Texas Getting Fast-Charging EV Stations

 

NRG Energy has grown its network of charging stations to include Freedom Stations, a fast-charging option for EV motorists in the Houston and Dallas/Ft. Worth areas in Texas. Freedom Stations give those EV owners who have subscribed to the eVgo network the freedom to charge wherever they find an NRG Energy’s eVgo EV Charging station. 

 

 The fast-charge stations, which feature 480V DC, can recharge 80 percent of EVs in under 30 minutes. NRG plans on having 35 Freedom Station sites in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and 25 sites in Houston.

Founded by NRG in 2010, eVgo is the country’s first privately-funded charging network, and is the only EV network in the nation offering this fast-charging option. Two types of stations will be available. The eVgo convenience stations will offer Level 2 charging (and yummy snacks) and remain open according to the retailer’s business hours.

 

 The eVgo Freedom Stations will include Level 2 and DC charging areas, and will be accessible 24 hours a day. The stations offer charging docks for two cars at a time, and are compatible with any EV (hopefully even this mobile BBQ, if it comes to the US!), according to Tianna Robinson, a sales rep at Reliant Energy (NRG Energy is its parent company). Anyone with an interest can sign up to become a member and charge at all eVgo Network charging stations.

How quickly can you charge the battery on the EV?

According to the eVgo Network site:

     ”If your car is equipped to accept a DC charge, then a 480-volt quick-charge station can deliver approximately 160 miles per hour of charging. 220/240V (depending on amperage) can deliver up to 24 miles per hour and 110/120V provides approximately 6 miles of range for each hour of charging.”

One charge at the fast-charging station could take you up to 160 miles (more than enough!), depending on the car you drive, and other typical variables, such as road conditions, style of driving, etc… Ms. Robinson noted that a larger EV, something like Ford’s little plug-in project,  might not enjoy the same range. Keep in mind, also, that those 480V are available only at the fast-charge station

America and Germany Getting Their Clean Energy Just Desserts

Germany is the unquestioned world leader in renewable energy. By mid-2011, the European nation generated over 20 percent of its electricity from wind and solar power alone, and had created over 400,000 jobs in the industry.

The sweet German success is no accident, however, and the following pie chart illustrates the results of a carefully crafted recipe for renewable energy.

As the chart illustrates, more than half of Germany’s enormous renewable energy generation is in the hands of “ordinary people,” according to the German Renewable Energy Agency. This outcome is more than golden in color, but has been a gold-clad economic opportunity for the German people, who have used the opportunity to become renewable energy producers and improve their economic security in a time of world economic crisis.

The policy recipe behind this golden success is called a feed-in tariff and its basis premise is that anyone can become a renewable energy producer. Under a feed-in tariff, electric grid operators are required to buy all renewable electricity under a long-term contract, and to offer a price for the renewable electricity that provides a modest return on investment. The feed-in tariff is responsible for two-thirds of the world’s wind power capacity, and nearly 90 percent of the world’s solar power.

The feed-in tariff is Germany’s complete energy policy recipe because it’s an incentive for generating renewable energy, but also has a democratizing effect – broadening the source and ownership of energy production. Crucially, the feed-in tariff builds a political constituency for more renewable energy production in a way that America’s half-baked energy policy does not.

The following chart illustrates a recent study of support for more nearby wind power in two German towns, each with a local wind farm. The difference is ownership, with one adjacent wind farm absentee owned and the other locally owned; and the difference is a massive shift in public support for more wind power. (I’ve generalized this to renewable energy).

The political importance of democratizing participation in the energy system can be boiled down to a simple example: a residential solar installation may add 3-5 kilowatts of new renewable energy to the grid, but more importantly it adds two new solar voters to the rolls. It may be marginally less cost-effective to allow a broad base of residential solar installations under their clean energy policy, for example, but the Germans have realized that the political payoff far outweighs the fractions of a cent added to electricity bills.

In practical terms, it explains why Germans are ahead of their targets for renewable energy production and can consider replacing their entire nuclear power industry with clean power while the United States lags behind, mired in a debate about extending the federal cash grant program and with an energy market balkanized by 50 distinct state policies.

The success of Germany’s renewable energy policy, in contrast to America’s, is a case of just desserts. Germany’s policy expands the energy pie and also divides it more evenly among its citizens, resulting in a groundswell of public support for more renewable energy.

American energy policy is half-baked, and its energy future is less appetizing.

The dominate energy policy in the U.S. is federal tax credits, policies that prevents vast swaths of America from being energy producers simply because they lack sufficient tax liability and forcing public institutions like cities and schools into awkward public-private partnerships to access them. The use of the tax code leaves the renewable energy industry heavily reliant on large financial institutions to help them sop up the credits, siphoning off scarce dollars to pad Wall Street accounts and effectively capping the growth of the industry. Marshal Salant, managing director of Citigroup Global Markets Inc., said in a recent interview: “There’s more demand for tax equity to finance renewable energy projects than we will ever have in the way of supply.” And Wall Street banks don’t love clean energy, only money. Unlike citizen energy producers, the banks won’t provide crucial political support when renewable energy policy is before the Congress.

Critics that contrast a feed-in tariff with other energy policy options like tax incentives, REC markets, or renewable portfolio standards miss the point. The latter are ingredients in a clean energy future, but the former is a complete recipe for the political, economic, and financial future of the renewable energy industry. Without a similar comprehensive approach in the United States, our energy future may not be so sweet.

Getting Off "The Grid" with BioGen

Hi there folks, i thought i'd write a quick article on my current project which i've named "BioGen".

First i'll cover my motivation, what BioGen is and how i came to start building it and then i'll tell you what it does and how it can help us. Then i will compare it to some other renewable energy solutions. Then hopefully you 'Yanks',with your pioneering attitudes, can then have a go at building it for yourselves. You see America has in abundance an energy resource which is mostly absent in the UK (The Sun!!) and for this reason USA is a great place to build a BioGen. BioGen is a project under development so this article contains some theoretical and some practical developments but hopefully no Fantastical ideas.

My intention is to get as many people interested as possible so i can start an online community to share research, provide support and help to each other.

My motivation for this project is simple, i'm sick and tired of paying hard earned money for something i can generate myself at next to no cost and by Jove i'm going to do something about it. The system i envisaged would be sustainable, cheap to build and easy to maintain while making use of renewable energy sources, like that big bright yellow thing that rises each and every morning without fail but has somehow escaped the attentions of the majority of people for so long. That's right, i was talking about the SUN, the most powerful energy source in our solar system, unavoidably obvious but so wastefully ignored. Why?, i frequently ask myself, How has this happened? the answer is almost as obvious when you think about it, it has happened only because energy companies can't charge MONEY for a supply of free sunshine.

It is time for people to wake up and realise that the very system many of these corporations and politicians perpetuate will be responsible for our destruction.

Their attitude is so very clearly : "Profit is more important than long term survival, hell, profit is even more important than short term survival and as long as i'm getting rich i couldn?t care less that humanity is'nt going to make it out of the 21st century". They are greedy, ignorant fools and they may well be our undoing.

Enough IS Enough.

So, BioGen is a project which will eventually use renewable energy sources and sustainable construction materials to provide OFF GRID electricity for domestic use. BioGen is intended to sever the noose which keeps almost all of us connected to 'The Grid'. But it is more than just a project, BioGen is a lifestyle, its is all about breaking away from the system which could destroy us. BioGen will give us an alternative to reliance upon fools and their foolish systems. It is aimed at anyone in developed countries who wish to utilise wasted resources to help cut their energy bills but also it will be appealing to people in poorer countries because of its low cost and simplistic design.

To give it a complicated name BioGen is a: "Co-Generation device based on the organic rankine cycle". That roughly translates to anyone who did'nt already know as : A device which produces heat and electricity by spinning a turbine and thus turning an alternator. BioGen will operate using a closed cycle which has been tried and tested in many power stations around the world. The most important difference between BioGen and a standard power station being BioGen uses renewable energy sources.

Any electrical output produced by BioGen could be stored in batteries for use via a power inverter or sold back into the grid as a means of reducing household energy bills. However, if you were really keen you could build a BioGen large enough power your entire home.

In a nut shell, BioGen uses a fuel/heat source to heat the fluid inside a boiler which then turns into vapour and drives a turbine. The vapour is then condensed back to liquid and re-circulated to the boiler via a pump. Pictured is a prototype BioGen boiler built using recycled gas bottles and bits of copper tubing.

BioGen can be adapted to suit your local climate, the boiler (pictured) cost under ?100 to build and is designed for use in countries like the UK where there is a supply of wood (biomass) to burn, the advantage of living in southern America is BioGen could be constructed without the need for a wood fired boiler because you have plenty of nice hot sunshine to do the job instead. So rather than have a wood fired boiler you could have solar panels to deliver heated liquid. This means that a BioGen designed and built specifically for the warmer States of America would be far more environmentally friendly than one built for a temparate climate such as the UK.

If you are further to the North of America you could have a BioGen system which uses biomass and solar energy sources. During summer it uses solar and durind cold winters you can burn biomass.

Where does the biomass come from?

It is recycled from the waste stream. Local tips are full of old wood which is on its way to landfill or an incinerator. Local businesses like carpenters create waste wood which is often discarded. The idea is to go and find biomass for free then use it as fuel. Ideally you should buy your own woodland and then manage it.

An important thing to understand is that BioGen is scalable, it could be built as big or a small as you want dependent on how much renewable energy you can harness.

BioGen is a work in progress, to speed that process up and make it as comprehensive as possible i need interested and interesting people to get involved. BioGen is for adventurous people who possess vision and share my vision of a global population who turned to the establishment and said "We don't want your electric grid anymore, it is wasteful, it encourages greed and it is designed to line the pockets of corporate fat cats at the expense of the little
guy".

Compare BioGen to micro generation systems like Photovoltaic (PV) or wind generation and hydro:

Biogen is quiet, cheap ,clean and sustainable and it could be used in conjunction with other technologies but really BioGen trumps all others. PV is very expensive and it requires lots of rare earth materials to build, wind is noisy, unsightly and unreliable. Hydro is expensive and it impacts the environment because it often requires a dam. Biomass and solar thermal are the best sources for general use and they are the back bone around which BioGen has been designed. Using Biomass encourages re-forestation which is in turn good for habitat and the environment. Flue gases can be filtered, however, If BioGen is used with a solar boiler instead of biomass it will be unbeatably clean.

The fact that BioGen can be built using almost 100% recycled parts makes it very, very green and those parts are in abundance.

Please visit my YouTube channel for more information on BioGen at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DoLpH1983

If you would like to get involved with BioGen then please visit www.biogen.webs.com to join up.

Further developments to BioGen include, composting pre-heater, retro fitting guide, electrical generation module, solar pre-heater, solar boiler, large capacity biomass boiler and the use of non flammable refrigerants.

Thanks for your attention friends.

Best Regards,

Stuart.

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Wind Energy Instruments getting Bigger & Better

Renewable energy production and demand growth is gaining momentum in many ways across the world. There is a booming demand of wind power today and all wind energy equipment manufacturers are gearing up to meet the demand and take advantage of it. Wind power capacity growth will be reaching 447GW in the next five years and by year 2014 end, Asia will lead the world in installed wind capacity. Enercon is amongst the other manufacturers who are focusing on 3MV-class wind turbines based on E-82/2.0. Without increasing the component sizes, there are new designs to operate at 3MW power. There will be a 3-6% increased yield because of these innovative designs as claimed by the Enercon.

Class I and II wind sites:
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has rated wind sites as Class I and II wind sites – IA and IIA sites. Various designs are being tested for low-wind speed inland sites as well as high-wind speed sites. E-82/2.3MW and E-82/3MW are for strong wind sites and E-1-1/3MW is for low-wind speed sites.

New designs at EWEC 2010:
The European Wind Energy Conference & Exhibition was held in Warsaw in Poland in April and REPower Systems AG presented two new improvements on their 3.XM series for sites with low-wind speed. 3.2M114 and 3.410 are optimal for less windy spots and 3.4104 on a 93 meter tower was specifically done for UK market as well special designs for Canada too.

Onshore wind turbines:
Large onshore wind turbines are now the forte of Alstom Wind. Easy maintenance and markedly ergonomically viable design make ECO 110 – their flagship – a successful larger scale rotor wind turbine.

New machines on display:
The EWEC 2010 showcased quite a few new designs and Gamesa and Siemens Energy are two of the companies putting up their G128-4.5 MW platform and wind turbine, and SWT-3.0-101 Direct Drive wind turbine respectively. Nordex SE has displayed N80, N90, and N100 wind turbines. Compact designs and superior specifications make these wind turbines remarkably efficient and noteworthy. They will increase the profitability with an assurance of quality and reliability.

Measures to improve energy output:
There are growing demands for more versatile machines which can be relied upon, durable and at the same time economical both while working with trouble-free maintenance. The people who invest in wind power want reliable and accurate data collection which can be reviewed easily. Today all the major wind power machine manufacturing companies are vying with each other to provide detailed and instant knowledge about wind and weather forecasting to improve energy output.

Future of Wind power:
Future of wind power is bright and shining as detailed studies by EWEA have already shown that power generation from wind energy is most economical. The consumers are reaping good benefits financially from wind power. There is no doubt”That wind is already directly curbing European electricity prices is perhaps less obvious, and all the more significant for it.”

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