One Million and 300 Million

As the political conventions take the stage, it's encouraging to see that both candidates support PHEVs and the development of electric fuel in the transportation sector.

Here's part of Obama's plan thanks to Politico:

Obama calls for 'clean energy' nation
By MIKE ALLEN

Sen. Barack Obama on Monday called reducing the nation’s energy consumption “the great test of our time” and proposed billions of dollars in subsidies for business and consumers to encourage a “clean energy “ future. “We can do this,” he vowed in Michigan, the nation’s car capital, promising to spend $150 billion over 10 years on the effort.

The plans include a $7,000 tax credit to drivers who buy advanced-technology vehicles and $4 billion in direct assistance to Detroit automakers to help them build hybrid vehicles in the U.S. “I ask you to join me, in November and in the years to come, to ensure that we will not only control our own energy, but once again control our own destiny and forge a new and better future for the country that we love,” he said at Michigan State University in Lansing.

The three main components of Obama’s plan are:

— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years.

— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level. (25% by 25)

—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020.

“If I am president, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal — in 10 years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela,” Obama said.

“To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next 10 years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates 5 million new American jobs.”

To set an example, Obama is vowing to convert the entire White House fleet to plug-in hybrid vehicles within one year, and convert all federal vehicle purchases to plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012.

Obama also set several other ambitious national goals:

— Weatherize 1 million homes annually.

— Increase the efficiency of new buildings by 50 percent in the next decade through energy-efficient roofs and better-quality windows and ventilation systems.

— Increase the efficiency of existing buildings by 25 percent over the next decade through retrofitting that includes improved insulation and ventilation systems."

Plug ins are also part of John McCains energy plan. Here's part of his plan ,which includes a 300 million dollar prize for a new revolutionalry storage device.

"John McCain Will Propose A $300 Million Prize To Improve Battery Technology For Full Commercial Development Of Plug-In Hybrid And Fully Electric Automobiles. A $300 million prize should be awarded for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. That battery should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs. "

"Our nation's future security and prosperity depends on the next President making the hard choices that will break our nation's strategic dependence on foreign sources of energy and will ensure our economic prosperity by meeting tomorrow's demands for a clean portfolio." more

With both sides of the political coin supporting the development and commercialization of Plug in Hybrids, it's clear that the momentum in plug ins continues to grow.

Just last week, academics and energy professionals came together for a two day workshop to discuss and explore the future of plug-ins and how they can be implemented into the public infrastructure.

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editors note:
Check out the links, they include a wide variety of PHEV stories since our last post.

The 80-20 Rule

Often when I talk about Plug-Ins, I say that PHEV's are a perfect embodiment of the 80-20 rule. There are a lot of versions of the rule and it has been written about a lot. But in the case of the PHEV, the logic goes something like this:

Roughly 80% of our daily trips are under 35 miles. And the remaining 20% are longer trips. So why carry around five times more battery storage and weight for that 20 %? Take care of that 20% with a small, efficient gasoline engine that runs at its optimum speed.

This so called Pareto principle is everywhere. As a business, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your products. 20% of your time gets 80% of the work done. 20% of the population has 80% of the wealth. However, 70% of vehicles can apparently be fueled with no increase of electrical capacity.

There are a lot of facts and misstatements about Plug-Ins that circulate these days about water consumption, pollution, the need for new power plants, and the like.

This post from Climate Progress deals very nicely with a lot of them. Here's a piece of it:

Why do PHEVs reduce greenhouse pollution?

A study by EPRI, the California Air Resources Board, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and others (5.3MB PDF) concluded that plug-in hybrids produced substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions than either conventional gasoline cars or unplugged hybrids. The reduction in emissions results from electric operation being much more efficient than gasoline operation.

Don’t PHEVs and BEVs just shift pollution from the tailpipe to power plants?

No. The proper comparison between vehicle types is the “wells-to-wheels” basis, where the pollution from extracting the raw materials, shipping, transformation (e.g. refining), and use are added. BEVs and PHEVs running on electricity have zero tailpipe emissions, but there are still mining and power plant emissions. Those emissions are however much lower than the corresponding crude oil extraction, refining, and tailpipe emissions. Pollution here includes greenhouse gases such as carbon-dioxide. The grid is getting cleaner each year, and will continue to do so as we replace fossil power plants with renewables, while a gasoline car gets dirtier as it ages.

Fueling a car on gasoline made from coal (Coal-To-Liquids or CTL) emits twice as much greenhouse gas as gasoline from crude oil.

Why is fueling a PHEV from coal electricity better than gasoline?

Two reasons: (1) Electric motors are extremely efficient compared to internal combustion engines, and this efficiency more than compensates for the dirtiness of coal. (2) The U.S. grid is only 49% coal (natural gas is 20%, nuclear is 20%, hydro is 7%, and other renewables are 2.4%). Thus power to charge PHEVs is not all from coal, and some is from zero emission sources.

Are the batteries ready?

Yes. According to EPRI, “battery durability testing sponsored jointly by EPRI and Southern California Edison demonstrate that current lithium-ion batteries are likely to retain sufficient capacity for more than 3000 dynamic deep-discharge cycles–about 10-12 years of typical driving.” The excuse “the batteries aren’t ready” has been used frequently because it is convenient, and few people bother to check. Any manufacturer sells what it has, and automakers are no different. When there are failures of planning in the board room, it is convenient for a manufacturer not to admit their mistake, but to blame the lack of a product on something beyond their control. That is PR.

The current absence of plug-in vehicles from America’s showrooms has been conveniently blamed on the batteries. In reality, existing, proven NiMH batteries, such as found in hybrids and BEVs could easily power PHEVs. However, automakers would like to switch from NiMH to Li-Ion batteries for PHEVs because they are lighter, smaller, and potentially cheaper. Common Li-Ion batteries (Lithium-Cobalt), such as found in cell phones and laptops have lifetime and safety issues, which allowed the automakers to claim lack of readiness.

However, other Li-Ion chemistries have existed for some time, so this claim was not accurate. For example, Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries are inherently safe and will last the lifetime of a vehicle. Also, the issues with Lithium-Cobalt batteries can be solved with the addition of other elements such as nickel and manganese. For example, Sanyo uses a mixture of Ni, Mn, and Co for the positive electrode, thereby producing a safer battery that exhibits power retention ratio of 80% or higher after 10,000 cycles (10-15 years in a hybrid vehicle). (more)

The good news is this.

Plug-ins will be available in the next 2 years from a variety of manufacturers.

And it won't be long before you can drive one.

And 80% of your transportation fuel can be 100% green.

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PHEV's and Water Consumption

In our last post on Blowback, we observed and opined that any movement forward exerts a force in the opposite direction, and that it is natural. However, this story on water consumption seems to be more than just natural clever shaping, it seems seriously wrong.

Here is the story and the claims.

Plug-in Cars Could Drain U.S. Water Supply,

Researcher Says

By Jennifer Bogo

Popular Mechanics
March 7, 2008

"A 30-mile commute in a gasoline-powered car would require the withdrawal of 18.9 gallons of water, according to a study he co-authored this week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The same commute in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), meanwhile, would take a whopping 318 gallons.

All told, electric miles necessitate threefold the water consumption and 17 times the water withdrawal of gasoline miles. But wait, aren’t PHEVs the environmentally friendly choice? “If you are a plug-in hybrid owner and you have wind or solar power at your house, then you can feel really good about your plug-in hybrid using very little water, if any,” Webber told PM. “If you’re a hybrid owner and are plugging your car into the standard U.S. grid, then your car is not very clean, nor is it water-free.”

With the grid’s current composition, electricity production requires about 136,000 million gallons of freshwater per day, accounting for over 40 percent of all daily freshwater withdrawals in the nation. That’s because coal-fired and nuclear power plants that use steam to drive a turbine typically use water—vast amounts of water—to cool and condense the steam at the exhaust."

And here's the disclaimer, followed by the restatement.

"Though most of this water is returned to the source (albeit at a higher temperature), a 17-fold increase in demand would pose a real problem for water-stressed regions, making power plants more vulnerable to shut down during times of drought."

In truth, to make a meaningful statement about water consumption, one needs to quote, well, the consumption, not the amount of water that is used to cool the plant.

Otherwise, it's the rough equivalent of saying that hydropower plants withdraw all of the water that goes through the dam's turbines.

According to this EPRI document most conventional power plants use from 200 gallons up to 900 gallons per MWH, depending on whether the plant uses natural gas, coal, or nuclear fuel, and depending on the cooling technology employed. (in that order)

The misrepresentation in this story thus seems staggering.

If you take 500 Gallons per MWH as a blend between all of your plants, and each KWH of electricity gives you four miles, then actual water consumption to go the 30 miles in the story is much closer to four gallons not 318 gallons. Water consumption per MWH for a new natural gas plant is around 250 gallons per MWH. At that rate of consumption and at an average of 20 MPG, the amount of water per electric gallon of gas is about 1.25 gallons. Most thermal plants will use around 3 gallons. Of course, there is no water consumed at all with wind power or solid state solar plants.

And what about the water used to refine gasoline?

The number varies greatly, but the ConocoPhillips refinery in Billings, Montana processes 62,000 bbls of crude oil, or 2.6 million gallons per day. That is 879 million gallons of crude oil per year. The water usage for the plant is 456 million gallons. That works out to be 0.52 gallons of water per gallon of crude oil processed. The study uses a range of 1.4 to 2.9 gallons of water per gallon of gasoline.

And what about the water consumed in the Tar Sands? Or in Saudi Arabia where they use massive water flooding?

Now, if you read the abstract of the original report, you will see that it says that electrics require 3 times the water consumption and 17 times the water withdrawal. The story above even says that. But with a headline that says "Plug in Cars could drain the US water supply," and the lead paragraph saying "a whopping 318 gallons", it's hard to see.

But it's even harder to see how the authors' work could have generated such a headline, given their own conclusion.

"Overall, we conclude that the impact on water resources from a widespread shift to grid-based transportation would be substantial enough to warrant consideration for relevant public policy decision-making."

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At Plug In Partners, we conclude that plug-ins powered by combined cycle natural gas plants use slightly less water than gasoline vehicles, and that plug-ins powered solely by coal and nuclear facilities will consume significantly less than the study's 3 times rate. We further conclude that the larger 17 fold increase number is mostly useful as a highly misleading headline.

Another writer from another publication could have just as easily written this headline:

Plug in Cars powered by Renewables will save US Water Supply.

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