The concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) power sharing has been mentioned on our site quite a few times in the past. For one instance, check out our interview with Michael Brylawski, a member from the Rocky Mountain Institute. The basic principle here is that electric cars charged at night while electricity is cheap can actually give some of that power back during the day when electricity costs more, and the owners of the vehicle that is giving that power back can get a credit towards the purchase of electricity when the car charges back up. Make sense?

Don't believe that this can actually take place? Check out this article from Inside Green Tech. They interviewed Sven Thesen of PG&E on the subject. PG&E have been creating new advanced metering which will show you what is happening with the car, charging or giving back. Here is a quote, "Just plug your vehicle in at night, and we'll send a signal at 11, 12 or 1 a.m. to start your charging. When you get up in the morning, your car will be fully charged. You'll plug your car in at work. Maybe we'll need your electricity, and maybe we won't. If we do, you'll see a credit on your bill, and if not, you'll see nothing."

Click here to read more. And thanks go out to Dallas for the tip.

[Source: Inside Green Tech]

In a lengthy, two-part editorial, David Roberts, a staff writer at Grist, presents his position on unifying the green lobby around the flag of URGE²: Use Renewably Generated Electricity, Efficiently. He is expecting bumper stickers and t-shirts - here's why.

Mine negawatts: The cheapest source of new energy is not using it - increase efficiency and you can slash the growth in energy demand. See part two of the interview with Michael Brylawski of RMI for his related comments on how people don't want extra kilowatts, they want hot showers and cold beers.

A good example of where to find negawatts is right above you - replacing standard incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs as is being proposed here in Australia. Similarly, make a car lighter and you can make it more efficient, or faster, or both.

Electrify: It's easier to find clean, renewable sources of electricity than it is to find clean, renewable liquid fuels which leads to an obvious conclusion - shift almost all energy use to electricity. That's not to say that there isn't a lot of room for renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel in the mean time, but long term, the electricity grid is just more efficient.

Kill coal: "Coal is the enemy of the human race." Coal fired power stations are responsible for a huge percentage of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Coal also causes environmental damage where it is mined and air pollution where is burning. Cleaning up coal is likely to make it financially non-viable in comparison to green technologies such as wind.

Upgrade the grid: Focus on energy storage and decentralisation through renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, hydrokinetic, cogeneration and biomethane. Developing good power storage technology is important to even out the supply intermittency of renewable energy sources. Examples of storage Roberts mentions include battery technology (both lithium and nano), hydrogen fuel cells, pumped storage, molten-salt storage and ultracapacitors.

Analysis: As Michael Brylawski said, "if the ultimate efficiency is, say, 10 percent of turning coal into refrigeration for your beer, every unit of energy saved at the fridge saves ten times that in coal." I especially like the concept of mining negawatts - you can start today by using compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Related:

• GridWise sets aside four days in April to work on U.S. smart grid
• Wind and solar powered streetlights... I hope there're no solar red-light-photo cameras!
• Interview with Michael Brylawski of RMI part two - Hypercars and cold beers

[Source: David Roberts / TomPaine.com]

Traditional metal sheet forming allows volume production of automotive body parts such as doors and roofs via a process known as deep drawing. The metal spools off a huge roll to be pressed into a corresponding mold by a three-dimensional die. High-strength steel, such as high-alloy hardenable steel or high-nickel maraging steel, is starting to take over from conventional steel though as auto makers look to reduce vehicle weight and boost fuel economy without compromising safety or performance.

High-strength steel components can be both thinner and lighter without losing their stability, but working with this updated material poses production problems with the incredibly expensive molds wearing out more quickly under the added burden.

High-performance ceramics may provide the answer however due to their being very much harder than steel and so less likely to wear out. Ceramic material exhibits a high resistance to attritious wear which has led the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology to embark on the KeraForm project to produce high-performance ceramic inserts. As part of the project, the issue of high-performance ceramics being so hard that they can only be worked with diamond was addressed by identifying three conventional methods that are basically suitable for the job, and optimising them for the purpose.

Analysis: Lighter equals faster, or more efficient, or both which is my personal favourite. High performance, lightweight steel was mentioned by Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute as being an option for achieving the promise of the Hypercar Concept. With research being done on how to work with it, high-strength steel could make up a large part of your next car.

Related:

• Tesla Motors bodyman explains carbon fiber
• Interview with Michael Brylawski of RMI, part one - History of the Hypercar
• KTM using carbon fibre to make their X-BOW roadster faster

[Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology]

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This is the fourth and final part in an interview with Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute where he talks about the history of the Hypercar and where this exciting concept is up to today. In the third part of the interview, Michael shared his thoughts on 'vehicle to grid' theory, biofuels and the dot com crash. Click here to go to part one of the interview.

If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the Hypercar history article first as background to this wide-ranging and insightful interview.


ABG: Do you feel that the steel industry is in anyway undermining efforts to change automotive vehicle production away from steel frames and panels towards lightweight carbon fibre composite parts?

MB: Other than the normal competitive industrial dynamics, there are no conspiracies in the automotive world. It's just too large and complex, with too many stakeholders with disparate agendas. Maybe in the old days with the Big Three, GM having half the U.S. Market, and big steel, etc., companies could engage in outright collusive and anti-competitive behavior in the industry, but in today's hypercompetitive environment, it's just not possible.

Interview continues after the jump.

British supermarket chain Tesco, the fourth-largest retail chain in the world, is teaming up with Los Angeles-based Solar Integrated Technologies to build what is claimed to be the world's biggest roof-top solar panel installation. Solar Integrated won the $13 million contract to install solar panels on the roof of Tesco USA's new distribution center in Riverside, California.

The 2 MW Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) system will cover 500,000 square feet of the 640,000 square footage of roof space at the facility and is set to provide one fifth of the depot's power supply. This will effectively reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1,200 tons per annum. Solar Integrated Technologies has previously provided BIPV solutions for other large corporations including Frito-Lay (100 kW at one facility) and Cola-Cola (329kW at one facility).

This is not the first example of Tesco taking the lead in reducing their environmental impacts, just two weeks ago they pledged to set an environmentally friendly example to its millions of customers by spending more than 500 million pounds ($987 million), cutting prices on energy-efficient products and reducing pollution. Previously, Tesco reduced their energy consumption per square foot by 35 percent over the eight years to 2006.

Running a chain of petrol stations in addition to their supermarket chain, Tesco is also the United Kingdom's market leader in the sales of biofuels. Their sales of biofuel blends will see emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, cut by more than 70,000 tonnes per annum.

Tesco has embraced biofuels in their own distribution fleet, announcing last month that is now running run three-quarters of its fleet on a B50 biodiesel blend which is made from 50 percent biodiesel and 50 percent petroleum diesel. The Tesco fleet of 2,000 lorries will be the first major fleet in the U.K. to use B50. The reduction in the whole-of-life emissions through the move to B50 is equivalent to the removal of over 20,000 medium sized cars off the road.

Last year Google made headlines by announcing that they would install around 9,000 solar panels at their corporate campus as parking shades and on roofs to provide 1.6-megawatts of solar power - enough to cover 30 percent of Google's power needs.

Analysis: Corporate solar is a growth industry providing companies with an opportunity to reduce their often massive electricity bills while highlighting their green credentials. Expect to see more and more companies with a reputation for aggressively focusing on their bottom line to install BIPV systems which will have a positive impact on the grid as a whole.

As Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute said in part three of his feature interview, "(plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) PHEVs could form a synergy of sort with 'intermittent' renewables like wind and solar... PHEVs being plugged in at night, and quite possibly at the office during the day, could offer a strong alternative for buffering renewables." Increased renewable electricity generation goes hand in hand with the take-up of PHEVs providing a holistic alternative to simply generating enough electricity to meet peak demand and wasting the rest.

Related:

• Interview with Michael Brylawski of RMI
• Google to build solar car ports at headquarters
• Portugal wants 45% renewable electricity output and 10% of all fuels to be biofuels

[Source: Reuters]

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This is the third part in an interview with Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute where he talks about the history of the Hypercar and where this exciting concept is up to today. In the second part of the interview, Michael shared his thoughts on how the Hypercar concept has changed over time and what's the best drive-train technology available today to power a Hypercar. Click here to go to part one of the interview. If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the Hypercar history article first as background to this wide-ranging and insightful interview.

ABG: You said that plug-in electric vehicles could provide ultimately a cheap electricity storage and transfer device for variable sources such as wind and solar, allowing them to become mobile energy storage devices. Could you please elaborate on this point?

MB: The concept of "vehicle to grid" (V2G) is something Amory Lovins has been talking about for over a decade. At first, even I thought it was science fiction, but of late this idea is getting a lot of traction and a ton of serious players are investigating its potential. From working with Amory now for 12 years, if anything I've learned to really listen to some of his more "outlandish" ideas. Quite often, they are right. As one person said about Amory, "he often overestimates things in the short term, but underestimates things long-run."

The idea of vehicle-to-grid is that when you have a meaningful number of plug-in hybrids or fuel-cell vehicles in the market, most of which are parked (and potentially plugged in) roughly 95 percent of the day, you suddenly have a huge electricity storage buffer plugged right into the grid. And with fuel-cells, you actually have mobile powerplants.

As a thought experiment, if all cars were efficient (with 35-50 kilowatts of fuel cell power) and propelled by fuel cells, we'd have roughly around 5 terawatts of electricity generation capacity in our cars. This is six times the electric generation capacity of all U.S. stationary powerplants - coal, oil, nuclear, hydro. Of course, we'd never use cars as our primary powerplants as hydrogen is just an energy carrier - not a source of energy - and it ultimately has to be produced by either reforming natural gas or electrolyzing water. We'd use these cars more likely for peak power, e.g., the peak of summer when our air conditioners are on full blast and when major U.S. cities have been experiencing brown outs due to an increasingly fragile grid.

(What fragile grid? Continue reading after the jump)

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This is the second part in an interview with Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute where he talks about the history of the Hypercar and what this exciting concept is up to today. In the first part of the interview, Michael shared his personal background and involvement with the Hypercar concept with us. Also, if you haven't already, I recommend that you read the Hypercar history article first as background to this wide-ranging and insightful interview. With that bit of business out of the way, on to the interview...

ABG: It has been 15 years since the Hypercar concept was first envisaged. Have the concept or the materials that were expected to be used to make a Hypercar changed over time with the advent of new technologies?

MB: In summary, no. The Hypercar Concept is technology neutral. When Amory Lovins conceived of the Hypercar Concept in 1991, it was at its core an automotive design strategy that focused on platform physics and not on specific technologies.

How the Hypercar design strategy emerged is an interesting story. Amory was well known for the concept of "least cost/end use," specifically in the electric utilities sector. What "least cost/end use" means is that we need to first look at the end use of what we need energy for, and then find the least cost way to provide it. In the 1970s, when Amory wrote his landmark "Soft Energy Paths," the experts at the time were predicting the need for hundreds, if not thousands, of new power plants to fulfill the US' "insatiable need for power." This sounds familiar, no? Anyway, Amory pointed out that people don't have a need for power - people want hot showers and cold beer, not kilowatts. (How many people do you know say "wow, what I really need now is a few kilowatt-hours"?).

The cold beers discussion continues after the jump

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It is my pleasure to bring you an in-depth interview with Michael Brylawski of the Rocky Mountain Institute. You may remember from the Short History of the Hypercar article we published earlier this month that the Rocky Mountain Institute, and its spin-offs Hypercar, Inc. and FibreForge, have been at the forefront of bringing the radical concept of super light-weight, high efficiency 'Hypercars' to the auto market since the Hypercar was first envisaged by their founder, Amory Lovins in the mid-1990s.

If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the Hypercar history article first as background to this wide-ranging and insightful interview. Michael, who is an AutoblogGreen reader himself, was incredibly generous with his time in answering my questions with the final interview being too long to post in one go. As such, I'll be running the interview as a series over the next few days.

Today, we cover Michael's personal background and involvement with the Hypercar concept.



Read the first part of the interview after the jump.