Energy efficiency concepts and applications

Technology

Energy Efficiency

The idea of electric cars, which run on big rechargeable batteries in opposition gas-powered internal combustion engines, has been around for years. But growing climate-alteration worries, tougher fuel-efficiency standards, billions in government subsidies, and a lot of venture capital seem to be generating a tilting point that could move electric cars from the transportation borders into the majority (The future of the electric car, 2010).

An electric car by definition will utilize an electric motor for forward motion instead of being powered by a gasoline-powered motor. The years 1899 and 1900 were the high spot for electric cars in America, as they sold more than all other kinds of cars. The 1902 Phaeton built by the Woods Motor Vehicle Company of Chicago, had a range of eighteen miles, a top speed of 14 mph and cost two thousand dollars. In 1916, Woods produced a hybrid car that had both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor. While basic electric cars cost less than one thousand dollars, most early electric vehicles were elaborate, enormous carriages intended for the upper class. They had fancy interiors, with costly materials, and averaged about three thousand dollars by 1910. Electric vehicles took pleasure in triumph into the 1920's with manufacturing cresting in 1912 (Bellis, 2011).

Electric cars had many benefits over their rivals in the early 1900's. They did not have the shaking, smell, and noise connected with gasoline cars. Changing gears on gasoline cars was the most complicated element of driving, while electric vehicles did not necessitate gear changes. Although steam-powered cars also had no gear shifting, they experienced from long start-up times of up to forty five minutes on cold mornings. The steam cars had less range before having to have water than an electric's range on one charge. The only high-quality roads of the period were in town, making most travel very local, an ideal circumstance for electric vehicles, since their range was narrow. The electric vehicle was the favored option of a lot people because it did not necessitate the physical endeavor to start, as with the hand crank on gasoline vehicles, and there was no fighting with a gear shifter (Bellis, 2011).

After this period the electric car went down in attractiveness and it was a number of years before there was a new awareness. By the 1920's, America had an improved system of roads that linked cities, bringing with it the call for longer-range cars. The finding of Texas crude oil decreased the price of gasoline so that it was reasonably priced to the common customer. The creation of the electric starter by Charles Kettering in 1912 got rid of the need for the hand crank. The commencement of mass manufacture of internal combustion engine vehicles by Henry Ford made these vehicles extensively obtainable and reasonably priced in the five hundred to one thousand dollar price range. In contrast, the cost of the less proficiently produced electric vehicles persisted to go up. In 1912, an electric roadster sold for over seventeen thousand dollars, while a gasoline car sold for just over six hundred. Electric vehicles had all but vanished by 1935. The years subsequent to the 1960's were lifeless years for electric vehicle expansion and for their use as private transport (Bellis, 2011).

The 1960's and 1970's saw a need for alternative-fueled vehicles to decrease the issues of exhaust emissions from internal combustion engines and to decrease the dependence on imported foreign crude oil. A lot of efforts to manufacture sensible electric vehicles took place throughout the years from 1960 and beyond. In the early 1960's, the Boyertown Auto Body Works together formed the Battronic Truck Company with Smith Delivery Vehicles, Ltd., of England and the Exide Division of the Electric Battery Company. The first Battronic electric truck was given to the Potomac Edison Company in 1964. This truck was able to reach speeds of 25 mph, a range of 62 miles and a payload of twenty five hundred pounds. Battronic worked with General Electric from 1973 to 1983 to manufacture one hundred and seventy five utility vans for use in the utility industry and to show the abilities of battery-powered vehicles. Battronic also manufactured and fashioned about twenty passenger buses in the mid-1970's (Bellis, 2011).

There were two corporations that were leaders in electric car manufacture throughout this time. Sebring-Vanguard produced over two thousand CitiCars. These cars had a top speed of 44 mph, a normal cruise speed of 38 mph and a range of fifty to sixty miles. The other company was Elcar Corporation, which fashioned the Elcar. The Elcar had a top speed of 45 mph, a range of sixty miles and cost upwards of four thousand dollars. In 1975, the United States Postal Service bought three hundred and fifty electric delivery jeeps from the American Motor Company to be used in a test program. These jeeps had a top speed of 50 mph and a range of forty miles at a speed of 40 mph. Heating and defrosting were accomplished by way of a gas heater and the recharge time took about ten hours (Bellis, 2011).

Several legislative and regulatory proceedings in the United States and around the world have renewed the electric vehicle development labors. Principal among these has been the U.S. 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment, the U.S. 1992 Energy Policy Act, and systems issued by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Additionally to more severe air emissions necessities and regulations requiring decreases in gasoline use, several states have issued Zero Emission Vehicle requirements as well. The Big Three automobile manufacturers, and the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as a number of vehicle conversion companies have become aggressively concerned in electric vehicle development through the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) (Bellis, 2011).

Demand is high right now for these cars, but that's mainly due to there are very few of them being made. Chevy only plans to produce ten thousand Volts in 2011. It remains to be seen whether large amounts of Americans, used to cheap gas and extended gaps between fill-ups, will be able to make the change. A bipartisan group in Congress undertook an effort to ease the transition, proposing a bill aimed at making half the cars sold in the U.S. electric by 2030 by way of extended subsidies, tax credits, and a ten million dollar prize for whoever develops the first commercially feasible battery with a five hundred mile range. The bill was included in a recent energy bill, but it got stuck in the Senate under a Republican filibuster threat. Nonetheless, electric car supporters believe that as battery technology persists to move forward, electric model prices one day will fall to the point that millions of people will be driving one (The future of the electric car, 2010).

There are many obstacles to electric cars with the biggest one being the price. In general, electric cars carry about a fifteen thousand dollar price over similar gas-powered models, because their batteries can cost up to twenty thousand apiece to make. The Volt's base price is forty one thousand, while the Leaf goes for about thirty three thousand. But large federal tax credits should drive the sticker price down by up to seven thousand five hundred per car, and some states are offering additional tax inducements. Even with the reductions, though, it would take more than a decade for a purchaser to get back the cost in gas savings. Still, supporters say that with developments in the mechanized process, batteries could drop by ten thousand apiece by 2020, and that more people will make the change when their gas savings more rapidly pay off for the higher price of electric cars (The future of the electric car, 2010).

A Leaf, for example, is priced at just above thirty three thousand, compared with Nissan's Versa model with roughly the same frame at about fifteen thousand. A federal tax credit for an electric car will shave seven thousand five hundred off the difference. But even if an electric car costs just pennies to run, this is not enough for a lot of purchasers. What most people don't understand is that in terms of operational costs or what it costs one to drive the car around, electric cars are beneficial today. But people don't purchase cars based on operating expenses. They buy based on upfront expenses and it can take years before the lower operational cost makes up for the higher upfront cost. It is thought that it could take up to five years to recover the price difference between the Versa and Leaf (Trading Pumps for Plugs: We Aren't There Yet, 2011).

Another obstacle with the electric car is that of range. Tesla Motors claims the Roadster can go up to two hundred and forty five miles on a single charge, while Nissan says the Leaf can get up to one hundred miles. The key phrase is up to. Weather, speed, and the utilization of accessories like air conditioning can considerably diminish their range. The Environmental Protection Agency hasn't yet figured out how to correctly measure range, so those numbers are even vaguer. This vagueness strengthens what has become known as range anxiety, which is the fear of being stranded miles from a charging station with a dead battery (The future of the electric car, 2010).

The Chevy Volt, for instance, receives 93 miles-per-gallon equal in electric-only mode (MPGe), 37 MPG in gasoline-only approach, and a combined composite rating of 60 MPG. Advertising 93 MPGe is predominantly doubtful, since the car can drive in electric-only mode for only twenty five to fifty miles in moderate conditions. Hills and tremendous temperature conditions decrease even this moderate range as they put supplementary damage on batteries. Additionally, it is hard to devise a battery for most favorable performance over a wide range of temperatures. Batteries could be rated for definite climates, but their value across regions would be insignificant. Complete or near-complete battery discharges appreciably shorten a battery's useful life (Loris and Kreutzer, 2011).

Electric cars give off no emissions, so they are immensely cleaner than carbon-dioxide-spewing, gas-powered vehicles. A recent MIT study found that electric cars charged in states with strapping nuclear or renewable energy sources are without a doubt greener than normal cars, but those in states that depend on coal plants can be worse for the environment than gas-powered vehicles. There is also the problem of how to recycle the dead lithium-ion batteries, which, although including none of the caustic chemicals of conventional car batteries, can weigh hundreds of pounds and aren't appropriate for landfills on a large level (The future of the electric car, 2010).

A standard 120-volt outlet can charge theses cars in six to eight hours. But one can also purchase a 220-volt charging station for about two thousand dollars that cuts the charging time in half. In the meantime, cities and states are mounting public charging stations, some of which will offer a charge more rapidly than the home-based ones. A federally sponsored proposal called ChargePoint America is presently working to establish charging stations in many metropolitan areas (The future of the electric car, 2010).

Another issue that has to be looked as is that of the power grid. Electricity grids are utilized to convey and allocate power from production source to end user when the two may be hundreds of miles apart. These grids are important to both producers and customers of electric vehicles and are supported inside government energy policy. Power generation resources include electrical generation plants such as a nuclear reactor or a coal burning power plant. A mixture of sub-stations, transformers, towers, cables, and piping are utilized in power transmission to make sure a steady flow of electricity. Electric vehicles will necessitate alterations to the distribution systems to supply opportune charging stations for customers. Smart Grid technology is a universal recurring topic to deal with the advance of the electrical infrastructure in support of electric vehicles, and to permit customers and energy producer's enhanced management of the resources (Murphy, 2010).

The amount of Americans driving completely electric isn't anticipated to be enormous overnight, but a slow changeover from the gas engines that just about everyone currently has. Local and bulk allocation systems are being looked at in order to make sure a gush in demand doesn't lead to blackouts. As for the new propulsion grid that electric cars will require, car charging stations are being constructed in public parking places, condo garages and office parks, but so many more are going to be required, like at shopping malls and the parking lots of wherever people work, so that while they're not driving, their cars can be charging back up to full battery. Electric cars need to recharge when they're not being utilized, as their range on the road is a little bit of gas engine vehicles. It is thought that twenty thousand new car charging parking spots will be up and running soon. But the two organizations which have received millions of federal tax dollars to put in charging stations in public places and apartment buildings are still finding the accurate spots and obtaining permission to set up at those spots. ECOtality and Coulomb Technologies are first looking at about thirty five major metro areas for their charging stations, but that leaves a lot of rural space and most of the country without a car charging parking spot for many miles (Keating, 2010). Quicker charging technologies are being worked on, and a number of organizations, including General Electric, Better Place and Coulomb Technologies, are competing to get parts of the charging station market. As for range, the Leaf's battery allows for a small driving distance of one hundred miles on a full charge, even though in actual traffic conditions that is probable to look something more like sixty or seventy (Trading Pumps for Plugs: We Aren't There Yet, 2011).

The U.S. government in 2008 began to talk about the energy crisis in earnest in response to both skyrocketing gasoline prices and a national mood that favored decreasing the U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil. When President Barack Obama entered office, he made energy independence one of his main issues, and his administration allocated billions of dollars to promote electric vehicle manufacturing and development of advanced batteries for those vehicles (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

In 2009, the U.S. had about 250 million cars on the road, of which only 40,000 were electric vehicles. Most of these had a range of twenty miles, a speed of twenty-five miles per hour, and were normally used for fleet applications, checking parking meters, and transporting people and clubs across golf courses. But the global electric car industry was poised to leap forward. Start-ups as well as established automakers were jumping into the electric car, hybrid retrofitting, and battery- making industries. New firms were investing hundreds of millions of dollars in promising start-ups, while existing companies were spending billions of dollars designing new cars and battery technology as well as building new battery plants. Some companies already had electric cars on the road, while others were pushing to have electric cars and so-called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) available by late 2009 or 2010 (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

The American transportation industry today faces a perfect storm of economic, geopolitical, and environmental concerns that threaten its future. The decline of the U.S. automobile industry, the country's increasing dependence on foreign oil imports, and global warming have spurred the Obama Administration to publicly commit the country to developing alternative transportation methods and alternative energy sources as a way of combating these problems and setting a new path for the U.S. transportation sector and economy as a whole (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

Federal and state governments have put into place a quantity of policies to encourage electric vehicle acquisitions. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides tax credits for permitted hybrid gas -- electric vehicles bought between 2006 and 2010, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act customized the tax credit for vehicles purchased after 2009 to $2,500 -- $7,500, depending on the battery capability. The law also integrated tax credits for plug-in electric drive conversion kits and over two billion in grants for advanced battery and vehicle manufacturing. A number of states have added consumer rebates for electric vehicles (Loris and Kreutzer, 2011).

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 set up the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, a twenty-five billion direct loan program intended at creating automotive and manufacturing green jobs and reaching the Administration's objective of higher standards for advanced technology vehicles. The federal government has also put into place tighter regulations on fuel efficiency that stand to help electric vehicles. In April 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency augmented the average fleet-wide fuel economy necessities to over thirty four miles per gallon (MPG) by 2016 (Loris and Kreutzer, 2011).

Research surrounding government policy in support of electric vehicles will rapidly lead one to look at much wider areas like environment control, dropping energy costs, dropping dependence on fossil fuels, and increasing the safety of existing electric infrastructure. While all these regions deserve wide-ranging research, it is important to center on government policy supporting electrification of cars. Electrification is defined as endorsing policies and actions that will make possible the employment of electric vehicles on a mass level in order to fight the economic, environmental, and national security vulnerabilities caused by reliance on petroleum (Murphy, 2010).

Government policy can impact all of the issues that surround electric vehicles. These policies tend to fall into four main groups: tax incentives; grants; public investment; and research and development projects. An appraisal of representative countries in each of the major regions will find some nations with well-thought out and synchronized policies containing apparent goals with monetary support, and other nations with only general statements of intention. Industrialized, and politically steady, nations tend to have reasonable plans while developing nations have more general declarations of intention without the objectives or monetary support to put them into practice (Murphy, 2010).

Such policies should include an electric car technology production tax credit, more stringent CAFE standards, and on the customer side, ongoing tax credits and non-monetary inducements such as access to HOV lanes. In other words, U.S. government policies should be aimed at structuring demand for electric cars. Also, the U.S. should invest in Li-ion battery R&D, assure IP ownership, and permit some participation in the advancement of battery technology and production. In addition, the U.S. should undoubtedly target power electronics and systems integration as realistic targets for U.S. leadership (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

Electric cars may ultimately represent a big proportion of America's vehicle fleet, but Congress should not force them into the marketplace with subsidies. Many believe that it is time to stop consumer and producer aids for electric cars and focus on an energy policy that creates affordable electricity (Loris and Kreutzer, 2011). It has been recommended that the government needs to purchase electric vehicles. They need to test at least one EV for use in municipal fleet operations and include suitable EV's and plug-in hybrids in fleet purchase schedules. They need to install electrical conduit and 120V or 240V plugs near parking areas. They need to change building codes and building permit rules to require 120V or 240V plugs near parking areas for new buildings and renovations. They also need to create an agency or jurisdiction fleet plan that commits to purchase electric vehicles, neighborhood electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles when they can meet the need (Government policies to encourage electric vehicle recharging infrastructure, n.d).

Due to a lot of technological improvements, batteries are now lighter and have better storage capacity, but still they only have a life expectancy of one hundred and twenty four thousand miles and a replacement price as high as fifteen thousand dollars. The battery in an electric car must surmount a lot of more technological obstacles before consumers accept electric power as a better-quality option to the internal combustion engine. Battery manufacturers must find a satisfactory mixture of capability, performance, robustness, dimension, weight, and price before the classic customer will spring for a home recharging system (Loris and Kreutzer, 2011).

Extensive electric car adoption in the U.S. is essential in order to reduce America's reliance on imported fossil fuel, decrease the nation's largest source of carbon emissions, and ensure national transportation security. However, the fact that the government's current strategy, which is focused on becoming the technology leader in the electric car market, leads one to think that it is unlikely that any significant impact will take place on achieving that result. Instead of such a technology push strategy, it is recommended that their be a market pull approach, which would entail the government creating incentives for companies to put electric cars in the hands of consumers and for consumers to purchase electric cars (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

Having presently some two hundred and fifty million cars on the road implies massive U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Therefore, the electrification of the transportation industry is inevitably becoming a high national security concern. The importance of this, on the other hand, will depend significantly on the price of foreign oil. For this reason, If the price of oil moves and stays above $150 a barrel, a clear and present national security threat will move the U.S. government to focus strategic decision making and to force all relevant parties to concurrently help put into practice a national strategy of scaling up electrification of the transportation sector in the next five to ten years. If on the other hand the price of oil stays below $150 a barrel, the U.S. government will persist to permit strategic decision-making to stay behind widely disseminated with a variety of interested parties concurrently competing for government resources in the next five to ten (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

The revolution of the U.S. transportation sector is likely to carry on during the next 5-10 years, but probably more gradually than is presently expected. The key driving force will not be the government, but rather major incumbent automakers, who have secured internal access to critical new battery technology as well as cooperative agreements with national, regional and local governments in dissimilar parts of the world which are significant for supporting infrastructure development. Only if oil prices again rise quickly and stay at very high levels will the electric car adoption course in the U.S. speed up. In that case, the early global movers may have considerable advantages, based on economies of scale and economies of learning, to take advantage of on a speedily expanding U.S. market occasion (Burgelman and Grove, 2010).

The good news is that the right mixture of technology and policy is now in place to make sure that plug-in cars are just about positively here to stay, in some form or another. Battery range is extended, and government inducements are pushing customers and industry to increase the market beyond the lavishness position it has engaged. Things have really gone in a new direction. There's just a whole expansive part of the population who now see how electric cars can work for them (Trading Pumps for Plugs: We Aren't There Yet, 2011).