creativforce

Lead Acid Batteries: How Cheap Beat Cool at Google

Congratulations on the XIDE deal!

Energy Storage: Chrysler - A123 Alliance Likely to Spark Interest in Sector

New Whole Foods Market(R) in Dedham to Generate On-Site Power with Fuel Cell Technology from UTC Power--PR Newswire

Energy Storage: Chrysler - A123 Alliance Likely to Spark Interest in Sector

Here' some more "good" news for the energy storage sector: news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20...

Cyberspies have hacked the energy grid!

Just one more reason why upgrading the grid is becoming an emergency, not an option. Of course I strongly disagree that we should help the energy monopolies upgrade so that we all become even more dependant on them. National and individual security would be better served if the grid was more like the web--a convenience that connected micro energy producers and storage rather than a lifeline that can be easily severed.

Electric transmission allows 30% + waste. Economies of scale don't apply when distribution is so expensive. Better in every way to generate and store energy locally. Also a consumer market would be much better for the storage industry.

Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation

It is not surprising to anyone to see no progress in lithium battery technology during the last 8 years of battery antagonistic, pro-oil corrupt Texas leadership. That doesn't mean the next 4 (8?) years won't be better for these batteries.

A better question is why there hasn't been more progress in NIMH battery technology. Ever since Chevron sat its big bottom down on ECD (Cobasys) there has been zero progress out of Detroit.

However, Toyota, the only company that owned a NIMH manufacturing license before Chevron arrived at ECD has done amazing things with it. The new Prius at better than 50 mpg is a great example.

But Ford is encountering shortages from Sanyo and every battery coming from Cobasys is apparently flawed...Mercedes has sued them and GM received an order that had mysterious leaks according to industry news reports: "General Motors is also unable to take advantage of the hot hybrid market. GM recently said that its domestic supplier, Michigan-based Cobasys, shipped as many as 9,000 hybrid battery packs that leaked and had to be replaced. Anderman said that the Cobasys problem “did not surprise him." In an interview with HybridCars.com, a Cobasys executive claimed that media reports about its battery problems were "not entirely true."

Producing nickel-metal hybrid batteries to last the lifetime of the vehicle—as much as 150,000 miles—is “not a trivial task,” said Anderman. The next generation of hybrid batteries, using lithium ion, are expected to be even more challenging from a technical and planning perspective."

Can somebody tell me why an oil company is in charge of battery manufacturing and can't the government investigate these guys?

A decade ago, Cobasys made great batteries for the EV1, but they forgot how to do it? While Toyota hasn't reported a single problem with their Prius battery. In fact many Taxi companies that have been running Prius cars report better than 300,000 miles on the batteries with no problems.

Is CHP or AXPW working on a hybrid prototype to undercut the $25,000 + price of the Prius, Insight, and Fusion? If so, I'll be happy to invest. Where's the product? And where's the market?

Cleantech, Optimism Squared and the Battery Industry

Thanks for the tip John: wired.com/science/... Everyone should read this article! It sounds like the biggest utilities, Duke, Xcel and the rest see the smart grid as a way to consolidate power. That scares me even more than the miserable place we're in now. Imagine how badly the Internet would suck if it were owned by Microsoft and everyone had to pay to use it. That's where we are headed if the Feds don't mandate a public grid with open standards.

Cleantech, Optimism Squared and the Battery Industry

Here's a scenario that keeps running through my mind. Imagine the great Northeast Blackout of 2003 happening in January when the temperature is hovering below zero. Imagine it lasts two days instead of one. How many of the 55 million people affected have back up generators or adequate fireplaces? How much violence would result in major cities as back up generators "change hands"? What would the cost be for frozen plumbing? How many accidental fires would start as people try to stay warm? What about the riots as refugees overwhelm warm-up centers? How many people would die of carbon monoxide poisoning? How many people would freeze to death?

It's a pretty easy scenario to imagine, since a catastrophic blackout has already happened in the summer. Our antiquated, inefficient power grid is run by local monopolies who have absolutely no financial incentive to change. Smart grid initiatives are a joke when our tax dollars are going to dumb monopolies.

The solution to this danger is simple and it solves a lot of problems at once--reduces dependence on foreign oil, reduces green house gas emissions, reduces air pollution, reduces overall energy consumption by 30 to 40 percent, creates a dynamic new green business.

Home fuel cells running on natural gas with battery back up systems.

Deregulate the monopolies. Use incentives to create a consumer market for power generation. In a consumer market, gas powered fuel cells that provide heat and electricity would be no more expensive than a furnace and water heater is today. Over a 20 year period most homes need to replace these appliances anyway. Fuel cells like to run at a constant speed, so battery systems would handle peak loads, excess could be sold back to a nationalized grid. Home energy production is 30 to 40 percent more efficient than our current system so even though it would run on NG the CO2 would be greatly diminished. A battery system with enough capacity to handle summer air conditioning, would get a home through 2 or 3 days if the NG pipeline is disrupted. Cheap back up tanks of LP could substitute.

The technology is here now. These systems are already on the market in Japan. It won't happen unless we can develop the political willpower to reorganize the local power companies. With deregulation there would be a free for all of capitalism developing lots of better ideas.

We would all be richer, safer, and healthier for it.

Cost Effective Energy Storage: The Orphan Stepchild of Alternative Energy

Lost my power this weekend (due to tornadoes in the area) and realized again just how vulnerable the average Joe is to grid disruption (especially in cold climates). If the International credit markets froze up so bad that the local power company couldn't order coal from Canada, we northerners would become refugees. In the Great Depression, folks could burn their furniture in the boiler, but today everything runs off the grid. Can't even get my gas furnace to light without electricity. And of course the gas company relies on credit markets too! Cheap batteries and a home windmill could tide you over until things got better, but I haven't heard anyone talking about cheap home power storage appliances. Tied to the grid they could be win/win for power companies and consumers (government and power companies should subsidize the cost). The consumer is worried, and that sounds like a big market to me. Gas generators are useless in a gas shortage. They don't help the grid. And, they're not "green."

Long Live the Cleantech Revolution

John, I often make the mistake of investing in things as they should be rather than things as they are. Energy consumption, energy generation and energy transmission "should" change dramatically. The infrastructure changes we need are at least 30 years overdue.

However, there is no incentive for power companies to do anything about that. It's not like we as consumers can easily unplug if they don't meet our needs for reliable green energy.

The consumer market has always been the only place where dynamic change takes place. If it weren't for the break up of Ma Bell, we'd all be dialing phone numbers and listening to our neighbor's phone calls as we waited for them to get off the multi-party line. Instead, today, we get to interact with your blogs on our i-phones.

The gas and electric meter on the side of my house is the same one that was there when I was born in the 50s and the energy is delivered over the same pipes and lines. The electricity is generated at the same coal-fired plant. Do you really think they are going to make huge investments to become more reliable, green and efficient today because they should? Do you really think all that free government money pouring into Homer Simpson's power plant will get him up off his ass ... or will he just use the money to buy more donuts?

Look at where the changes are happening today in the US--wind mills and solar plants are popping up in rural cooperatives (where the public owns the utility), on military bases where they are forced to consider efficiency and where paranoia makes them consider becoming energy independent, and in CA where the mountains don't blow the coal smoke to Canada or the next state over (somebody else's problem).

Europe is making great strides because they have to buy their NG from Russia, and that's enough to scare anyone into being green.

The only other signs of progress are public relations stunts such as solar panels on the Children's Museum, etc..

What incentives will drive this sweeping revolution you keep talking about?

Smart Grid's Enabler - Alternative Energy Storage

Again a great article! But I wonder if all this energy investment money is going to disappear along with the TARP money. I am getting fed up waiting for the smart grid to start happening. I've been reading about the need for it since the 80's and have lost money every time I have tried to invest in it. I remember a Buckminster Fuller lecture I attended in '82 where he predicted that the smart grid would end the cold war because solar power would flow around a global grid from countries in daylight to countries in darkness.

The trouble as I see it is the Homer Simpson effect. Once your home plugs into the grid, they have you by the short hairs for life. Homer gets a paycheck no matter how much he charges, no matter how short sighted he is, and no matter how much he screws up. If we could deregulate energy like we did the phone companies, then cool stuff would start happening. If AXPW sold their batteries at Home Depot, I'd buy a windmill and enough batteries to disconnect. The off-grid battery systems available today are dangerous, require constant maintenance and have very short life spans. But the incredible life span of these batteries you have written about here make it seem like you could count on them for decades like you do your furnace. If they could develop a turn-key home energy system for under $30,000, it would be the biggest revolution since the PC.

I like Fuller's utopian dream of sharing free energy, but since that ain't gonna happen, I want my own.

Li-ion Batteries: A Speculative Field of Dreams

I was holding ENER stock back when Texaco bought in. I was excited because I thought they were serious about being an energy company, not an oil company. I thought my stock would skyrocket. Duh. Boy did I get burned. And I'm still pissed. Little did I know at the time that the oil companies would succeed at suppressing NIMH battery technology for a decade. The entire world should be pissed. I am beginning to believe that they can't keep the genie in the bottle much longer. But I am extremely suspicious when breakthrough technologies like EEStor and PWTC mysteriously disappear or simply stay hidden. I don't know anything about battery technology, but I do know that oil companies (the greatest concentration of wealth in the world) don't want to lose market share. Don't think the free market will ever bring battery powered cars to consumers because oil money can always trump small start ups. It has to be done with legislation. As California has repeatedly proven, if you have the legislation, the technology will follow.

Lead-Carbon: A Game Changer for Alternative Energy Storage

Big news about world lithium resources today. Is TRU true?:
Outlook: Lithium Industry Will Be Pushed in to Oversupply through 2013
22 January 2009
Lithium consultants TRU Group Inc. says that its updated lithium outlook for presentation at the IM Lithium Supply & Markets Conference Santiago 2009 will conclude that the industry is not immune from the global recession and will be pushed into oversupply this year through 2013.

Global use of lithium will decline sharply by at least 6% in 2009 and demand is unlikely to bounce back any time soon as consumers put off buying laptops or cell phones containing lithium batteries.

It is likely now that some expansions and new projects will be delayed or cancelled until market conditions improve. However, new and large uses for lithium will start having a major impact on demand within the five-year horizon: Lithium use in electric vehicle batteries and lithium alloys for aircraft.

TRU forecasts that demand will be strong and sustained in these two segments over the long term 2020. The industry does need at least one of the announced pipeline production projects to come into production and also could do with another new project as the market tightens around 2015-2017.

New lithium producers still will need to be cost-competitive with existing salt lake brine based producers in South America and China. Emerging technology may make some of the undeveloped medium-sized (brine) lithium resources quite attractive. The industry through expansion and development of new resources will have no problem meeting demand, the outlook concludes.

TRU Group Inc., based in Toronto, Canada and Tucson, USA, are industrial management and engineering consultants with a strong capability in lithium project development. The firm is a world leader in resource evaluation, salar exploitation, brine and mineral lithium extraction and processing technologies—those in use, prospective, and leading edge.

TRU has evaluated and modeled most of the known existing lithium properties and advised a number of players on a wide variety of lithium resource, engineering, process, business and investment issues.

The outlook presentation will be posted on the site after the conference on 27 January 2009 at the link trugroup.com/Lithium-M...

Lithium Unicorns and Alternative Energy Storage

"I think I smell smoke." Smells like sulphur to me! You would think that if the entire automobile industry is really staking their future on lithium powered cars that somebody might think far enough ahead to kick up some dirt and look to see if there was any lithium out there. Billions are being spent around the world on metalurgy and chemistry research, patents filed and factories built, but nothing on a basic independent geological survey? A wise friend once told me to never look for conspiracies when simple stupidity would do. But this goes beyond stupidity.

How Will Temporary Decline in Oil Prices Impact Energy Sector?

John you are very popular because you read comments and write back. You provide a very healthy dialogue that expands everyone's understanding.

I think Aptera is going to prove you wrong, however, with the first successful battery powered American car. By using lighter materials, less materials, recycled materials and advanced aerodynamics, they have created a vehicle that has the power requirements of your Chinese bicyclist (their drag coefficient is less than Lance Armstrong's). They are selling the initial units at $30,000--a huge premium over economy commuter cars. But when they ramp up production, they have suggested that they could be profitable selling for around $15,000. That would be a game changer. They have also totally reinvented how a car is assembled. When the factory gets going, it will probably look like a desktop PC assembly line with plug-in components being added to a basic shell. And their three-wheel design allows them to skirt archaic govt. requirements, qualifying the vehicle as a motorcycle. It's a shame they are rolling out the first units during the worst possible scenario--a recession and low fuel prices. Any reader who hasn't been to aptera.com owes themselves a peak at the future. I know it's all pie in the sky sales brochure stuff now, but it sure looks and sounds plausible.

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

When we average americans have a problem we get up in the morning and fix it. My "quaint" point is that the only thing stopping me and millions of other average americans from junking our engines is the lack of an over the counter battery that provides range, price, and weight that will fit in our Corollas. This isn't extravagent arrogance. Just look at all the backyard rebels at evalbum.com/. This rebellion has gone from one or two "nuts" to thousands in the last year. And I believe it would jump from a few thousand to a few million if we could buy conversion kits with NIMH or Firefly batteries at Pep Boys. Either of these technologies would give us 500 pound battery packs coupled with a 75 pound motor (about the same weight as the engine, gas tank, and exhaust system we would be tossing) delivering highway speeds and a range of about 50 miles. That's all we need to get to work and back. It's not a sexy market like Tesla, but what's the profit on a million 500 lb battery packs?

Alternative Energy Storage Is an Investment Tsunami

As usual, great info John! All we need for a PEV revolution is a lead acid battery that weighs half as much as current technology like the one PWTC owns the patent on and stopped manufacturing why?? NIMH would work if Cobasys was ever serious about marketing it (Chevron needs to wake up or die). Every family today has 2 cars, only one needs to be electric for commuting to make a fundamental difference. My wife and I both own used Corollas for commuting and the minivan stays in the driveway for weekends. I would gladly turn the Corollas into EVs or Poulsen hybrids If I could get a battery.

By the way, has everybody seen this at Greencarcongress?

Michelin to Commercialize Electric Active Wheel Technology

1 December 2008

Michelin’s Active Wheel integrates brake disk, electric motor and suspension motor.

Michelin’s Active Wheel, an in-wheel system comprising a brake, 30 kW (40 hp) electric traction motor and electric suspension motor system, will be used in the Heuliez-produced WILL electric vehicle (battery or fuel cell), due to be available to fleet owners in 2010. The WILL grew out of a concept developed by Heuliez and Michelin and features networked services innovated by Orange.