Subscribe
Recent Posts
Eyjafjallajoekull and all that
Sustainability in the Service Sector - video
Are you part of the problem...
Book Review: Confessions of a Radical Industrialis...
We're coming over all web 2.0...
Archives
News & Views From the Front Line
Friday, 22 January 2010
Better Place EV Battery Swap
While doing some background research on new low carbon business opportunities for The Green Executive, I came across a demonstration video for Better Place's automatic electric vehicle battery swap technology. The idea is that instead of having to wait a long time to charge your batteries, you simply swap your depleted battery pack for a charged one. This condenses recharge hours into a couple of minutes (it's slightly sped up in the video).
The business model will mean EV owners don't actually own the batteries, rather that they purchase a power service instead - a neat example of a product service system. It is exactly this sort of innovation which will thrive in a low carbon economy.
Labels: batteries, electric vehicles
# posted by Gareth Kane : 14:30
0 Comments
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Smart Grids for Idiots
This morning I was reading the usual batch of letters to my local paper on how terrible renewable energy is, how global warming is a myth, blah blah blah - the usual reheated zombie arguments. And this morning the old myth that renewables need 100% backup from fossil fuels reared its ugly head once again.After reading The Solar Economy during the summer, I've become fascinated with how a solar powered economy would work in practice. I got an hint of how this works when I visited EAE Ltd this summer. They use power from their wind turbine directly by day and then at night use it to charge their electric forklift truck. This is a very simple form of energy management that spreads the peak of consumption across 24 hours - using the forklift battery to capture renewable energy when it is available for use during the day.
A smart grid would do this on a much larger scale. The grid would link lots of generators, large and small, using a range of generation technology - microhydro, solar PV, wind, biomass CHP etc - with lots of users - commercial, residential and electric vehicle owners. Some of those users would also have storage facilities - most notably electric vehicle owners. The smart bit of the grid would control the balance between generation, storage and use and manage the flow of money between them. When supply exceeded demand, the price per unit would drop and the storage facilities would charge up. When demand exceeded supply, those owners of storage facilities could opt to sell energy back to the grid at a premium. This optimisation of supply and demand would lower peak demand, so any backup required would only have to cover a much lower essential demand.
There are interesting proposals for how this could work in practice. You could be driving your electric car and the energy management system would advise you to charge up in the next hour at a certain charging point (identified by GPS) as prices were low. Later you could be sat at your desk at work and receive a text from your car outside advising you to sell some of its stored energy while prices were high, leaving enough charge to get home. Some estimate that, by selling such services to the grid, electric vehicles could become a source of income rather than a drain on your resources.
Smart!
Labels: electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart grids
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:17
0 Comments
Friday, 11 September 2009
Brrrm, brrrm (or not as the case may be...)
On Wednesday I was in Bedford at the Low Carbon Vehicle exhibition as part of the work we're doing with Innovation Scout to identify business opportunities in the low carbon economy. There was a real buzz about the place and some extraordinary vehicles including a hydrogen powered Morgan, and, getting most attention, the £87,000 electric sportscar, the Tesla. According to the nice lady on the stand, they've sold 1200 of these worldwide and are moving into profit.
I was working unfortunately and couldn't get a test drive. We were picking experts' brains to spot gaps in the market - OK if you're going to have electric cars, who is going to maintain them? Who provides the breakdown service? Who trains the emergency services in not getting an electric shock when they attend a road traffic accident involving an electric vehicle? While some experts could let this kind of idea flow freely, it was interesting how many found it difficult to think around their area of expertise. The conclusion was that there were dozens of opportunities around any one emerging technology for anyone with entrepreneurial spirit and, importantly, an inquisitive mind. Many of these are essential enabling products and services for the core product (the car).
Yesterday I interviewed Vic Morgan, founder of the Ethical Superstore for the Green Executive (my second book). His view is that if you take an ethical/green stance, you have to overcompensate with commercial attitude. He finds it easier to employ people with a passion for commerce and then interest them in the ethics later rather than the other way around.
Both these insights chime with the first secret of the Three Secrets of Green Business:
"Treat the environmental agenda as an opportunity, not a threat. Grasp it with both hands but, whatever you do, don’t forget you are still running a business."
Labels: electric vehicles, green business, innovation, tesla
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:25
0 Comments
Friday, 4 September 2009
Has hydrogen had its day?
I've been doing some research into the current stage of the hydrogen economy for Innovation Scout. Back in the late 90s and early 00s, hydrogen was the fuel of future - and on Teesside, where I was working in that period, it was held up as the saviour of the chemical industry. In fact, any project that might get in the way of the march of hydrogen was simply brushed aside (including one of mine, but I'm not bitter. Well, not much).But then what? Some major motor manufacturers brought forward concept cars and there were a number of fuel cell systems installed in buildings and road signs. But not much more has progressed as technical and economic issues have hindered the commercialisation of the technology. President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu pulled the plug on hydrogen research and everybody seems to be focussed on the electric vehicle. Honda alone seems to have stuck with the hydrogen model with its FCX Clarity model (lauded by the Top Gear petrolheads) and there the open-source Riversimple hydrogen car was launched this summer. The latter will be leased in cities where the hydrogen infrastructure is provided by industrial gas giant BOC.
So there may be life in hydrogen yet, the only question is, with huge distribution networks required for both, can it compete with the upsurge in interest in electric vehicles? Looks like a classic battle along the lines of Betamax/VHS and, like that videotape war, it will probably won on entrepreneurial ability rather than technical prowess.
BTW, if you are interested in the current state of affairs in the electric car industry, check out this interesting BBC Radio 4 programme which includes an interview with Shai Agassi who is launching a distributed network of charging points and automatic battery exchanges.
Labels: cars, electric vehicles, hydrogen economy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:43
0 Comments
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Low carbon strategies - but are they too little, too late?
The UK Government is launching a raft of strategies today: Low Carbon Transition Plan, a Renewable Energy Strategy and the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy. I'll be reviewing them and posting a summary later in the week.In the meantime, wind turbine manufacturer Vesta is closing its UK plant to concentrate production in China, Denmark and Germany (the latter two having feed-in legislation for renewable energy). The Government claims that the UK will have a booming low carbon sector look a bit flimsy if they're going to let this happen. Yesterday I interviewed Roy Stanley, Chairman of the Tanfield Group which owns the world's oldest electric vehicle manufacturer, Smith's (first model 1935, would you believe?). What struck me about our conversation was how a relatively modest increase in orders would drive down the supply chain costs very quickly and make the vehicles much more competitive on capital costs (they are cheaper on through life costs already). Tax breaks and public sector procurement could make this happen very quickly and create a snowball effect.
So, I'd like to see a bit less strategy and quite a lot more action. Tax breaks, public procurement and feed-in legislation would go a long way to creating sustainable markets for the low carbon industry and then we'd see a boom. We shall wait and see...
Labels: electric vehicles, feed-in tariff, low carbon economy, renewable energy
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:56
0 Comments
Friday, 29 May 2009
Mitsubishi i MiEV hits the UK
This week I got to drive one of the first two Mitsubishi i MiEV plug-in electric cars in the UK. Like most electric passenger vehicles it is a sharp mover and a sharp stopper too as the regenerative braking kicks in, charging the batteries again.
According to Mitsubishi, its range is 100 miles on a full charge and its carbon emissions are about 30% of a petrol equivalent (presumably using the carbon intensity of Japanese electricity as a guide). A quick charge will take it to 80% of battery capacity in 30 minutes, but a full standard charge takes 7 hours.
This is quite a breakthrough - an electric car that you could imagine being seen (but not heard) in. The range would be a bit limiting for me - I'd like to see an extra 50 miles there as I often do a 80-100 mile round trip to clients on Teesside and I would want a bit of headroom in case of traffic problems etc. Tesla, makers of the impressive electric sports car, are working on a 300 mile saloon, which would be brilliant.
It is clear that electric cars are starting to evolve quickly and it will be very interesting to see how quickly they become a mainstream choice.
Labels: carbon emissions, electric vehicles, mitsubishi miev, tesla
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:05
0 Comments
Monday, 20 April 2009
Electric cars are NOT zero emissions...
... unless you can guarantee the electricity comes from a 100% renewable source.It frustrates me that much of the recent press coverage describes electric vehicles as zero-carbon as they are obviously not - their carbon performance should be rated as the average emissions from the mains electricity of that particular country. "Zero-emissions" is just greenwash and it should stop now before the inevitable backlash.
My second frustration is trying to get an accurate estimation of what those emissions are. Just this weekend I have seen quotes suggesting that they are roughly the same as the petrol equivalent, that they are 40% more efficient and in one case (the Tesla sports car) just 25% of a small petrol sports car. Not all of these can be right.
We need a proper method of calculating these emissions and we need it now.
Labels: carbon emissions, electric vehicles, zero emission vehicles
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:10
0 Comments
A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
