EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, part 10

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Biodiesel just went up to $4.99/gal. I'm not surprised, I've expected such a price increase for a long time. The price will go much higher, as will the price of dino diesel.

(Mini rant ahead, not necessarily properly informed and in no particular order.)
It burns me that something made in our country costs so much yet it's "cheaper" to give billions to other countries and ship oil from thousands of miles away. I can buy new vegetable oil retail for ~$3.50/gal and build my own biodiesel processor for ~$1,500. (I haven't looked into collecting "free" waste oil as my time is far too valuable to make that worth even considering.) After paying for methanol, lye, and power, my cost would be roughly $4/gal for home made biodiesel. With the amount of fuel I use for business and personal transportation, the processor would pay for itself in less than 2 months. As fuel gets more expensive this payback period will only get smaller. I can also almost certainly get cheaper oil by buying wholesale and buying thousands of gallons at a time, again making the payback period smaller and eventual profits larger. Extremely tempting. Alas, the time required to set up each batch of fuel still makes it cheaper to keep forking out $$$ for premade fuel. I may build the processor anyway, cost be damned.

:buddies:
 
Hey BB-Thanks for the information. That is the best deal I have ever seen on solar panels. It is really expensive to go off the grid vs. intertie because of the battery cost.

Have you guys checked the prices on deep cycle batteries lately? They have gone through the roof.

To Diesel_Bomber- If you do set up for making the biodiesel, let us know how it goes!
 
Hi Bill - Thank you for that post - really sums it up for me. More or less confirms what we all suspect, but wish were not true - PV does not make sense at the consumer level.

I wish I could buy my power at the 0.12 / kwh that your neighbor does.

For me, a 20 year payback is not a good investment, because every 5 - 10 years, my setup will go obsolete or get broken some how.

Just curious - I looked at Exide deep discharge 12 volt batteries at the auto store the other day - label at least talks to "100 amp hours with reserve" - putting it somewhere near 1 kwh. Would that $ 100 battery make it for at least 1 year, or is this a "historical labeling capacity concept".

I guess my continued focus on insulation improvement is the way to go from a "investment vs savings method".
 
Don't know about the Exide--You want to ensure that it is a deep cycle battery and not an RV or Marine battery.

Typically, many people start with 6 volt "golf cart" batteries that they can get from Wal-Mart and other places... Sometimes nicknamed "training" batteries, they are usually a good deal and last a reasonable amount of time (3-5 years, and some people get upwards of 8 years).

Issues with wet/flooded cell deep cycle storage batteries is the deeper the discharge, the shorter the battery will last. If you can keep it above 75% State Of Charge (SOC), the battery will not form hardened sulfates (below ~75% SOC, the sulfates in the discharged plates starts hardening within a few hours--and if left in a low state of charge, large amounts will harden and the battery will loose capacity as the hardened sulfates cannot be recharged). Taking a battery below 50% and the plates will quickly start to be permanently damaged.

Also with flooded cell batteries, they evaporate water during charging/equalization. Requires distilled water to refill and makes a mess on the top of the battery and of the cables. You can get caps (Water Miser is one brand) that will reduce water loss.

Good thing with flooded cell batteries is they tolerate over-charging pretty well because you can add water back in.

AGM's are a good battery once you know how to manage your system. The cost something like twice as much--but you can cycle them deeper and they don't out gas... However, because you cannot refill them with water, they are very susceptible to damage from over-charging/over heating.

Your Exide battery--if you only plan on cycling it about 20% every day--it should last 1-3 years (just a SWAG).... 100A*H * 12v * 20% = 240 Watt*Hours (or, if this is a twenty hour discharge rate a 12 watt load for 20 hours--not very much useful power unless it is a few lamps or a radio).

And, if you are in Oakland CA, using PG&E, and an E1 residential rate (PDF file), your first ~300kWhrs per month are $0.11556 per kWhr. You don't pay $0.32/kWhr until you use over ~600 kWhrs per month.

Yea, battery (Lead) prices are going way up... But so is the copper wire to connect up your system.

-Bill
 
Well, here in Pleasanton, my rates for last bill are:

Base 400 kwh = .115
next 123 kwh = .135
next 280 kwh = .227
next xxx kwn = .33 something

Mid April - Mid May 2008 = 697 kwh (no AC running yet on that bill, but it this past week we had multiple days over 105 F. ) So my AC more or less costs me .33 / kwh - pretty ridiculous given that in OH, my Dad pays 0.05 / kwh.

Last year, same period = 874 kwh

There is much more temp range out here, even though it is not that far away. Also, working from home adds some kwh, as well as having kids.

Thanks for the battery tips - for some reason, I had it in my head that marine and RV batteries were designed for regular deep discharging through most of their capacity - jokes on me I guess.

AGMs - Are those the so called "gel cells" ? I know a guy that had gel cells in his mazda miata, and if they went dead even once, you had to toss them. Real pita.
 
HarryN said:
More or less confirms what we all suspect, but wish were not true - PV does not make sense at the consumer level.
Click to expand...
This is simply not a true blanket statement. Nothing works well for everybody - but grid-tied PV most definitely makes sense at the cosumer level for a large percent of the population. And it'll make more sense when we start charging the proper amount for the "cheap" energy that is killing us and destroying our mountains, lakes and rivers. Sounds dramatic, I know... but there it is.

If you meant to say that off-grid PV is a tough sell at the consumer level - you are closer to the mark. There is a huge difference - like 100% difference in price. But that can be (and is!) a great bargain if it costs $1500/foot to bring power to your home from the nearest town. I have friends who faced bringing the grid in for 1.7 million dollars (and then renting the electricity every year on top of that), or spending $75,000 on off-grid solar. Which made more sense?

For me, a 20 year payback is not a good investment, because every 5 - 10 years, my setup will go obsolete or get broken some how.
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There is no set ROI for anybody or any system. For one thing it depends on the ever-increasing cost of electricity. The more expensive your electricity becomes, the faster the ROI. Right now you are renting your energy. At the end of the year, you have nothing to show for it. I own my electricity - I paid up front for my power for the next... well, quite possibly the rest of my life. And in my case, it "paid off" the very moment that I turned my system on. I could not afford to NOT put in solar.

As for things going obsolete or breaking - well that happens so rarely that we hardly even think about it. If something does break, it certainly isn't the whole system! And I'm not really sure what obsolete means in this case? I suppose that any car you buy last year is obsolete this year... but it keeps doing what it ever did, so who really cares? I suppose my entire 5-year-old PV system is "obsolete" and there it is out there making electricity just like it did five years ago.

I guess my continued focus on insulation improvement is the way to go from a "investment vs savings method".
Click to expand...
Conservation is almost always going to be your best bang for the buck, and I totally agree that EVERYBODY should be concentrating on this. Yet so few do.
 
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AGM's are not Gel Cells... You can read a bit about the difference between the various Lead Acid battery types and their individual issues here (Battery FAQ from NWAS--a solar equipment dealer).

Short answer, stay away from Gel Cells for anything solar related. That leaves flooded cell or AGM. Flooded cell are cheaper and more resistant to over charging damage. AGM are better at deep cycling, faster recharging, and much less mess and maintenance--but very susceptible to over charging damage.

"Out West" here (San Mateo, CA), we generally have cool nights and can open windows to let the heat out at night... With an old 1930's home (built with zero insulation), just insulating the walls, ceiling, and floors (floor insulation not needed--but was easy to do--even went as far as insulating and double pane low E windows for the garage too), and double pane vinyl windows retrofitted everywhere--I can easily get a 20 F differential between outside peak vs indoor peak temperatures...

For example, on our 95 F day (last week has been warm), our downstairs temperature is ~70F and upstairs is 75F peak... As the warm days go on, I get about another 5F on those temperature peaks during the day--and that is without A/C (hit about 80F upstairs). But if I compare 80F (plus a couple ceiling/floor standing fans) without A/C and "the government" which is trying to mandate 78F for the A/C set-point--I have been really happy with the insulation (plus it makes our home much quieter wrt outside noise).

This was a home that before insulation/windows needed fans and open windows to keep livable when the temperature when above 75F. A very nice improvement (smallish 2 story 3 bedroom home). Now, early spring and late fall--when the temperature outside still gets above 70F--I now sometimes use central heat for 20 minutes to bump the house temp above 65F after a cool night because of all the insulation that prevents heat gain (and of course--heat loss).

Funny thing is now, in our upstairs bedrooms, I can see it start to warm up on a cold day just from having people in the rooms, and turning on a 170watt TV--it is really heating our room at night (of course, our nights are pretty mild 40F-55F).

We also added some operating skylights (with shades/blinds to control excessive light/heat) which cut down on the need for lighting and open for ventilation. Mostly, We use an old 30 watt laptop during the day, and leave the copier and printer off--except when needed. Although, this does work well for our family--it certainly does not work for everyone else.

The last thing to look at with Solar Grid Tied systems--is that TOU pricing can actually help because of generating power during the expensive part of the day and consuming power during the lower cost night.

My 3kW rated (Peak STC) system generates a bit more power than I consume (+4,000 kWhrs over 982 days or ~124 kWhrs per month extra (about $14 in "extra power per month), that resulted in $25 extra money to purchase at $0.09 per kWhr off-peak or ~278 kWhrs per month because of the TOU plan (or ~3x "more power" from our solar panels because of the TOU offset pricing).

My system will allow me to plug in an EV and consume ~278 kWhrs per month for free (not really free--I oversized my system specifically to support a solar EV/plugin-hybrid), and another ~300kWhrs per month at $0.09 per kWhr (base tier pricing).

I am no Darell--but I try in my own way. :wave:

-Bill
 
Darell you used 5 minutes with Art Bell and 5 minutes on KQED, you still have 5 left ;)

As an update since I have moved closer to work I have started using my new EVT electric scooter. It does about 40 mph on a flat road, fast enough for the 35 mph roads. Anyway I was calculating some things and came up with this.

6 miles to and from work takes just about 1 kw to recharge. Right now I am charging with off peak power at $.0589 / kw, lets call it 6 cents, that puts the scooter at 1 cent a mile or 6 miles / kw or 166 w / mile. Fuel consumed for the VW TDI diesel at 60 mpg at 4.69 a gallon is 7.81 cents a mile. Our van getting 24 mpg at 3.96 a gallon is 16.5 cents a mile. So to sum up

1 cent a mile - electric scooter
8 cents a mile - VW Jetta TDI diesel
16 cents a mile - Toyota Sienna van

I plan on getting the solar panels up this weekend, so the scooter will be charged by the sun :)

I think I am driving very aggressive with the scooter, lots of WOT (wide open throttle) and heavy breaking. I will try driving more conservatively to see how much it makes a difference.

Darell what is your w/mile or miles per kw averaging? (I know but what you to post ;) )
 
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Well, I was wrong that it has gone. I've since done some extended air time bits. But won't bore you guys with it here.

The Rav does about 3-4 miles/kWh from the socket to the road. The EV1 did 5-6. Obviously the numbers are better for the battery to the road calculation. But socket to the road is more meaningful.
 
I was listening to Kirby Wilber who was in for (stupid brain can't...) OH! Shaun Hannity (and I'm HAPPY when there is a guest host!) and they were discussing electric cars and how we'll get enough power to charge thousands of them.

It comes down to coal fired power in the short term. But the opposition won't allow ANY new plants.

It always comes down to the same A-holes who cry about getting off oil won't allow what it takes to get off oil.

The free market needs to decide it anyhow!
 
It comes down to coal fired power in the short term. But the opposition won't allow ANY new plants.

It always comes down to the same A-holes who cry about getting off oil won't allow what it takes to get off oil.

The free market needs to decide it anyhow!
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I totally understand. Is this what was said on the show, or is this what you think, or both? Coal is horrible, and we have no need to build more coal plants to help us get off of oil. None. In the short term, we have the capacity to power 70% of the cars on the road with what we already have in place. We won't replace gas cars with EVs over night, and don't need to build out more power over night. Renewables like wind and solar are a PERFECT match for battery cars since the cars can be used as storage. And storage is really the main stubmling block for weather-dependent renewables.
 
Hello Darell,

I read an article in EVWorld the other day about the RAV4EV's. Some are 10 years old now. But I guess the technology for BEV's is not ready yet!

How many miles do you have on your RAV4EV?

My wife works at a local hospital and she says scooters are everywhere. I wish more people could discover the electric scooters like Brock. Bicycle sales in our area is up 30%. One of the best ways to get off the oil is to not have to use it.
 
I'm coming up on 60,000 miles. We have one private driver - in a 2002 vehicle like mine - who has just passed 150,000 miles on his Rav. Yup. Same batteries. His batteries are only now showing signs of degredation. At 150,000 I think everybody calls that "the life of the car." How many gasoline engines have needed replacement WELL before that? Since there have been some, I guess gas engines aren't quite ready for "prime time?" :sigh:

Yeah, the scooter and bike sales are great. What drives nuts is how many more GAS scooters and motorcycles we have on the road. They typically pollute more than our modern cars. :(

If you saw the article that I think you saw (starts "we made a car that lasts too long.") then please also see my comments below that article wehre some of us explain several things that were not true.
 
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