Southeast electric utilities to test smart charging PHEV Priuses
A pair of southeastern U.S. electric utilities will soon start testing a fleet of converted plug-in Toyota Priuses to evaluate a smart charging system. Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy will be evaluating both cross utility charging and billing and vehicle-to-grid technology. The project will look at the issues of tracking energy usage and billing when a car that is subscribed to one company charges on another's network. Similarly, energy fed back to the grid from the cars will need to be tracked so that drivers get appropriate credit. V2Green will provide the communications modules that will identify the car when plugged into the grid for billing purposes.
[Source: Earth2Tech]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
yetiatlarge 10:29AM (11/10/2008)
Are these batteries sourced from the same supplier as the Hybrid Prius?
If they are they are not very green as this article explains.
The Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.
The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.
“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.
All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?
Reply
GoodCheer 2:25PM (11/10/2008)
"Are these batteries sourced from the same supplier as the Hybrid Prius?"
Nope. These use Li batteries.
CLEEVE 9:37AM (11/21/2008)
If I were you, I'd shoot myself!