A Truly Magical (Organical) Soap

A Passion for Plug-ins

By John Addison (8/7/08). Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe spoke about his dream of building a car that could cross the United States on a single tank of gasoline. A plug-in hybrid running on E85 would potentially use only one gallon of gasoline every 500 miles in a blend with five gallons of ethanol, with the rest of the energy being fueled by electricity and biofuel.

In a recent article, I shared the stories of fleets and enthusiastic advocates and individuals who have converted their hybrids to be plug-in hybrids. Most people, however, will wait for vehicles that are designed from the ground-up to be plug-in hybrids. These vehicles will be warrantied by major manufacturers. Future plug-in hybrids will have larger electric motors, smaller engines, lithium battery stacks, and optimized control systems.

GM has announced plans for new plug-in sales by the end of 2010. Toyota is more likely to first deliver hundreds of fleet evaluation cars in 2010 and may follow with sales in 2011. Because both may start with limited numbers of vehicles and long wait times, it may be 2011 before you could get delivery of a new plug-in hybrid.

Toyota has put ten of its prototype plug-in hybrid into test applications in Japan and California. These test vehicles are Priuses with nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. Toyota is being a bit secretive about its new plug-in hybrid. The car is likely to be smaller and lighter than the Prius and use lithium batteries. By carrying less weight and more advanced batteries, Toyota can give the vehicle greater electric-only range, possibly 40 miles which would accommodate the daily range requirements of 78% of all U.S. drivers.

General Motors has made clear statements that it will start taking orders for the Chevy Volt from U.S. consumers by the end of 2010. Last December, I attended a General Motors showing of its Chevy Volt - an elegant four-door sedan shown in this photo which I took. One GM designer admitted that the Mercedes CLS gave some inspiration for the Volt. The Chevy Volt can be driven 40 miles in electric-mode using 16kW of lithium batteries, before its small one liter engine is engaged. 16kW is twelve times the storage of my Prius NiMH batteries.

The Volt uses an electric drive system with a small ICE in series that is only used to generate added electricity, not give power to the wheels. GM’s modular E-Flex propulsion could be adapted to various engines including diesel, fuel cells, and potentially battery-electric.

A hybrid battery might use a state of charge depletion window of twenty percent. A plug-in hybrid conversion kit might use a state of charge depletion window of 80 percent, and only be willing to warranty the battery for two or three years. GM will want to offer customers ten year warranties by having 150,000 mile target lives for their batteries. GM will likely use a state of charge depletion window of 50 percent with the Volt. While GM and Toyota see long-term market share advantage by being first to market with a plug-in, other auto makers are cautious.

Plug-in hybrids will face growing competition from electric vehicles, which have more limited range, but have no engine and therefore never require a fuel like gasoline or diesel. At times some of these EV makers have floated the idea of plug-ins in the future. Such comments have come from Nissan-Renault, Tesla, BYD, and others.

In this era of record gasoline prices, people are using many successful approaches to spend less for gas and cut emissions. A record number are cutting personal miles by taking part in employer flexwork programs, car pooling, using transit, and grouping trips. Households are maximizing use of their most fuel efficient vehicles while leaving the gas guzzler parked. More are buying fuel efficient cars. Plug-in hybrids will become a growing part of the solution to save gas and slow global warming.

Plug-in hybrids are destined to be a major success. According to the California Electric Transportation Coalition, if automakers begin producing plug-ins within the next few years, 2.5 million cars could be plug-ins by the year 2020, saving 11.5 million tons of CO2 and 1.14 billion gallons of gasoline each year.

What's the Buzz About Clean Tech and Other Green Stuff?

Blackout + 5

What is Cleantech?

Breakthrough in solar energy storage

The hydrogen economy is heralded in certain quarters as the green alternative to oil as an energy carrier. At present the vast majority of hydrogen generated is generated from natural gas. So right now a hydrogen fuel cell car, is most likely still ultimately reliant on a fossil fuel source, natural gas, to provide the hydrogen required. In the future of course the thesis is that we could use renewable energy sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and generate our hydrogen in that way, thus getting away entirely from fossil fuels.

There was an interesting development on this front reported in the media last week. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology University have developed an efficient method of using solar energy solar energy to produce hydrogen from water. Nothing new there I hear you say. But the breakthrough appears to be the use of some specific catalysts which make the process of splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen much more efficient and therefore viable.
There is no doubt catalysts can work some magic and if they have identified something that can do this here, they may well be on to something.

Daniel Nocera of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, said the discovery could remove one of the major obstacles that has prevented solar power from being taken up widely as a viable alternative to fossil fuels such as oil and gas.
"The discovery has enormous implications for the large-scale deployment of solar since it puts us on the doorstep of a cheap and easily manufactured storage mechanism. The ease of implementation means that this discovery will have legs," Dr. Nocera said.

So will solar panels and water solve our energy problems? Dr. Nocera thinks so stating that ‘sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems given that in one hour enough energy from the Sun strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for a year’.

Now there is another group out there, more of a fringe element perhaps, which is proposing the idea that you run your car on water. There is some interesting discourse and commentary on this in the green tech gazette. If you really want the hyperbola and sales pitch on this, check out ‘Run Your Car with Water’

The basic premise is that you can use electrical current from the alternator in your car to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then burned along with the gasoline which helps increase fuel efficiency. I have to say I am very skeptical about this. I am inclined to think there is no such thing as a free lunch. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that: In any reaction, energy cannot be created or destroyed. The energy to split the water has to come from somewhere and in your car the energy source is your gasoline. If you use the alternator in your car to run your A/C it consumes fuel, so too would running your alternator to generate hydrogen. In fact the new Toyota Prius will have solar panels on the roof to power the A/C for this very reason.
However ….. a caveat to this, may be if there is a synergistic or catalytic effect of co-burning hydrogen with gasoline which makes the whole process more efficient (at present your typical car is about 20% efficient, i.e. 20% of the energy in your gasoline tank goes into moving the vehicle, the rest is lost mostly as waste heat).

Also if you were able to use say for example the braking energy of the car to generate electricity and use this electricity to split hydrogen, THEN you would be taking advantage of wasted mechanical energy to produce that hydrogen fuel. Again, the Toyota Prius already takes advantage of this phenomenon to power the battery.


Paul O’Callaghan is the founding CEO of the Clean Tech development consultancy O2 Environmental. Paul is the author of numerous papers on environmental technologies and lectures on Environmental Protection technology at Kwantlen University College. He is chair of a technical committee on decentralized wastewater management in British Columbia, is a Director with Ionic Water Technologies and an industry expert reviewer for Sustainable Development Technology Canada.

Send some clean power with Green My Vino

Plug-in Drivers Get Charged

By John Addison (7/31/08). In 1971, a bright engineer, Dr. Andy Frank, was looking to the future. He knew that oil production had peaked in the U.S. and that cheap oil would later peak globally. He calculated how to get 100 miles per gallon, and then he built a hybrid-electric car.

A few years later there was a crisis in the Mideast. Oil tankers stopped moving through the Suez Canal. There were hour gas lines in the United States with engines fuming emissions and drivers fuming with anger. Gasoline was rationed. The crisis intensified Andy Frank’s commitment to build great vehicles with outstanding fuel economy. He has been on that mission ever since.

Andy Frank took me for a ride in a big GM Equinox SUV that got double the fuel economy of a conventional SUV because he converted it to a plug-in hybrid. The ride was the same as in any other SUV except it was more quiet. Fuel economy doubled because much of the time the vehicle ran on electricity with the engine off.

This vehicle was typical of many projects. The large engine was removed. An engine less-than half its size was put in its place. His team saved hundreds of extra pounds by replacing the standard GM transmission with a smaller and lighter continuously variable transmission. Even with an added electric motor and lithium batteries, the vehicle weighed less than a standard Equinox. The air conditioning and other accessories ran electrically, instead of placing mechanical demands on a large engine. Converted to be powered electrically, the air conditioning could run with the engine off.

Andy Frank is the father of plug-in hybrids. His students at U. C. Davis have gone on to be some of the brightest minds in automotive design and transportation management. Over the past 15 years, he and his students have built over ten different plug-in hybrids. They have ranged from sport cars to full-sized SUVs. Typically these PHEV can go over 40 miles (64km) in electric-only range and weigh no more than their standard counterparts. U. C. Davis Team Fate Vehicles

The idea of plugging-in is not new. We are in the habit of recharging our mobile phone every night. Soon, we may also be recharging our vehicle every night. Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) look and drive like regular hybrids. They have a large battery pack that captures braking and engine-generated energy. Like hybrids they have computer chips that decide when to run only the electric motor, using no gas, when to run the gasoline engine, and when to run both. Many plug-in hybrids are programmed to run on only electricity for ten to forty miles before engaging the engine. Heavy duty vehicles, and eventually some passenger cars, will use more efficient diesel engines, not gasoline.

Andy Frank was all smiles as a crowd of 600 applauded at the Plug-in 2008 Conference in San Jose, California, last week. Many in the crowd now drive plug-in hybrids as part of their fleet demonstration programs. A number in the crowd had converted their personal Toyota Priuses or Ford Escape Hybrids. This was a crowd of plug-in converts.

Some visionary fleet managers have accelerated the development of plug-in hybrids. Rather than wait years for major vehicle manufacturers to offer plug-ins, these fleets have contracted for conversions then used their own maintenance teams to keep the experimental vehicles running. For example, Google is getting 93 miles per gallon (mpg) with its converted plug-in Priuses, over double the 48 mpg of its normal Priuses. Google uses solar power to charge the cars. Google’s RechargeIT.org

In Southern California, 24 million people live in an area where the mountains trap smog and damage people’s lungs. South Coast Air Quality Management District plans to reduce emissions by contracting the conversion to plug-in of 10 Priuses, 20 Ford Escape Hybrids, and several Daimler Sprinter Vans. The vehicles are being put into a variety of fleets with hopes that "a thousand flowers will bloom."

Fleets are piloting plug-in conversions around the country. These fleets include New York City, the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, King and Chelan County Counties in Washington, Minneapolis and the City of Santa Monica.

Electric utilities have started a variety of plug-in hybrid pilot projects involving everything from cars to large trouble trucks. These utilities include Southern California Edison, Austin Energy, Duke Energy, Wisconsin Power, and Pacific Gas and Electric to name a few. At a time when there are desperate discussions about being more dependent on oil, including taking ten years to get oil from environmentally sensitive areas, electric utilities are coming to the rescue by increasingly powering our vehicles.

Because some plug-ins will go up to 40 miles in electric mode at slower speeds, it is possible to get over 100 miles per gallon. With short trips in cold weather, little improvement might be seen. Driving on freeways without recharging will not help. However, for most driving cycles, plug-ins can dramatically reduce the need for expensive gasoline fill-ups.

You can get over 100 miles per gallon (mpg) by either adding a kit to an existing hybrid, or by waiting until late 2010 to order a new car from the car makers that will be discussed in next week’s article. Due to probable wait lists, it may be three years before individuals can get delivery of plug-ins from car makers. If you are now getting only 20 mpg, getting 100 mpg would cut your gasoline bill 80%. Over the next few years, you will have a growing number of choices of plug-in hybrids.

Plug-In Supply unveiled its $4,995 Conversion Kit at the Plug-in 2008 Conference. The lead acid (PbA) conversion kit, based on the CalCars Open Source design, converts a Prius into a plug-in hybrid with an all-electric range of up to 15 miles if kept to a maximum of 52 mph. At freeway speed the gasoline engine will be engaged. Green Car Congress Article

Most fleets and people who convert prefer to deal with a system integrator, garage, or mechanic that is experienced with plug-in conversions and can maintain the vehicles. For example, Luscious Garage has converted about 20 vehicles. A garage might charge $2,000 or more to install a plug-in kit.

A123 Hymotion is establishing certified conversion centers throughout the nation so that people can convert their Toyota Priuses to plug-in hybrids for $9,995 per car. The conversion kit includes interfacing to the Prius computer that controls hybrid operation, interfacing with existing Prius NiMH battery, and includes a 5kWh A123 lithium battery.

Many early converts are enthusiastic about their plug-in hybrids. They report that electricity is only costing the equivalent of 75 cents per gallon, compared to over $4 per gallon of gasoline. If you plan to convert a hybrid to a plug-in, be sure that you have a safe and convenient place for recharging at home, work, or other location. For most, a 110 volt garage line will be the best option.

CalCars.org, a leading plug-in non-profit group, has been a major force in the growth of plug-in hybrids. Technical guru, Ron Gremban converted a Prius in 2004, and now contributes in many areas including the development of an Open Source plug-in platform. CalCars Founder Felix Kramer has patiently nurtured the expanding support of electric vehicle groups, environmental groups, media, legislatures, and auto makers. He has made “plug-in” a household name. There are a growing number of batteries, plug-in conversion kits, and garages for plug-in conversions. CalCars summarizes offerings and provides links.

In California, Sven Thesen converted his family's Prius to a plug-in with help from CalCars.org. He and his wife love it, and share the plug-in Prius as their only vehicle. For them, it was not about saving money, rather it was to protect the future for their young daughters and everyone’s children. In Boston, students Zoë and Melissa converted because they see conventional cars as bad for the environment. In Texas, Jim Philippi replaced his 12 mpg Yukon with a converted plug-in that gets over 100 mpg. He buys renewable energy credits to use wind power for the plug-in charging. See Videos and Read about over 100 Plug-in Drivers

There is some truth to the old adage that you can recognize the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. Early conversions have sometimes produced problems and downtime. The conversions typically add an expensive second battery pack to the vehicle’s existing nickel metal hydride battery pack. To make the plug-in hybrid controls work, the manufacturer’s control system must be “fooled” with new input signals.

The added battery pack often displaces the Prius spare tire. In the Escape, a larger battery pack is often placed in the rear cargo area, behind the passengers seating in the rear seat. Battery life is a function of the state of charge. In hybrids, auto makers only use a narrow range of charging and discharging, so that they can warranty batteries for up to ten years. In plug-in hybrids, batteries are usually deeply discharged, reducing battery life. Kits may only warranty the expensive batteries for up to three years.

If anything goes wrong, auto makers like Toyota and Ford, may claim that the conversion created the problem and that their warranty is void. Although the car owner may have legal recourse, many are leery of warranty issues.

Even if vehicle lifecycle operating costs are higher with plug-in conversions and warranties limited, these issues have not stopped plug-in hybrid enthusiasts who strongly feel that we cannot wait for the big auto makers. They want rapid adoption of solutions to address global warming and oil addiction to end now. These early drivers of plug-in hybrids are leading the way -- at 100 miles per gallon.

I returned from the conference to learn that my wife was spending $2,000 for new drapes. This was good news, for I assumed that it would therefore be no problem for me to spend $24,000 on a new Prius, less a nice trade-in for our 2002 model, and another $10,000 to convert it to a plug-in. An interesting discussion ensued.

We both want to save gas and take some leadership in making the future better, but $25,000+ (after trade-in) is a lot of money, especially in this economy. If the battery is dead in three years, that could be another $10,000, or less if kit providers offer extended warranties. Giving up the spare tire space is another concern. At least three times in my travels, I have needed to put on the emergency spare.

Like many, we are more likely to wait until the end of 2010, hoping for several electric vehicle and plug-in offerings for auto makers. These vehicles will be designed to be plug-ins, with smaller engines, only one lithium battery pack, better drive systems, and balanced vehicle weight. These new offerings will be discussed in my next article.

We can all be thankful for those who refuse to wait, often concerned with climate and energy security issues. There are over 200 converted plug-in hybrids now on the road. One year from now, there may be over 1,000 plug-in hybrids of all shapes and sizes in use.

By the end of 2010, we may be able to start buying plug-in hybrids from major auto makers. Once cars designed from the ground-up to be plug-ins are made in volume, prices differentials will drop to a fraction of the current charge of converted hybrids. In a few years, plug-ins, with long battery warranties may cost less than $5,000 more than their hybrid counterparts.

Plug-in hybrids will succeed because of Andy Frank and the early leaders who converted their vehicles to use more electricity and less petroleum. We will all benefit from the reduced gasoline use and cleaner air that started with the courageous pioneering of the plug-in converts.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences.

Green, a Dead End For Social Networks?

'Green social networks are popping all over the place. Frankly, I have stopped keeping track. They want us to become engaged, and to change our behaviors, fast. They claim to have all kind of tools to help us accomplish the impossible. How come then, I am not more enthused? I, out of all people, who spend so much time on the topic, should be an easy sell.

Here is what I think is missing from all these sites. A lack of understanding of basic psychology, and of the way real people change their behaviors. I do not decide ‘I want to be green’, and ask for someone to whip me into shape. Actually, I may, but the truth is, that kind of intention is not sustainable. I do not need to add yet another thing on my already long to-do list. I want solutions to my everyday problems, as in more convenient, cheaper, smarter.'

Two months later, with the gas, food, and mortgage crisis hitting the American people on multiple fronts, more than ever is it important for green social network entrepreneurs to revise their strategies. And to come down from their lofty green goals, and start addressing Josephine's pain, as related here in a recent New York Times article:

'Josephine Cage, who fillets fish, said her 30-mile commute from Tchula to Isola in her 1998 Ford Escort four days a week is costing her $200 a month, or nearly 20 percent of her pay. “I make it by the grace of God,” she said, and also by replacing meat at supper with soups and green beans and broccoli. She fills her car a little bit every day, because “I can’t afford to fill it up. Whatever money I have, I put it in.”'

Josephine, and a growing group of citizens, from all socio-economic stratas, have much to say to social entrepreneurs. 'Grab us where we are hurting the most, and offer us tools that we really need, not just 'nice to have' green networks.' It may very well be, that the best way to engage users into adopting greener behaviors, is not through a direct green message. But rather, by helping them ease the pinch in their pocketbooks.

I am curious, what is your experience with green social networks, both from a personal and a professional standpoints? Do you share my views? Which strategies do you suggest for current and future green social networks?

Marguerite Manteau-Rao is a green blogger and marketing consultant on sustainability and social media issues. Her blog, La Marguerite, focuses on behavioral solutions to climate change and other global sustainability issues.

Is the U.S. Really Behind?

It's somewhat fashionable to bash the United States in terms of its energy/environmental policies and progress. But, is the rest of the world really that far ahead?

This article in Sustainable Facility magazine suggests that maybe Europe isn't quite as green as it fancies itself to be.

Meanwhile, this story points out that Tokyo citizens -- living only a few hundred kilometers from Kyoto itself -- aren't terribly committed to taking actions that will reduce emissions.

I'm certainly not going to dispute that Americans are energy gluttons, and that our current non-position on climate change is untenable. However, before we undertake a fit of self-flaggelation, it's worth reflecting upon the point that fundamentally solving our environmental and energy challenges is going to be much harder than merely talking about solving the challenges -- as perhaps the rest of the world may be finding out all too starkly.

Richard T. Stuebi is the BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, and is also the Founder and President of NextWave Energy, Inc.

Key sustainable energy indices rise, LED-Lighting suffers (week ending 8/1)