frflyer

Smart DOE Battery Manufacturing Grants and Dilution for Dummies

I finally picked up a small interest in AXPW today. Is the spread that I saw typical for this stock? It was bid $1.30 ask $1.48 when I placed the order.

Smart DOE Battery Manufacturing Grants and Dilution for Dummies

I wonder about the grants for electric drive component manufacturing. UQM, RZ and HYGS could be beneficiaries. Anyone have an idea who else to watch in this sector?

Alternative Energy Storage: Cheap Outperforms Cool

The hype or hope article about PHEVS that you cited, also included the following.

"EV advocates are quick to note the Prius wasn't designed to be a plug-in hybrid, and in fact makes a lousy one. The biggest problem is the electric motor is too small, so the car relies more heavily on the gasoline engine. Cars designed from the ground up to be plug-in hybrids, like the plug-in Prius that Toyota is working on or the Saturn Vue plug-in – will almost certainly offer far better fuel efficiency."

On reading the article, I was a little confused about how they were measuring the mpg of the converted Priuses in the study. The claims often heard for PHEVs don't say you will get 100 mpg on a trip. They say that with enough electric only range for people to commute back and forth to work, they will end up doing 60% of their driving on battery power, with a resulting overall annual mpg of 100.
And one has to consider that the 30 miles, or whatever is the electric only range, is fueled by about $1 worth of electricity.

I also noted the anecdotal story in the last paragraph about the man who got 75mpg with his Hymotion conversion kit. And this on what is not the ideal test car, assuming the quoted paragraph above is correct.

Who was driving the cars? Was it typical commuting and less often longer distance trips? No. Since these were city fleet vehicles, they wouldn't be very good examples of the averege driver's experience.
That makes it a flawed study to my mind.

A Very Smart Plan for Federal Smart Grid Grants

A little off topic, but I wonder if anyone else noticed the news from China yesterday. They intend to have 100 GW of wind power by 2020.
All in all, it bodes well for the clean energy sector.
And it should mean more battery demand.

By virtue of sheer dumb luck, I happended to pick up some shares of APWR yesterday, which besides the China wind story, had some good news of it's own today, with a new $75 million contract for cogeneration. The stock was up 18% today.

China wind energy story
uk.reuters.com/article...

"A great example of the diversity of potential applications is a new partnership that Envision Solar and Bright Automotive announced today at a capitol hill press conference. They're planning a nationwide network of solar powered charging stations for PHEVs that will use Axion's batteries for the storage function."

There was also some news about coming up with a common plug design for EVs and PHEVs to connect to 440 volt quick charging stations.

I was just reading an article on Enersys at Zacks. The ENS spokesman said they were interested in aquisitions. Are you at all afraid that an Enersys would try to buy out Axion? Or have they set up lots of barriers to that?

Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation

MichaelH
You say the government did everything in it's power to kill hybrids. I think you are referring to the Bush administration, which had a different agenda than the current one.

Lead-Acid, Lead-Carbon Batteries: The Only Option for Average Consumer

Sorry I misread what you wrote. There have been so many acronyms for hybrids and electric cars, I though I'd missed one.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John

"I've been writing on storage since last July and every time I suggest that PHEVs with electric ranges beyond 20 miles have little or no economic merit,..."


It may be some consolation that you are not alone
in this opinion. Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has written an article essentially saying the same thing you are. He is definitely pro renewable energy and has been a big supporter of PHEVs, so it was interesting to see his sobering take on this.

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

creativeforce

"Can't even get my gas furnace to light without electricity."

That problem can be solved by using what I believe are thermocouple? bimetalic strips or peizo electric starters. I remember that my father installed this on our gas fired furnace in Massachusetts years ago. Got sick of losing heat when the inevitable power loss from downed power lines happens in winter.

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

“. . . the distributed grid might look like this: intermittent wind and solar power generation would be complemented by load-supplementing fuel cell plants, in much the same way that peak power and base load power plants interact today"

I like FCEL for this reason. Their utility scale fuel cells can use methane or NG and can work in conjunction with NG fired plants.
They are also CHP (combined heat and power)


"Better long-distance electricity transmission systems and cost-effective energy storage methods are needed before we can rely on such a source to supply roughly 25 percent or more of base-load electricity generation (the minimum amount of electrical power that must be made available)."

Does this mean 25% of power needs to be base load at minimum? It's more like 70% now isn't it? - 50% from coal and 20% from nuclear

As far as rights of way and siting issues for new transmission lines, there is an alternative idea in the proposal for large scale CSP that was featured in Scientific American last year. They had the idea of using existing rights of way and even siting new HVDC lines along highway and railway rights of way, eliminating the problems mentioned. I wonder if anyone is seriously considering this and what the pros and cons are.
Seems like it would have less impact on land for one thing. It wouldn't be possible to do this everywhere, like in the desert where there may be no existing roads or rights of way near potential new CSP plants, but could still account for much of the miles of transmission lines from these sources to the end user in less remote areas.

Lead acid battery companies like Exide would only need a turnaround in the auto sector to lift their stocks from their current low valuations. New applications like grid and EVs would be like icing on the cake for them.

Lead-Acid, Lead-Carbon Batteries: The Only Option for Average Consumer

tireman63

Pardon my ignorance, but I'm not keeping up with all the acronyms.
What is NVH?

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

Renzo

But what are the real costs of those legacy power sources? I believe that if you added the hidden or externalized costs of fossil fuels to the price of gasoline and coal etc., it would completely change the equation. Gasoline would likely be at least a few dollars/gallon higher. Even adjusting for carbon, with a carbon tax or cap and trade, doesn't begin to account for the total cost, because CO2 is just one of several costly impacts from their use.

Or maybe we should do as Colbert joked about on his TV show, and just let the "free market" decide which species to let go extinct. I hope you are smart enough to realize that the welfare of the ecosystem IS our welfare. Too many anti environmentalists fail to understand this basic truth. It's not humans OR the environment.

SetAmericafree.org estimates the hidden costs (including subsidies) of fossil fuels at $800 billion annually in the U.S. I take that with a grain of salt, as it's probably high, but who knows for sure? Even half that would likely double the price of gasoline from where it is now. And chopping off the energy sources we have now is not what's being advocated. That's an exaggeration. Phase them out as new sources come online, yes. coal first

Global subsidies to fossil fuels are $200 billion a year. $49 billion a year in the U.S. Why?

I repeat my suggestion made elsewhere to read "The Carbon Age" by Eric Roston. - global warming aside, it's a fascinating book.

The worst case scenarios may be too pessimistic, but should we only prepare for the best case scenario? It's the speed of the change that is so dangerous . And all current observations show that change is happening faster than thought just a few years ago. The IPCC's 4th Assessment report is already proving to be way too conservative. And it's only two years old.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

Renzo

"We commonly use religious terminology--believer, denier, agnostic-- when we are talking about AGW. It’s an easy shorthand that exposes the blind faith needed for a belief in imminent, catastrophic AGW. It’s not enough that I simply believe (as I really do) that increasing CO2 can warm the environment. I have to believe not only that the environment will be harmed, but also that it’s going to be an immediate, Gadarene decline that requires us to institute cap-and-trade this minute to save the planet. If I question the magnitude of AGW, its timing, or the efficacy of proposed draconian cures, then I am a “denier”. (This is a particularly cynical and stupid epithet considering its implicit allusion to the Holocaust). "

Far from being alarmist, the IPCC has been overly conservative. In fact it is the somewhat political nature of the IPCC that makes it so, contrary to skeptic arguments that it's proof of exaggeration. It's reports got watered down if anything, as a result.

“The recent [Arctic] sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the IPCC climate models” — and that was a Norwegian expert in 2005. The retreat has accelerated in the past two years.
The ice sheets appear to be shrinking “100 years ahead of schedule.” That was Penn State climatologist Richard Alley in March 2006. In 2001, the IPCC thought that neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.
Sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 — 3.3 millimetres per year as measured by satellites — was higher than the IPCC climate models predicted.
The ocean carbon sink is saturating sooner than expected.

The subtropics are expanding faster than the models project."

climateprogress.org/20.../


The short answer is that if the scientists are right we don't have time to argue about it.
Yes, it could be that bad. If we exceed certain tipping points it will be beyond our control.
Worried about big government and draconian measures? If we do nothing now and it's as bad as scientists fear, those will be the only solutions later. Much much more draconian than anything being discussed now.
Now it's an oppurtunity. Later it could be far more expensive, and about survival, no matter the cost.

I don't believe it's an allusion to the Holocaust to use the term denier. I think you are imagining that. John Holdren, the new energy secretary comments on deniers verses skeptics.

"The few climate-change 'skeptics' with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. The attention and credence they receive are a menace, of course, insofar as this delays the development of the political consensus that will be needed before society embraces remedies that are commensurate with the magnitude of the climate-change challenge."

"Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by this vocal fringe should ask themselves how it could be, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that the leaderships of the national academies of sciences, of every country in the world that has one, are repeatedly on record saying that global climate change is real, dangerous, caused mainly by humans, and reason for early and concerted action to reduce those causes; that this is also the overwhelming consensus view among the faculty members of the earth sciences departments at every major university in the world; and that all three of holders of the one Nobel prize in science that has been awarded for environmental science, are all leaders in the climate-change scientific mainstream."

"The fact is that anybody who could believe that the cream of the part of the world scientific community that has actually studied this phenomenon could be co-opted by hoaxers or suffering from mass hysteria is just not thinking clearly."

"We should really call them 'deniers' rather than 'skeptics', because they are giving the venerable tradition of skepticism a bad name."

"As my original reference to 'the venerable tradition of skepticism' indicates, I am in fact well aware of its valuable and indeed fundamental role in the practice of science. Skeptical views, clearly stated and soundly based, tend to promote healthy re-examination of premises, additional ways to test hypotheses and theories, and refinement of explanations and arguments. And it does happen from time to time — although less often than most casual observers suppose — that views initially held only by skeptics end up overturning and replacing what had been the 'mainstream' view."

"Appreciation for this positive role of scientific skepticism, however, should not lead to uncritical embrace of the deplorable practices characterizing much of what has been masquerading as appropriate skepticism in the climate-science domain. These practices include refusal to acknowledge the existence of large bodies of relevant evidence (such as the proposition that there is no basis for implicating carbon dioxide in the global-average temperature increases observed over the past century); the relentless recycling of arguments in public forums that have long since been persuasively discredited in the scientific literature (such as the attribution of the observed global temperature trends to urban-heat island effects or artifacts of statistical method); the pernicious suggestion that not knowing everything about a phenomenon (such as the role of cloudiness in a warming world) is the same as knowing nothing about it; and the attribution of the views of thousands of members of the mainstream climate-science community to 'mass hysteria' or deliberate propagation of a 'hoax'."

"The purveying of propositions like these by a few scientists who do or should know better –and their parroting by amateur skeptics who lack the scientific background or the motivation to figure out what’s wrong with them — are what I was inveighing against in the op-ed and will continue to inveigh against. The activities of these folks, whether witting in the case of the scientists or unwitting in the case of their gullible adherents, have nothing to do with respectable scientific skepticism."

You might find this interesting also.

climateprogress.org/20.../

Clearing Al Gore's name part 1

What is wrong with me giving references? Is that worse than shouting that Al Gore is the devil and global warming is a hoax with nothing to back it up?

And you seem to not understand the difference between the harm being immediate and the fact that there is a time lag associated with emmissions we create now. You are ignoring the cummulative nature of it. All signs show that the 1.4 F change so far is changing the planet. 3 degrees? 5 degrees? maybe 10 F increase by the end of the century? That's what the latest models suggest with business as usual. Many skeptics doubt the models accuracy, but the models keep getting better.

Now that the fossil fuel PR campaign knows they can't win the argument, they are selling the idea that it will cost too much. Or haven't you noticed that change in strategy?

As far as consensus? In reality there is no comparison.
Not unless you believe the phony lists of skeptics from the Oregon Petition with it's 19,000 (actually about 200 climate scientists)
Or Senator Inhofe's list of 650 skeptics.- about 2 dozen of these belong to the AGU, which has 14,000 members in the US. and 20,000 in the EGU. Or the fact that every major scientific organization in the worldl agrees with the IPCC. Both sides may claim consensus. One is lying.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John
I know you have an open mind. My comments are not necessarily directed at you. But the majority of deniers who endlessly repeat every skeptic argument, or usually a whole littany of them, when only one in a hundred is even worth talking about. And the majority of deniers are motivated by politics, not science.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

more on the cost of nuclear
solveclimate.com/blog/...

Nah, we can't effect the big ole Earth.

E. O. Wilson, who is an expert on biodiversity, commenting on Bjorn Lomborg's innacurate numbers in his book "The Skeptical Scientist"

"Before humans existed, the species extinction rate was (very roughly) one species per million species per year (0.0001 percent). Estimates for current species extinction rates range from 100 to 10,000 times that, but most hover close to 1,000 times prehuman levels (0.1 percent per year), with the rate projected to rise, and very likely sharply."

"Area-species curves. Ecological research across a wide range of habitats shows that the number of species inhabiting a patch of land increases exponentially with the size of that patch. Different studies have produced different estimates for the species-area exponent; the higher the value of the exponent, the steeper the general relationship between land area and species diversity, so that a small change in land area has a large effect on diversity. In The Diversity of Life, I use the conservative values of the area-species exponent and rate of tropical deforestation to arrive at about 0.25 percent of tropical forest species extinguished or committed to early extinction annually."

"Studies from tropical America, New Guinea, and Indonesia (cited in The Diversity of Life) show that when forest fragments are reduced to anywhere from one to 27 square kilometers, 10 to 50 percent of the species in the fragment go extinct within 100 years, consistent with the Diamond-Terborgh models of exponential decay. The area-dependent decline in mammal species of the U.S. and Canadian western national parks also accords with the picture of committed extinction by area reduction alone. "

On ocean acidification

'Basic chemistry leaves us in little doubt that our burning of fossil fuels is changing the acidity of our oceans,' said John Raven, professor of biology at the University of Dundee, UK. 'The rate of change we are seeing to the ocean's chemistry is a hundred times faster than has happened for millions of years. We just do not know whether marine life which is already under threat from climate change can adapt to these changes.'

www.rsc.org/chemistryw...

Another article on ocean acidification here:

www.cbc.ca/technology/...

And in the book "The Carbon Age" you will learn how ocean acidification is potentially destroying one of the biggest carbon sinks on Earth, the gazillions of shelled algae called cocolithophores that live in the ocean, and take carbon to the sea floor when they die, effectively removing it from the carbon cycle .
They have been doing this for hundreds of millions of years, helping to keep the carbon cycle in a balance that has supported life as we know it for all that time . They can't form their alkaline shells in an acidic ocean.

Nah, man can't effect the big ole earth.

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has joined the climate realists. The realists are the growing group of scientists who understand that the business as usual emissions path leads to unmitigated catastrophe...."

climateprogress.org/20.../

Greenhouse Gamble
The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
globalchange.mit.edu/r.../

The most expensive thing we can do is to continue with the fossil fuel based energy, or business as usual.


westcoastclimateequity...
Global Warming Solutions for Governments

"Behind fossil fuels’ global dominance lies the shocking fact that governments still subsidize them with tax-breaks and price supports, some dating back to World War I. The total global give-away to fossil fuels comes to more than $210 billion a year."

Not to mention the externalized costs of continued fossil fuel use, which is in the hundreds of billions annually.

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

Projections of energy prices for new nuclear plants and supposed clean coal, as compared with projections for energy prices for solar and wind, clearly show that they won't be able to compete with wind or solar within a decade, which in the case of nuclear, is about how long it will take for the first new nuke to come online.
I think billp37 has a conflict of interest he's not telling us about.
Those who are forever telling us how renewable energy is a no go have lost all credibility with me.

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

www.scitizen.com/scree...

climateprogress.org/20.../

8.3 GW of new wind energy came online in 2008. Oh yes the capacity factor! OK, 35% for wind. That still is the equivalent of 3 nuclear power plant being completed in one year., or 5-6 coal plants. At 7-8 cents/kWh wind is hardly expensive.
And wind is the cleanest of all, with the lowest land footrint of all.

Not all renewables will need electricity storage. Geothermal and solar thermal with heat storage are two exceptions.

In regard to climate change, read the new book "The Carbon Age"
by Eric Roston. A fascinating read that covers many topics and is much more than just another book on global warming.

Then explain how speeding up the natural carbon cycle a hundred fold could possibly be anything but trouble. And explain how pumping the carbon that took 60 million years to precipitate out of the carbon cycle in the form of coal deposits, back into the carbon cycle in a few hundred years, or a geological nanosecond, could possibly not be trouble. This is unprecedented in the history of the earth. And it upsets a balance in the carbon cycle that has been in place for hundreds of millions of years.
Nah, man can't effect a big ole thing like the planet.

On the cost of clean energy conversion
www.hks.harvard.edu/pr...

How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet?
The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change
By Eric Pooley

25 peer reviewed studies have shown that changing to clean energy and efficiency will have minimal economic cost.

Or you could believe the heavily biased, heavily flawed, non transparant, and not peer reviewed, study by the Manufacturers Association and a chamber of commerce proxy that has been widely debunked.