EV Charging Station Now Available!

First Public Charging Station for EVs

The first public charging station for electric vehicles opened April 25, 2009 in East Woodland, California at the Gateway Center! A low-key ceremony was held to inaugurate the station. At the inauguration Tesla Motors demonstrated how use the chargers on six of their very own Tesla Roadsters.

There is one Tesla charger, two AVcons chargers, a small paddle inductive charger, in addition to two neighborhood EV standard outlets where – in approximately an hour – those eco-friendly car users can come and charge up their electrical vehicles.
It is the first station made available of its kind. We have the city of Woodland and other developers to thank for that. There are also hopes that in the future many more stations pop up following its lead. In fact, currently Tucson and Phoenix Arizona are in talks of opening EV-charging stations.

There are concerns, however, on how successful the stations will be. Consumers are left wondering how the minimal number chargers will be shared if an increase in purchases of EVs are expected of auto shoppers. Once a car is done charging, will the person next in line have to wait until the other’s car gets picked up? And how is someone supposed to occupy their time while waiting for their vehicle to charge? Some feel that more technology is needed before the new stations become more widely used.

Others are concerned that this step forward may end up being a step backward. It may delay research and possible advances in finding a renewable energy source for vehicles if they do become gradually more accepted by society. And not only that, but jobs could possibly be in jeopardy if these public charging stations become customary.

Without a doubt, charging stations are an improvement considering the current status on the world’s dependency on gasoline – especially in the United States. Yet, there are still a few flaws here and there regarding the technology and availability of the charger that still will need to be advanced before becoming accepted across the United States, as well as across the world.

http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/first-public-charging-station-for-electric-cars/

http://gas2.org/2009/05/01/first-public-electric-car-charging-station-inaugurated-in-woodland-california/

EPA tries to slam corn... but can't bring themselves to do it. Yet.

CNN recently published a news article about the EPA’s newly proposed ethanol law. They want to push more advanced biofuels over the use of corn-ethanol because they claim that the production cycle of ethanol emits too many emissions, and that ethanol itself produces too many fuel emissions when in use. The EPA gave two energy-use scenarios on which to base the legislative decision; one that favors corn-ethanol and one that would prohibit all but one corn-ethanol production process while favoring other alternatives like cellusic ethanol energy.
The reason the EPA gave two very different scenarios and has not yet favored either of them is to buy time for the agency to meet within itself and determine how to calm its corn-based ethanol industry as well as increase lobbying efforts.
The corn industry is concerned about what information is being used to determine that ethanol emits more emissions than it saves. RFA President Bob Dineen said there was too much uncertainty about how the EPA made the indirect land-use calculations and questioned the validity of the data the government used in those calculations.
"The science of market-mediated, secondary impacts is very young and needs more reliance on verifiable data, and less reliance on unproven assumptions. Done correctly, such an analysis will demonstrate a significant carbon benefit is achieved through the use of ethanol from all sources," Dineen said. There are so many different factors that contribute to how many greenhouse gases are actually emitted, that any scenario would be difficult to plot. One must consider the fuel for tractors and transportation, which are coal-based, but also that pastures and cornfields are a huge source of greenhouse gas sinks. It is almost impossible to tell if ethanol, including the production process, is any better or worse than using coal and oil-based energy.
This problem of data accuracy and predictions seems to be a common theme among scientists and in the EPA. We read about this issue in State of Fear, but right now we are also able to see it in action. The EPA has many supporters to please, and by reducing the corn industry they are hurting many people economically, as well as loosing support. This is why they have not made any decisions yet, they have only proposed the idea that a law may need to be changed.
However, the US department of Agriculture is providing credit programs for ethanol firms, and the Department of Energy is giving the corn ethanol industry an $800 million stimulus package. Maybe the EPA will not have to worry about losing its corn-growing support base, since the farmers will be too busy spending all that money to notice.

The news article can be read here: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200905051317DOWJONESDJONLINE000557_FORTUNE5.htm

The Pros and Cons of Coal Gasification

As we have learned in class, of the natural fossil fuels we have at our disposal, coal is pretty much the left handed, red headed step child of the group. It's the dirtiest, the hardest to harvest, and has less energy per kg than our other options, but it does have one thing going for it: it's really plentiful. Compared to the skyrocketing prices of natural gas and petroleum, coal is looking pretty good right now and as many proponents tout, it's a step towards energy independence. 

Now, we have talked in class about how much of the coal we have is laden with sulfur, which quite frankly, is not so hot for the environment and the process for cleaning coal can be expensive. Thankfully we have a "new" process called coal gasification that may just be the answer to our dirty coal needs. At least for now. Here is a summary of the coal gasification process, as well as the pros and cons of utilizing it.  (from popularmechanics.com)

1. The heart of gasification lies in (shocker) the gasifier, which takes coal, water and air and applies heat under high pressure to make "syngas"-a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Minerals in the fuel (i.e., the rocks, dirt and other non-carbon-based material) separate, leaving the bottom of the gasifier either literally in ashes or as an inert, glass-like slag-materials that can be reused for materials such as concrete and road fill.

2. The crude syngas leaves the gasifier piping hot and full of contaminants (hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, mercury and nasty particulates, to name a few). A combination of heat exchangers, particulate filters and quench chambers cool the syngas to room temperature and remove most of the solids.

3. Syngas then passes through a small bed of charcoal to capture mercury, removing over 90 percent of this toxic metal (click here to learn more). Used charcoal containing captured mercury leftover is sent to a hazardous landfill for disposal.

4. The final step for cleaning in gasification is the removal of sulfur impurities in acid gas removal units, where the impurities are converted into sulfuric acid or elemental sulfur-both valuable byproducts.

5. A combustion turbine then reheats the clean syngas, dilutes it with nitrogen for control of NOx (the greenhouse gas that makes smog) and burns it, driving a generator to make electricity.

6. Leftover heat from combustion is recovered in a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG), which generates steam to power the internal turbine. Some of that air is compressed and can be channeled back to the air separation unit for oxygen, which is then reused within the gasifier.

7. The steam generated in the HRSG and the steam made in Step 1 combine to drive a steam turbine for even more power production. The steam then cools and condenses into water, which pumps back into the steam generation cycle. In an IGCC plant, two-thirds of the total electricity produced comes from the gas turbine and one-third from the steam turbine.

The great thing is, once coal is converted to a gas, it's fairly straightforward to remove pollutants. Mercury, sulfur, and particulates can be stripped out and sold commercially. This "clean" gas can then be used for a variety of fuels such as oil for heating homes or fuel for cars. "The gas can also sub for natural gas, fueling "integrated gasification combined-cycle" (IGCC) power plants to create electricity. Pennsylvania hopes to replace many of its filthy coal-fired power plants with IGCC plants."

""You could put a million scrubbers on an old coal-fired power plant and never even approach the environmental performance of a coal gasification plant," says Kathleen McGinty, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection."

So the benefits work out as a reduction of air pollutants, a solution to the waste-coal problem, and a boost to economy.

So what are the drawbacks?

"There are three drawbacks, and they are substantial:

• If gasification takes off, there isn't enough waste coal in the country to feed the beast. Thus, you're back to coal mining, which is a nightmare.
• Gasification is largely untested and unproven, at least in the U.S. And IGCC plants are more expensive than old-fashioned dirty coal-fired plants. Thus, gasification relies heavily on subsidies. State and U.S. Dept. of Energy tax incentives for the Penn. plant, for instance, add up to over $140 million. More big industries getting chummy with gov't; more semi-permanent corporate welfare recipients.
• Carbon dioxide. Global warming. That whole thing. IGCC plants are certainly an improvement over dirty coal-fired plants -- they use less coal to create more energy -- but they still produce plenty of CO2. They do make the CO2 fairly easy to capture, which is nice, but the question is what to do with it once it's captured. The big idea is to sequester it: pump it underground or into plant tissues and soil. However:

"The effectiveness of CO2 storage in those systems is completely unknown," says Anne Hedges, program director for the Montana Environmental Information Center. "It's a nice theory, and I sure hope it works. But there's absolutely no evidence it does on a long-term basis." "

To sum it up, as an alternative energy solution, don't waste your time with coal gasification. However, as an improvement to dirty coal, gasification is just that: an improvement. We need to look to other technologies, but as it is, this is a good step in the right direction.

sources:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4218251.html

http://www.grist.org/article/coal-gasification-clean-coal-or-subsidy-hungry-boondoggle