Battery Metals

In a bid to accelerate the transformation of the transportation sector, a new study says growing electric-vehicle use will deliver large benefits not only to their owners but also to all utility customers.

The study, commissioned by ChargEVC, suggests there will be net savings for utility customers if plug-in vehicle owners charge their vehicles at off-peak times for electricity – even after including the cost of installing the infrastructure and enhancing the power grid.

Electrifying the transportation system is viewed by many clean-energy advocates as a significant part of the state’s efforts to reduce emissions contributing to climate change, as well as cleaning up air quality in New Jersey, which often fails to meet federal health standards.

The transportation sector accounts for 46 percent of the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions, the largest of any area of the economy, including power plants.

New Jersey lags behind

But New Jersey, as the study notes, lags behind other states in building the charging infrastructure to hasten wider adoption of electric vehicles. The study cites the benefits of expending public and private investment in that cause, which it claims will reduce vehicle-operating costs for consumers, with the added benefit of lower air pollution.

The study’s release comes at a time of increasing public debate over how New Jersey is to achieve a cleaner energy future and at what cost. A comprehensive bill to subsidize nuclear power plants and carbon-free sources of electricity like solar is facing still opposition, in part over its perceived expense to ratepayers.

Even with those competing policies, there is movement to push for broader investment in electric-vehicle infrastructure. A week ago, Atlantic City Electric filed a $14.9 million petition with regulators to invest in a range of electric-vehicle programs. On Monday, a Senate committee will consider a bill (S-1975) to require the state to develop a plan to increase sales of plug-in vehicles and electric charging stations around New Jersey.

Intense competition

In addition, there are pots of money available to fund these projects, although the competition for the funding is intense.

For instance, New Jersey received $72 million from a nationwide settlement with Volkswagen for the company’s cheating on diesel emission software in its vehicles. The state Department of Environmental Protection solicited requests for how the money should be disbursed late last year.

So far, it has received requests for funding from 114 projects, totaling more than $387 million. The projects run the gamut – from electrifying equipment from shore to ocean vessels; to ferries and tugs; to school or transit buses; to forklifts and cargo-handling equipment at ports; to diesel trucks; and to charging stations at local communities, such as the Municipal Complex in Paramus.

To clean-car advocates, the response is heartening. “It proves that this effort could be a real economic driver in the state,” said Chuck Feinberg, president of the New Jersey Clean Cities Coalition, and a member of ChargEVC.

Other funds for this effort might be available from money received from New Jersey rejoining a regional initiative to combat greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Once the state rejoins the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, it will receive funds from a surcharge on power-plant emissions to fund clean-energy initiatives.

How that money from both RGGI and Volkswagen is allocated, however, has yet to be determined.

“It’s important that all stakeholders continue working to improve air quality – and the health of our residents – through a concerted, collaborative effort to increase the number of zero-emission vehicles and infrastructure to support them,” said Peg Hanna, manager of DEP’s Division of Air Quality.

Renewable energy projects provided the Kingdom’s national power grid with 402 megawatts of electricity in 2017, which is expected to increase to 1,700 megawatts by 2019, Energy Minister Saleh Kharabsheh said on Wednesday.

In a statement following a visit to the Sahara Forest Project (SFP), Kharabsheh said that Jordan is rich in renewable energy resources, especially solar energy, due to the location of the Kingdom within the Sun Belt, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

SFP, which was launched in September of 2017 in Aqaba under the patronage of His Majesty King Abdullah and Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, aims at producing 10,000 litres of fresh water per day and up to 130,000 kilogrammes of vegetables annually, in addition to the production of solar power.

The 30-dunum SFP Launch Station, located outside the port city of Aqaba, is financed primarily by Norway and the EU, Petra reported.

The project uses sun, saltwater, desert areas and CO2 to produce food, fresh water and clean energy.

Kharabsheh noted that the sun shines in the Kingdom for 316 days a year at a daily average of eight hours, adding that various areas in the country are also characterised by wind speeds ranging between 7 and 8.5 metres per second, which is enough to establish wind stations for generating electricity.

He also highlighted the importance of the SFP in enhancing the role of local resources in contributing to the total energy produced, commending the EU’s role in supporting the Kingdom’s energy sector.

During the tour —which saw the participation of EU Ambassador to Jordan Andrea Matteo Fontana, Norwegian Ambassador in Amman Tone Allers and ten other ambassadors — CEO of SFP Joakim Hauge pointed out that the project had already started producing solar energy and selling fresh vegetables to local consumers inside Aqaba.

Vintage Electric offers a few emission-free ways to get around California, and for its latest retro-inspired ride it has enlisted one the Golden State’s most iconic figures. Big wave surfer Jeff Clark is best known for spending 15 years paddling into the Mavericks break alone before it became world famous, but for his latest ride he is taking a much drier (and safer) approach. The Jeff Clark Signature Cruz e-bike has the legend’s fingerprints all over it, and offers fellow surfers a clean and stylish way to cruise down to the beach.

Soft contact lens technology could link renewables and the grid and make electric cars better.

In the 1970s, Dr Donald Highgate found a way to make contact lenses more comfortable. With colleagues at the University of Surrey, he developed a transparent, flexible polymer that held water like a sponge.

Now, the same technology has spawned a new supercapacitor material that could accelerate the adoption of electric cars, and solve one of the biggest problems facing renewables.

Instead of storing energy in chemical form like a battery, supercapacitors hold it in an electrical field, like static collecting on a balloon. In 2011, Tesla’s Elon Musk predicted that it would be supercapacitors, not batteries, that would power future vehicles.

They promise faster charging times, and don’t rely on expensive materials such as lithium and cobalt, says Dr Sam Cooper from the Dyson School of Design Engineering. They are also more durable. “Supercapacitors have a very long cycle life,” he explains. “You can fill and empty them a huge number of times.”

The problem has always been a lack of energy density. The best available supercapacitors hold just five per cent of the energy per kilogram of a lithium ion battery. A fleet of supercapacitor-powered electric buses in Shanghai illustrates the point. Although they can charge in less than 30 seconds while dropping off passengers, they need to do so every few stops. But that could be about to change.

Superdielectrics Ltd has developed a supercapacitor material that can store “remarkable amounts of electricity, far beyond what we’ve seen before,” according to its CEO Jim Heathcote. It’s cheap to produce, uses no rare elements, and because it’s mostly water, it can’t catch on fire like traditional batteries. The discovery happened almost by accident, says Highgate, who is now director of research at the company.

His contact lenses were based on a polymer mesh that swelled up when water molecules attached to it, trapping more water within the holes in the net. By adding different elements to the mix, he was able to give the polymer additional properties. In the 1990s, he and Heathcote developed a variant with attributes that could be used for hydrogen fuel cells.

By 2016, the pair were trying to make their polymer matrix more electrically conductive with an eye on biomedical applications – potentially as an interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs. But when they tested the new polymer – a thin, light blue square the size of a postage stamp – something strange happened.

Highgate remembers scribbling some rough figures on the back of an envelope. “I did the calculation and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, that’s ridiculous,'” he recalls. “[The capacitance] was 100 times what it ought to have been for a little thing a square centimetre. I thought I’d made a mistake.”

They had stumbled on a material with dielectric properties between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater than existing conductors. Over the last 14 months Superdielectrics has been working with researchers at the universities of Bristol and Surrey to determine whether their polymers work in real world conditions. They released their results this week.

The scientists have created small devices that can power a fan or an LED for a few minutes, and claim that with further work the material could eventually reach energy densities of up to 180 watt-hours per kilogram, compared to 10 Whr/kg for the best currently available supercapacitors.

That would bring supercapacitors in line with lithium-ion batteries. It could mean smartphones that charge in seconds, and cheaper, safer electric vehicles that you can power in the same amount of time it takes to fill up a petrol car. Instead of charging every other stop, China’s buses could run for 20 or 30 before being juiced up in seconds.

Shortening charging times could also accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, according to Dr Jenifer Baxter at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. “If you can decrease the time spent charging and you can maintain or increase the range within that charge, that will certainly reduce people’s anxiety about electric vehicles,” she says.

Regenerative braking is another potential application. “Batteries don’t like to be charged quickly,” says Cooper, who was not involved in the research. Supercapacitors are perfect for it, and could help make electric vehicles more efficient.

There are some potential hurdles to overcome. Although the material is competitive with batteries on weight, Cooper points out that size will also matter if they’re going to be used within vehicles. This hasn’t been researched yet, but Highgate estimates the volume of a supercapacitor made using this technology would be about 30 per cent greater than an equivalent battery.

Another issue, and the “Achilles heel” of supercapacitors, according to Highgate, is their internal leakage current. While batteries can store energy for weeks or months, supercapacitors can only do so for hours or days before it seeps away. That might not matter for some applications, but would be a problem for electric cars if they were left unused for a few days. Combining supercapacitors with batteries as a back-up could be one solution.

Most see the first use for this technology not within cars, but as a key part of the charging infrastructure. “Roughly half of the population doesn’t live in a place where they can charge overnight at home,” says Tim Martin, director of Zapinamo, which is developing flexible electric charging stations. Those people need access to rapid charging facilities instead, but Martin says the national grid would struggle to supply electricity at the speeds required.

Large storage units full of supercapacitors could start popping up at service stations, to act as a buffer between electric cars and the grid. They could charge slowly, outside of peak times when electricity is cheaper, and then deliver that energy to multiple vehicles rapidly when required. “Stored energy is the only way that you can combine instantaneous power with the speed of charging that makes range anxiety go away,” says Martin.

The same approach could also be a game-changer for renewable energy. Because solar and wind are unpredictable, the electricity they generate needs to be stored so it can be released during lulls. “When everyone puts on the kettle after dinner, that sudden spike in demand has to come from somewhere,” says Cooper. At the moment, that is done mostly by pumping water uphill and running it back through turbines when energy is needed, but supercapacitors offer much more flexibility because they can respond so quickly.

“Wind, wave and solar energy is available but it is intermittent and, without storage, cannot be relied upon to meet our energy needs,” says Highgate. “This new work would transform the energy system which underpins our way of life – it is the necessary development before we and our children can have a genuinely sustainable, environmentally safe energy supply.”

African Utility Week to provide site visit to view Robben Island solar microgrid in action

Robben Island is renowned for being the place where South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela (‘Madiba’), was jailed for 18 years of his 27-year prison sentence. Keeping in line with Madeba’s vision for a better future, the UNESCO World Heritage Site has recently adopted a sustainable blueprint for its diverse eco-system.

The National Department of Tourism (DoT) commissioned a solar microgrid, awarding Cape Town-based SOLA Future Energy an EPC contract to design and construct a solar energy microgrid to reduce the island’s dependency on expensive heavy fuel oil. The project is the first of its kind on an island as part of a grid resolution, among other things, aimed at reducing the carbon footprint. The system consists of a solar photovoltaic (PV) farm, combined with a lithium-ion battery storage facility and smart controllers to ensure a seamless electricity supply, whilst significantly reducing the island’s fossil fuel consumption.

Robben Island has an energy usage profile that comprises residential needs, desalination, harbour and offices; in total, the island uses almost 2M kWh of electricity annually. The solar microgrid, which comprises 1,960 Canadian Solar (CS6U-M-340 W) high efficiency modules, will produce almost 1M kWh of electricity annually, significantly reducing the costs of buying diesel and transporting it to the island.

SOLAR MICROGRID
The solar microgrid will reduce the island’s fossil fuel consumption by 235,000 litres of diesel per annum or 50% of previous usage. This will result in a reduction of the site’s carbon emission by at least 820 tonnes, and will save the island money during its 25 years of operation. The solar microgrid consists of three power production elements; the solar PV farm consists of 1,960 mono-crystalline modules with a total of 666.4kW power supply. The battery bank, consisting of 2,420 lithium-ion battery cells, is able to store 837kWh with a maximum output of 500kVA. The third power production element is the diesel generators, which are used when no solar or battery storage is available. Multiple controllers between these power production elements are said to balance the power supply and create a smart microgrid, ensuring a seamless supply of power. Due to the high salt content in the air, a material called 3CR12 was used as it is similar to stainless steel; however it can withstand rust from the corrosive nature of sea salt in the air.

In addition to being rich in political history, Robben Island is home to several bird species seeking refuge and breeding grounds on its shores. A refuge for the African jackass penguin – an endangered bird found only on the southern coast of Africa – meant the project design had to adhere to strict environmental standards and requirements. Environmental and archaeological permits were required to commence construction in addition to installing penguin-proof fences and bird-proof wires to protect both the animals and the solar panel wires. The EPC staff were required to attend specialist training in case they had an encounter with any wildlife or had to handle any archaeological artefacts that might be discovered underground.