EV and Alt Fuel Vehicles, part 10

[Darell]

Well, the KillaCycle is now the fastest EV *EVER* in the 1/4 mile. Made a pass in the 7's yesterday at 168mph. 7.8 seconds for a standing 1/4 mile and 168mph. Yeah... them EVs are slow.

http://www.killacycle.com/2007/11/11/7824-168-mph-at-pomona-ahdra-nov-10th/

 

[BentHeadTX]

Thanks for the news Darell... good to see those 99 DeWalt drill batteries still breaking records. Love the A123 but I wish they would make larger cells since 2.3 Ah makes too many connections and too much battery management system board complexity.

Meanwhile, I am kicking back and watching PHET and hope their LiFePO4 automotive style batteries come on-line quickly. A 25.6V 36AH pack with only eight cells to worry about would make my project much easier.

 

[Darell]

Thanks for the news Darell... good to see those 99 DeWalt drill batteries still breaking records. Love the A123 but I wish they would make larger cells since 2.3 Ah makes too many connections and too much battery management system board complexity.

Standard chicken and egg issue, of course. The battery makers don't want to gear up to make large-format packs if there are no cars to put them in. The car makers can't make the cars until the batteries exist. :sigh:

 

[jzmtl]

Berkeley is just about to pass a landmark Solar initiative where homeowners will barely be able to afford NOT to put up solar. There will be no up-front cost, just an extra property tax assessmement that will be equal to or LESS than the power bill that they were be off-setting. After 20 years, the assessment goes away, and the solar system is owned by the homeowner. This isn't difficult! It just needs to be implemented by communities (countries?) that care.

So who's paying? Those things are bloody expensive from what I know.

 

[Darell]

So who's paying?

The city takes out huge, low-interest loans to front the money. The homeowner then pays it back via a property tax assessment. The additional tax will be equal to or less than the cost of the electricity that is then NOT purchased from the utility. Bottom line - you can't afford not to do this if you live in Berkeley. Much the same way that I couldn't afford not to install PV....

Those things are bloody expensive from what I know.

Five years ago I bought a brand new car and a PV system that will provide fuel for an electric car for the rest of my life... for a grand total of $41,000. That's a new full-featured, highway-capable electric car PLUS fuel for life. Want bloody expensive? Total up your ever-increasing traditional fuel costs for the rest of your life... and add the ever-rising cost of electricity for your home. Maybe toss in a pinch of health care costs and a war or three. Only then can we determine what is "expensive" in this case.

My PV system covers my car "fuel" and the electricity for my home. The only thing I did wrong was to wait so long to install this bloody expensive thing.

 

[jzmtl]

How big is your house/yard, just curious. I just can't see putting up enough solar panels to power both car and house in the little bitty roof I have, especially in the winter when sun is weak and electricity demand is highest. Besides climbing onto a 45° incline two story roof to brush snow off would gets old really fast.

Oh yeah, unless the gouverment does the free system thing (HA HA), I and majority of people just don't have money for the $41000 upfront cost.

 

[Darell]

I have about the smallest practical PV system you'd want to install. 2.5kW. Takes up about half of the roof of just the garage, or about 250 Sq. Feet.

You can see my installation here: http://evnut.com/images/solar/solar1.jpg

If I had a normal-shaped garage, all panels would have fit on the South side. As it is some of the panels had to move up to the second story. If you look close you see them all. That's it!

Of course it doesn't snow here too much! But they also make snow-melters for these things that work great. PV works in more climates than people give it credit for. Snow can be an issue though as it can hold stuff up there that would normally slide off.

 

[jzmtl]

The size looks doable, smaller than I expected. But I'm skeptic on snow melter. It melt snow into water, which runs down roof and gets frozen, but this is exactly what you DON'T want to happen, because it will kill the roof/shingle fast. The system probably work well for people in the south but up here when it snows you really get 6 inches at least dumped on you.

 

[Darell]

Well, I know people who live in snowy places are making it work. It isn't something I deal with around here though! Brock is using PV in Greenbay. They get some cold up there, I hear. Maybe he'll chime in and tell us of his experience.

 

[BentHeadTX]

Standard chicken and egg issue, of course. The battery makers don't want to gear up to make large-format packs if there are no cars to put them in. The car makers can't make the cars until the batteries exist. :sigh:

I grabbed some info from PHET and they make cylindrical cells rated at 3.2V at Ah ratings of 10 to 250 amp hours. They have a "12V 36Ah" battery that looks rather automotive that I am interested in. Take two of those and two chargers and run them in series for a 25.6V 36Ah pack. The prismatic cells are available in 23 to 144 amp hours so things are looking up.

Figure I'll find out how much those 36 amp hour batteries cost pretty soon. My peak discharge will be 1C but normally much less so they should last for many years. If they work OK, then I can get the bigger guns for eventual wind/solar experiments.

Here is the info:

http://www.phet.com.tw/Products/Products_Intro.aspx

 

[Brock]

No problems with snow on panels. The only time the snow actually sit's on it is during a storm and then you have no sun anyway. Basically a panel should be set to your latitude +15 degrees due south for winter or your latitude for summer. If you're fixed mounting them most people just split the difference and do latitude +7. So up here at 45 degrees my tilt is 53 degrees due south, snow doesn't sit well on glass at a 53 degrees tilt

Us northerners just see a drastic output drop in winter. I drop to about 1/5 of my summer output. The killer is we have so much less daylight in winter and at such a low angle, hence the 30 degrees. The advantage is in summer I access power and sometimes have to run the AC to use it all up

 

[jzmtl]

That really sucks, when you need it the most for heating is when it produce the least.

Doesn't matter now thou, I have a grand in my bank account, so that's about what, 2% of startup fund.

 

[Darell]

That really sucks, when you need it the most for heating is when it produce the least.

Just the reverse here. The high electricity load is in the summer for AC. I don't produce much or use much in the winter. I produce gobs of power and use gobs of power in the summer. But then that doesn't really matter as much as it seems since the bill is averaged over an entire year.

 

[jzmtl]

Huh, it's just the opposite here. I use AC a week per year at most, doesn't get that hot here. But my winter electricity bill is 3x my summer bill (electrical baseboard heating).

 

[BB]

I have a similar PV system as Darell's... Mine is 3.0kW peak Grid Tied, and I have averaged around $300 in electrical utility credits per year with a $5/month minimum connection fee (credit is lost for now--but really watching for a good family electric vehicle and get rid of our little Honda 4 door to use the extra $$$ in the "bank").

So, I am ahead money wise because of the Time of Use metering (during the summer the base rates are, $0.29 per kWhr Peak, and $0.09 per kWhr off-peak). Just don't use much power noon-6pm weekdays during the spring/summer time--and it gives me the equivalent of 3x larger panels (in terms of generating power credits).

Also, my array generates more kWhrs/year than we use at home (natural gas for cooking/heating/hot water/drier, conservation, and turning things off).

Am I saving money yet... Not really at this time. My array generates power around $0.14 to $0.17 per kWhr. And my base rate is just under $0.12 per kWhr (standard residential with no time of use). If I was using a lot of electricity (A/C, electric heat, etc.), rates run upwards of $0.36 per kWhr (standard rate) or $0.52 per kWhr for the most punitive Peak Summer rates.

If you are above base line (tiered pricing where you get charged higher rates for using more power), solar PV Grid Tied can save you lots of money right from the beginning... And you don't have to have large enough panels to zero out your power bill--just large enough to knock you out of the higher pricing tiers.

-Bill

 

[Brock]

Yes it's true you produce less in winter, but since we currently heat with wood or gas our electric usage drops in winter. We are also on time of use, so in the summer when the sun is shining we are producing $.24 / kw power to off set our on peak loads, then as the sun sets we switch to off peak rates at $.06 / kw.

Right now we only have 500w of solar, but it carries us through the daytime peak. Our new home has roof mounts for 3kw, but I could add another 3kw if I ever have the $. We have also installed a geothermal heat pump which uses electricity; we plan to run it only off peak, but that's another story.

 

[gadget_lover]

I came across a RAV-EV today on the freeway in San Jose. Hybrids have become very common during the commute. I am seldom out of sight of at least one during my 35 mile drive. EV's, on the other hand, are rare as hen's teeth.

The EV was in the middle lane of interstate 880, cruising at a sedate 55 MPH. Normally, that's faster than you'd be able to do on that stretch of freeway, but today the pre-holiday traffic was super light so I could actually do the speed limit.

I bring this up because I (and the other drivers) were treated to a slow moving car embazoned with EV in big letters. It did nothing to disuade the notion that EVs are slow. Why would an EV driver drive so slow when the traffic would allow 65? Any ideas?

Daniel

 

[Akita]

:thumbsup: Old Dinosaur Honda's that used low tech...technology.

The original 1.3 liter car and the later American-market CRX HF model could reliably achieve better than 50 mpg, more than a decade before gas-electric hybrids appeared on the market, and at no price premium over the base model; the 1.3 liter was rated at 51 mpg for CITY and 60mpg highway

Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CR-X#_note-0

Friend of mine has the original owners manual for his 1984 1.3L Honda CRX.
It quotes:
CITY 52 MPG
HYW 64MPG
AVG 58 MPG

He still owns the darn thing and even with 280K on the speedometer it gets a consistent 55 MPG overall average.

So you have to ask yourself what is the problem here.

25 years later they think 35 mpg is front page news ?

Not hardly friends.

 

[jzmtl]

I came across a RAV-EV today on the freeway in San Jose. Hybrids have become very common during the commute. I am seldom out of sight of at least one during my 35 mile drive. EV's, on the other hand, are rare as hen's teeth.

The EV was in the middle lane of interstate 880, cruising at a sedate 55 MPH. Normally, that's faster than you'd be able to do on that stretch of freeway, but today the pre-holiday traffic was super light so I could actually do the speed limit.

I bring this up because I (and the other drivers) were treated to a slow moving car embazoned with EV in big letters. It did nothing to disuade the notion that EVs are slow. Why would an EV driver drive so slow when the traffic would allow 65? Any ideas?

Daniel

Same as people in gasser drive slow in left lane? :thinking:

:thumbsup: Old Dinosaur Honda's that used low tech...technology.



Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CR-X#_note-0

Friend of mine has the original owners manual for his 1984 1.3L Honda CRX.
It quotes:
CITY 52 MPG
HYW 64MPG
AVG 58 MPG

He still owns the darn thing and even with 280K on the speedometer it gets a consistent 55 MPG overall average.

So you have to ask yourself what is the problem here.

25 years later they think 35 mpg is front page news ?

Not hardly friends.

Those things are LIGHT, an encounter with soccer moms in SUV who's putting on makeup while yelling at kids in backseat would turn you (and CRX) into a metal sandwich.

 

[Darell]

I bring this up because I (and the other drivers) were treated to a slow moving car embazoned with EV in big letters. It did nothing to disuade the notion that EVs are slow.

Most people assume that my car can't go fast enough to be on the freeway. Seeing one doing 55mph should at least raise *some* eyebrows. Seriously. Most people think that I'm limited to 25mph..... and about 20 miles of range.

Why would an EV driver drive so slow when the traffic would allow 65? Any ideas?

I have a pretty good idea, yes. It is likely for the same reason that I drive my EV AND my Prius AND my Civic before that, AND my Volvo before that... at ~55 mph even when the speed limit is posted at 65+. I drive in the right lane where no truck, nor any car pulling a trailer can legally exceed 55 mph. And I do this... wait for it becuase I know it'll be shocking... to save energy. Yes I even try to save CHEAP energy, as well as the more expensive and polluting kind. Driving 55 mph I can go 120 miles. Driving 65 mph I can go about 90 miles. One time when I managed a solid 45 mph (on a highway with max 45 speed) for the whole trip, I went 135 miles on a single charge.

I don't hold people up, and I'll happily waste my own clean energy to speed up to facilitate a merge - so that a lumbering gas-burner doesn't have to change speed suddenly and spew even more exhaust.

The bigger question here is why do people insist on driving at or above the speed limit when driving at or below the limit is proven to be significantly safer, cheaper and less polluting?

Or... how about another: Why do people drive alone in cars that can hold five... seven... even nine people? So many questions.

I like jzmtl's response as well: I see gas cars going slow all the time. Would more people jump on the EV bandwagon if they were passed by a Tesla at 130 mph? Eventually we're going to have to start thinking of our transportation as.... transportation.