2007: THE YEAR PLUG-IN HYBRIDS TAKE OFF?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HBO6 @ Jan 3 2007, 07:59 AM) [snapback]370084[/snapback]</div>

That's impressive. I hope this message gets absorbed by the masses as well as our government leaders. I can't wait to see plug-in's by the major car manufacturers.

 

In response to the naysayers who insist this will create demand for more polluting power plants...from the same article:

DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. Further, those plug-ins that are left connected to an electrical socket after being fully charged (most U.S. cars are parked over 20 hours a day) can substitute for expensive natural gas by providing electricity from their batteries back to the grid: "spinning" reserves to help deal with power outages and regulation of the grid's voltage and amperage.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Jan 3 2007, 03:21 PM) [snapback]370279[/snapback]</div>

Or DDarrell would just say somthing to the effect, "they wouldn't have to build any new plants for me, in fact I could supply my energy to help charge my neighbor's plug-in."

All kidding aside, hydrogen is dead. Add one atomic number and we get lithium. That's where the near future lies.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Jan 3 2007, 03:21 PM) [snapback]370279[/snapback]</div>

IMHO, the situation is better represented with the quoted paragraph left intact since, IMHO, it is key to understanding the situation. So, I'll, reluctantly, quote the paragraph again, this time, unedited:

"Utilities are rapidly becoming quite interested in plug-ins because of the substantial benefit to them of being able to sell off-peak power at night. Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity, DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. Further, those plug-ins that are left connected to an electrical socket after being fully charged (most U.S. cars are parked over 20 hours a day) can substitute for expensive natural gas by providing electricity from their batteries back to the grid: "spinning" reserves to help deal with power outages and regulation of the grid's voltage and amperage."

Here's the key part of the paragraph:
"Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity"

Electric power plants do not simply shut down at night. Right now, most off-peak electricity and the fuel used to generate it goes to waste. What this paragraph says, IMHO, is that the current electrical capacity and the current rate of consumption of fuel to generate that electricity will not need to be increased to meet the demand for 84% of the country's 220 million passenger cars if they were plug-ins. Think about it. The paragraph does not put it into those terms, but this is, to the best of my knowledge, essentially what this paragraph says.

I'll put it rather bluntly in my own words: the current "gasoline" based economy is simply p'ing away vast amounts of fuel for no good reason. IMHO, every reader of this board should be up in arms about it and writing their elected representatives to get the situation changed. As I see it, plug-ins have a very large potential to drastically change things.

While the idea of thousands of plug-ins powering the electric grid in times of power outages is a potentially "neat" benefit, as I see it, that is a trivial benefit of the technology in comparison to the effect that would result from the likely very large reduction in gasoline consumption and the reduction of wasted fuel used to generate underutilized electricity.

All the best,
Matthew

 

Using off peak power also allows for plants to operate continually at their optimum operating conditions, which is a sweet spot of efficiency for power production and is what the various environmental controls are tuned for. When a utility throttles back for overnight off- peak conditions (because the previous poster is right, they don't get turned off - at least the big ones don't), the existing environmental controls do not operate at their optimum because they are not as adjustable as a (relatively low tech) coal fired burner. By utilizing off peak power, we would actually reduce overall emissions by operating within the sweet spot continually. It would possibly make it more economical for the smaller plants which do get switched off and on or are on the last off the list for controls to get them sooner.

The new clean coal technologies (see DOE web sites on new coal technology) cannot be throttled back and are required to operate at a stable set point due to the extreme difficulty of getting these this started up in the first place. A side from the high cost, it is one of the reasons that new plant are typically not built using these designs, even though they are easier to clean up after because they were designed to be. To justify the costs, they must produce lots of power. If base load increases, newer technologies like these become viable. As it stands, new coal plants are typically simple and smaller and just to meet peak demands, if natural gas generation is not chosen.

In addition, better utilization of existing transmission assets will justify improvement to that infrastructure which will better protect us all from the dreaded blackouts. Assuming you can get new transmission lines thru public reviews.

 

My two-cents.

When I drive my future plug-in home from work, I'll be arriving home about 3:30pm-5pm. This is still during peak hours. My neighbors with their future plug-ins will be doing the same. We'll all probably be plugging our cars in when we get home.

So, what is needed is a timer that charges the car in the wee small hours, like Midnight to 5 am or something. So I can plug it in but it won't start charging until off-peak.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jan 4 2007, 06:08 PM) [snapback]371051[/snapback]</div>

Godiva,

I have the very timer you describe, only I use it for my engine block heater. It turns it on at about 3AM so the engine is nice and toasty when I'm ready to commute to work. A simple configuration change could make it do similar things for PHEV recharging.

Oh, and the timer cost me about $10 from Home Depot. Problem solved!

 

Did anyone see the Top Gear of the Honda FCX fuelcell segment?

Not the the fuelcell was cool. It was how the Japanese was able to find a way to not "WASTE" the unused electricity that the hydro power plant was producing. Similar to the night power going to waste, even the day power if it is over produced..... they decided to use the unused electricity to produce fuelcell for their Honda FCX fleet cars.

Man, if only American companies are just this inventive. Oh, I forgot. We have not been business smart (outside of the Silicon Vallies around the US) in years. Guess it is cheaper to not invest and make more money, than just pollute the air by just keeping coal/gas powerplants burning.

 

I'm not sure if I read it on PC or elsewhere, but it seems that the ability to charge near term PIHV batteries is not so much the problem. But rather, the supply of lithium for battery manufacture. Does anyone know of how the advent of hybrids has affected markets for Nimh battery components and how supplies will be affected by the impending lithum battery production "explosion"?

 

The late Dave Hermance gave a talk on batteries at a recent PriusClubSD meeting.

There is a PDF of Dave's talk on this page.

The bottom line is that hybrid car batteries are such a very small niche in the market there is no incentive for manufacturers to develop the specialized batteries hybrid cars need. Toyota will probably have to develop it's own batteries. The Prius is on a 5-6 year redesign loop. The 2009 Prius will probably not have Lithium/Ion batteries and will probably not be a plug-in. It also won't have side signal mirrors, but that is a whole other thing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jan 3 2007, 03:57 PM) [snapback]370345[/snapback]</div>

Hydrogen is element #1. HELIUM is element #2.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(thermon @ Jan 15 2007, 02:59 AM) [snapback]375764[/snapback]</div>

Ah crap. You're right. Brain fart.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jan 3 2007, 01:57 PM) [snapback]370345[/snapback]</div>

They wouldn't have to build any new plants for me. In fact, I could supply my own energy, and enough to help charge my neighbor's plug-in.



As others have pointed out, and as the article itself says - There is already enough power for many millions of cars already. And one thing so often left out of this equation is how much electricity (or at least energy input that COULD be electricity) it takes to make GASOLINE.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jan 4 2007, 05:08 PM) [snapback]371051[/snapback]</div>

Every production EV had this built in. Definitely not rocket science! Not only can I tell it when to charge, I can tell it when to start the heater or AC so it'll be properly conditioned when I leave for work, or get ready to head home.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Jan 3 2007, 03:21 PM) [snapback]370279[/snapback]</div>

Yes, absolutely. I looked up a bunch of the relevant information for that calculation some months back, which ended up as post #58 in this thread. (Warning -- major nerd alert, but the data are there if you want to look):
http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=2...mp;#entry293313



What I hadn't realized before I looked at the data is that typical daily peak-load-to-trough-load in the US is typically 50% - nighttime trough is typically half of the daytime peak. So, half of US electric capacity stands idle at night. That's a lot. If we were reasonably smart about when we charged, we wouldn't need any more capacity until almost all the miles in the US were converted to electricity. And even then, you'd get midsummer nightime brownouts as a warning signal that we were near capacity -- at which point, you could just ask people to burn gas for a while in the PHEVs. So unlike brownouts from AC load, you have an obvious soft failure mode (if you ever get that close to capacity). The only unfortunate fact in the entire picture is that the peak US road travel month is the same as the peak US electricity use month -- August. Other than that, PHEV charging is the perfect offset for daytime electrical load.

Given that the average cost of electricity is fuel + amortization of the cost of the plant and equipment, and they don't need any more plant + equipment, the additional cost for the nighttime elecgtricity would be way below the average. Not only would this make the equipment more efficient and more clean on average, if the utilities merely kept their existing rates, they'd make a fortune out of it.

This can't happen fast enough to suit me.