AutoblogGreen Interview with Daniel Kammen on PHEVs
Yesterday, I wrote about the cost of charging your PHEVs compared to gasing it up in a study commissioned by the state of California. I contacted one of the writers of that study and asked him about some concerns our readers raised in comments. He was kind enough to take my questions by e-mail and even send me a copy of the study (under review at Environmental Research Letters) which I will give you a little peak.Daniel Kammen is Professor in the Energy and Resources Group Energy and Resources Group, Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy and is Professor of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Engineering (Commenter Mike Z. must be happy to read that) at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lets get to it. Our readers wondered what assumptions were made about the car. Here are more details directly from the study.
"We adopt performance parameters for PHEVs with an all-electric range of 20 miles from EPRI (2002). The all-electric efficiency includes losses from charging (EPRI, 2001). A charging rate of 1 kWh/hr can be obtained by using ordinary 120 Volt technology with a charger efficiency of 82% and a charger size of 1.2 kW, and higher charging rates may be obtained by investing in infrastructure such as 240 Volt chargers. Each compact car PHEV will use 4.1 kWh of stored energy if it drives its entire all-electric range and will require 4.1 hours to recharge, and each full-size SUV PHEV will use 7.1 kWh of stored energy if it drives its entire all-electric range and will require 7.1 hours to recharge.2 The design of PHEVs is an area of great uncertainty; if PHEVs have all-electric ranges that are less than 20 miles so as to reduce initial costs, then each PHEV would require less electricity to fully charge but may charge more often."
Go below the fold for another quote from the study and the responses to your questions.
Commenter Kballs will be happy to read the study does consider things like timers and is not just going for the worst case.
"The analysis above suggests that more than 5 million PHEVs might economically charge in some hours, so we examine the effects of 1, 5, and 10 million PHEVs under three plausible charging pattern scenarios. Note that we do not evaluate the worst case situation in which PHEVs would be charging at the peak electric load. Because PHEVs represent new demand in the electric power system, this case would obviously result in higher peak loads and would begin to immediately create the need for more generation and transmission capacity. The cases described above seem more likely than peak charging because they match typical commute patterns. However, PHEVs are not yet available so we do not know how consumers will behave if they obtain PHEVs. Avoiding peak charging may require technologies that discourage or prevent such behavior, but these could be as simple as timers on chargers."
Now, the interview. I tried to ask things raised in your comments.
Q: Do you know Alexander Farrell, the guy behind the California study?
A: I hired Alex into our department. Alex and I wrote the biofuel study together, and more importantly, the two low-carbon fuel studies that put this work into practice in California.
Q: Are you the guys working on the Toyota Prius plug-in project?
A: The Prius project is directed by Dr. Tim Lipman (my former post-doc) and Dr. Susan Shaheen. It is described online at:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/07/25_plugin.shtml
Q: Who funded this study and does your school have a policy on funding?
A: As a state university, UC Berkeley accepts funding from both the public sector and the private sector, but accepts no restrictions on publication or other use of the data from those studies. Our work on plug in hybrid vehicles was funded by the non-profit energy foundation of San Francisco and by the U. S. National Science Foundation, and by the Karsten Family Foundation that has endowed my laboratory.
Q: To the study, our readers seemed concerned with the assumptions you made. Can you talk about that a little?
A: The conclusions of the study are that in states with clean electricity grids, such as California, plug-ins can decrease peak load (increasing human health by putting less fossil fuel power plants online during hot, smoggy days), reduce electricity costs, and develop a more competitive electricity system. Second, developing hybird vehicles will require research on better batteries as at present they are not cost-effective (gas would have to be ~ $5.50 gallon for current batteries to make this a good deal).
Q: Have you taken a look on how that might look in states beyond California?
A: It depends on how clean the electricity grid is - which varies utility by utility and state by state. As more states adopt clean energy standards (renewable energy portfolio standards), PHEVS become better and better for the environment.
For more information visit http://rael.berkeley.edu
"The analysis above suggests that more than 5 million PHEVs might economically charge in some hours, so we examine the effects of 1, 5, and 10 million PHEVs under three plausible charging pattern scenarios. Note that we do not evaluate the worst case situation in which PHEVs would be charging at the peak electric load. Because PHEVs represent new demand in the electric power system, this case would obviously result in higher peak loads and would begin to immediately create the need for more generation and transmission capacity. The cases described above seem more likely than peak charging because they match typical commute patterns. However, PHEVs are not yet available so we do not know how consumers will behave if they obtain PHEVs. Avoiding peak charging may require technologies that discourage or prevent such behavior, but these could be as simple as timers on chargers."
Now, the interview. I tried to ask things raised in your comments.
Q: Do you know Alexander Farrell, the guy behind the California study?
A: I hired Alex into our department. Alex and I wrote the biofuel study together, and more importantly, the two low-carbon fuel studies that put this work into practice in California.
Q: Are you the guys working on the Toyota Prius plug-in project?
A: The Prius project is directed by Dr. Tim Lipman (my former post-doc) and Dr. Susan Shaheen. It is described online at:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/07/25_plugin.shtml
Q: Who funded this study and does your school have a policy on funding?
A: As a state university, UC Berkeley accepts funding from both the public sector and the private sector, but accepts no restrictions on publication or other use of the data from those studies. Our work on plug in hybrid vehicles was funded by the non-profit energy foundation of San Francisco and by the U. S. National Science Foundation, and by the Karsten Family Foundation that has endowed my laboratory.
Q: To the study, our readers seemed concerned with the assumptions you made. Can you talk about that a little?
A: The conclusions of the study are that in states with clean electricity grids, such as California, plug-ins can decrease peak load (increasing human health by putting less fossil fuel power plants online during hot, smoggy days), reduce electricity costs, and develop a more competitive electricity system. Second, developing hybird vehicles will require research on better batteries as at present they are not cost-effective (gas would have to be ~ $5.50 gallon for current batteries to make this a good deal).
Q: Have you taken a look on how that might look in states beyond California?
A: It depends on how clean the electricity grid is - which varies utility by utility and state by state. As more states adopt clean energy standards (renewable energy portfolio standards), PHEVS become better and better for the environment.
For more information visit http://rael.berkeley.edu
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TX CHL Instructor 2:01PM (8/12/2007)
"(gas would have to be ~ $5.50 gallon for current batteries to make this a good deal)."
I did a BOTE calculation for an available battery conversion (for the Scion), and it came out closer to about $12/gallon for break-even. EV is not yet ready for prime time.
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Bill Guiffre 3:38PM (8/13/2007)
Since the EV1 had a range of much more than 20 miles (around 80 miles), should we not assume any new PHEV will have at a minimum an 80 miles range in all-electric mode and not the 20 miles in the analysis?
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Lascelles 2:11PM (8/12/2007)
"Since the EV1 had a range of much more than 20 miles (around 80 miles), should we not assume any new PHEV will have at a minimum an 80 miles range in all-electric mode and not the 20 miles in the
analysis?"
Bill, PHEVs usually have a smaller battery, engine, etc. than an EV. Think of it as somewhere between a Hybrid and EV. The full EV has a bigger battery because there is no gas motor, etc. I hope that helps.
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Lascelles 2:37PM (8/12/2007)
Also, Google made the MPG of its plug-in public and that was 73.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/06/19/google-org-announces-rechargeit-gives-11-million-for-phevs/
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Bill 3:13PM (8/12/2007)
So, a PHEV sedan used in the daily commute that adds a few kWh/day to the owner's power consumption would require "more generation and transmission capacity"?
I'm just a little skeptical of that claim.
Using his data, if you drove it 20 miles one-way to work, then plugged it in when you arrived, it would be fully charged well before the grid hits peak demand (at home you set the timer to recharge after midnight)
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Lascelles 3:27PM (8/12/2007)
John, I am not going to TRY to mix classes. The new article will say the safest passenger car hybrid. It will only rank one, i.e the best of, because like you say, there are many factors to consider. No one seems to disagree with that or the fact Camry is the best PASSENGER hybrid for 2007. Maybe the award will inspire someone to make a full list.
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Lascelles 4:45PM (8/12/2007)
Woops, that last comment was to the wrong article.
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Anth 6:56PM (8/12/2007)
The fundamental point is that batteries aren't good enough right now, and he is right.
I would expect 240V sockets to become prevalent in the garages of new homes around the country in the next five years (that is if the builder is thinking). And given that new construction (at least in my case) the breaker box is on the outside of the garage so it wouldn't take much to get a 240V socket installed.
The last point is especially important, as CA has a goal of something around 20% of electricity generated through clean sources by 2020. Its possible through PHEV use by that time the electricty used to power PHEVs is all clean (and the current energy use is still made through the same sources as today).
So imagine taking the pollution of a quarter of the cars off the road. And by 2030 we could be nearly car-based-pollution free. Can solar and wind keep up though? 40M cars by 2030 just in California using 15kWh per day (60 miles) is 600M kWh, or about 400MW of generation running 24/7, or 800MW of generation running 12hrs/day (solar, wind, etc).
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Chris M 9:44PM (8/12/2007)
I suspect NiMH batteries may be "good enough" for a PHEV, but we'd have to accept a limited
EV range. Toyota is currently testing a plug-in Prius using NiMH batteries, but it has only 8 mile EV range.
Both A123 and AltairNano batteries have excellent cycle life and good energy density, the only holdup for PHEV use is high price. Improvements in manufacturing may bring the price down, ushering in the "plug-in" era.
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Lascelles 11:41PM (8/12/2007)
Chris, I think Prius could do a lot better and probably will. I know it's important but I never understood why people seem to care about batteries so much? The Prius is the best not because it has the best battery. That won't be true for the next best hybrid. I have written some bad things about the series hybrid but I think if one did come to market and the car company said, you know what, this is NOT greener. No one would care. I think the advantages of a clean, silent, easy to repair, better shape because you don't have to shape around gas engine parts, etc would be SOOOO great, no one would care. This is an interesting study but the tipping point for EVs is not when the battery competes on a MPG, etc with gas. You can argue it's there today. It happens when it just clicks with people. That's what I think. I don't like boxes. I think the most important part of the quote is "how consumers will behave if they obtain PHEVs." Just look at plug-in conversions. Just imagine what might happen with PHEVs? What if there was an off the rack solar kit with the PHEV? Think how that could extend range. The power your house and V2G stuff has more potential than most people think too.
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steven 8:37AM (8/13/2007)
@5 What employer is gonna let you plug in your car when you get to work so you can effectively "steal" electricity from the company? It DOES make it a whole lot more affordable though.
@Anyone: Right now I pay my electric bill monthly and it is high ($294/month)in spite of all my new light bulbs, Energy Star appliances, and two of the most efficient heat pumps on the market. I know there are environmental advantages that may outweigh the costs associated, but does anyone have numbers or the formula on how much one's electric bill will go up causes some folks are gonna be in for a "shock". Of course I limit my driving now, but once I get the vastly superior milage, I'm gonna drive a lot more. It only make sense.
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Lascelles 9:13AM (8/13/2007)
Steven,
Many work places did this with the EV-1. Many do it today for the hand full of electric cars out there. Google is even testing plugins. I think your boss would notice the plug :D There were a lot of places you could charge for free as well. Sure, you could say they did it for the press or tax break or whatever but there are some companies out there that really care about the environment.
As for the bill, it probably depends on where you live and how often you plug in. It could vary wildly. That's really what I am highlighting with these articles but...
Take a look at the Prius. That interface is amazing. I don't think PHEV drivers will have to depend on timers. I think it will be all built into the car. You will just set, don't spend over this amount and Onstar or whatever will download my electric company rates or whatever and do all the work. No thinking. Just remember to plug in.
Maybe a little voice from the car will remind me if it sees I am at a charging point like home with GPS :D
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Jim Beyer 11:26AM (8/13/2007)
This is the same UCal Berkeley that sold out to Chevron? And this is the same Chevron that bought Cobasys, the maker of the NiMH cells that worked for 130K+ miles in the EV1 and the RAV4? And then proceeded to sit on them for the last 10 years?
Just wondering......
This guy is off base. If PHEVs were so far out of reach, how come Toyota has already built hundreds of thousands of hybrids? (Which contain battery packs themselves). I agree that the economics might be questionable for PHEVs at this time, but they are no where near as problematic as Kammen suggests.
At the very least, one could reasonably argue that the externalities of oil use (regional instability, fighting wars, etc.) could easy top the $2.50-3.00 cost premium that he suggests that PHEVs carry.
Well, Prof. Kammen, thanks to Toyota, the camel's nose has slipped under the tent. Hybrids are HERE, and they are going to STAY HERE. 3rd parties are already tinkering with them to make PLUG-IN HYBRIDS.
Soon they will be HERE and will STAY HERE. And then oil will lose its grip on the American consumer.
Even the Coboasys patent (which prevents anything larger than an F cell NiMH to be used in a vehicle) is running out very soon.
Oil's time is just about up. Tick, tick, tick....
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Jim Beyer 11:42AM (8/13/2007)
Oops. My Bad.
It was actually BP that gave UCal Berkeley $500 Million dollars, not Chevron. But Chevron does seem to sponsor many scholarships there as well.
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GRLT 7:14PM (9/10/2007)
@12, every generation of Prius to date has shrunk the battery pack. The 2007 pack holds less energy than the 1997 pack.
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GRLT 7:17PM (9/10/2007)
@12, every generation of Prius to date has shrunk the battery pack. The 2007 pack holds less energy than the 1997 pack.
-Sorry if this double posts-
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Chris M 9:26PM (9/10/2007)
GRLT, you've got it exactly backwards. The 1997 Prius (sold only in Japan) used cylindrical NiMH batteries. The 2001 model switched to a prismatic battery pack, more compact but with higher power and greater energy storage. The 2004 and later models had a slightly lighter but more powerful battery compared to the 2001 version.
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