John Petersen

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

JLBR, the big problem with FR is that it's a fairly small market. For example, the PJM Interconnect talks about needing 1,000 MW of FR capacity and in the next breath talks about expecting 180,000 GEVs, which at 20 kWh each would represent about 4,000 MW of capacity. So it's one of those markets that's big if you're supplying special purpose systems and small if you're thinking that V2G has a future. The real issue with grid scale batteries is that there are about 17 different identifiable applications and none of them (other than FR) has enough stand alone value to justify the price of storage systems, so everybody is trying to amalgamate value streams to get enough value out of a project to justify the cost. The next step will be working through regulators who know how to handle generation and know how to handle distribution, but are at a bit of loss when it comes to storage which is neither fish nor fowl. There is a monster report coming from Jim Eyer that talks about grid scale storage and the underlying economics. While I've seen preliminary information in his slide presentations, they're all marked "preliminary do not cite" so I'm awaiting the final release with bated breath. I probably won't do anything big on grid scale till after the Eyer report is published, although there are a couple preliminary steps that I can take in the interim.

Altair is working with a material they call "nano-titanate" but it has nothing to do with nanotubes which are unique physical structures that are formed principally by carbon and silicon. The nano-titanate is an ultra-fine milled material that maximizes surface area and optimizes chemistry, but it's not "nano-structured." Almost everybody in the industry is moving to nanoscale materials to boost performance because it can be done cheaply. Nano-structured materials are incredibly difficult to make in volumes and we're probably looking at another decade before the science is advanced enough for commercial products. My best guess is that nano-structured materials will lead to the next disruptive advance in storage, but for the foreseeable future, nano-milled materials are all we can look forward to with certainty.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

JLBR, I've listened to Ali Nourai speak a couple of times and he always says that AEP is technology agnostic when it comes to grid storage and their current focus on lithium-ion batteries is based on an assumption that making batteries for zillions of GEVs will drive prices down to a point where lithium is the cheapest solution for utilities. For reasons that will become clear in the next couple days, I think there are a lot of problems with that assumption.

I had a chance to spend some time with the Beacon team at EESAT and they made a pretty compelling case that it will be easier to engineer big performance advances into the next generation of flywheels than it will be to develop comparable advances in chemistry. When I first started this blog, I thought Beacon's stock price had gotten a bit ahead of its business. They've done a lot of catching up over the last 18 months and as the facts have changed so has my opinion.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

JLBR, the in my view the best alternatives to GEVs are Prius class HEVs or Prius class HEVs with compressed gas fuel systems. Right now the Prius is far and away the cleanest and most fuel efficient car on the market. If you compare a GEV with a conventional IC vehicle, the differences are pretty huge. If you start doing the comparisons between the current best of breed and the GEV's the performance differences are nowhere near as striking. I'll be writing more on this within the next few days.

Testing of ALTI's grid-based systems is in a very early sage, as is the testing of AONE's systems. Since utilities are typically looking for a 10 year service life, I would expect testing to continue for quite a while before anybody is willing to go too far out on a limb and declare the systems a success or failure. The preliminary technical results seem promising, the long term economics won't be known for a long time. In the final analysis, my best sense is that everybody who brings a product to market and survives testing for a significant application will have more business than they can ever handle. But surviving the first round of a prize fight doesn't say much about how things will look in the 12th round. So the only safe thing to say today is "so far so good." One thing that's absolutely clear is there are no silver bullet solutions out there, which leaves me convinced that diversification is probably the best approach.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

JLBR, the nature of the political beast makes it constitutionally incapable of supporting something that isn't represented by a strong industrial lobby and doesn't promise wonderful photo opportunities for subsequent campaigns. In the final analysis, the political class is every bit as susceptible to a good sales pitch as the apolitical class. The result has been described by one auto executive as technology du jour syndrome. In the original space program, the goal was to put a man on the moon - simple and riveting. The message was we don't know how to do it but we expect you to get creative and figure out the details. Everything since then has been directed in detail by political animals who can't help but serve their own interests instead of the greater good. The one positive side of RPS proposals is that they'll be great for the storage sector ;-)

ALTI started out as a mining company that was milling titanium compounds into very fine powders for paints and other applications. They then discovered that those powders might be useful in batteries and changed their business plan. They are not using nanotubes of any sort and their nano-titanate is just a catchy name for a very finely ground powder that offers a large surface area and optimizes chemical reactions. The same is true of A123's nano-phosphate.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

JLBR, I'm a big fan of hard core economics. I have no fundamental problem with Government subsidies to manufacturers to support the creation of critical infrastructure. It's an entirely different situation when public money is used to subsidize luxury consumption by individuals. New factories make the economy richer. Consumption subsidies are little more than pirates sharing the plunder with a select group of constituents.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

MRTTF, I was aware of the charge time for a 6.6 kW system and raised the issue because the perception seems to be that a driver will be able to pull a depleted GEV into a charging station and "fill er up." in 15 minutes, which is absolute hogwash without pack designs that can handle immense currents and distribute the current evenly across an entire battery pack.

I was also aware that DOD can have a major impact on battery cycle life, which is why the Volt will only make 65% of its nameplate capacity available to the car and maintain wide overcharge and undercharge reserves.

What I did not understand and would like to know more about is the impact of repeated high-rate charging on cycle life.

Any clarification will be appreciated.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

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KillaCycle, if the world was as you apparently think it should be, the 13 members of the Electrification Coalition including Carlos Ghosn of Nissan, Alex Molinaroll of JCI-Safe and David Vieau of A123 (among others) would not have signed off on major policy paper that says several times and in several different ways:

"A range of current industry-wide estimates place the current (2009) production cost for lithium-ion batteries at roughly $600 per kWh. Admittedly this is a broad generalization that ignores production volume, chemistry type, vehicle type and pack size. A number of companies have indicated that they have achieved lower cost structures, but the preponderance of estimates indicates that $600 per kWh is a good approximation for the industry average. As grid enabled vehicles begin to enter the marketplace in 2012, these costs are expected to have already begin to fall. Estimates place battery costs for that time period at around $500 per kWh."

The quoted paragraph comes from page 79 of the Electrification Coalition's roadmap. The numbers are not mine. They were approved by top executives in the industry who presumably know what they are talking about. If we go to A123's SEC reports and calculate cost of goods sold per watt hour of product shipments, the precise numbers are $16.841 million in cost of good sold divided by 16.202 million watt hours shipped, or $1.04 per watt-hour. You can find those numbers on page 24 of their Form 10-Q.

With respect to charging, the roadmap says (page 102):

"In other words, the addition of a GEV to a circuit is roughly the equivalent of adding a substantial portion of another house’s worth of load to the circuit. (On a 30 amp circuit, a Level II charger can draw 6.6 kW of power, far exceeding a typical home’s average load.)"

That suggests to me your home charger is probably not a 12 kW circuit. I can guarantee that you don't have a 4.8 kW circuit in your car.

The charging rate of a battery pack is limited by pack design, not individual cells. If the pack is limited to 6.6 kW, it doesn't matter that the individual cells could take a larger current because the wires that connect the cells together can't. I understand that everybody talks about recharging a 24 kWh pack in 10 or 20 minutes. The sad but undeniable fact is that quick charge dreams are a physical impossibility unless the packs are designed for the charging load. If anybody tries to recharge a 6.6 kW battery pack in less than about 4 hours he is going to have a molten pile of battery slag to clean up in the morning.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Killacycle, the best rule of thumb equivalency number anybody's come up with is four miles per kWh. Since small lightweight vehicles like they're using for GEVs will typically get somewhere in the 24 to 28 mpg range, you are looking at a minimum available energy of 6 or 7 kWh. By the time you add a 20% margin to equate useful energy to nameplate, that takes your nameplate energy to 7 or 8 kWh. These numbers come straight from the roadmap.

The roadmap talks about current first purchaser prices for all grades (including chemistries that are prone to thermal runaway) of $600 per kWh with two to three year forecast of $500 per kWh. Last time I checked $600 x7 was $4,200 and $600 x 8 was 4,800.

There is an immense difference between the corners a DIY EV enthusiast can cut when working on his own car and the corners an automotive OEM can cut for a mass produced vehicle that has to pass a myriad of Federal safety regulations, satisfy California warranty requirements and qualify for product liability insurance.

Your personal experience in satisfying your personal standards has no bearing on the standards OEM automotive manufacturers will have to meet.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Thotdoc, Advill and Don, I'm mystified by the reluctance to rely on natural gas, a reliable domestic resource that may not be the final answer but can certainly be a wonderful bridging technology. Toyota successfully tested an NG fueled Camry hybrid last year. It cut fuel consumption by 40% and slashed CO2 emissions by 60% while using proven and relatively cheap technology that doesn't have the vexing cost, range and infrastructure problems we find in GEVs. We don't have many more NG filling stations than we do GEV charging stations, but the core distribution infrastructure for natural gas is only slightly less pervasive than the grid and CNG vehicles offer opportunities for short-term economies of scale that are more than wishful thinking.

I think the problem boils down to bureaucrats who are so enamored with big pictures that they overlook baby steps and assume away all constraints that are inconsistent with their vision. They do so comfortable in the knowledge that they'll be pursuing other careers by the time the flaws in their logic become obvious. We all know that making a plan is the best way to prove that God has a sense of humor. For reasons that are still unclear to me, the thought leaders apparently believe themselves exempt. Ultimately economic fact will prevail over quasi-religious belief, but we're in for some serious insanity during the interim.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

I just discovered why I occasionally get commenters who want to argue with facts. The test at this link is fun but the overall scores from test takers are terrifying indeed:

pewresearch.org/politi...

If you really want to understand the mentality of the masses, this is a great starting point.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Don't sugar coat it Mayascribe, tell us what you really think!

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Battman, the period since September 30th has been tough across the board for battery companies. My tracking group summary data follows:

Cool Emerging - Off 20.15%
Cool Sustainable - Off 18.86%
Cheap Emerging - Off 16.93%
Cheap Sustainable - Up 1.09%
Chinese Batteries - Off 13.72%

In other words, a portfolio of lithium stocks has done a lot worse over the period.

tireman, chemical reactions have been known and pretty firmly established for a long time. Most modern technologies are fairly good at maximizing the potential of the chemistry. When you start with a chemical reaction that's already 80% or 90% efficient, it's very hard to get even modest gains without cost increases that make the performance gains meaningless. Piston engines will still be the rule when you hit the century, but the piston engine will be attached to a mild or more likely full hybrid drive train (without a plug). A failure to implement HEV technology across the board would be a terrible waste that could be surpassed only by a foolish effort to implement GEV technology in more than a few niche markets.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

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Advill, there are solutions that work and there are those that don't work so well but feel oh so good. Right now we seem to be stuck in a cycle of feel good solutions that either won't work at all, or will have incredible unforeseen repercussions like grain based ethanol did. The plan makes sense for its promoters because revenue is revenue.

Roadrunner, in an assumed world based on press releases without supply constraints, cost constraints, recycling constraints and financial constraints an argument can be made for GEVs. In the real world bedeviled by all of those problems, GEVs are an easy way to stick you head in the sand and get nowhere. The hard numbers do not lie and they do not support your thesis.

We had all better hope that AGW is a cobbled together fantasy from somebody who hopes to make a buck. Because regardless of what we do in Europe or the US, total hydrocarbon consumption is not going to decline because there are six billion people trying to claw their way up from crushing poverty and given a choice between 'have' and 'have not,' they will always pick have even if it doesn't suit your definition of clean.

You're unhappy with my way of thinking and I'm not terribly excited with yours. In another five years or so it will be pretty clear which of us was right. I trust you'll forgive me for neither conceding defeat or claiming victory at this juncture.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Mayascribe and MRTTF, I'm not sure whether it's comedy or whistling in the graveyard - perhaps gallows humor is the best description.

GroovyGeek, I'm not the least bit suspicious about the technical potential because it comes with a great pedigree. I will, however, withhold judgment when it comes to cost because quality at a nano scale is hard to control and incredibly expensive. My guess is they'll get to an ultra-cool device that's suitable for applications like aerospace, but unless there's something that makes silicon nano-wires a tremendous bargain, I won't be looking for a mainstream product.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

I'm with you Battman; confident that China won't give preference to a billion or so local consumers when America has 300 million people who want stuff too. I am, however, hedging my bets by learning how to say "Welcome to WalMart" in Mandarin.