The Hydrogen-Oil Company Connection

I feel you are right Michael. These are the conclusions we came up with in my Natural Resources Conservation class and it seems that anything I read from knowledgable authors follows this same line of thinking.

 

I understand what you are saying, and agree that - TODAY - pollution is lessened to a point, but that method still doesn't SOLVE the problem.

Let's for a moment say batteries make an enormous leap in quality, to the point where they make ICE cars obsolete. With hundreds of thousands of BEVs now charging at night, what happens to the base load? It increases, and IT'S STILL FROM POLLUTING SOURCES!

No. The best technologies will rise to the top . . . but to prematurely label Solar/Hydrogen a dead end is being disingenuous.

If we really wanted the biggest bang for the buck with the money being spent on hydrogen research, why not cancel the research, ban ICE cars, and just buy everyone a bicycle. [something I'm sure would bring a smile to your face ] The pollution savings would be immediate and dramatic! But then what kind of future would that bring?
Bicycles, like today's electric cars, don't work for everyone.

 

I do think that current EV technology is ready for action. Only one needs to apply that technology properly.

500mile range? You only need that if you restrict your thinking to the following:
- You own the battery and it is in your EV, fixed (not easy to swap)
- You recharge the battery for yourself at home
As everybody seems to do, even EV enthusiasts.

Project Better Place (PBP) gives the perfect answers for all of the current problems with EV tech:
- You own only the EV, not the battery. EVs are cheap without the battery.
- The recharge grid charges the batteries, not you. Batteries are the property of the recharge grid operator
- You simply pick up a new battery for your EV when you deplete the one in your car (from a station of the recharge grid). The swap is quick and automatic (robotized). Your EV of course has to be recharge grid compatible. I imagine a robotized swap could be done within a minute and you may not even leave your car (only insert your grid id card into the swapping station`s card slot).
- The recharge grid covers your country (let`s say every current petrol station should be part of it as a swap station) so it is enough to have batteries providing a 80-100 km range.
- The swaps are planned and coordinated by computers so you should never be left without a next battery.
- The batteries are the problems of the recharge grid operator, not you. You only plan your journey and your nav computer tells you where you will pick up your next battery.
- Battery management is done by the operator so they will be able to get the maximum cycle life out of them. You only pay after the kwhs your car depleted from the battery. I imagine batteries will be protected in every possible way by the operator (e.g. the car cannot draw larger amps than allowed by that battery).

The funny thing is that the recharge grid idea of PBP could have been implemented a decade ago. Apart from the navigation equipment, everything was available.

Shai Agassi and quite a lot of people think that EVs are ready and they seem to invest quite a lot of money into the idea (see news about PBP).

Of course, when batteries evolve to an acceptable level, one may decide to become independent of the recharge grid, own a battery and charge at home.

It is really like GSM operators. car=mobile phone, battery=phone call.

 

Sure, and it would probably only cost a billion dollars or so to build a robotized one-minute battery-exchange system throughout the U.S. and stock it with enough battery packs for all the cars that would come though. Then of course it would be easy to get all the car makers to build all their cars to spec. When we can't get them to build EVs at all. NOT!!!

Your idea is pure science fiction.

We will have fast-charge batteries before we have a system of battery-exchange stations throughout the U.S.

For the near term, EVs are for city driving of distances under a couple of hundred miles. These can be built now and they are practical now. Probably half or more of U.S. families own two cars and do not need both to be long-distance stinkers. Replacing one car with an EV for city driving would cut a big chunk out of our gas consumption. For the long term, we need fast-charging. Or we need to return to a simpler lifestyle where people did not take the family car on inter-city trips, but took the train.

 

@Daniel

Project Better Place is not my idea. There seems to be some pretty big companies which believe in it. (Renault-Nissan will produce the first grid compatible electric cars). Take a look at their website.

GSM networks were extremely capital intensive too but that didn't stop investors to put them into operation.

Don't forget that they don't need to buy the latest (and most expensive) batteries for the system. They can buy LiFePO batteries for example, those are pretty safe and in volume production already (BYD).
However, they are in negotiations with companies like A123 as well.

A well-organized recharge grid operator can get much more out of the current battery packs than the average Joe (e.g.: detecting cell failures early and swap cells in battery packs).

 

Actually these numbers are generous, and you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. You can estimate the daily solar production for any area of the country here:
PVWATTS v. 1
A 1 kW system in Sacramento, CA would put out about 1399 kWh per year, or an average of 3.83 kWh per day. Scaling up to an 80 kW system, would give just under 307 kWh per day on average. The default assumed derating for all the various efficiencies of the equipment is 77%, so 400kWh is almost exactly the ideal output.

Sorry, but this is just not true. A transport medium is only useful if its cheap, easy and clean to get back and forth. Today's fuel cell vehicles emit more CO2 than their gasoline counterparts, and are 4-10x less efficient than existing BEVs. Its all well and good to say screw efficiency, except that efficiency equals dollars. 4-10x less efficient, means 4-10x more expensive (vastly over-generallized, but probably not far off). Lets consider a few short term (10 year) scenarios:

1. BEVs for local travel, ICE (owned or carshare) or mass transit for long distance.
Minimal investment to bring existing battery technologies into large volume production to get costs competitive. Remember US automakers said an HEV couldn't be made for under $70-80k at the same time Toyota rolled one out for $20-30k by investing in volume production of the required technologies. Minimal investment in electric infrastructure, surplus and off peak capacity already sufficient for ~70-80% of vehicle miles traveled. Long term investment in renewable electric infrastructure reduces CO2/pollution output of both transportation sectors as well as electrical useage. Greatly reduced (~90%) demand for ICE fuels may make bio-fuel production feasible with domestic resources. Transportation costs to consumers greatly reduced, providing economic stimulus. Starts cutting CO2/fuel consumption on day 1, clear path to eventual 0 emissions. Requires minor shift in behavior.

2. Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Fuel cell development still years and $10s-100s of Billions from commercial feasibility. Refueling infrastructure will cost Trillions. Early production infrastructure will be dirtier than gasoline ICEs, increase fossil fuel demand and cost Billions if not Trillions. Long term transition to renewable/seawater sourced Hydrogen will increase cost of converting electric infrastructure by 5-10X, costing many many Trillions. Eventual conversion to advanced technologies such as algae unproven, expensive, and doubtful in this time frame. Little to no reduction (if not increases) in CO2 or fuel consumption in this time frame.

Another fun calc:
Fueling station cost: $3.2 million
Vehicle Miles per day: 540 (270 if the OPs calcs are right)
$3,200,000 / 540 miles * 365 days * 20 year operating life (for solar panels anyway) = 81c per mile fuel cost! (or $1.62 per mile if the OPs right)

By comparison, a Prius costs about 6-7c per mile at current gasoline prices ($3.30), and a late 90s BEV costs 1-2c per mile (2-3c per mile on renewables).

Rob

 

A "floor jack/drop down/roll-it-away / re-install fresh pack" process is also robotized if I understand the verb correctly. The robot of course would be built into the ground and have only one moving/mobile part (the arm which takes the old battery and installs the new one).

@daniel
I don't think that building/running a robotized swapping station would be very expensive compared to a traditional petrol refilling station:
- The complexity of the hardware is similar (pumps+storage versus swapping mechanics)
- You never have to receive petrol shipments, electricity continuously flows from the grid (during refilling a lot of service stations cannot accept cars).

I imagine, first only cities will be served by swapping stations and when city networks are complete they start adding intercity road stations.

I will open a thread for Project Better Place.

 

Regarding the costs of solar, can I point out a recent development?

Nanosolar are now shipping their reel-to-reel printed solar panels for a fraction of the cost of silicon PV panels. They aim to reach $0.99 per watt, compared to about $5-10 per watt for conventional solar panels.

15,000 annual EV driving miles requires about 3,750 kWh of electricity per year in an efficient EV. This could be obtained from a 2 kW peak solar array, installed on the roof of a home in a sunny location like California.

Thus, a single investment in $2,000 worth of Nanosolar cells could provide all the "fuel" (electricity) to drive your electric car for probably half a century or more to come FOR FREE. Many people spend that much on gasoline in one year alone! Solar-EV is soooo the way forward....

 

@clett
This is very encouraging. When do you think these panels become widely accessible?

 

@Sola,
Unfortunately for the general public, not for a long time.

Nanosolar's order books are completely full for the forseeable future. They are ramping up production at an astonishing rate by building new factories, but there will still be no way of meeting global demand for solar at the prices they can manage for probably a decade or more, even at their unparalleled rate of growth.

The German utility companies in particular willl happily buy up every last square centimetre of panel that Nanosolar can produce so the rest of us won't get a look in for the time being.

 

The A123 batteries are LiFePO. This is the latest, most expensive, and in my opinion the most promising battery technology at present. It's what I have in my Xebra, though mine don't come from A123.

The battery-replacement scheme is a solution that addresses no problem, because if the stations have the grid capacity to deliver enough energy to recharge all those batteries, then they can almost as easily perform fast-charging on those A123 batteries, which are capable of fast charging if you can deliver the energy fast enough.

The bottleneck is getting enough grid power to the stations. Not the recharge time of the newest batteries. Therefore physically replacing batteries is not necessary.

I am all for the development of a grid infrastructure capable of providing fast recharge to cars on the highway.

 

The problem is not the available power (though I think you were half joking). The problem is the infrastructure to deliver enough power to selected locations at a high enough rate. The present wires cannot deliver enough wattage to "gas" stations to charge that many batteries simultaneously, or to charge up individual cars that rapidly. But that's not all that great an impediment. And once bigger wires are in place to deliver the power, fast-charging will be a better solution than battery-switching.

IOW: Battery switching requires just as much power to the stations as fast charging does. But battery switching presents many other problems as well. Thus fast charging is the better solution.

 

In the abscence of thicker wires, couldn't a fast charge station use banks of capacitors? Use them as buffer between the slow rate power supply and quick charger.

It isn't ideal, but could be smoething to bridge the gap.

 

Most distribution primaries are 13.2 kv or 33 kv, with that reducing down to about 4.2 kv to the transformer you see in residential areas

Most 13.2 kv primaries are typically rated to a nominal 2-phase 500 mva. A continuous current of 1,200 amps is available

Most 33 kv primaries are typically rated to a nominal 2-phase 1,500 mva. Continuous 1,200 amps.

Charge capacity would not be a problem at that level, it *would* be a problem at typical residential split phase 120/240.

Even if you have to use something like a Wartsila or Waukesha dual fuel/co-gen set, that is far more efficient than a bunch of gasoline powered or - god help you - fuel cell cars running around.

Standard efficiencies for the above mentioned V-16 power sets are 40-45%. Co-gen is higher - 80-89% - and there are many large commercial, institutional, and certainly industrial, applications where co-gen more than pays for itself

 

The capacity is probably there, but don't underestimate the kind of power you need to fast charge these kind of packs.

To fill a single 375V/53kWh Tesla Roadster pack from empty in 5 minutes would take 53kWh/375V = 141.3Ah * 60 / 5 hours = 1696 A / .85 efficiency factor = ~2000A @ 375 Volts, or 750kW! Probably a bit higher even, as you probably have to charge at a voltage higher than 375V. Now lets say you want to be able to charge 10 vehicles at the same time, and you need lets say 10s of thosands and eventually 100s of thousands of such stations. If at a particular moment you needed to power 100,000 of these 10 pump stations simultaneously, you come up with 750kW * 10 pumps * 100,000 stations = 750,000MW. From the numbers I can find this is about 3/4 of the entire installed US generating capacity, and we are not taking any transmission losses into account yet.

Granted, this is a purely fictitious situation but I think it illustrates the point that large scale fast charging is not trivial. There is a good chance that you will need to do some sort of onsite storage to smooth out the huge transient loads this would create. Whether that is into a bulk system, whether its batteries, capacitors ($$$$), or maybe even a mechanical/flywheel type storage, or whether you just slow charge a bunch of replaceable packs it seems like you'll have to do something.

Rob

 

Just went to the Tesla website, and they claim a full charge at home in under 3 hours. This is with something like an electric dryer plug for their home charging station, so no more than 30-40 amps

Using hv-to-mv stepdown for charging, the power requirements aren't that high