SmartEnergyViews

Toyota Prius (Prii?) are hard to find. There are currently no new Prius models on the lots of any Toyota dealer in our area (East Tennessee).

Toyota can't make them fast enough. From the Detroit Free Press

Toyota has also struggled this year to produce enough small cars and Prius hybrids to keep up with customer demand. Sales of the Prius, Toyota’s best selling hybrid, declined 8% in July to 14,785.

Batteries are the critical path. From FTD.de

Waiting lists for Priuses have expanded sharply as demand outstrips the Japanese carmaker's capacity to build the petrol-electric hybrid vehicles. Toyota - normally a paragon of supply-chain management - admits to "bottlenecks", particularly in batteries, which have slowed turnover even as drivers clamour for more fuel-efficient cars.

This has created a hot market for used Prius:

According to data released by the Power Information Network, the average used Prius with 8,000 miles on the odometer is selling for $1,300 over the suggested retail price of a new one. What’s more, even a Prius with 22,000 miles sells for just $276 less than a brand new one.

Glad we got ours last year, just in time to get the tax credit (which has now expired):

(Sorry, ours is not for sale.)

Vancouver BC company Day4 Energy says they have developed a design and manufacturing process for a new line of solar cells with efficiency up to 19%. The company says the new design also lowers production costs by up to 25% using existing manufacturing infrastructure.

Sanyo Electric Company of Japan says they have developed new technology that boosts their solar cell efficiency to 23%. It is still in the research phase, but the company expects to begin mass production of 22% or better efficiency solar cells in 2010.

IC Corporation manufactures a line of diesel electric hybrid school buses and "people mover" buses.

There are two versions of the school bus. The "charge sustaining" type uses a lead-acid battery based electric motor along with the diesel engine for a 20% to 50% improvement in mileage. The "charge depletion" is a "plug-in" hybrid that uses lithium-ion batteries and achieves up to 70% improvement during the first 70 miles of a route, falling back to 20% to 50% improvement over the rest of the run.

One of their people mover hybrids was recently placed on loan to the Denali National Park in Alaska for testing.

Fulcrum BioEnergy, Inc. announced plans to build one of the first commercial-scale production facilities for converting municipal solid waste to ethanol.

The $120 million plant will begin operations in early 2010 at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center in Nevada. It is expected to produce 10.5 million gallons of ethanol per year from 90,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste including household garbage.

Fulcrum's CEO E. James Macias says "Converting garbage waste into a clean, renewable fuel for cars has profound social and environmental benefits. It will help mitigate our dependence on imported oil, lower the price of gasoline, reduce the amount of waste landfilled, lower greenhouse gases and create a new industry of jobs and economic growth. Unlike conventional ethanol technology, which uses corn and other agricultural feedstock, our plant will utilize processed municipal solid waste which will not affect the cost or availability of our nation's food supply."

The Sierra BioFuels plant will utilize gasification technology licensed from Integrated Environmental Technologies and a licensed proprietary catalytic technology for converting synthesis gas to ethanol jointly developed by Nipawin Biomass Ethanol New Generation Co-operative Ltd. and Saskatchewan Research Council. The process is expected to be environmentally benign, utilizing a gasification process that does not create significant levels of emissions like waste-to-energy incineration technology.

The process converts post-recycled organic waste, and therefore does not compete or interfere with communities' established recycling programs but does reduce landfill volumes and lower waste disposal costs.

Part of the company's business model involves working directly with solid waste disposal companies for access to fixed-price, low or
zero-cost solid waste.

Toyota announced this week that they will begin U.S. manufacturing of the Prius at their new plant in Blue Springs Mississippi starting in 2010. The plant was originally slated to build Highlander Hybrids, but that production will be moved to Indiana as large pickup production there is scaled back and moved to Texas.

In related news, demand for hybrids is so high that many buyers are on waiting lists.

Federal tax credits that cover up to 30% of the cost of installing solar electric systems for businesses and up to $2000 for residential installations are set to expire on December 31st.

According to the Sacramento Business Journal, companies in the industry are concerned about new business next year, and some are looking overseas. :

"Everybody’s making contingency plans," said Steve Kircher, chief executive officer of Solar Power Inc. in Roseville. "I think you’re going to see cutbacks and layoffs in the construction industry. We’re not out soliciting new business."

A bill to renew the credits is stalled in Congress.

The Calgary Herald reports that EEStor is "expected to release the results of independent third-party testing" of it's capacitor based battery system "sometime over the next several weeks." According to the article, EEStor says the system will be "commercially ready within six months."

RELATED:

• Battery technology breakthrough?

• CityZENN: Hope or hype?

According to Car Central in Australia, Volkswagen is bringing a concept car to market that travels 100KM (62 miles) on 1L (.26 gallons) of fuel. That works out to about 234MPG.

The 300CC one cylinder diesel engine car is built using lightweight materials (carbon or possibly magnesium according to some reports) and weighs only 300KG (660LBS). According to the report, Volkswagen only plans to make about 1000 per year, and the cost will be $20K-$30K EUR (approx. $31K-$47K USD).

Florida Power & Light has announced plans for three new solar energy centers, one of which "will provide 25 megawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity, making it the world’s largest photovoltaic solar facility".

The first project should begin in 2008. The other two projects will begin in 2009. Together, the three sites will prevent the release of nearly 3.5 million tons of greenhouses gases over the life of the projects, which is the equivalent of removing 25,000 cars from the road per year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. FPL is the world's number one producer of solar energy and the nation's top producer of wind power.

Then, on a smaller scale, a couple living in The Villages, in Central Florida, installed 24 solar panels on the roof of their house. They now have monthly electric bills "as low as $3". State of Florida and federal tax incentives dropped the cost of this couples' solar installation nearly in half, from $45,000 to $23,000.

Wired has a cool story about an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who is working on a prototype plug-in hybrid that can go 50 miles on a charge, gets 100MPG, and has a solar panel on the roof that will power the car for five miles.

The car is a converted Toyota Prius, with advanced lithium-ion batteries. It's charged using an external solar array. One of their areas of research is li-ion battery efficiency and thermal management.

According to Business Week, Hertz has added 3400 Prius cars to their "Green Collection," and Enterprise has 4000 hybrids and 450,000 cars that get more than 28MPG.

But, car rental companies say people on vacation with lots of luggage still prefer larger vehicles and SUVs.

EERE News: Solar Power Could Provide 10% of U.S. Electricity by 2025

Solar energy currently provides less than 0.1% of the electricity generated in the United States, but a new report finds that solar power's contribution could grow to 10% of the nation's power needs by 2025. The report, prepared by research and publishing firm Clean Edge and the nonprofit Co-op America, projects nearly 2% of the nation's electricity coming from concentrating solar power systems, while solar photovoltaic systems will provide more than 8% of the nation's electricity. Those figures correlate to nearly 50,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic systems and more than 6,600 megawatts of concentrating solar power.

As noted in the report, solar power has been expanding rapidly in the past 8 years, growing at an average pace of 40% per year. The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has also been dropping, while electricity generated from fossil fuels is becoming more expensive. As a result, the report projects that solar power will reach cost parity with conventional power sources in many U.S. markets by 2015. But to reach the 10% goal, solar photovoltaic companies will also need to streamline installations and make solar power a "plug-and-play" technology, that is, it must be simple and straightforward to buy the components of the system, connect them together, and connect the system to the power grid.

The report also places some of the responsibility with electric utilities, which will need to take advantage of the benefits of solar power, incorporate it into future "smart grid" technologies, and create new business models for building solar power capacity. The report also calls for establishing long-term extensions of today's investment and production tax credits, creating open standards for connecting solar power systems to the grid, and giving utilities the ability to include solar power in their rate base.

Clean Edge press release here, full report here.

A joint pilot project between the University of Tennessee and Mascoma Corp. to make switchgrass ethanol has been scaled back. and Mascoma is dropping out as a partner but will provide technology.

According to the news report, the company pulled out because of a soft market for ethanol, and the university says their "previous expectations were unrealistic." The project was previously awarded a $26 million DOE grant.

Mascoma, which recently got equity funding from GM, says they have patented microorganisms that break down cellulosic biomass into ethanol.

They say they have raised $61 million in third-round funding, including $10 million in equity funding from Marathon Oil and the $26 million DOE grant with U.T.

Just editorializing, but maybe U.T. got hooked up with a company in the IPO business instead of the biofuels business?

MIT: Harnessing solar energy like plants do

Much more chemical research will be needed to make solar energy technologically and economically viable. When plants photosynthesize, they produce high-energy sugars such as glucose; the chemists aim to produce hydrogen fuel or hydrocarbons such as methanol.

When sunlight strikes the artificial photosynthesis device, high-energy photons will split water into hydrogen and oxygen. One of the researchers' biggest challenges is developing inexpensive catalysts that can split water efficiently. Platinum does the job, but it is very rare and expensive, so the researchers are focusing on more abundant metals, such as iron, cobalt, nickel and manganese.

With hydrogen fuel cells, the need for hydrocarbon fuels isn't clear, at least to me. Maybe it has to do with the distribution infrastructure we already have in place? With that, maybe the idea is that the ability to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels would result in more immediate, short-term benefit?

Ford Motor Co. EVP Mark Fields discussed Ford's hybrid and plug-in electric plans at a recent industry conference. He noted that Ford is launching hybrid versions of its Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan autos later this year and discussed some of the challenges in bringing a PEHV to market.

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According to a Prius Chat newsletter, the "Next Generation Prius will be unveiled at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show in January. The rumor around Toyota dealerships is that the Gen III Prius will be on sale in April 2009."

Edmunds Auto Observer speculates on updates which include 50 more horsepower and improved gas mileage. They suggest plug-in and Li-Ion options won't be available until Gen 3.1 in 2010.

Nissan has announced it will invest $115 million in a joint venture with NEC to mass produce lithium-ion batteries, a key component for the next generation of plug-in hybrid and plug-in electric cars. Production is set to begin in 2009, with an initial capacity of 13,000 batteries per year and eventually 65,000 per year.

Lithium-ion batteries have higher energy density which allows for smaller, lighter, higher-capacity batteries.

Toyota was planning to introduce lithium-ion batteries in the next generation Prius, but safety concerns have delayed that for one or two more model years according to industry analysts.

GM is said to have a lithium-ion battery ready for their Volt plug-in electric car. Whoever gets there first will get a jump on the next generation of hybrids and plug-ins.

GM had a big, green, full page ad in the Sunday New York Times entitled "We need to talk." It touts their commitment to the environment and energy efficiency.

It says that because they have a large environmental footprint they have an obligation to change. They say the are one of the leading users of renewable energy, that they have reduced CO2 emissions at their facilities by 80% since 1990, that they have 14 facilities that send no waste from production operations to landfills.

So far so good.

But then they say "there is no greater proof of our commitment to change than the ongoing development of gas-friendly to gas-free fuel solutions by our Chevrolet brand" and that they are "making vehicles with better fuel efficiency than ever before."

Really?

Read more...

From an interesting article in Mother Earth News.

Global non-renewable energy resources in terawatt/hours:

• Coal: 6,000,000
• Natural Gas: 1,500,000
• Uranium 235: 1,500,000
• Oil: 1,000,000
• Tar Sands: 800,000
• Total: 10,800,000

Global annual renewable energy sources in terawatt/hours:

• Direct Solar Radiation: 350,000,000
• Wind: 200,000
• Ocean/Thermal: 100,000
• Biofuels: 50,000
• Geothermal: 10,000
• Tidal/Wave: 5,000

According to the article, total world energy consumption in 2004 was 130,971 terawatt hours, and is projected to grow to 205,686 terawatt hours by 2030.

The article also says:

• "The total amount of energy produced by burning all the coal on the planet would only be equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth every six days."

• "The entire recoverable world oil reserve is equivalent to the solar energy that strikes the Earth in one day."

• "The recoverable world reserve of fissionable uranium is equivalent to less than 1 1/2 days of the energy striking the Earth from the nuclear reaction of the sun."

I haven't been able to verify any of the author's numbers, but if they are even close it boggles the mind. You should read the whole article, and ask why we aren't seriously pursuing a distributed solar economy.

A secretive Austin Texas company claims to have invented a solid state battery that will make current electro-chemical batteries and the internal combustion engine obsolete. Skeptics say it is beyond any known technology and compared it to "alchemy."

According to news reports, batteries based on EEStor's ultracapacitor technology would enable you to plug in your electric car for five minutes and drive 500 miles on the charge. It could also be used to store power from solar panels and for "flash" charging of devices such as laptops and cellphones.

A small electric car company, ZENN Motors, has licensed the technology and expects to use it in a short-range, low-speed vehicle later this year.

On the web:

• EEStor Wikipedia

• EEStor Patent 7,033,406

• ZENN Motor Company

Like most states in the South, Florida is heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy, with 80% of its electrical generating capacity based on non-renewable sources that pollute the environment.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Florida gets 37% of its power from coal, 21% from natural gas, and 22% from petroleum. Clean, renewable sources (wind, geothermal, biomass, and solar) represent only about 3% of Florida's power generating capacity, and the rest (18%) comes from nuclear power plants.

With growing political and environmental opposition to fossil fuel energy sources (not to mention the fact that they will eventually run out), and concerns about the safety and cost of nuclear power, what are the alternatives?

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News reports indicate that milk and dairy prices will increase dramatically because the price of corn is going up due to the demand for corn to make ethanol. (Yes, our economy is a tangled web!)

But even more serious is talk of a tequila shortage because Mexican farmers are planting corn instead of agave due to the demand for ethanol.

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The 2007 Detroit Auto Show gets underway this week. I was looking forward to the new model announcements, hopefully some hybrids or other super-efficient cars. But no. Instead we get some new monster trucks and more of the same old same old.

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