frflyer

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.

Why Pure Play Energy Storage Companies Could Double for Investors

old wizard

I agree that large scale renewable projects should be supported, but they don't need to be pilot projects only. Solar thermal has already had it's pilot project stage, and is ready for large scale deployment. Also, it has it's own cheap energy storage, when combined with molten salt heat storage. It can provide base load power on a large scale day and night.

Wind grew by 50% last year, so doubling in 3 years does seem a little less ambitious than what can be done.
What I would like to see is large govt loan guarantees, like was being offered to nuclear energy in the original version of the stimulus package. This would seriously propell the solar thermal industry, for instance, toward large scale development. Both it and wind can be built quickly and will both provide inexpensive power in the future. That would go a long way toward alleviating the credit crunch induced funding problem for these projects.

Related articles:

climateprogress.org/20.../

peakenergy.blogspot.co...

John
I was talking with a man who runs a small local battery company, called ARC Battery, which sells batteries and also makes them on a small scale. His market is largely for the marine industry, so lots of deep cycle batteries. I asked him a few questions about new battery technologies, and while he wasn't fully informed on all types, he did speak glowingly of lead foil batteries. He said they have been in the lab for quite a while, and have some winning characteristics, like excellent charge cycling. I hadn't seen lead foil mentioned in your articles, unless I missed it. Any comments?

How to Determine Value of Alternative Energy Stocks

Loren
I also like what BCON is doing, but John is probably right that if nothing else, it's probably a little early for this company's stock. I know from my own mistakes about buying promising stocks too early.
I bought a small stake in Metabolix at more than twice what it is now, because I was so impressed with their bioplastics technology.
I was way too early. Same thing with Genomics stocks that I thought would become the Microsofts and Intels of the biotech world. Celera, Millenium, Human Genome Science, Affymetrix, etc.
For a good part of 1999, they acted like they just might, but crashed with the Nasdaq in Feb 2000 and never recovered.

I spent six months or more learning about the science on the internet.
After reading an article about Affymetrix's GeneChip technology, in 1995, I was hooked, even the editors of Wired magazine, who published an article about AFFX were amazed.
I began following biotech companies.
Then Celera sequenced the fruit fly genome in 5 months, and started on the human genome, which they eventually completed in 9 months or so, and Genomics was on fire.
As a result, I was so convinced, that I failed to get out while I was ahead. I had more or less discarded my trading sense for a long term buy and hold strategy. The logic was, that if you bought a Microsoft or a Cisco Systems when it was young and held on for years, you would have a huge payoff. A virtual fortune from a small investment. Those who sold because they doubled their money missed the big move and maybe even lost money on the stock they bought with the proceeds from the double.

The market will always make a fool of you when you think you have it figured out.

But stuffing a small stake away as speculative for the long term is understandable. I like the idea of buying baskets of stocks in up and coming industries. That's why I have 7 solar stocks. One or two homerun stocks can more than make up for several that fail. There are numerous alternative energy stocks that I follow that are in the early stage. I keep them on my radar and wait for further developments.


Good job John

Lead-Carbon: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage

Any idea why Exide fell 20% friday? I don't see any news that would cause such a big drop on high volume.

At P/S 0.10, forward P/E 2.4, P/Book 0.79 it certainly looks cheap.

Lithium Unicorns and Alternative Energy Storage

I'm curioius how lanthanum is used in NIMH battery production. I just took a quick look at the article claiming the twin towers were taken down with nuclear explosions (from JohnK25's comment) and noticed lanthanum listed as a radioactive substance.

Cleantech: The Sixth Industrial Revolution

Digger

"I have not found anybody in the RE lobby who make claims of reliable base load capability"

Then they are leaving out solar thermal with heat storage. CSP plants with 6-8 hours of heat storage are already being built and storage of 14-16 hours is completely feasable.
They will be able to produce electricity as low as 5-8 cents/kWh when economy of scale kicks in. Can be air or water cooled.
And storing heat is far cheaper than storing electricity. This is NOT intermittent energy.
In one respect it is better than coal base power because it naturally revs up in sinc with the demand cycle during the day, matching output with demand and price.

Look at the proposal called TREC, which would build solar thermal plants around the Mediterranean along with HVDC transmission. These solar thermal plants would supply electric power as well as CHP(combined heat and power) while also desalinizing water.
The plan is to power Europe, North Africa and the Mideast. Creating clean water and clean energy from one source could do wonders for many parts of the world. And while it may seem idealistic to some, it may also provide a clear demonstration of what can be achieved when nations cooperate with each other.
The Mideast in particular could use some of that sensiblility.

The U.S. obviously has more potential for renewable energy than the UK due to the geographical limitations of the UK. For that reason, nuclear may be one of the only choices there for any large capacity generation.

Solar thermal with heat storage could power the entire U.S., using less land than now used for the coal industry and coal plants.
And there wont be billion gallon spills of toxic fly ash sludge.

Gas plants can be run less hours a day, but run when needed by the grid. This will extend the life of existing gas plants and help fill in the gaps from intermittent power like wind and PV.

I think it is obvious from an environmental standpoint that the number one priority should be phasing out of coal. Solar thermal in the U.S. could replace all the coal by 2030.
A study by the Western Governors Association said 300 GW of solar thermal could be built in the southwest near existing transmission lines. Adding HVDC lines would expand that substantialy.

Solar thermal is also being built for non electric applications in industry and agriculture.

I don't rule out nuclear power altogether but am not a big fan and the objections are more than just emotional. Saying the objection is just emotions belies the truth of the dangers of spreading the availability of fissionable material and waste all over the world. Look at the current angst of Iran's nuclear program. Now imagine that playing out in dozens of countries around the world. And don't tell me that nuclear is safe because less people have died from it than from coal. That's akin to saying living next to an active volcano is safe because it hasn't erupted yet. We haven't had a nuclear holocaust yet either, but that doesn't make me feel any more comfortable about nuclear arms proliferation. Anything is safe until it isn't. There will be no mistakes in the nuclear industry just like there are no mistakes in the oil and coal industries right?
Tell that to the people of Kentucky and Tennessee. Think the billion gallon spill in Tennessee is an anomally? Eight years ago there was a 300 million gallon spill in Kentucky. And the same containment ponds continously bleed toxins into watersheds.
I'm sure there will be no spills of radioactive materials just like there are no oil spills right? As long as there is human error, I won't completely trust anything as lethal as nuclear power.


Power from new nuclear plants will not be cheap.
It won't even be able to compete with solar thermal.
The cost of building nuclear plants has gone up. FPL has raised the estimate for two new nuclear plants proposed for Florida from $4,000 kW to between $5,500 and $8,100 kW.
No wonder they have moved into the solar thermal business, and not just in Florida.

Estimate for power from new nuclear plants is 12-17 cents kWh. Solar thermal can match that right now with prices falling to half that much in less than ten years, about when the first new nuclear plant would likely go online.

A new estimate puts the price of nuclear power at 22-30 cents kWh and up to $10,000 kW to build.

Another interesting development that could prove to be big is the new type of solar being developed by Zenith Solar in Israel. Concentrating PV which also captures the heat from cooling the PV receivers. So these are sort of a combined solar thermal and PV system. The captured heat could be used to make more power, or as hot water for buildings and industry. This increases the conversion efficiency by quite a bit over pure PV systems. www.businessweek.com/g...

One important benefit of renewable energy like solar and wind is that they are labor intensive to build and will provide far more jobs than building nuclear or coal plants.

Sources:

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/wp...

climateprogress.org/20.../

www.salon.com/news/fea...


climateprogress.org/20.../

List of solar large projects in US
www.seia.org/galleries...

www.altenergystocks.co...

Waterless solar thermal? Yes.
www.nrel.gov/csp/troug...

solarsouthwest.org/ Solar Southwest Initiative

www.desertec.org/

www.trec-uk.org.uk/

Alternative Energy Storage Stocks: Review and Outlook

billp37

The lower capacity factor of wind and solar is well understood. From what I've seen it is taken into consideration in the energy plans that call for ramp up of both solar and wind.
For instance it would take 300 MW of wind to equal 120 MW of coal power. But the wind power is cheap and clean and needs no fuel ever. No mountain tops blown off, no billion gallon spills of toxic coal fly ash sludge.

Solar thermal (CSP) with heat storage designed to run all night would have the same capacity factor or nearly the same as a coal plant.

Many CSP plants probably won't be designed to run all night, partly because it's not considered necessary.


John Lounsbury
Your dream may come true.

"I have been daydreaming about a hybrid photovoltaic-thermal generating system. "

www.businessweek.com/g...
article on Zenith Solar - Israeli company making consentrated PV systems that also make and capture heat.


An interesting and ambitious proposal, and an excellent overview of solar thermal can be found at TREC. They plan to build solar thermal plants and HVDC lines in North Africa, the MidEast, and possibly southern Europe.
The plants will provide electricity, usable heat, and desalinization of sea water for Europe, North Africa and the MidEast.
Read about here:
www.solarserver.de/sol...


More on CSP at these links:

www.salon.com/news/fea...

climateprogress.org/20.../

www.altenergystocks.co...

solarsouthwest.org/


Here's a list of solar thermal companies.

Abengoa Solar
Acciona Solar
Ausra
BrightSource Energy
Iberdrola
Solar Millennium
Solar Reserve
Sener
SkyFuel
eSolar
Solel
Torresol
Stirling {Stirling and Infinia use a sterling heat engine instead of steam turbines.}
Infinia
Sun Power(not the PV company)


Solar Thermal projects in U.S.

from Green Wombat website:
"Stirling has moved to silence the naysayers by filing a license application with the California Energy Commission for its first solar power plant - the world’s largest - a 30,000-dish, 750-megawatt project to be built 100 miles east of San Diego on 6,100 acres of federal land controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. (A energy commission licence application - an extremely detailed and expensive document; Stirling’s runs 2,600 pages - is considered a sign that a project has the wherewithal to move forward.)"

"Solel last July signed the world’s largest solar power deal when it agreed to supply California utility PG&E (PCG) with 553 megawatts of green electricity to be produced by a massive solar thermal power plant to be built in the Mojave Desert"

Ausra is building 175 MW plant near San Luis Obispo CA

Brightsource has had 900MW approved by power companies for the Mojave Desert
This is spread over 2 or 3 plants.

Acciona Solar 64MW plant Nevada Solar One pilot project.

There are 355MW of CSP pilot plants running since the late 1980s and early 1990s in Mojave Desert. (without heat storage)

Abengoa Solar's 280 MW parabolic trough project with 6-hour molten salt storage in Arizona.

Florida Power and Light (FPL) has filed in California to build 250MW plant Mojave.
Yes, FPL has seen the light and is now in the solar thermal business in other states.


In Spain, Solar Tres, a 17 MW central receiver design with 15 hours molten salt heat storage is underway. It will run 24/7 will generate 110.6 GWh/yr, equivalent to 6500 hrs of full-load operation or a 74% utilization factor.


"The same acre can produce 10 times as much energy from wind as it can from corn ethanol, 180,000 miles per acre per year. But both corn ethanol and wind power pale in comparison with solar photovoltaic, which can produce more than 2 million miles worth of transport per acre per year." www.ecogeek.org/conten...

To be fair, wind actually only uses a tiny percentage of the land it is sited on. It can coexist with agriculture. But CSP is not intermittent, on the other hand.

Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance

I agree wtih Michael Fitzimmons that the projections of vehicle sales by DOE is questionable, and yes they have an oil centric bias.

"I truly wish there was somebody out there with a public company that focused on ultra-high efficiency storage like pumped hydro, compressed air, molten salt and all the cool stuff that people far smarter than me are working on"

There is a public company working specifically on molten salt energy storage.
United Technology's Sunstrand Rockedyne division has developed advanced molten salt sytems for solar thermal plants. They have also started a new solar thermal company, Solar Reserve, to use this technology.
I believe they intend to sell the technology to other solar thermal companies as well.

"The new hybrid systems for cars are expensive, costly to maintain, and have no return on their investment. Additionally they do not reduce the “green house” gases"

PHEVs are said to double the efficiency of even a Prius. A car with IC engine that would normally get 25mpg, would achieve 100mpg overall. That cuts emissions drastically.
Furthermore, it's estimated that a PHEV would achieve a life of car cost equal to gasoline cars, even with gas at $1.75/gallon. I doubt we will see prices that low for the majority of the next 10 years. Probably twice that at least. That would amount to substantial savings over the life of the car.
The emissions would be even lower if the PHEVS are NG powered, as well as having even larger life of car savings due to lower fuel costs. Having said, that, I still think there are serious flaws in Pickens' plan.

It's much more efficient use of Ngas to burn it in power plants and power cars with the electricity. This has to be weighed against the lower cost of NG over gasoline or diesel, and the fact that the U.S. has better domestic supply of NG than oil. If we really have enough Ng, then Pickens' plan may serve in transition to EVs, as PHEVs would also do.

The biggest argument for PHEVs over EVs in the near term, IMHO, is that people would be much more inclined to buy a car without range limitations, particularly if they are one car families, who want a one size fits all car.

"BTW I share your agnostic position on global warming; the more I hear ignorant politicians and their followers rant about it, the less I believe in it."

Couldn't disagree more.
The ranting of the deniers repeats arguments endlessly that have been thoroughly disproved for years and decades in some cases. And it is plain to see that most deniers are blinded by political ideology to the point where they will believe Sean Hannity over tens of thousands of climate scientists. That side of the argument is based on belief almost exclusively. Sure there are uncertainties in the science, but deniers believe nonsense, like that a scientific theory isn't valid unless it is 100% proven.

Where are the skeptic climate scientists who are not funded by the fossil fuel industry?
Where are the scientific papers at the AGU meeting that disagree with the consensus?
Or the EGU meetings? They don't exist.

Deniers believe that global warming stopped ten years ago, which is blatantly false, and only seems reasonable because of cherry picking data points like the huge anomaly that was the 1998 El Nino, and the huge anomaly that is the current La Nina cooling.
Anyone who can read a stock chart can see that the warming trendline has not been violated.

Some deniers still claim that the greenhouse effect is disproven by laws of thermodynamics.
Yeah right.
They take 100 arguments with no scientific basis and add them up with 2 or 3 relatively reasonable arguments and think they are making sense.

Heartland Institute couldn't get a single climate scientist in Texas for their list of "experts" who disagree with AGW theory, even though there are dozens if not hundreds of climate scientists in Texas.
Their 4 experts?
policy analyst
energy expert
petroleum engineer
emergency physician

This is typical of all the lists of skeptics the deniers claim.

The Oregon Petition and the 32,000 "leading scientists" that the VP of GM talks about? Jokes. The 32,000 includes the Oregon Petition, which was a phony hoax, started by a guy who believes the industrial revolution has improved biodiverstiy on earth and that the more CO2 we pump into the atmosphere the more wonderful life on earth will be.
Right!

Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance

Correction: The URL for the storage and transmission story should have been. Same address minus the comment.


www.altenergystocks.co...

Alternative Energy Storage: It's All About Price vs. Performance

John

A problem with Pickens' plan is that burning natural gas in a power plant is a far more efficient use of the gas than burning it in cars.
And wind isn't a good match for replacing gas plants which are not intermittent. Also, it makes much more sense from an environmental perspective to phase out coal plants and let the gas plants run. Use solar thermal with heat storage for replacing coal base load.

There is an interesting article on energy storage and transmission at:

www.altenergystocks.co... #comment-106183

The article talks about how much grid balancing can be done with smart transmission, making the point that it is even more important to establish the new improved grid, than to develop storage solutions.

We obviously need both as key elements of an improved electric infrastructure, but I found the article interesting, offering a perspective I hadn't heard before.

You mention Active Power's and BeaconPower's flywheel potential.
How to compare them? Which is a better investment?

"So what we really need to do is get up in the morning, go to work and solve the problems of today with the tools we have. If we do that consistently, tomorrow will take care of itself."

Well said

The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market

One last comment
Found this Green Car Congress website

www.greencarcongress.c...

An analysis and comparison of what are the best choices for low emission vehicles.

The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market

regarding:
The Sixth Revolution: The Coming of Cleantech.
haven't read it all but very interesting.

Related articles on climate solutions and what it will take
to reduce carbon emissions enough to prevent the worst case scenario for climate change.

An Introduction to Core Climate Solutions
climateprogress.org/20.../

which is based on this 2004 study published by Science magazine. You will notice that in 2004 solar thermal wasn't considered, but thinking has changed since then, as the first link shows.

Science magazine article on Stablilization Wedges to solve global warming carbonsequestration.us...

also:
www.nature.com/climate...

climateprogress.org/20.../

It should be noted that it will take tremendous effort to keep CO2 at or below 450ppm by 2050, while many scientists say we should reduce emissions till we lower CO2 to 350ppm from the current 380ppm
It was 280 ppm at the start of the industrial revolution.

At 450ppm we will still face major problems from climate change.

How Will Temporary Decline in Oil Prices Impact Energy Sector?

Mayascribe
"Maybe this is why Obama is not saying much about Nat gas as an alternative fuel for cars? If so, then this would even further add to the advantage of battery assisted cars."
I had the same thought when I first heard of Pickens' plan. NG PHEVs even cleaner than gasoline PHEVs. Then I read the article below at climate progress which basically says:

The problem with using natural gas for cars instead of in power plants as T Boone Pickens suggests, is that it isn't a very efficient use of the gas, compared with using it in power plants. It is more efficient to make electricity which is then used in the cars. And if we are trying to eliminate carbon emissions, it's coal plants that should be phased out, since they're much dirtier. And how will wind which is intermittant take the place of gas fired peaker plants? Not that I want to discourage wind development or HVDC tranmission, but this is maybe a case of the right ideas for the wrong reason.

climateprogress.org/20.../


In regard to PHEVs or EVs, what about the idea of power companies buying the batteries for grid modulation and storage after they no longer will power the car. I've read that the batteries would still have quite a useful life left after they no longer will work in cars. The way the idea was presented, was that the price of the battery would be discounted when you buy a car to account for it's future use in the grid. How much that discount may be I don't know.

Another question I've had is in regard to Tesla.
If Tesla can build a luxury roadster on a small scale, that competes in price and performance with an equivalant conventional Lotus or Porche, and has decent range, why can't this be done with a less performance oriented car that is mass produced on the scale that Detroit has, at a reasonable price?
Wouldn't the range increase with the lower performance expectations? We don't all need cars that go 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds, nor do we need 130mph top end.

John- when you say PHEVs will cost $10,000 to $30,000 more, is that based on future mass production, or is it based on current costs at current production rates? And why is the spread so big between these estimates?

I am often skeptical when high cost are mentioned as game stoppers for technologies that don't yet enjoy economies of scale.
I'm not saying that's the case here, but I often hear this kind of argument, and it can be misleading.

Any thoughts on Phoenix Motorcars?
Sport Utility Truck and small SUV

35kWh Altair lithium titanate battery pack

torque = 590 ft pounds

range 130 miles - they are working on an expansion pack that will extend the range to 250 miles by 2009

charging - on board 6.6kw 220 volt plug in
for 5-6 hour charging. Also has a connector for 10 minute rapid charge which requires 480 volt, 3phase, 500 amp charging system.
It's the quick charge that I find interesting.
If there were 480 volt charging stations along freeways, it would be like stopping for gas.
They are aiming their marketing at fleet sales, farm and ranch job trucks, delivery vehicles etc, where range isn't a big concern.

How big is the market for city vehicles, delivery, taxis, job trucks for agriculture and industries, mining etc? Seems like these are the best applications for pure EVs at present, given the range limitations.

The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market

John, thanks for replying to my comment. I don't doubt the need for storage.
I had seen those numbers for parts of Germany and Denmark a couple of different places, but you may be right. I read somewhere that Denmark was selling windpower into Germany's grid in exchange for base power from Germany.

We could make a good start on building solar thermal which comes with it's own inexpensive energy storage.

For what it's worth, a report from the Western Governers Association said the industry is capable of building 13 gigawatts of capacity by 2015. They said once there were 4 gigawatts installed, the price should drop to less than 10cents/kWh and should continue to drop as the scale increased to 5-8 cents/kWh. There are already 2 gigawatts scheduled or already building in California. These aren't pilot projects- some are as big as 500 megawatts. The report also said 300 gigawatts could be built near existing transmission lines.

I gleaned the following from articles at Green Wombat

Abengoa Solar's 280 MW with 6-hour molten salt heat storage for Arizona Public Servic.

Ausra 175 MW plant near San Luis Obispo,CA (central coast)
building now

FPL has filed plans with California regulators to build a 250-megawatt plant in the Mojave Desert.

Brightsource has a contract for up to 900 megawatts in the Mojave desert. this is two or three plants.

eSolar, contract with Southern California Edison with 245 megawatts plant

Solel signed with PG&E (PCG) to build a 553 megawatts solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert

Stirling filed a license application with the California Energy Commission to build a 750-megawatt plant 100 miles east of San Diego

That's 2,753 megawatts total, if Brightsource builds only 500 megawatts.
3,153 megawatts total, if Brightsource builds 900 megawatts.
- assuming that all of these are completed.





BTW nice move in Exide today

The Heart of Cleantech Sells at 50% Discount to the Broader Market

“Energy storage is the holy grail of cleantech and a difficult problem” that must be solved before solar and wind can become more than niche technologies."

This is an overstatement. For one thing Denmark has somehow managed 20% wind power already. Parts of Europe including parts of Germany and Denmark have 40% wind power. But here in America with tiny percents of power coming from these sources, this is repeated over and over by those opposed to renewable energy
The argument is too often used as more disinformation to delay shifting to alternative energy.

The statement doesn't take into account solar thermal with heat storage.
This technology can replace coal plants as base load power. It can also act as load following power. And storing heat is 20-100 times cheaper than storing electricity and much more efficient. In a way, solar thermal with storage is better than base load because it peaks when energy demand peaks, while also being able to put out steady power when the sun goes down.

Yes we need storage solutions but that isn't as big a factor as made out to be.
We have a long way to go before it is a fatal lack. With a tiny percent of power now generated by solar and wind in the U.S. there is a lot of room for growth before it is a major problem. For one thing, the statement doesn't take into account the use of solar panels to partialy or fully power individual homes either on or off the grid.