Stimulus Watch

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[edit] General Description

The purpose of this project is the first field test of a fleet of PHEVs (Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle). While reduced carbon foot print and the reduced consumption of hydrocarbon fuels are side effects, they are not the primary objective.

The driving factor behind this project is the aging grid system of the US. The methodology and topology of the grid has been relatively stable for several decades while the electric consumption and population have continued to grow. This has stressed the grid system nearly to the limit, punctuated with rolling black outs, and cascading failures every couple of years.

It has been postulated that numerous battery driven vehicles could be used as temporary energy storage to reduce local consumption on the distribution grid during peak demand hours (5-7pm). In this case, 60 vehicles would be approximately 300 KW for about 2 hours, or about 60 households at peak draw during peak demand hours.

Because the ultimate goal is a system level change as opposed to an incremental change, no individual power company is willing to do this project alone. There is no payback for them or their funding an infrastructure change, and no PUC is going to let them pass on this experimental cost to the customer. Hence, a certain amount of government support is necessary to prove the concept is feasible, and that it can be brought in to the mainstream. From there, it is hoped that industry will pick up the concept, standardize, and reduce the cost through volume.

One might ask what the utility companies get from this. The answer is a reduction in the number of plants they must construct, operate and maintain, and a reduction in the number of new transmission and distribution lines they must construct. Both of these items have been hampered in recent years by numerous public mandates against construction of power plants and power lines (curiously, this same public still expects to get their electricity). If the electric company can acquire extra resources without building infrastructure, then its a win for them. Now 300 KW is a drop in the bucket, but it is a start. Once the concept is proven, other major fleet vehicle operators may be interested in taking up the usage of predominantly electric vehicles. For example apart from power companies, there is the post office, UPS, Fedex, other utilities, businesses with large daily use fleets, government agencies with large daily use fleets (hopefully it is apparent that fleet vehicles get parked for the day at about the time when peak demand starts).

In the future, it is envisioned that numerous fleet vehicles, predominantly driven by their electric motor rather than their engine, would be able to meet short term electric needs during peak demand. It is also envisioned that individuals owning similarly powered vehicles may be able to drive them to work (electrically) and plug in at a large facility. Their vehicle along with their co-workers vehicle would then be charged and discharged per a demand plan to meet local electric peak demand. Obviously the individual would be charged and credited according to the usage.

[edit] The Goal

The goal of the project is to establish the methodology and feasibility of reducing peak loads by using distributed storage in the form of a semi-electric vehicle on the local distribution grid.

The goal of the project is demonstrate that fleet PHEV vehicles can be used for managing and reducing peak loads. This in turn (it is hoped) will encourage other operators of fleet vehicles (post office, gas company, communications, Fedex, UPS, etc) to participate in other projects to manage the grid via PHEV's.

The anticipated benefits of this are:

Reduce or delay the creation of new generation facilities, distribution and transmission lines by managing grid peak load.

Reduce dependence on foreign oil by using electric vehicles who's energy comes from domestic sources (coal, natural gas).

[edit] Why Boulder?

Simply because Boulder was chosen as Xcel's test bed for Smart Grid concepts, and thus was chosen as Xcel's Smart Grid City. Here's a more extensive piece on why Boulder was chosen as Smart Grid City

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/13/boulder-to-become-first-smart-grid-city/

[edit] A Basic List of What's Required to Do the Project

$100,000 per car for plug in technology CONVERSION Only a government worker would leave their office and be home by 5:00 to plug in their car. however keep in mind peak electrical is about 1 to 5 PM so these cars will not return electricity to the grid during peak times. given a 5 year life on the batteries 5KW times 2 hours times 5 (work days per week) times 48 weeks (holidays and vacations) = 12,000 KW for the life of the car divided by 1,000 (conversion of kw to mw) = 12 MW per car at $100,000 per car = $8,333 per MW returned to teh grid. PV solar costs $153 per MW solar thin film costs $140 per MW coal is $55 and NG is $53 per MW.

now here is the kicker to recharge the cars off peak they will use less than 10% renewal energy and 90% coal & NG generated electricity. This is not clean technology for vehicle transportation it is a transfer of coal and NG generation from peak to non peak with batteries.

The project is geared towards PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) as an alternate peaking energy source for "lopping" the daily energy peaks that happen typically from about 5-7 pm. The goal is to start with fleet vehicles that return to their origin at approximately 5pm each day, and make their battery supplies available for placing approximately 5 KW per vehicle on the grid for approximately 2 hours. These batteries are then recharged in the middle of the night when demand for electricity is lowest and abundantly available.

The functional requirements for doing this are:

A vehicle with a sufficiently large battery capability, which at this writing typically means replacing standard hybrid batteries with large groups of lithium-ion packs.

An inverter for converting battery power back to 120 or 240 VAC that can be placed on the grid.

A battery charging mechanism for recharging the batteries.

Control circuitry for controlling the discharge and charging of the batteries.

Network and internet connections for remotely controlling charging and discharging of each PHEV from a grid control center.

A charging center where the PHEV's can be plugged in. This may be a group center for a few cars, single car station or possibly a facility for all 60 vehicles. In the case of a significant number of vehicles at one location, it may necessitate upgrades to the local distribution grid and its protection system to handle putting significant power onto the grid.

Concerning the engineering required to do this:

Presumably this charging/discharging center will be designed to distribute charging and discharging equally across all three phases of the grid.

Before putting significant generation back on to the grid, the sites in question will require a protection study, and most likely a simulation of potential scenarios to insure that no unforeseen consequences arise.

This will most likely require a special control and monitoring station at the local grid facility as well as a data acquisition system for tracking vehicle performance.

Ultimately, a detailed analysis report will be required.

To support the above items is the necessary detailed design and documentation to accompany the item.

[edit] Points in Favor

Some people may ask "Is this Smart Grid technology?". The answer is yes, in part. Smart Grid is the aggregated management of numerous small resources and loads to optimize the operation of the electrical grid. While the product is power, the underlying vehicle (no pun intended) for performing this management is a network communications and control structure. Thus, by operating and managing the charging and discharging of these vehicles on the grid, the project is enabling Smart Grid technology, and the infrastructure that must go into it.

While the vehicles are probably the main part of the expense, a major portion of the 6 million dollars will be spent on setting up control for the vehicles, management, data acquisition, analysis and reporting, as well as design and simulation to determine the impact of the vehicles on the grid. Remember, this project interacts with a critical public utility, and thus related engineering costs are higher because of it. Most likely, the 6 million dollars is not the whole cost of the project, and it is reasonable to assume that Xcel is supplying a percentage of matching funds in the project.

Does the country need this? The answer is yes, its one of the spectrum of solutions to our energy problems. For more information please consult the web references under additional data.

[edit] Points Against

0 jobs created. $6 million dollars. Boulder gets to drive about twice as far on a gallon of gas. This is NOT economic stimulus especially when the money would be given to a company whose converted car CAUGHT FIRE and forced them to do a recall. The company's own CEO took responsibility for the fire, "Carl Lawrence, chief executive officer of Hybrids Plus in Boulder, Colorado, said his company produced the battery pack used in the plug-in Prius that burned. The cause hasn't been determined, and the fire may have resulted from a wiring flaw when Hybrids Plus assembled the cells into a battery, he said." Is this really even debatable?

Convert 60 vehicles for 6 MILLION dollars? That's $100,000 per vehicle. Wouldn't it be cheaper to purchase new vehicles? Or cheaper yet to go back to horse and carriage? Keep in mind that EEtrex, a Boulder-based company, lists that they can convert a Prius to a Plug-In-Hybrid for $24,000; where does the extra money go?

Only in Boulder, CO would anyone propose to spend $100k per vehicle stop paying $2.00 for a gallon of gas for an already Hybrid vehicle. So at 45 MPG at lets say an average of $3.00 a gallon of gas would be $1 per 15 miles driven, you would have to drive ONE MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND (1.5 million) MILES before it cost you $100,000, assuming of course that the dozens of scientists working on the project decide to not do anything with collected data. That doesn't even take into the consideration the extra power consumption the city would take up and on a tiered electric plan with the more you use the more you pay for kWh. I wonder if these "highly educated" Boulderites that are proposing this remember their basic math skills. What a freaken joke!

I suppose they could always pay for this idiotic project by writing some more traffic tickets for touching the solid line with your back wheel while getting in the turning lane. I think this loss of money in government is good, it's going to make them cut these ridiculous projects... if they can do the math that is.

Scientific research: What a bunch of crap-talk about a waste of tax payers dollars. Where do these idots think the power comes form to run the vehicles in the first place. Oh that would be coal-pull you heads out of your rears and stop spending money. It is the craxy thinking of folks who come up with these ideas that put this county in the big hole that it is in. Stop and ask the question would you personally buy a $135,000.00 vehicle to run around the city in..then why ask us as tax payers to fund it for the citys.

Sincerly one hacked off tax payer.

[edit] Where to Get More Information

Some information on vehicle conversions can be obtained from http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Main_Page.

V2G Information: http://www.udel.edu/V2G/

And here's two more informative places to start on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHEV and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

If you want to read more on Smart Grid from a 48 page brochure funded by the department of energy (DOE), you can find it here:

http://www.oe.energy.gov/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages(1).pdf