Green Blog - Green Energy , Cars and Environmental Technology Blog

This is great news. Better Place is planning on making Australia the third country to  be setup with its Electric Car Network. Its really exciting as it does something Ive been advocating for many years:

They will setup recharging stations every 40km or so bewteen Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane and have fast switchover modular packs for compliant electric cars. So in town you might just recharge while you are at work, but on a long trip you will just quick swap the packs. The current tech gives about a 200km range between charges. But im sure this will be improved, especially if the Chevy Volt becomes compliant with this tech. Manufactureres have to get onboard and develope a standard for switching the packs and the type of plugs in use. Leadership is needed in this area.

This means you simply pull in (and quicker then you normally refill, ) get a new battery pack swapped in. You will lease this technology depending on how far you drive. The big electric companies in australia are partnering with Better Place to provided renewable electricity to these refill locations.

More from Carpoint:

Australia has been chosen as the next country to pioneer EV infrastructure by US green corporation, Better Place

Green transport campaigner, Better Place, has announced it will build an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure network Down Under. The announcement from the Palo Alto (California) based company was made in Melbourne late last month, in conjunction with AGL Energy and Macquarie Capital Group.

According to Better Place, Australia is the next cab off its EV infrastructure rank, after Denmark and Israel. It says it will partner with the Macquarie Capital Group to assist the raising of $A1 billion of capital to build and deploy the network, while AGL will provide “zero-carbon” electricity (power generated via renewable means).

 

Better Place CEO and Founder, Shai Agassi, said that Australia had been chosen to prove the organisation’s ideas about EV transportation networks could be scaled. In announcing the infrastructure plans he said Australia could be a test case for networks in the USA and UK.

Thi is a fantastic idea and one of the first steps in re-inventing our transport system away from fossil fuel dependence.

I want this to be my next car but I dont know when its due in Australia. About 1012 opps sorry Ron thats 2012 ! to be optimistic. It will be released in the USA within 2 years. Some pictures have been leaked and i think the car looks great. ( and the guy looks suitable dodgey)

Also

And more here http://www.hybridcars.com/carmakers/production-chevrolet-volt-photos-leaked-24951.html

The Chevy Volt isnt a pure electric car but a Series Hybrid: See the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vehicle_drivetrain#Series_Hybrid 

Heres and exerpt from the wiki: Series Hybrid

    

Structure of a series hybrid vehicle. The gray square represents a differential gear.

Series or serial hybrid have also been referred to as a Range-Extended Electric Vehicle (REEV); however, range extension can be accomplished with either series or parallel hybrid layouts.

Series hybrid vehicles are much more similar in design to a battery electric vehicle than an internal combustion vehicle or parallel hybrid. In a series hybrid system, the combustion engine drives an electric generator instead of directly driving the wheels. The generator both charges a battery and powers an electric motor that moves the vehicle. When large amounts of power are required, the motor draws electricity from both the batteries and the generator. A transmission may not be needed at all and if it is present it can be far less complex, as electric motors are efficient over a wide speed range. Some vehicle designs have separate electric motors for each wheel. Series hybrids can be also be fitted with a supercapacitor or a flywheel to store regenerative braking energy, which can improve efficiency by minimizing the losses in the battery. The vehicle conceptually resembles aelectromotive locomotive with the addition of a battery.

An advantage of a series hybrid is the lack of a mechanical link between the combustion engine and the wheels…

So basically its far superior to the Prius and new Honda Insight as it doesnt use a petrol motor to drive the wheels directly. Just as a way of extending the range of the batteries when they get low after 50+km of just battery driving. The wheels are only driven directly by electricity. Not by mechanical power from the petrol engine.

As most people drive less than 60km at day on average you could potentially use no fuel over several months until you embark on a decent trip. I love htis car and the idea behind it. Lets hope other manufactures step away from this first generation Prius technology and embrace this technology.

Theres talk that a eurpean version is being built from this platform and drivetrain but will use a small turbo diesel back up motor. That would be fantastic. Imagine the range a small disiel range extending motor would deliver….

DRAGON 10 Voice Recognition - Now Released

I dont know if you know this but most days I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional speech recognition to write these articles. Its a LOT faster than typing as I can just dictate into this blog directly. Also allows for free-flowing thoughts to be immediately written down.

Its a really great product that I’ve been using for 8 years.

Well now there a new version out. Its called Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 or just Dragon 10. Its a lot more accurate with than the version 9 and when combined with a proper USB noise canceling headset ( like the Andrea NC181USB seen here) returns excellent accuracy and reliability.

If you do a lot of writing ( even just emails) then you’d be mad not to try this excellent software.

There’s been a few interesting green news items this week.

Lets take a look:

The Spanish Government has announced that they intend to put 1 million electric cars on their roads by 2014. This shows that the Spanish government is committed to actually doing something about their emissions and oil dependency.

Imagine if the Australian Rudd Government took a proper approach in addressing our fuel/emission problems here in Australia and committed to something similar.

But no in Australia we get a  b***s**t commitment to subsiding Toyota to the tune of $70 million to build out dated and inefficient camry Parrallel Hybrids . Wow, what a commitment.! Hold the phone. Peter Garrets  warming up for a dance on the PM’s desk to celebrate. Not good enough. 100% better  than Howards efforts, but that’s not a great benchmark in green solutions.

More reading on Spanish efforts at Gas2.org

In other news MIT researches have found a new more efficient way to store energy from renewable sources.
Everyone is touting this as the next big thing for solar, but the reality is that it can be used for any renewable source like solar, wind , tidal etc. It a new method of splitting hydrogen out of water using a closed loop systems. Here’s some technical info from the  CNET article.

The idea is to use the energy from solar photovoltaic panels (or another electricity source) to crack water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Those gases would be stored and used later in a fuel cell to make electricity when the sun is not shining.

The concept is a closed-loop system: running the hydrogen and water through the fuel cell creates water, which can be captured and used again.

and more..

The core scientific discovery was finding a way to break oxygen out of the water with a relatively inexpensive and benign material, Nocera said. The catalyst–made of a cobalt phosphate–can operate in plain water at atmospheric pressure, giving it more potential than existing methods, he said.

So basically it’s a cheaper, and more effective way to use electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water. It means that at night you will have the stored power of the days excess solar or wind power. You might also be able to use the stored hydrogen in your car. You use a small hydrogen fuel cell at night to pump the extra hydrogen into to generate the power.

I think that this is a major development. It annoys me that its being pimped as a solar solution ( where in fact they used grid power to run the tests). When really is a solution to effectively store ANY renewable energy.

I don’t know if it will happen soon though. I mean theoretically once you pay and install this system you will have cheap off-grid power and fuel for your car. I cant see a fully installed system being cheap given the companies that might loose out from this.  Maybe the Chinese will get onboard to mass produce this one day. Also i wonder about safely storing hydrogen in your house but I’m sure that can be resolved.

More news to come

Australia has VAST reserves of CNG ; compressed natural gas. Its the stuff your using in your heater at home and in your gas stove. Its cheap, safe, and exists in VAST quantities in Australia. The infrastructure is already in place in most areas. I mean it is possible to fill a CNG car from your house that’s connected to CNG gas for very little money.

CNG installation is very similar to an LPG system for your car. Its also emits far less CO2  than Petrol/diesel and LPG.

Yet, there no subsidy or political drive to roll out this important transport fuel source in Australia. Its largely being IGNORED by all levels of government…

This is an exploratory article. One of many I will produce to look at this complex and important issue.

Ill be asking  questions like:

Why a subsidy on LPG but not CNG?

Why isn’t there a political interest in using this as transport fuel given the KNOWN benefits.
Why is Germany and countries like Brazil embracing CNG yet Australia who sits on massive reserves ignoring this fuel reserve that literally right under our feet?
Why doesnt Honda sell the CNG car the Honda Civic GX in australia? The Civic GX ( or a similar car) combined with the PHILL home fill up system would make a great start to rolling out CNG in Australia.

Heres some basic info on CNG from its wiki. Some additional information on CNG cars with cost and benefits on its wiki page also.

On the 6/6/08 there was an interview with a canberra resident using CNG and it raises some interesting points.

Heres a small excerpt:

GORDON TAYLOR: Canberra has one CNG filling station at Fyshwick. Run by gas distributor Alinta on behalf of ACTEW-AGL, it has 105 customers, including Dennis Rocha, whose family car runs on CNG.

GORDON TAYLOR: The bowser tells it all, just 58.5 cent s a cubic metre, that’s equivalent to 53 cents a litre for petrol. For Dennis Rocha, it’s just $20 to fill the tank.

DENNIS ROCHA: I think we will probably save more than two-thirds of what we would normally spend, same mileage for mileage.

GORDON TAYLOR: Natural gas provides fuel for an energy starved world, while its environmental credentials are equally impressive. CNG’s greenhouse emissions are 80 per cent lower than petrol. Used widely overseas, it’s a fuel that’s been ignored in Australia and that’s despite Australia selling off natural gas by the ship load to countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

More to come on this important issue. if you have any questions you want me to look up about CNG then post in comments.

I have created a beta version of my Petrol vs Diesel Cost Calculator. Its designed for you to work out if its worth swapping to a diesel car depending on the kilometres you travel each year and the relative cost of diesel vs petrol per litre. It will actually work for any fuel as a direct comparison. So you could calculate LPG versus Diesel.

Enter the figures that are in RED and it will tell you how much you will save over the kilometres that you put it. So replace the L/100km with the known figures of your car or the listed l/km of the new car, replace the cost per Litres of the fuel with today’s prices and put in how many kilometres per year that you will use. It will tell you how much you will save over the distance. You can then work out if its worth trading / selling your current car for a diesel one. You could also put in LPG or CNG figures where diesel is. Its the same calculation.

This is a beta table so carefully check the results as I’m not 100% sure I have got it correctly.

If you wish you can also put in your usable fuel tank size to get the range in KM on that tank and the cost of filling up. My car has a 60 Litres tank but I can only use 55L for obvious reasons.

You can then work out what you are going to loose when you sell/trade your car. So if I loose say $4000 going from my current car to a diesel and I’m only saving $500 a year then it will take 8 years to break even. Of course based on the above if I do a lot more kilometres per year I will save more per year.

Of course this does not allow for the lower CO2 emissions of the diesel which is a positive, but also it does not allow of the emissions created and energy used when making your new diesel car. So its up to you to work out what’s best for your personal needs and your personal beliefs in terms of the environment.

Interesting article at drive.com.au

Comparing the costs of ownership of hybrid cars to normal cars. Drive are quoting a RACV study into the issue:

” Fuel for thought for potential hybrid car buyers is the revelation that the Toyota Prius, which uses an electric motor to help the petrol engine, costs about $50 a week more to run than its closest petrol equivalent, a Toyota Corolla small hatch, and up to $5 a week more than a mid-sized four-cylinder Camry.”

The Honda Civic hybrid costs about $23 a week more to run than its four-cylinder petrol equivalent, the survey shows”

This has a lot to do with the $10 000 premium you are paying for the hybrid power plant over the petrol equivalent. I’ve always thought that with this “early adopter” premium on hybrids that they are not a good way to save money. But that not why most people buy them, they are trying to contribute to the global warming and carbon emmissions solution. Its more of a token gesture than a practical money saving measure. That why you see so many hollywood celebrities buying the Toyota Prius. They be doing a lot less damage in a turbo Diesel golf!

Im not against Hybrids, i just think they are a stop gap, temporary, technology platform for the automakers to be test new batterys and technology and to provide a token gesture to governments about reducing emmision. It buys them time to get to the real hybrids, plug-in electric models with extended range engines.

I dont personally believe that hybrids will be efficient until the petrol motor is removed from the actual drive train. In other words when hybrids operate like a diesel electric train where you have modest sized motor running at a constant RPM only when needed to top up the batteries. the motor isnt connected to the wheels at all like it is in the Prius. The motor drives an electric alternator that charges the batteries. Then the petrol/diesel motor can be made cheaply and can be run very efficiently as the motor is only designed to run at a single  RPm setting. Then you dont neccessarily need multivalve and VVTI VTEC engine technology and so on. This will make the motors cheaper,lighter and more fuel efficient.

Then wtih mass production more people will afford hybrids, that only run on petrol/diesel on long trips. Not just the rich.Otherwise they are on electric only with the option to be topped up at home on the grid using off peak power or preferrable green power from solar/hydro etc

A good example of a car like this is the Chevy Volt from GM. see more on its Wiki

I believe this to be the future of hybrids. Then eventually they will be cheaper to run and to buy. But for now they are a toy for people making a lifestyle statement, not a way of solving the oil crisis and enviroment.

I’ve got a lot more to post about this issue …