Axion Power Concentrator 229: April 20: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Lower rates is debatable, although you didn't say lower for whom.
All these assets wasting for utilities could mean very bad things for the less powerful rate payers. Not to mention their investors who use them for where we use to go for bonds/income planning.
Rich and powerful companies may be able to mitigate the rate paying effect on themselves and speed decentralization in the process. And of course some of them have a very different reliability computation than "the people."
Politics will, as it often does, rear its head here too.
Some state governments are leading, though where they're leading (and why) may not be clear ... or right in the long run. Yet it's also a regional/federal issue ... good luck with that!
It will not be a simple transformation as battles between better transmission infrastructure (which could mean lots of jobs [more politics] ) and storage (as it hopefully gets cheaper) play out. Watch what happens with Tres Amigas ... will it get off the ground, and will it make a big difference in these calculations?
$1.65B Deal Could Make Clovis, N.M., Hub of Nation's Power by: RICHARD WILLIAMSON Monday, November 26, 2012
Familiar to any Axion investor ...seems like a great idea, taking forever with delays you don't anticipate.
The Transmission ... Storage ... Decentralization story will be fascinating, and possibly painful to watch. Hopefully there will be some transparency in why decisions are made, but I wouldn't count on a lot of it.
"First of all, despite the name (I’ll come back to that), the company isn’t developing zinc-air battery technology, but rather zinc-iron redox flow battery technology. Its key benefits, according to Wilkins, are: “reliability, durability, safety, and low cost.”
...
haven’t had to go the megaphone-advertising, attract-investors route — the startup has been funded by a handful of wealthy individuals. ”We’ve been able to raise a lot of capital through private, high-net-worth individuals,” Hayes added. And I could hear the gratefulness in Hayes and Wilkins’ voices. They are well aware of the fatigue investors, experts in the field, and the broader public have from overhyped technologies that never make it to market.
...
The first, “easy” markets to penetrate are behind-the-meter microgrid generation, Wilkins notes. "
"The new ICs equipped with TI’s Impedance Track technology informs the user about battery health and charge with 95% accuracy. This information helps prevent sudden shutdown and in the process increases the longevity of the battery and end-equipment. Thus, TI’s new ICs may provide the requisite support for critical instrument"
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
BetaMax anyone?
Interesting comment (not verified) on the NY Times article linked from the Nextek one:
"It seems that you got many of the GM talking points about DC charging. That "Japanese standard" DC charging, called CHAdeMO, is actually the world standard, with 2500 chargers installed around the world, including almost 200 in the USA and 650 in Europe. There are 50,000 cars around the world using that standard. This year will add many, many more of both cars and charging stations.
This new competing standard that GM is introducing with the Spark EV will only be used in the USA. No other USA car manufacturer, Ford, Chrylser/Fiat, nor 100% electric car manufacturer Tesla have any cars planned or announced for this new standard. In the entire USA, there are four of these new standard charging stations at manufacturer's technical centers and exactly one in the public, north of Phoenix, Arizona.
Maybe GM can get the government of New York to endorse their competing standard, and the country will split with CHAdeMO on the west coast, and this new one in the east.
Germany will use a different standard, even though they like to call it the same name. Neither of the two "Frankenplug" standards will be used in Japan. CHAdeMO, however, is the same throughout the world.
Two other cars will be arriving in 2014 to the USA from offshore to use the GM promoted standard here, from BMW and VW. None of these cars are expected to sell in large numbers.
The two largest battery electric vehicle manufacturers, Nissan and Tesla, do not use the Frankenplug, nor do they have plans to."
"A DC vehicle charger, such as those found in Nextek-designed microgrids, can deliver 50 kilowatts, which will bring the Spark to 80 percent charge in just 20 minutes"
"At its 2013 Supplier Summit, CARQUEST Auto Parts presented East Penn Manufacturing
...
Each supplier is evaluated on several key areas: quality; driving sales; providing the right product, right place, right time and delivery of unparalleled customer service experience."
"When Ford Motor Co. announced in 2012 that its new hybrids would use lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel-metal hydride, many experts raised an eyebrow.
Lithium-ion, after all, had a reputation for high cost and unknown durability, largely because the technology was still comparatively new. In contrast, approximately 95 percent of full and mild hybrids up to that time had used nickel-metal hydride.
But Ford engineers now say their decision to use lithium-ion was based on accelerated lab tests showing lithium-ion would actually be more durable than nickel-metal hydride over a long lifetime. The tests, combined with mountains of field performance data on nickel-metal hydride, convinced them that they could predict the eight- or 10-year future of a chemistry that didn't even have five years worth of reliable field data.
"We are really confident that our Key Life Tests are mimicking the duty cycle of some of our most stringent and abusive customers," Kevin Layden, Ford's director of electrification programs and engineering, told Design News. "Given that, we feel lithium-ion will be better than nickel-metal hydride. We expect it to be absolutely stellar."
...
its second generation Fusion hybrid now uses lithium-ion. So does the C-Max hybrid, the Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid, the C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid, and the Focus Electric."
Long comment stream as well ...
Anyone know for sure who supplies their batteries?
Other battery experts welcomed the team's efforts but said it could prove hard to bring the technology to market.
"The challenge is to make a microbattery array that is robust enough and that does not have a single short circuit in the whole array via a process that can be scaled up cheaply," said Prof Clare Grey from the University of Cambridge's chemistry department.
University of Oxford's Prof Peter Edwards - an expert in inorganic chemistry and energy - also expressed doubts.
"This is a very exciting development which demonstrates that high power densities are achievable by such innovations," he said.
"The challenges are: scaling this up to manufacturing levels; developing a simpler fabrication route; and addressing safety issues.
"I'd want to know if these microbatteries would be more prone to the self-combustion issues that plagued lithium-cobalt oxide batteries which we've seen become an issue of concern with Boeing's Dreamliner jets."
Prof William King hopes to use the microbattery to power electronic equipment before the end of the year. Prof King acknowledged that safety was an issue due to the fact the current electrolyte was a combustible liquid.
He said that in the test equipment only a microscopic amount of the liquid was used, making the risk of an explosion negligible - but if it were scaled up to large sizes the danger could become "significant".
However, he added that he soon planned to switch to a safer polymer-based electrolyte to address the issue."
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
On the other hand, the "safety improvements" were required:
APS fire probed January 02, 2013
"Officials with Arizona Public Service Company are still investigating the cause of an electrical fire atop McMillan Mesa in late November that caused significant damage to a $3 million installation.
...
A spokesperson for APS said company officials are working closely with Electrovaya Inc., a lithium-ion battery manufacturing company, to determine the cause of the Nov. 26 fire.
The fire did not affect the nearby substation, as APS installed the equipment for the energy storage system away from the existing infrastructure.
Firefighters initially had let the blaze burn while they waited for an APS crew and then helped establish a path into the yard to allow utility workers to temporarily shut off power"
Electrovaya Announces Memorandum of Understanding With Major Asian Conglomerate
MOU envisages minority investment in Electrovaya, joint marketing arrangement, Joint Venture opportunities and business co-operation in all other areas including material sourcing and project financing
"The Company has focused on enhancing its technology by adding more safety features on all levels of the battery system. Key improvements in the battery system include:
Safety improvements: fire resistance, reduced flammability, anti-propagation
Wider operating temperature range at both hot and cold extremes
More efficient thermal management system in a smaller space"
Other improvements along key performance metrics"
Couple other "goodies" in the release.
Who knows ... you can snark, you can call it responsive, you can call it lipstick on a pig ... time will tell.
"Now consider what would happen if ALL of your commercial and industrial customers went down the same path. If ALL of them committed to using 20% less energy. And ALL of them decided to generate as much of the remaining 80% on their own as possible. And ALL of them demanded that what little they bought from the utility had to be 100% renewable."
"meant to be used in tandem with distributed solar installations with storage systems developed in Germany; the funds come with a maximum size requirement of 30 kilowatts. The batteries must have a warranty of at least seven years to gain the subsidy. Another requirement is that the PV installation sends 60 percent of its capacity to the grid over the lifetime of the plant. The battery subsidies will apply retroactively when connected to solar systems installed in 2013, according to reports
...
Presumably, the initial battery systems will be lead-acid technology, which might give way to lithium-ion or other emerging battery formulations as prices fall."
Axion Power Concentrator 229: April 20: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
All these assets wasting for utilities could mean very bad things for the less powerful rate payers. Not to mention their investors who use them for where we use to go for bonds/income planning.
Rich and powerful companies may be able to mitigate the rate paying effect on themselves and speed decentralization in the process. And of course some of them have a very different reliability computation than "the people."
Politics will, as it often does, rear its head here too.
Some state governments are leading, though where they're leading (and why) may not be clear ... or right in the long run. Yet it's also a regional/federal issue ... good luck with that!
It will not be a simple transformation as battles between better transmission infrastructure (which could mean lots of jobs [more politics] ) and storage (as it hopefully gets cheaper) play out. Watch what happens with Tres Amigas ... will it get off the ground, and will it make a big difference in these calculations?
$1.65B Deal Could Make Clovis, N.M., Hub of Nation's Power
by: RICHARD WILLIAMSON
Monday, November 26, 2012
http://bit.ly/ZKlOwO
Familiar to any Axion investor ...seems like a great idea, taking forever with delays you don't anticipate.
The Transmission ... Storage ... Decentralization story will be fascinating, and possibly painful to watch. Hopefully there will be some transparency in why decisions are made, but I wouldn't count on a lot of it.
Axion Power Concentrator 229: April 20: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
http://bit.ly/Zgms8U
"First of all, despite the name (I’ll come back to that), the company isn’t developing zinc-air battery technology, but rather zinc-iron redox flow battery technology. Its key benefits, according to Wilkins, are: “reliability, durability, safety, and low cost.”
...
haven’t had to go the megaphone-advertising, attract-investors route — the startup has been funded by a handful of wealthy individuals. ”We’ve been able to raise a lot of capital through private, high-net-worth individuals,” Hayes added. And I could hear the gratefulness in Hayes and Wilkins’ voices. They are well aware of the fatigue investors, experts in the field, and the broader public have from overhyped technologies that never make it to market.
...
The first, “easy” markets to penetrate are behind-the-meter microgrid generation, Wilkins notes. "
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
by Zacks Equity Research
April 18, 201
http://bit.ly/XUTRaw
"The new ICs equipped with TI’s Impedance Track technology informs the user about battery health and charge with 95% accuracy. This information helps prevent sudden shutdown and in the process increases the longevity of the battery and end-equipment. Thus, TI’s new ICs may provide the requisite support for critical instrument"
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
starting here: http://seekingalpha.co...
World's First All-Electric Car Ferry Powered by Electrovaya's Lithium Ion Superpolymer(R)2.0 Battery
Emerging Fast Growing Demand for Green Maritime Transportation
http://yhoo.it/Yyapjs
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Interesting comment (not verified) on the NY Times article linked from the Nextek one:
"It seems that you got many of the GM talking points about DC charging. That "Japanese standard" DC charging, called CHAdeMO, is actually the world standard, with 2500 chargers installed around the world, including almost 200 in the USA and 650 in Europe. There are 50,000 cars around the world using that standard. This year will add many, many more of both cars and charging stations.
This new competing standard that GM is introducing with the Spark EV will only be used in the USA. No other USA car manufacturer, Ford, Chrylser/Fiat, nor 100% electric car manufacturer Tesla have any cars planned or announced for this new standard. In the entire USA, there are four of these new standard charging stations at manufacturer's technical centers and exactly one in the public, north of Phoenix, Arizona.
Maybe GM can get the government of New York to endorse their competing standard, and the country will split with CHAdeMO on the west coast, and this new one in the east.
Germany will use a different standard, even though they like to call it the same name. Neither of the two "Frankenplug" standards will be used in Japan. CHAdeMO, however, is the same throughout the world.
Two other cars will be arriving in 2014 to the USA from offshore to use the GM promoted standard here, from BMW and VW. None of these cars are expected to sell in large numbers.
The two largest battery electric vehicle manufacturers, Nissan and Tesla, do not use the Frankenplug, nor do they have plans to."
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
http://bit.ly/XIUuS7
"A DC vehicle charger, such as those found in Nextek-designed microgrids, can deliver 50 kilowatts, which will bring the Spark to 80 percent charge in just 20 minutes"
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
CARQUEST Announces 2012 Supplier Of The Year
April 18, 2013
http://bit.ly/Z6pht7
"At its 2013 Supplier Summit, CARQUEST Auto Parts presented East Penn Manufacturing
...
Each supplier is evaluated on several key areas: quality; driving sales; providing the right product, right place, right time and delivery of unparalleled customer service experience."
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Why Ford Chose Lithium-Ion for 2013 Hybrids
Charles Murray, Senior Technical Editor, Electronics & Test
1/2/2013
http://bit.ly/VEu8MC
"When Ford Motor Co. announced in 2012 that its new hybrids would use lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel-metal hydride, many experts raised an eyebrow.
Lithium-ion, after all, had a reputation for high cost and unknown durability, largely because the technology was still comparatively new. In contrast, approximately 95 percent of full and mild hybrids up to that time had used nickel-metal hydride.
But Ford engineers now say their decision to use lithium-ion was based on accelerated lab tests showing lithium-ion would actually be more durable than nickel-metal hydride over a long lifetime. The tests, combined with mountains of field performance data on nickel-metal hydride, convinced them that they could predict the eight- or 10-year future of a chemistry that didn't even have five years worth of reliable field data.
"We are really confident that our Key Life Tests are mimicking the duty cycle of some of our most stringent and abusive customers," Kevin Layden, Ford's director of electrification programs and engineering, told Design News. "Given that, we feel lithium-ion will be better than nickel-metal hydride. We expect it to be absolutely stellar."
...
its second generation Fusion hybrid now uses lithium-ion. So does the C-Max hybrid, the Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid, the C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid, and the Focus Electric."
Long comment stream as well ...
Anyone know for sure who supplies their batteries?
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
http://bbc.in/10jg7wh
"However, safety issues still remain.
...
Other battery experts welcomed the team's efforts but said it could prove hard to bring the technology to market.
"The challenge is to make a microbattery array that is robust enough and that does not have a single short circuit in the whole array via a process that can be scaled up cheaply," said Prof Clare Grey from the University of Cambridge's chemistry department.
University of Oxford's Prof Peter Edwards - an expert in inorganic chemistry and energy - also expressed doubts.
"This is a very exciting development which demonstrates that high power densities are achievable by such innovations," he said.
"The challenges are: scaling this up to manufacturing levels; developing a simpler fabrication route; and addressing safety issues.
"I'd want to know if these microbatteries would be more prone to the self-combustion issues that plagued lithium-cobalt oxide batteries which we've seen become an issue of concern with Boeing's Dreamliner jets."
Prof William King hopes to use the microbattery to power electronic equipment before the end of the year. Prof King acknowledged that safety was an issue due to the fact the current electrolyte was a combustible liquid.
He said that in the test equipment only a microscopic amount of the liquid was used, making the risk of an explosion negligible - but if it were scaled up to large sizes the danger could become "significant".
However, he added that he soon planned to switch to a safer polymer-based electrolyte to address the issue."
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
APS fire probed
January 02, 2013
"Officials with Arizona Public Service Company are still investigating the cause of an electrical fire atop McMillan Mesa in late November that caused significant damage to a $3 million installation.
...
A spokesperson for APS said company officials are working closely with Electrovaya Inc., a lithium-ion battery manufacturing company, to determine the cause of the Nov. 26 fire.
The fire did not affect the nearby substation, as APS installed the equipment for the energy storage system away from the existing infrastructure.
Firefighters initially had let the blaze burn while they waited for an APS crew and then helped establish a path into the yard to allow utility workers to temporarily shut off power"
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
http://seekingalpha.co...
February 20, 2013 07:00 ET
Electrovaya Announces Memorandum of Understanding With Major Asian Conglomerate
MOU envisages minority investment in Electrovaya, joint marketing arrangement, Joint Venture opportunities and business co-operation in all other areas including material sourcing and project financing
http://mwne.ws/VXMo7h
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
April 17, 2013 07:00 ET
Electrovaya Launches the New Generation of Lithium Ion Battery Technology SuperPolymer® 2.0
http://mwne.ws/10hCi60
"The Company has focused on enhancing its technology by adding more safety features on all levels of the battery system. Key improvements in the battery system include:
Safety improvements: fire resistance, reduced flammability, anti-propagation
Wider operating temperature range at both hot and cold extremes
More efficient thermal management system in a smaller space"
Other improvements along key performance metrics"
Couple other "goodies" in the release.
Who knows ... you can snark, you can call it responsive, you can call it lipstick on a pig ... time will tell.
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Utilities: What Walmart's power plans say about your future (it's scary!)
4/17/2013
http://bit.ly/11wujhV
"Now consider what would happen if ALL of your commercial and industrial customers went down the same path. If ALL of them committed to using 20% less energy. And ALL of them decided to generate as much of the remaining 80% on their own as possible. And ALL of them demanded that what little they bought from the utility had to be 100% renewable."
Axion Power Concentrator 228: April 16: Axion Power On Panel At Energy Storage Economics 2.0 For New York City And Beyond [View instapost]
Germany on the Verge of a Subsidy for Energy Storage
Will cover battery systems connected to photovoltaic installations
ERIC WESOFF: APRIL 17, 2013
http://bit.ly/15mBbD3
"meant to be used in tandem with distributed solar installations with storage systems developed in Germany; the funds come with a maximum size requirement of 30 kilowatts. The batteries must have a warranty of at least seven years to gain the subsidy. Another requirement is that the PV installation sends 60 percent of its capacity to the grid over the lifetime of the plant. The battery subsidies will apply retroactively when connected to solar systems installed in 2013, according to reports
...
Presumably, the initial battery systems will be lead-acid technology, which might give way to lithium-ion or other emerging battery formulations as prices fall."