Battery Metals

The idea of using electric car batteries to support the grid sounds like something out of a Margaret Atwood novel. Imagine millions of EVs that charge from the grid when there is excess output and release back unused juice to the grid at peak hours. Also, many believe car batteries can be used as household battery packs, collecting and storing power from renewable installations. But how realistic is this belief?

The concept of vehicle-to-grid outlined above is not new. It’s been around for about a decade, but so far, no major breakthroughs have taken place. What’s more, despite a suitable level of enthusiasm, it looks like it will be many more years until such a breakthrough takes place.

Let’s start with the technical side, assuming for simplicity’s sake that Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s estimate that by 2040, more than half of all new cars sold will be electric, so there will be sufficient battery capacity to use in the grid.

So, that’s millions of electric cars all fitted with batteries. What do utilities and drivers do if they want to play together to improve the resilience of the grid (utilities) and charge some cheap juice (the drivers)? They will need to have a communications system in place so everyone knows when the best time to charge the cars is. This problem was detailed in a December article by the Lexington Institute’s Vice President Constance Douris. It’s not even the biggest one.

There is also an issue with the discharge part of the process: some industry insiders are concerned that when the grid sucks out juice from the batteries this could lead to increased stress on the cells, potentially damaging the battery.

As serious as these problems are in their own right, they are perhaps easier to solve than the non-technical ones. If you want to use millions of cars to act as battery packs, you will need to change the way people think and this cannot be achieved with a technological breakthrough. It takes time and a lot of it, plus motivation. A case in point is Nissan’s experiment with owners of its Leaf EV, as described by Bloomberg.

Nissan offered owners of Leaf a means to adapt their car battery to power their homes. The benefit was a US$40 electricity bill every month. What happened? Over the six years since the start of the project, just 7,000 Leaf owners agreed to take part. That’s 7,000 out of 81,500 Leaf owners in Japan.

As for the right time to charge your EV so you get the lowest rates, Nissan again did a trial together with utility Tepco, this time with employees, asking 45 of them to install electricity chargers at their homes to monitor power demand on weekends. Participants were rewarded with Amazon shopping points for buying electricity when supply was highest—but it wasn’t enough to make them take advantage of the cheap juice. Only 10 percent completed the trial.

Finally, there is the simple question of money. If you want to get EV drivers on your side and convince them that it’s better for them to charge at peak production and discharge during peak demand, you—that is, the utilities—will need to make it worth their while. For now, the financial benefits of V2G are uncertain. Once this uncertainty dissipates, the chances of the concept becoming a reality would greatly improve. Just make the system easy to use and the savings from charging at the right time worth the effort. Now this is a “just” that will take years to do.

It’s been over a year since we “flicked the switch” at Stucco, turning on the first big battery bank in an Australian apartment.

So how has the Stucco Solar + Storage system performed? Has it lived up to our dreams of slashed power bills, carbon neutrality, and high levels of energy independence? How is the economics stacking up for Stucco (the owner of the system)?

Thanks to the system’s outstanding monitoring, with Enphase monitoring each panel and battery module and SwitchDin monitoring each apartment’s consumption, we have plenty of data to help answer these questions.

Before we do, a quick overview for any readers not familiar with the Stucco Solar + Storage project. Stucco is a housing co-operative in Newtown, Sydney, that has been providing affordable housing for 40 students of Sydney University since 1991.

In 2015 a group of residents developed a project to install a solar and battery storage system to reduce the resident’s power bills as well as their carbon footprint.

In early 2016 the City of Sydney awarded Stucco an Innovation Grant to help support this first demonstration of a Solar + Storage system in an Australian apartment, for the council recognises that apartments pose a major hurdle to their zero carbon plan.

The project proved to be quite challenging, requiring Stucco to first set another precedent with (what we understand to be) the first residential embedded network retrofit, as well as negotiating unprecedented battery fire controls and the building’s heritage status.

Eventually, in December 2016, with all approvals in place, Solaray Energy installed the 114 solar panels and 36 batteries to deliver Stucco 30 kW of solar capacity with 40 kWh of usable battery storage.

The Solar + Storage system is now the primary source of energy for the building and residents buy all their electricity from Stucco Co-operative, who acts as the embedded network manager and retailer.

Now, the data…

Impact 1: Slashed power bills for tenants

In 2017 Stucco’s tenants saved on 55% on their power bills!

The average resident paid $240 p.a. for all their electricity, including connection charges etc., compared to an estimated $540 if they were still buying from a grid retailer.

Individual’s bills and savings depend on the size and shape of their load profile and how this interacts with Stucco’s innovative Time of Use pricing structure with different rates for grid power and local power (from the Solar + Storage system).

Impact 2: Attractive returns on investment for Stucco

In 2017 the system generate over $10,000 of value for Stucco Co-operative. This comes from the sale of locally produced and stored electricity to tenants, plus income from the sale of excess solar power to the grid (FiT), plus savings on the Co-operative’s own bills for the common areas.

This gives a (simple) return on investment of 7.7% on full project costs of $130k, which is a payback period of 13 years. With the generous support of the City of Sydney, the ROI for Stucco’s investment of $50k is around 20%, or a 5 year payback.

While the 13 year payback period unfortunately exceeds the 10 years warranty period of the battery, this was forecast by our modelling, and mainly reflects the ambitious nature of the project and battery prices of late 2015 (which is a distant memory in this rapidly evolving market). The figures also highlight how effective grant funding can be in supporting early demonstrations of new technologies.

Ofcourse the ROI could be improved by increasing the rates charged to residents, but this runs counter to Stucco’s primary objective of providing affordable housing. The current pricing arrangement appears to strike a good balance between the interests of the co-operative and the residents.

Impact 3: Carbon neutral (?)

The solar system produced a total of 41.5 MWh of clean power in the year, exceeding the total electricity requirement of the Co-operative of 36.4 MWh.

Unfortunately the building still uses gas for hot water, but my (rough) calculations suggest that the CO₂ equivalent emissions from the annual use of 8 MWh of gas is probably a little less than the CO₂ equivalent emissions abated by the generation of 5 MWh of excess solar power.

Impact 4: Highly self-sufficient

Across the year the building, and it’s 40 residents, was roughly two thirds self-sufficient. This is far greater than we had imagined would be feasible when we started the project, and is even slightly higher than the 60% forecast by our modelling.

A striking aspect is that, across the year, more solar power comes via the batteries than direct from the solar panels. Considering that the battery stored solar power is available during the peak hours, when electricity prices are tripple what they are in the shoulder period and quadruple what they are at off-peak hours, the batteries.

Bonus Impacts

In addition to the immediate impacts of the system we’ve been delighted by the community’s recognition of the project. It won a CEC Install of the Year award, a NSW Green Globe and the Tenant Lead Initiative award from the Australasian Housing Institute.

I was also fortunate to be awarded a 2017 Myer Innovation Fellowship to support me in setting up SunTenants as a social enterprise that builds on the Stucco experience to bring the solar revolution to Australia’s rentals.

Summary 

After a year of operation the Stucco Solar +Storage system has proven to be a fantastic success for tenants, who’ve halved their bills, for the co-operative, that is receiving a healthy additional income stream, and for the planet, that is being spared 40 people’s carbon emissions.

What’s more, the system is demonstrating the viability of providing the majority of an apartment’s power needs from cheap clean solar power, with battery storage.

Reflecting back on the project I continue to be in full agreement with the late Lucky Chance, “you can never regret optimistic endeavor”.

The battle for a mid-sized, middle-class electric car market is revving up as high-tech upstart Tesla scrambles to get is Model 3 out to buyers in the face of strong competition from Detroit mainstay General Motors.

It’s been two years since Tesla announced the Model 3, a four-door EV with a base price of about $36,000 before tax breaks, and an entry-level range of about 220 miles per charge. More than half a million people flocked to put down a deposit on one, and Popular Mechanics named it the magazine’s Car of the Year for 2018.

Although Tesla has dominated the EV market with its high-end offerings so far, the assembly lines for the Model 3 have been slow to crank up. While the company says it hopes to hit its target of 5,000 cars a week by June, it just cracked 2,000 at the end of March.

“I wouldn’t quite say they’ve regained their footing yet, but they’re making progress,” stock analyst Efraim Levy, who follows Tesla for the market research firm CFRA, told Seeker.

Into the gap has stepped GM, which beat Tesla to showrooms with the Chevrolet Bolt — a comparably sized, four-door hatchback with a range of 238 miles and a similar base price. The Bolt has been racking up plaudits from reviewers like Consumer Reports, which called the vehicle “shockingly good” — and GM got it out to dealerships before Tesla, giving consumers looking for a longer-range, relatively cheap EV an early option.

“Tesla’s position is better, because they’ve proven there is significant demand for the technology generally,” Scott Shepard, a transportation analyst at Navigant Research, told Seeker. “But it is also precarious, because it has yet to prove profitable, and has proven more difficult than expected to scale. GM is also less likely to get away with quality control issues than Tesla, which impacts GM’s bottom line and slows them down.”

The rivalry is also a struggle for the future: EVs now make up about 1 percent of the global automotive market, but that number is expected to grow rapidly as the world tries to reduce the planet-warming carbon emissions fossil fuels produce. And while the Trump administration moved to puncture one of the tires of US climate policy this week, moving to push back rules that would boost fuel efficiency standards, vehicle manufactures are not likely to scale back their focus on EVs.

“Automakers have universally recognized that their future is electric,” Max Baumhefner, who studies electric vehicle issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Seeker. “They’re not going to change. The design cycle for a new car is longer than a presidential term.”

In California in particular, a push to get 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030 has led to the availability of 44 different EV models in the state, Baumhefner said. That’s also spurring more investment in the network of charging stations needed to top off batteries, which has been lagging behind sales.

“One beautiful thing about cars without tailpipes is they meet tailpipe emission standards everywhere,” he said.

Tesla founder Elon Musk told a reporter via Twitter that he’s now overseeing the Model 3 line personally:  “I’m back to sleeping at factory,” he wrote. “Car biz is hell …” Musk also started SpaceX, which launched a Tesla roadster into space atop the world’s largest rocket in February.

“If they can get a roadster into space, I think fixing production issues is pretty reasonable,” Levy said.

Both companies reported first-quarter production figures at the start of April, with Tesla touting nearly 8,200 Model 3s out the door. The Bolt ran well behind, at less than 4,400. But both showed extensive growth, with the Bolt’s deliveries up more than 40 percent over the same period of 2017. Tesla didn’t start delivering the Model 3 until last summer, but says it quadrupled from the quarter that ended in December.

Levy said that despite Tesla’s problems, it’s “a fan favorite” with a cachet comparable to computer giant Apple.
“It’s got popular demand. It’s the brand that people want to be seen in,” he said. “The Bolt is more day-to-day. You don’t show off a GM vehicle the way you show off a Tesla.”

But GM chief Mary Barra told a conference in March that customers have been pleasantly surprised by the Bolt.

“They don’t know what to expect,” she said. “They think they’re maybe going to compromise, and then they realize they don’t at all. It’s a great vehicle.”

Barra said Chevy plans to step up Bolt production later this year and wants to have at least 20 all-electric models on the street by 2023. Those are aimed not only at the US market but at countries like China, which is trying to reduce the pollution that came with its rapid industrialization.

But the Bolt is also cheaper right now, Levy said. Tesla is first delivering its more upscale Model 3 packages with a higher-powered motor that gets more than 300 miles on a charge.

And while Tesla is currently leading GM in sales, GM “has traveled farther in terms of technological development and is more likely to weather any storms on the horizon,” Shepard said.

But Shepard said both models are likely to get more competition from an upgraded Nissan Leaf. The 2018 version of that popular urban runabout has gotten a range boost to about 150 miles, as well as a style update and more room. It starts at about $30,000, and the company has told reporters the 2019 version will have a range of 200-plus miles. That entry might help find the sweet spot between range and prices for consumers, who until recently had limited EV choices.

“There was either the Tesla long-range vehicles or the rest of the market with sub-100 milers,” Shepard said. “The second-generation Leaf is interesting, because it’s effectively splitting the distance between its first generation and the Model 3 and Bolt, and in so doing netting some cost savings over both.”

The traffic was bad. It was raining. The windows kept fogging up. And there was no guarantee that a public charging station would be available when she got to her destination.

My cousin recently told me about the stress of taking her parents’ e-Golf, a Volkswagen electric vehicle, to see a show about 30 miles away. Even if she’d overreacted to the possibility of running out of charge (the e-Golf has about a 100-mile range), she decided her next car wouldn’t be electric.

A few weeks later, she bought a Honda Fit. She brought it over for a ride around my block, touting its great gas mileage, relieved to forget about her charging worries.

What my cousin experienced is nothing new. Range anxiety — a constant nagging feeling that your electric vehicle (EV) doesn’t have enough juice to cover your trip or make it to the next charging station — has followed drivers since the advent of consumer battery-powered vehicles. It’s similar to stressing about your cellphone battery not making it through the day without a portable battery or charger and outlet handy.

Limited charging infrastructure and range limitations are something of an Achilles’ heel in the electric car industry. “Everything about electric vehicles is awesome except plugging them in sucks,” Alex Gruzen, the CEO at wireless car charging company WiTricity, said in a phone call.

Electric car makers continue to expand and improve their charging networks and apps to map and find charging spots, so range anxiety should start fading, but it’s not an instant fix.

Carmakers adding electric options to their fleets are building out individual charging networks: Volkswagen, Jaguar, Porsche, BMW, and others have all laid out plans to electrify dealerships and add charging stops. Tesla, known as the leader of the EV pack, offers thousands of charging stations, including fast supercharging stations, through its nationwide network. It also aims to produce a million electric cars by 2025.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook report for 2018 projects an ongoing increase in EV sales — from less than 1 percent in 2017 to 12 percent of all vehicle sales in 2050.

Electric vehicle charging network ChargePoint found in its annual report that 200,000 EVs were sold in the U.S. in 2017 — the highest number ever. The network also added 10,000 charging locations, bringing its total to 45,000 charging spots nationwide. But as EVs go mainstream (currently they’re only about 1 percent of the car market) charging stations need to keep up. California alone announced a target of 5 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030.

Across America, drivers can find more than 150,000 gas stations. Chevy Volt owner Adam Green, 34, in Phoenix, thinks chargers could fit into existing gas station infrastructure. “Right now there isn’t enough demand to have charging stations everywhere,” he said in an email. “It would be great if a couple could be found at gas stations.”

But as WiTricity’s Gruzen explained, relying on battery power requires being proactive — planning to charge ahead of time to have enough range — instead of reactive, i.e., running low on gas and finding a nearby gas station. It’s hard to facilitate that type of change.

Speech pathology grad Lindsay Downs, 27, drives her all-electric 2011 Nissan Leaf in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley with minimal charging issues while out and about. Every so often the charging spot at her usual shopping mall is unavailable, but she can usually find somewhere to charge if she’s low on battery. She thinks more people would go electric if they could change their paradigm and realize they would never have to fill up again. “Changing the way you think is just hard for people in general,” she said in a call.

Daniel Imbeault, 52, in Quebec, experienced the difficulty of changing how he thought about cars and “re-fueling” after going from a lifetime of gas cars to a 2016 Nissan Leaf. “With my gas car, I just start the engine, put it in drive, and go. Need gas? Stop at the next exit, fill it up, and go. That’s it, no big deal. No anxiety at all … I can refill anywhere! But electric is a completely other world,” he wrote in an email.

EV advocate and Tesla driver Don Burke, 52, thinks of electric vehicle adoption as a movement. Eventually the infrastructure will grow and make electric cars an easy purchase. “This largely is a supply and demand framework,” he said in a call. “As more EVs come into market, the supply side will increase to meet that demand.”

The biggest barrier to purchase is charging fears, he said. “Everyone thinks they’re always going to be thinking, ‘How do I find a charge?'”

Many EV drivers say their range anxiety has been abated after owning and seeing the benefits of driving a battery-powered, emission-free car. But look at 31-year-old stay-at-home dad and consultant Tom Levron, who shared how much brain power he puts into his Honda Fit EV driving habits in San Diego, California, a market that incentivizes EVs with tax breaks and rebates.

In an email he wrote, “The way I avoid the anxiety is charging the car at night… charging during the day when I get back from errands in case I’ll need to go out again, planning my day and leaving time for a charge when there are free public charge stations — like at my local grocery shop and just knowing my limits, before I head out on errands I map out to see that it’s all within range there and back.”

That’s a lot of low-level planning, and while admittedly it’s not that complicated, it’s a lot more thought than most people put into getting around.

ChargePoint, PlugShare, and other EV networks and individual electric carmakers offer robust tools and apps for phones and within car consoles to alleviate any anxiety. But these maps and trip planners can’t make more charging stations appear.

Looking at a list of the most scenic, quiet routes in the U.S. based on GPS tracking transportation company Geotab’s calculations, it still seems daunting to take your EV on what should be a relaxing, less congested ride. One of the quietest roads in America is U.S. Route 50 through Utah. To a gas car driver, it’s a stretch of limited services with a handful of gas stations, but for an EV owner, this scenic route is anxiety-inducing.

The charging infrastructure is just not there yet. And with these service gaps, range anxiety will persist — even as battery technology improves and as charging stations become as ubiquitous as gas stations. Eventually that stress will fade as more drivers know they can plug in and unplug those charging worries wherever they go.

Contaminants, including antibiotics, pharmaceuticals and steroids, are increasingly being detected in surface waters and drinking water sources. These contaminants can have a huge impact on both human and aquatic health, so effective removal is essential to protect the health and safety of water resources.

“There have been a number of urban sewer inventories that have identified hospitals as a major contributor of drugs and hormones and other contaminants that end up at wastewater treatment plants,” said Bill Burgos, professor of environmental engineering at Penn State.

In fact, hospitals may contribute upwards of half the total load of contaminants carried to regional wastewater treatment plants, said Burgos. Once there, elimination can be difficult because the chemicals become diluted, yet they still pose a health threat due to their high biological potency.

“One way to destroy these compounds is through chemical oxidation,” Burgos said. “Manganese oxides are very powerful oxidants and are known to be nonselective, so they are highly reactive with just about any oxidizable organic compound, including those found in hospital wastewater.”

To test the effectiveness of manganese oxides (MnOx), the researchers collected wastewater samples from the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and obtained biogenic MnOx-coated coir fiber from a metal removal unit in Glasgow, Pennsylvania operated by EcoIslands LLC. The MnOx-coated fiber was then reacted with the hospital wastewaters to evaluate performance.

Chemical analyses showed that biogenic MnOx-coated coir fiber filters were very effective at removing contaminants from hospital wastewaters. Of the 36 organic micro-pollutants detected, 21 were removed by more than 94 percent after a 24-hour reaction period.

Consistent with these results, bioanalytical assays, which test the potential toxicity of the wastewater to humans, also revealed that biologically active compounds were removed below detection levels.

“Not only do we have chemical evidence that these filters remove these contaminants, we also have biological evidence that the potential human toxicity was dramatically reduced,” Burgos said.

In addition, the MnOx used was formed as part of a coal mine drainage treatment system, and its reuse converts a waste product into a commodity.

The team’s next steps include reducing treatment times, testing a flow-through configuration, screening different biogenic MnOx sources, and beginning field studies.