Volt.”
This would be, as Tim so correctly said at #160, the first real giant step, which would show that change is real, and get the snowball really rolling. All of this other stuff is wonderful, and I applaud it. But it can all be next steps in the journey of 1000 miles.
LJGTVWOTR!!
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
CaptJackSparrow #175
If you do happen to move [“A solar electric system increases home value by $20,000 for each $1,000 in annual reduced operating costs, according to The Appraisal Institute.” (Reference) In other words, the cost of our solar installation will probably raise the value of our house by about $36,000, or just about the cost of the installation. You can speculate how high this number will be whenever we sell our house, but it seems clear that we will recover some, if not all, of the cost of installation when we sell.] from ( http://www.teslafounders.com/ )
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March 12th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
#176 Jeffhre Says: Bio fuels IMO could be carbon neutral if vehicles, vessels and aircraft scrubbed their carbon to return all reactants back to the soils for the next generation of bio fuels, instead of using synthetic fertilizers, and if carbon emitting dead zones in the oceans from fertilizer run off were eliminated.
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Bio-fuels from non-food soruces require no fertilizer. The leftover bio-mass is perfect for soil remediation. The carbon absorbed by the plants is equal to the carbon released when burned. There is no need to scrub carbon in vehicles. Bio-fuels from non-food soruces are carbon neutral.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
CaptJackSparrow
Lyle has posted information about your preferred car in the next post! Something to TH!NK about.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
This looks very promising indeed.
We need a practical way to apply a usage tax to these new type of batteries. I anticipate a small “recharge tax” might do the trick. As a city manager, I continuously brainstorm with other knowledgeable managers/mayors on important issues facing our modern cities. I am against a “mileage tax” that is currently circulating within the local gov community. I alos do not like a “congestion tax” like London is using. A “recharge/cycle” tax on these new hybrids seems more palpable for the road warriors who want to take advantage of our local roadways. One thing is for sure, local governments need to get more creative with new revenue streams to support the ever increasing demands of our roadways and transportation infrastructure.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Here is the link to the original paper. I have to admit it is very interesting!!!
http://uploading.com/files/OKSUV5HQ/nature.pdf.rar.html
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Suppose you had a machine at your house that could make 1 gallon of gas in 24hrs for $1. No matter how big your fuel tank, that’s all you can get at that price. Need more? Drive less, or go to the corner and pump gas at $4 a gallon. That should help put all of this quick-charge-at-home talk into perspective.
We could only speculate about quick vs slow charge before, since the battery could only be charged slowly, with quick charge a possible future enhancement. Now that quick charge has a published breakthrough behind it, the prospect has become a bit less theoretical; but one still has to ask how to get more expensive (but more plentiful) electric charge “at the corner.”
IMO there are two kinds of battery urgently needed; one that is light, powerful and cheap enough for a consumer vehicle, and one that is gigantic, but has enough storage capacity to be relevant to a utility. Such storage on a utility-wide scale could make the existing grid much more capable, shipping baseline power off-peak which will be dispensed more locally on-peak.
For utility load-levelling, there have been several attempts to develop eutectic (molten salt) batteries. This has been a market in Japan for years, and there are some interesting developments in the field recently.
These batteries are currently tractor-trailer size, and need to be kept at 300-500 degrees C; so they’re not likely to be adopted for any but the largest vehicles (the bigger the better, because mass to surface ratio = less heat loss).
Once these giant-format batteries are economic enough, I could see them coming into use for quick-charge stations, now that the car batteries appear to be headed for a quick-charge capability.
I often hear about used EV batteries being purchased for load-leveling by utilities; but remember that this won’t be a force to reckon with until 8 – 10 years after significant EV penetration into the marketplace. The giant utility-scale battery is more likely to appear by that time.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
#140 statik:
Genius indeed. GM is up 13% on the “news” (press release?) according to a current story on the Yahoo page.
That ought to motivate the UAW to take stock instead of $$ for the trust fund, LOL.
As everybody knows, press releases beat actual results any day.
#179 Dave G:
I looked into the Solar City deal, but it set off all of my scam alarms. In the end, I would have been lucky to break even with my present power bill. I guess the feel good aspect is worth something, but it was too scary for me.
Even so, it is the brainchild of Mr. Elon Musk, of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceEx fame, so maybe that gives it some credibility. Or maybe not?
If memory serves, the actualy leasing operation is run by Salomon Bros., or some such equivalent. Didn’t do much for me.
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March 12th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
@ Jackson 187
“We could only speculate about quick vs slow charge before, since the battery could only be charged slowly”
Funny, I argued that in a previous thread but not directly at “Charging”. It was more to regen braking and how much was really captured. The MAX you can capture is 16KW theoretical eventhough the EV motor can produce 32KW, 16 is the MAX so the rest is wasted/unused. That of course assumes 1C rate.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
You guys are making way too much of this announcement.
Rapid recharge/discharge is nice. It would undoubtedly improve regenerative braking and make instantaneous power demand much more flexible. It would allow the hybrids never to need buffering capacitors, as an example. And larger rated electric motors could be specified to aid acceleration.
That might push EREV series designs up the automotive size ladder for vehicles into the “full size” or Mercedes S Class, BMW 7 series, Chrysler 300 or Cadillac DTS sized vehicles, where they are not yet practical today.
Dual-mode parallel-series hybrids grow more practical, too and becomes superior in instantaneous power for towing or hauling situations, while also simultaneously downsizing the size of the ICE component, thus improving total fossil fuel demand.
For example, you might see a small 3.0 liter v6 diesel or v6 gas engine in a Heavy Duty F150 capable of towing 10-12,000 pounds loads, more than the equal of an big engined all ICE design. Without Plug-in capability that might mean 28-30 mpg Large PUs hybrids. Plug-in capability could register in excess of 35 mpg equivalent, without sacrificing any hauling ability.
It should certainly help make diesel electric hybrid locomotives more practical too, such as GE has just introduced. I could also see Diesel-electric parallel-series hybrid Class 8 “Big Rig” tractors traveling the highways toowhile increasingtheir fuel economy. But those were coming anyway.
But none of you seem to comprehend how much energy and what kind of equipment and more importantly the safety handling needs of such high power rates would require, were they to be used for “Quick Charge”. I predict the 5minute “Quick Charge” will never appear.
Quick Charge is FANTASY people. It always will be.
An electrical “Quick Charge”, in practice, will still be an hour minimum, for an EREV and more for a BEV. Even though the battery might be able to sustain a faster rate of charge.
Y’all image a “Quick Charge” is much like driving into a gas station for a 5 minute fill-up, like gasoline. You simply drag the power cable over like the gasoline hose and “plug it in”.
That is NOT what is required.
With reasonable charging equipment, say what the gentlemen with his 230v 50 amp service is talking about, it Still takes the better part of an HOUR to recharge an EREV automobile traction battery and double that for a pure BEV.
With equipment to do the “‘5 minute idea”, you need much more. Instead, think of driving into one of those fenced off high tension step-down electrical distribution stations with the Skull and Crossbones and Danger signs posted everywhere. You know the ones with the several foot high transformers, and 3-5 foot tall insulators to separate the electric cables from ground. Then think of you climbing out of your car dragging a cable the size of a Fireman’s hose except made out of copper so it weights a score of pounds per foot, to your car and making the connection. It has to be a perfect connection too, or you will instantly weld the cable to your vehicle, if not electrocuting yourself.
Today highly trained technicians knowing that they are cheating Death, make those kinds of permanent connections with due caution. They pay due respect for the energy that can throw them 10 feet or more and curl their hair just walking within a few feet close by. They use tools tthat are four feet long with massive insulation as they manipulate the cables. That is the reality of the types of power that you are dealing with for a 5 minute “Quick Charge”.
And you want the average gas jockey or self serve customer to do that??
Start counting the daily dead. A War would produce fewer daily death tolls.
This is a nice advance. Li-Ion batteries become more rugged, and able to stand abuse better. It can mean than that home recharging rates over a few hours will not hurt such batteries; and that battery life expectancies will probably climb with “normal” charging rates, say anything under 440v and 50 amps.
Thus cutting the requirement for 16KWh to get 8KWh usable for 150,000 miles or ten years life, like the Volt planners now do, whilel also plannnig to include a battery replacemnt for a significant number of customers. Even if it falls to12KWh for 8KWh usable, that is only a reduction of 25% in the battery ratings and that might not mean a 25% reduction in cost. But the extra battery included the warranty cost might almost disappear.
This is very good news for lots of reasons, but don’t think it is a fundamental breakthrough, it isn’t. It is merely once step of the incremental technological progress as Mankind improves his technology from limited fossil fuels, to more flexible and cleaner alternatives.
The simple progressive things that the eco-loons do not believe is possible, as they wail in their doom and gloom,and ruan about in their Chicken Little dances.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
#188 noel park said:
(in response to #140 statik):
Genius indeed. GM is up 13% on the “news” (press release?) according to a current story on the Yahoo page.
That ought to motivate the UAW to take stock instead of $$ for the trust fund, LOL.
As everybody knows, press releases beat actual results any day.
=======================
Indeed they seem to. On the GM up 13%…what isn’t right now, eh? Crazy world.
I may get out of my dog buy of GE a couple weeks ago even. They got there rating cut from AAA to AA+ and it is surging, lol. Love these bear market rallies…hard and fast.
Side note: Actually, I said I was going to hold it until it broke even just to give myself a reminder of what over-optimism in this market does for you…but I think if I can get out only down a few percents points, rather than the 50%+ it dropped last week, I’ll take my money back and hope the lesson is learned. So I’m going to sell it at days end today…I made more than the difference selling out some puts I bought in the last hour yesterday on the open (on SPY), so I’m pleased overall.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I have trouble believing those numbers. As an engineer I just keep thinking “what’s the catch”. It would be so awesome if there really aren’t any major caveats. I want to be optimistic…but I’m sure whatever Statik says will happen anyway.
—-
My vision for the future:
EREVs- eventually EVs, go from charging mostly at night to quick-charging quite a bit during the day. However, all of the batteries from the old EVs with reduced capacity have been bought cheaply by the power companies, who use them in large banks for energy storage (especially for inconsistent sources such as wind power/etc.). Thus power generated at night is stored and redistributed. As well, there are windmills or solar panels on different sections of highways. Small stretches of road adjacent to the highway are made into “charging lanes”, where cars extend a probe to metal on the road and recoup power provided by these sources or from the grid (and are charged a toll automatically for doing so). Hopefully, this will all be handled by autonomous vehicles
P.S. SolarCity is indeed a Musk company. Doubt it’s a scam.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
#187 Jackson,
The battery pack in the Volt can probably be charged in less than an hour. The LG chemistry supports that. It probably wouldn’t lower the life of the pack.
The Volt’s charger has 2 modes:
• 6.5 hours at 110v
• 3.2 hours at 220v
So the Volt’s charger is more limiting than the battery. Why is that? (check one)
a) Because that’s what most home circuits and electrical cords will support.
b) Because most people drive less than 40 miles per day
c) Because daytime charging will wreak hovoc on our grid
d) all of the above
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
#192 ccombs,
Current U.S. oil consumption breaks down roughly as follows:
• 44% gasoline (mostly for passenger vehicles)
• 17% diesel (mostly for heavy duty long distance travel)
• 5% jet fuel
• 15% fuel oil (home heating and industrial)
• 19% other (petro-chemical, plastics, fertilizer, etc.)
How does your vision of the future address all of these?
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
To; Ccombs; i am and engneer, also and have some problems with it too. What is the power density? What happens when it completely discharges. No one seems to want to answer these questions
Did you see my post on this new Ultracap electrod technology? If you read it completely, you can see that with some minor tweaking ti could produce 100 KW/Kg. (3 volts instead of 1.5) I think it is called Reticle Carbon. It could be a sleeper and catch everyone by surprise.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
#175 CaptJackSparrow says “Think about it, if you generate enough, you’ll be charging your Volt FREE”
Utilities should have a special reduced rate for EVs or houses with EVs (you get a choice if you want to meter separately). Solar is not competitive with these rates so you’re best off sizing the system for your usage:
http://www.pge.com/myhome/environment/pge/electricvehicles/fuelrates/index.shtml
http://www.sdge.com/tm2/pdf/ELEC_ELEC-SCHEDS_EV-TOU.pdf
The output for the CA rebates are also about 5% or 10% lower than what you’ll probably see in practice so a system sized for slightly less than what you use will probably produce what you use. Even if you produce less than you use, at worst you’ll be charging the EV using lower tier bands so the pricing should be very competitive with your solar system, even if you amortize the system over twenty years.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
@ ccombs #192
Marginal cost.
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March 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
{pointing a 10 gauge barrel at your face} “Gimme it NOW!!!”
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
i don’t know how this degenerated into a discussion of dangerously POLLUTING solar energy. But let me disabuse yourselves of the belief that what you are doing with Solar is beneficial or even Pollution Free.
People worry about the alteration in the Earth from changes almost unmeasureable of a fraction of a Watts per square meter, possibley induced by GHGs increases.
Solar polutes a few hundred Watts per square meter for every square meter of total Solar installed.
It doesn’t matter if the Solar power is centrallzed in a big utility or a decentralized with a few million people installing their own solar panels. They collectively, POLLUTE and very badly by the total amount of square meters of solar installations from whatever source.
Have you heard of the planetary Albedo?
The planetary Albedo is the ratio of the energy absorbed form the Sun versus the amount reflected back into Space, without being absorbed. It is about 31% give or take for the Earth.
A solar panel is no where near that average. it approaches a zero reflectance and as an active device that pipes off energy elsewhere is “blacker than the blackest black” and can in some cases absorb more than the most perfect natural absorber.
So every square meter of solar panel installed increases the heat absorbed from the Sun by 31%. or so. That heats the Earth a hundred to a thousand times MORE per square meter than GHGs that the eco-loons worry about endlessly. Fortunately we don’t have much solar installed yet.
Just like windmills were perfect and pollution free according to the eco-loons.
Until we started building them and found out otherwise.
Windmills consume lots lof land, kill lots of birds, disturb the lives and breeding of other animals, including humans, and can disrupt the Grid creating blackouts. Few today recogniize that disrupting the natural method of equalizing temperature (the Wind) can lead to more severe weather later. Only noware somepapers apearingquaetioningthe weather created downwind from Winfd Farms. In short Windmills are not Pollution free.
Solar is less used, as it is more un-economical, so the Pollution effects exist but are unrecognized as yet. Solar’s pollution effects are more massive than Windmills, unfortunately.
We have already mentioned the disruption to the Albedo. Have you heard of thermal pollution?
Engineers measure the efficiency of any power system by looking at the useful energy/work produced versus the waste heat created and produced as a wasteful side effect. Solar stinks in its efficiency. It is dismal and only 10% to 12% efficient. That means up to 90% of the energy turns into useless Heat warming the Earth and raising the temperature.
Solar POLLUTES worse than any other, in this way as well.
So if you are worreid about Global Warming, you can’t do anything worse than installing Solar energy panels!
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
@ 140 “Looking at from our angle is more than slightly nauseating…but from GM’s angle, it is genius.”
LOL, …And press releases shall record the collective memories and beliefs amongst all who art dwelling upon this land.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
This could be a game changer – we will see in a couple years. One should note that although the batteries may be available in 2 years, the infrastructure to charge cars will take decades.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
#189 (Cap’n):
Several months before the cell manufacturer was revealed, we were speculating that a battery pack might have more than one type of cell for this very reason. If this research pans out, I’d have to call it “inevitable.”
#190 (stas):
“Quick Charge is FANTASY people. It always will be.” (followed by realistic description of charging hazards at the necessary power levels)
In an earlier thread (a lot earlier; so no, I won’t be trying to dredge it up) when many of us were speculating about public charging methods, this very issue came up. In that thread, I was the one pointing out the hazard of gigantic wires.
With a little further thought, I imagined two large sockets on the bottom of the car, separated from each other by the length of the battery. You’d drive up as you would into a repair bay, but instead of getting on a lift, you’d be positioning over two probes which would safely come up from underneath to engage the sockets. There would be an audible pop, but no real danger (unless some rube decides to combine high-power recharge with his gas pump setup).
“It will always be a fantasy” are dangerous words to utter when attempting to anticipate technology; it sounds a little too much like “that steamboat thing will never work.”
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
#93 (Dave):
“The battery pack in the Volt can probably be charged in less than an hour. The LG chemistry supports that. It probably wouldn’t lower the life of the pack.”
I didn’t realize, or remember that.
“The Volt’s charger has 2 modes:
• 6.5 hours at 110v
• 3.2 hours at 220v
So the Volt’s charger is more limiting than the battery. Why is that? (check one)
a) Because that’s what most home circuits and electrical cords will support.
b) Because most people drive less than 40 miles per day”
I’m with you so far.
“c) Because daytime charging will wreak hovoc on our grid”
Here we have to part, because:
a) It will take decades for EVs to penetrate the market to the point where additional load is an issue
b) Quick Charge Stations will only be possible if they can store energy the same way an EV would (with more powerful batteries)
c) If we embark on a nationally subsidized PV solar cell initiative (which seems politically likely), the resulting power will be available on the grid in the daytime, not overnight
d) If you read the rest of my #187, what I’m suggesting that the utility might do with giant-format batteries is the equivalent of turning the entire grid into a kind of hybrid:
(i) The wires coming down your street are sized for the peak instantaneous load they might sustain, and most of that capacity is unused most of the time. From your house to the local substation, there is no “grid failure” issue.
ii) Giant Format batteries placed in the substations would soak up energy at off-peak times when the larger grid feeding them is less used.
iii) Giant Format batteries would help sustain the local grid(s) at peak time.
iv) I’ll go so far as to say that with an (admittedly unlikely) storage capability, the existing grid could service far more load while the generators consume less fuel.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Better batteries mean better Volts. All is good.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
#199 (stas):
A field research project using eutectic (molten salt) batteries from Japan are trying to level the intermittent output of individual windmills. As to birds and bats, most of the areas considered for large windmill implementations are either in sparse prairie/desert environments, or out to sea.
In any case, one has to compare possible hazards of windmills against acid rain and other strictly pollution-related issues of generating electricity by more traditional methods.
Albedo effect? It will be centuries before we’ll have to worry about the Heat problem. The sun will strike the Earth regardless of whether or not there are solar panels sitting on it. Cutting down forests has more of an effect than PV farms are likely to.
I really thought you were going to go with “what about the energy it takes to make Solar panels” argument, which is a more legitimate (though manageable) argument.
#201 (Jason):
“This could be a game changer – we will see in a couple years. One should note that although the batteries may be available in 2 years, the infrastructure to charge cars will take decades.”
It will take decades to make an economic case for it.
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March 12th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Awesome!
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March 12th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
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#187 Jackson Said:
Suppose you had a machine at your house that could make 1 gallon of gas in 24hrs for $1. No matter how big your fuel tank, that’s all you can get at that price. Need more? Drive less, or go to the corner and pump gas at $4 a gallon. That should help put all of this quick-charge-at-home talk into perspective.
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Hey, GM Marketing Department….
#187 Jackson has a very clever way to put the value proposition of an EREV(with 40 miles EV) into perspective.
I’m intrigued by the marketing potential of the imagery Jackson outlines; owning a VOLT is like have a gas pump in your garage that allows you to buy gas at under $1/gallon.
You could have a commercial that starts out with asking the question “How would you like to have your own private gas pump in your garage that allows you to buy gas for less than $1/gallon for most of your driving?” Show a home car garage with a big commercial gas pump in it with an “Under $1/gallon” price banner over the pump. Then the commercial would say “How about if you could replace that gas with electrons?” The gas pump fades out and an electrical outlet fades in. Then show the Chevy VOLT drive into the garage and be plugged in. Voice “You can do that with the revolutionary Chevy VOLT.”
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Electric Cars + Nuclear Power = American Energy Independence!
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March 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
With all that free solar in California, I’m packing up and moving to Southern California!
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March 12th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
#203 Jackson Says: a) It will take decades for EVs to penetrate the market to the point where additional load is an issue
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I think EREVs are going to happen very fast. If EREVs can charge quickly, then grid problems may happen in the next 10 years.
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March 12th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I wonder how much heat will be generated if you pull or dump that much juice in that short time frame?
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March 12th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Avg Customer Electric Usage Mid Atlantic approx 1,000 kW-hr /month
= 33.38 kW-hr per day
= average rate of 1.4kW at 240 Volts
= 6 amps
to charge 1 Volt = 8 kW-hr (~ 1/4 of daily usage)
Easily done by the existing system for many, many years as Mr Jackson has patiently tried to point out. It will most certainly not wreak havoc (sic) with the existing system which in most cases is not a ‘grid’ but a radial feeder. The Volt knows what time it is, it knows how much charge it needs, it knows the temperature perhaps(may need external input for you far northerners with heated garages) and it may know how long a charge interval it has, ergo, it can proceed to charge itself day or night at randomly distributed intervals to complete the charge in the allotted time. It only needs to exclude charging for morning and evening hours with extreme temperatures. This is programmable also. It is much to the benefit of utilities to ‘flatten’ the load curve as much as possible, even in the daytime, to make maximum use of their capital facilities. For quick charges, other sources(batteries) are needed to sink energy as Mr Jackson also explained. I promise never to mention this again but I’m certain to be provoked.
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March 12th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I hope OPEC reads this and chokes!
Excellent news! Discoveries like this give me hope that we WILL have a viable real alternative to oil sooner than we thought.
I can’t wait to watch OPEC shrivel and die away!
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I’m curious if this technology can/will be applied to Iron fluorophosphate anodes. Those, if you remember, are the anodes that work both for both lithium and sodium ion batteries. I’m thinking it should. Also, FeFPO4 anodes have the potential for longer life, as the volume change over a charging cycle is small relative to FePO4.
Fast charging, long life, and the potential to reduce risk to lithium shortages. That would be great!
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March 12th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
#211 Shawn Marshall Says: to charge 1 Volt = 8 kW-hr (~ 1/4 of daily usage)…
It is much to the benefit of utilities to ‘flatten’ the load curve as much as possible, even in the daytime,…
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Daytime load is about twice the load during the night. Given that our grid is already operating near capacity on hot days, adding another 1/4 of our daily usage during daytime hours will certainly put us beyond the capability our our current grid, no matter how random or spread out it is. Plug-in experts agree that most people should only consider charging at night.
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March 13th, 2009 at 3:34 am
Stop worrying about the stupid power grid (get the little joke there). Implementation of electric cars is not going to happen overnight. When the biggest hurdle to electric cars is the power grid then that will be a day to celebrate.
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March 13th, 2009 at 4:44 am
First shall be battery in place. In case fast charging possibility I would go for EV although infrastructure would be missing. The main consideration would be EV price. I know one more thing – fast charging would cost at least 2 times more than conventional one and fast charging station will be installed in vicinity of high voltage transformer stations not to disturb network performance. Since the price of day time fast charging will be on average 3 times more expensive than conventional one majority of EV users will use night time slow chargers in vicinity of their homes. Peack hour fast charging will be emergency solution and will not affect substantialy transmission grid operation.
But those are only theoretical speculations since nobody seen such perfect battery yet.
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March 13th, 2009 at 6:38 am
#215 omegaman66 Says: When the biggest hurdle to electric cars is the power grid then that will be a day to celebrate.
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If you consider an EREV to be an electric car, then start celebrating. I believe EREV sales are going to ramp much faster than anyone predicts. If future EREVs have fast-charging capability, then we could hit the grid wall within the next 10 years.
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March 13th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Speaking of the electric grid. These types of batteries can be used in sub-stations and at wind-farms as well to store and distribute electricity more evenly.
The downside to wind power has always been the fact that its not always reliable. Having a way to store the power would be a huge leap in making wind energy a truely viable energy source.
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Vince:
http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-top.pag?docid=107712739
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/03/sodium-sulfite.html
Thanks guys (you know who you are)
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March 13th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
March 14th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Oh PLEASE let this be true…
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March 15th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
How do you recharge such batteries or an EEStor quickly? Each charging station has storage in the form of the same type of batt. or cap. on site. That way the grid can keep the station storage banks topped off and as vehicles come in to recharge the storage bank has the capacity to fill each vehicle rapidly with out overloading the grid. Much the way gas stations work now. Simple.
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March 18th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Gooooooooooood! This just goes to show that where there is much demand, research can work out wonders.. now the production! production!
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March 19th, 2009 at 10:07 am
This is big news, but not for PHEVs. As many have pointed out, by the time you have enough energy for a PHEV, power isn’t an issue. Where it is really important are for mild hybrids and for KER systems, and anywhere else where power capacity, particularly on brake energy rengeration, is the limiting factor. The ideal application for this technology is something like the current Honda Insight, where the improved battery technology will allow a cheaper, smaller pack with similar efficiency, or more efficiency with the same pack capacity.
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May 11th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Watch, Exxon will buy this technology. They will give MIT hundreds of millions of dollars for it, in a secret transaction. Then, like most battery technology, it will quietly disappear. It has happened before.
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May 19th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Voltny wrote: Great news, good bye Saudis, Middle east, Hugo Chavez and OPEC. Welcome the new Volt generation.
Nope. Stanford had a similar battery back in 2007. Google “Stanford Lithium battery” After they published, the battery was never in the news again. It has been revealed that Saudi Arabia is funding the project.
Now they will just buy the MIT battery design.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 pm
And if all harvesting, maintenance, transporting was on foot, *bookkeeping and records done during the daytime on an abacus etc.
*That last one was rhetorical in nature.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:02 pm
The company is owned by Elon Musk!
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July 5th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I am glad to be alive to witness this transitional stage of the energy evolution, i.e., from the combustion of fossil fuels to the usage of the more universe friendly electrons/atom. What’s next? Fussion?
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July 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
For the people complaining about fast charging at home. Do you gas up your car at home? Nope. Leave the fast chargers at the stations. I dont mind slow charging at home while Im sleeping OFF PEAK hours.
These batteries have huge potential for fleet vehicles as well with high loads to break being able to recapture large amounts of energy quickly is key to diesel-hybrid work trucks.
And any great breakthroughs in batteries can be a good thing even for early adopters as they will need to eventually replace batteries anyway. Taking a early EV from 100 to 250 mile range when you have to replace batteries anyway is a great thing.
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