Storage is all fine and dandy to solve one problem with wind energy. However, is it practical in the form of a parked fleet of vehicles? Will America go for it and turn in their Hummers?

Regarding the wind at night. Bear in mind that wind turbines operate at a hub height of about 265 feet. At least the newer larger ones. At these heights the wind can get rather strong even though it is weak to non-existent at ground level.

That brings attention to one of many issues the wind energy sales teams don't want to admit to. Their sound modeling is incorrect. Measurements taken on site are much more troublesome than their predictions. Their modeling doesn't take into account the atmospheric influence on sound propagation in the layering that Cassandra mentions. Low frequency sounds (the ones the industry won't admit are a problem) propagate much better at night than during the day as a result.

I can testify to the adverse effects having experienced them for myself. If you live near a wind turbine installation visit it during the night when the weather is fairly calm and the blades are spinning at or near peak. If you're anywhere near West VA I'd suggest a visit to Tucker County. Go to Backbone Mountain (aka Mountaineer) near Thomas, West VA on Rte 219. It crosses the ridge in two places very near the turbines. Sugarlands Road off 219 has a nice spot to park and you'll be almost under one. However, to get the vibes you want to get a bit further away as there is actually very little to be felt up close. All the excitement happens a bit further away.

There are early rumblings that Vibrio Acoustic Disorder (commonly linked to industry workers exposed to constant low frequency noises 8 hours daily for 5 days per week) is also occuring in people that live in the shadow of wind turbines. That just covers the sound and doesn't address shadow flicker or strobe effect.

It stands to reason that these low frequency vibes will cause problems with wildlife and livestock as well as humans.

Then there is the matter of blade and ice throw. Something belittled by the wind industry yet a reality. One turbine in Germany chucked the whole nacelle and blade assembly in a wind storm when the brakes failed. Large pieces were thrown over 1500 feet. The nacelle and blade assembly weigh over 50 tons.

Each generator in the nacelle at the top of the tower holds several hundred gallons of oil for cooling and lubrication. That can leak out and contaminate the ground below. It may burn in the event of lightning strikes. Most rural fire departments aren't equipped to fight fires 265 feet above the ground.

There are hidden sources of CO2 for each turbine. The foundations consist of a minimum of a 30 foot across by 30 foot deep footer filled with concrete and reinforcing steel. The production of concrete yields CO2. It takes a lot of cement mixers to fill one hole and they'll be burning diesel to and from the site. Each blade is 135 feet long and must be trucked in - the rig will be longer, perhaps 150 feet (compare to a conventional rig at about 60 feet). Massive cranes have to be driven in to build the things. Most roads in the rural settings aren't equipped to handle such traffic and will need to be modified to meet the challenge. More CO2. Then they'll be damaged by all the traffic and need repairs. More CO2. “A single 555-megawatt gas-fired power plant in California generates more electricity in a year than do all 13,000 of the state's wind turbines. The gas-fired plant sits atop a mere 15 acres. The 300-foot-tall windmills impact over a hundred thousand acres, to provide expensive, intermittent, insufficient energy.” http://www.sovereignty.net/p/clim/wind-leo.htm That would be a whole lot of turbines covering a whole lot of ground to knock a dent in power generation. They tend to operate at about 20 to 30% of name plate output.

The Mountaineer installation is reputed to be the location of the most bat kills for any industrial wind facility. You may not like bats, but they do a good job of killing disease carrying insects. Bats aren't the only flying victims. Raptors and migrating birds get the chop too. That includes bald eagles. Industry information on these is misleading too.

Maybe we need to take a look at conservation as well as alternative sources. Most stereos, TVs, computers, and other appliances used intermittently are still consuming power when switched off. Most houses are not as well insulated as they could be. Most appliances like refrigerators aren't as efficient as they could be.

The domestic auto manufacturers mention that they offer X number of cars that get better than 30 mpg. However, it seems that they prefer to push the SUVs if you watch the ads on TV. If you look at what is on the road the ads seem to be working. Sadly most of the ones I see only have one occupant. Better appliances are available. Insulation is available. You can put stereos and TVs on surge protectors with an off switch that will kill the power completely. Same for computers. Don't forget to turn off lights when you leave a room or go to bed. On an individual level this may not appear to be much. How many people live in the US? It adds up.

Honda and Toyota each make an excellent hybrid. One is designed to perform best on the highway and the other in town. Or do like I do and walk to work every day. Or get a bicycle. Americans are obese anyway, the exercise won't hurt.
Posted by: bonobo chimp

Because historically Democrats have been less concerned about the environment and energy usage than big oil Republicans? Sorry but most of the people I know who are experimenting with alternative energy are more liberal than conservative. Way to inject irrelevant idiocy into an interesting and informative disucssion.
Posted by: Johnny Good

Without getting too ‘windy’ let me give a quick synopsis of the role a ‘real’ PHEV could play in this V2G game. First, instead of a PHEV with only 9kWh of HV Battery & a 100v 2kW line, let’s use a PHEV with at least 24 kWh of HV Battery & a 220 Volt, 20 kW line to the grid just like the EV or BEV vehicles proposed in presentation.

First, this is not a ‘pipe-dream.’ I have a Prius with 24.5Ah of HV Battery that can pump out 22kW steady for up to 6.4 hours. That is 141 kWh potential with 1 gallon-US of fuel or 50 miles left in the tank. I have a little over 100,000 miles on this battery assembly now & have never had a single problem. The whole array only added 110 lbs to my Prius & cost me just under $2,000 to put together. Of course, I assembled the array myself & it is not contained in a crash-proof box & should not be considered anything more than an experimental prototype but, I do have over 100,000 absolutely trouble-free miles on this array.

Now, with such a reality in place, let’s take a new look at what is actually possible with a fleet of PHEV V2G vehicles outfitted like my Prius is with 24.5Ah of HV Battery.

Instead of needing 15,600 BEV to provide 234 MWh, you can now get your 234 megawatt hours from only 1,659 PHEV fitted as is my Prius. Let’s take a quick look at the investment costs for these same numbers. 15,600 BEV @ $52,000 ea = $811,200,000 vs. 1,659 PHEV @ $36,000 ea = $59,724,00. If you were to use the $ amount that would be expended on BEV to make 234 MWh & put them into PHEV instead, you could buy 22,533 PHEV & make 3,177 megawatt hours or 3.17GWh of electricity. That is at least 13.5 times as much electricity for the same $ investment. That has to be a little bit sobering.

Yes, my Prius is an AT-PZEV emissions rated vehicle & while it is making electricity it is almost as dirty as the newest, cleanest coal-fired plant so, let’s take a look at using 22,533 of my kind of PHEV for non-‘spinning’ work. 22,533 PHEV X 12 kWh = 270 MWh vs. 15,600 BEV @ 15kWh ea = 234 MWh --- The investment in PHEV comes out on top again even when treating the PHEV fleet like a BEV. The same investments $ can get you 112.5% more BEV power & keep up to 3.17GWh of reserve on hand for ‘spin-time’ emergency generation.

Wayne – http://privatenrg.com
Posted by: Wayne Brown

I would encourage you to learn to drive lighter and smarter. It would make your good vehicle even better.

Back to this article the V2G concepts have been proven by ACPropulsion and their T-Zero and eBox. They also have the removable Longer Ranger clean gen set that can be added or removed as needed. Very smart, very practical and real.
Posted by: jim stack

Wind speeds tend to decrease at night, because the boundary layer separates from the free atmosphere when the boundary layer cools. Thus, wind power yields would be expected to drop at night. PV power also drops (to zero) at night. Driving, especially the commuter driving for which a plug-in is most suitable, tends to occur during the day. Thus, there would be a tendency for vehicle owners to want to charge up the plug-in at night, rather than to let the grid extract power from the plug-in at night. Perhaps the conundrum could be avoided if parking spaces were equipped with electric plugs and power could flow into commuter vehicles during the day. Enough power would have to be left in the vehicles during nightly discharging to get the vehicles to their destinations the next day: presumably, just a software patch. Still, the natural tendency would be to charge the vehicles when the grid is not receiving power from wind and PV.

One would have to work out whether the inherent load on the grid, lower at night, would be low enough to permit ANY charging of vehicles at night. Note that 24-hour businesses or other operations that used on-site PV during the day would be net consumers of grid electricity at night. In a 100% solar/wind world, i suspect not. Toss in a few hundred [shudder] nuclear plants or a lot of biomass fuel, and the grid might make it thru the night. Continental-scale superconducting transmission lines would also help. The wind is likely to be blowing somewhere, even at night.

cassandra

/**/
Posted by: cassandra none

So I pose the question to CARB, 'Do you want the money to be spent on these generation assets that are going to be used to back-up wind or do you want the same amount of dollars spent on electrification of the vehicle fleet?'

Please look at all the facts. The batteries are in the tunk and could and will be btter contained as he firms up the design. I can't say that for the many very unsafe vehicles on the road today full of imported gas.
Posted by: jim stACk

Hi Kent,

Allow me to address some of your concerns here as you may have alarmed the readers into some misconceptions about electric vehicles in general.

Actually there are many ‘experimental prototype’ vehicles on our highways. In fact, the DOE is currently sponsoring (funding) a consortium of vehicle manufacturers, electric utilities, universities & national testing laboratories in developing new battery technology for use in all varieties of electric vehicles in the US. This consortium has many quote; “experimental prototype” vehicles being tested throughout the US on every type of public roadway gathering real world test data to help manufacturers develop new battery technology for use in electric & electrically assisted vehicles to be manufactured in the US.

As far as the safety of the battery array goes; the array is made up of NiMH cylindrical batteries encased in steel jackets which have been designed in both parallel & series groupings so that the array is disconnected from the vehicle’s system in less than 1 ms of any kind of short circuiting or OEM shutdown. At the moment the array is disconnected, another series of relays drop the entire array into groupings of 7.2 volt nominal modules so that high voltages do not have to be dealt with in emergency situations. This is even better than the OEM battery which remains @ 201.6 Volts when disconnected from the vehicle. The whole 110 pound array is secured to the vehicle and completely covered by a hard cargo cover so that the array stays put even in a roll-over accident.

Even if some of the steel cylinders were ruptured in an accident; the chemistry & makeup of such NiMH cells do not have leakage problems as the electrolyte is predominantly dry. If any of the electrolyte (Sodium Hydroxide & Potassium Hydroxide) alkaline were to get free, it can be neutralized very simply with nothing more than a mild vinegar & water mixture akin to what one might eat on a nice salad. In fact, these two chemicals that make up the NiMH electrolyte are the base chemicals for most soaps, detergents & shampoos and are nowhere nearly as dangerous as the common Lead-Acid batteries which are very often ruptured and leak quite a bit of sulfuric acid in accidents.

My insurance company is fully aware of my test vehicles & what I do; in fact, they require that I submit pictures so, that if a vehicle is stolen, I will have evidence for the extra losses I claim. I insure them for more than MSRP, not just because of the battery array but, because of the expensive data loggers, computers & etc which I have in them for testing. They are eager every year to renew my policies & have never tried to do anything more than sell me more coverage than I need.

Regards – Wayne – http://privatenrg.com
Posted by: Wayne Brown

Perhaps you are saying that your battery pack can put out 22 KW for half an hour and then the engine driven generator drives the 22 KW output for the next six hours, so what you perhaps are telling us is the size of the gas tank in the car. The biggest, and utterly insurmountable problem with that scenario, is that (except for the extreme, but almost never realized, benefit of being able to provide power in a blackout emergency), this configuration is hopelessly uneconomic compared to the stationary alternatives. And then, how would you (in this hypothetical V2G scenario) drive your car on electricity (or even gasoline for that matter) having expended it proping up the electrical grid?
Posted by: Kevin Hill

NiMH batteries produce an even less plausible result. At 60 Wh/Kg and 100 Wh/L, 141 KWH represents about 5200 lb and about 50 cubic feet of batteries. Again, perhaps the 141 KWH was more a statement about what's in the gas tank.
Posted by: Kevin Hill

Hi Kevin,

My comments are actually in continuation of some comments I made on the first of these V2G series of articles here at EV World of which this is #2 in the series. In commentary under the first article, I did a better job at describing that indeed, gasoline in the tank is where I get the 141 kWh, not from the HV Battery. I have also mentioned that this would leave the PHEV HV Battery completely charged & I would also have 1 gallon-US of gasoline left in the tank which is good for far more than 50 miles in a such a PHEV. In fact, I can get over 100 miles on one gallon gasoline when my Prius begins with a fully charged battery. A 100 mile range will get me to my next gas station with very little worry from almost any place in the USA.

I also tried to build a case showing that this idea is not only viable but, until our suffering grid is more stable, PHEV-V2G vehicles are very likely the most reasonable investment, if not the only V2G alternative against a very well documented warning of upcoming grid blackouts forecasted by the federal panel that oversees the nation's power grid system just last Monday. This panel is called ‘The North American Electric Reliability Council’ and this is the very first time they have issued a warning since their inception in 1965. They have said that demand for energy is growing faster than supply in the US by almost 3:1 & until our utility companies have more incentives to build up the electrical infrastructure (power plants & distribution lines), we can count on blackouts in many areas of the US over the next several years. The incentives are not there, are not forthcoming & the blackouts are. Your best V2G type of assist for this very real & worrisome scenario is PHEV for most of the reasons I have already shown.

You very adeptly called the V2G scenario a ‘hypothetical’ scenario but, almost all good ideas take root after a group or groups of people apply careful & thorough analyses of hypothetical possibilities. When it comes to new ideas many good possibilities are too often left out of the mix due to ignorance, bias or agendas. Generally I am not very noisy but, I can clearly discern that the full & proper PHEV-V2G story is not being represented or thought through; therefore I am being a bit noisy. PHEV in the V2G hypothetical lineup have not been properly represented here or in the studies thus far. I have chosen to come out of the quiet place I usually keep to declare that PHEV in the V2G arena are being erroneously represented, maybe via ignorance, maybe via agenda but, either way at a loss of viable choices to those who are pondering the overall possibility of V2G.

Regards – Wayne – http://privatenrg.com
Posted by: Wayne Brown

This article focusses attention on the diurnal power bridging issue (and it mentions the complementary benefit of having V2G provide emergency power), the idea of storing and re-generating power on a large scale, day-in-day-out with EV's of some sort (PHEV or BEV) to improve the value of wind power as base generating capacity.

In short, the idea a small number of V2G capable vehicles could bridge large amounts of power generation to the peak period seems plausible on the surface (from an instantaneous power generation capacity perspective only), but it is not practical because there isn't enough energy storage capacity in the EV battery to drive that generating capacity for any significant length of time.
Posted by: Kevin Hill

As one seriously contemplates the reality of V2G ever venturing out of its current hypothetical state, one can see an immediate & real benefit in local neighborhood grid organizations of say 20 domiciles wherein 3 or 4 families out of 20 own something akin to a PHEV such as I own & are willing to dedicate the vehicle to functioning as emergency generators in times of power outages.

Four Prius like mine could generate enough power to fulfill the electrical needs of approximately 20 homes if each used an average of 4 kWh per hour which is well above the 24 hr current average per home in my neighborhood but, you have to plan for the times of day when usage is higher. These kinds of vehicles can even bear the extra large amperage draws of heavy electrical startups via the buffering that four 24Ah batteries would afford (up to 800kW for 30 seconds). All that is needed is the proper linkage between the vehicles & the neighborhood grid to handle these large surges. I have more than one vehicle in my household & the average for my neighborhood is 2.7 vehicles per domicile. So we could easily leave our vehicles in service & attend to our regular daily duties.

The nice thing about a Prius PHEV is that the engine will turn off when the battery SOC is above 65% & the kilowatt output from the vehicle is less than or equal to 5 kW & will startup automatically whenever either of two things happen: 1) The battery SOC falls below 55% or 2) The vehicle kilowatt output exceeds 5 kilowatts. The engine will then run until the battery SOC reaches about 60-67% SOC & then again turn itself off if the vehicle kilowatt output is 5kW or less. If output is above 5kW then the engine will run itself in accord with power need up to a sustained 22kW for up to 6.5 hours & even longer if someone will come along and fill up the fuel tank.

When we are all done generating emergency power for the neighborhood, we can go back to using the vehicles for their originally intended use & the investment in super clean emergency power will have been very low.

BTW, gasoline is $2.05 today in my community so, using 10 gallons of fuel to make 141kWh of electricity costs me just 6.8¢/kWh in fuel. Some utilities pay up to 85¢/kWh for emergency power.

On a closing note; my part of the world is serviced by two older coal-fired power plants so, running my AT-PZEV Prius here is cleaner than if I were to buy & use an EV in this part of the world for the time being. Hopefully this will all change someday but, until it does, I am doing my part the best way I know how & have resources for.

Regards – Wayne – http://privatenrg.com
Posted by: Wayne Brown

If PHEV's like the Prius can do such an important public service, perhaps, the local governments & local utilities can do more to subsidize the cost of ownership of such a high-capacity V2G-capable vehicle, and more of these PHEV's will put a real dent in petroleum conservation instead of a token effort that amounts to 1.5% of new vehicle sold representing PHEV's. The $0.85 buy-back per emergency kwh would also give people incentive to provide their vehicle for these emergency civic duty.

Now, WAyne, if instead of gasoline used, CNG (compressed Natural Gas) consting 1/2 as much as gasoline is used to power the Prius, then the fuel cost/kwh will be only 8 cents. Or if hydrogen will be available in the future at every gas station, then using your H2-ICE-HEV or FCV's to supplementing the grid for peak daytime usage will help save on redundant (read: wasteful) power-generating capacity at the power plants without dirty emission problem. In cold climates, using your CNG or H2-PHEV for heat and power co-generation will bring fuel-efficiency to above 80-90% when the heat generated will also be utilized to warm your house. Make an airduct that conducts hot air from the car in your garage to your central HVAC system, and voila, instant heat-power co-generation without any major additional investment. In the role of genset, the engine will last for a long time. The GE Jenbach piston powered gensets have listed time between engine overhaul of 60,000 hours. Yes, that's right, 60,000 hours, it is not a typo error.
Posted by: Roger Pham

http://www.alternativeenergystorage.com/power.htm

Then we may not need large batteries in EVs or PHEVs to buffer the grid.

Although not useful for vehicles (too heavy), as a home energy storage medium this sounds too good to be true:

They reckon a 500 kWh battery would take up 350 cu ft and last indefinitely.

Yet only $20 per kWh costs in volume production!

Home owners could make a lot of money from grid buffering with one of these.
Posted by: clett erridge