Plug-in hybrid using electric from grid from coal replacing oil/gas?

Can a plug in hybred reduce the U.S. cars 2.9 billion barrels of crude oil a year habit - perhaps 200 million barrels can be replaced by 40 million tons of coal - a discussion of the potential impact of a backup generator from General Motors coming this fall that you can also use as a pickup truck.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4952048/

Dig more coal, the hybrids are coming
Plug-in hybrid cold displace 200M barrels of foreign oil
By Peter Huber Mark P. Mills

<snip>A coal-powered car? Absurd though that may sound, that's exactly what a hybrid becomes if configured to allow its battery to be recharged from an electrical outlet when the car is parked. Chevy's new Silverado hybrid isn't — it sends electric power the other way, through a 2.4-kilowatt AC power outlet that can run your kitchen appliances out in the middle of nowhere. In your own garage, however, it would make more sense to treat the truck as the appliance and recharge its batteries by plugging it into the wall.

A plug-in hybrid would save most drivers a lot on fuel, because big power plants generate electricity a lot more cheaply than little ones. Running on $2-a-gallon gasoline, the Silverado delivers electric power at a marginal cost of 60 cents per kilowatt-hour. Compare that with electric power from the grid. The average residential price is 8.5 cents per kwh. Off-peak prices, at utilities that offer them, are far lower. You could charge your truck at night. Opportunistic recharging would play a role. Once the plug-in hybrid catches on, recharging terminals will proliferate, acting and even looking a whole lot like parking meters. Mall owners will validate your recharge card when you shop in their stores.

To the electricity cost must be added the wear and tear on the rechargeable battery. All told, says Edward Kjaer, director of electric transportation for Southern California Edison, refueling at the plug should cost no more than a third as much as refueling at the pump, and in many cases a lot less than that. Sticking coal with the same highway-construction taxes you pay at the pump would narrow the gap only a bit.

GM's EV-1 all-electric car, offered in California from 1996 to 2000, was a flop despite the cheap all-electric fuel. Reason: Drivers want to take long trips, too, and batteries can't come close to matching the range provided by gasoline. With a plug-in hybrid, however, the gas tank will get you up the mountains on the weekend, while the rechargeable battery gets you to and from the office and the mall. And the battery is far smaller than the 19-kwh monster used in the all-electric car.<snip>Peter Huber is a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and a partner, along with Mark P. Mills, of the Digital Power Group.

© 2004 Forbes.com

thats why they're hybrid. :shrug:

Solar and/or wind electric generation.

Hybrids (which use gasoline/diesel but are extremely efficient) are a good interim technology.

The pollution from coal is many many times worse than from oil or the other Energy sources. Furthermore, the batteries are still a limiting factor for this technology. Trust me. My student senior design project is a Hydrogen powered Hybrid Electric Explorer.

http://futrcar.me.vt.edu/ft03/magellan.htm

This explains our approach.

Especially if you are going to burn it in an engine, and not a fuel cell.

If you've already got the hydrogen, it is much easier to chemically combine it with carbon to make some sort of liquid fuel.

How does your hydrogen powered car compare to one powered by methanol or Dimethyl ether?

Mechanically the cars would be almost identical, except for the fuel storage systems, which would be much much simpler than any hydrogen powered car. A methanol powered car is as easy to "fill up" as a gasoline powered car, and a DME car is only slightly more difficult to "fill up" than a propane powered car.

Getting the hydrogen equivalent to "ten gallons" of gasoline into a car and keeping it there while the car is parked is not so easy.

For competition, we want to acheive the least amount of greenhouse gasses and other compounds like NOx. The team used to have a fuel cell, but GE bought out the company and shut down the fuel cell division. The idea is to explore the complexities of hydrogen storage and transmission. That is the spirit of a research project.

The complex part isn't the fuel for the engine though. Its the drive train design. The vehicle is an electric vehicle with a motor for driving. The hydrogen engine serves as a generator only and does not drive the wheels at all. This is called a series hybrid. As opposed to the parallel hybrids like the focus and insight that allow the engine to drive the wheels like a normal car part of the time.

But for practical purposes "the least amount of greenhouse gasses and other compounds like NOx" depends on the entire fuel cycle.

The problem I have here is when good works like yours are presented to the public by various politicians (such as California governor Arnold Schwarzeneger) as some sort of pie-in-the-sky hope for the future. If we make hydrogen out of coal, overall things get worse than if we make some other fuel out of coal.

I very much respect the spirit of your scientific research, and understand the difficulties of getting these projects funded, but Democratic Underground is, after all, a political discussion board, so we have to look at things from practical and very political points of view.

;-)

Ahhhh, plumbing problems... I enjoyed this:

"The hydrogen storage and delivery system will stay the same except for the plumbing around the tanks which will be converted from flexible lines to hard lines."

I can imagine!

Thanks for posting this.

Granted, Hydrogen has serious problems to overcome; its density, Production without massive pollution, proper storage, etc. The NOx depends on the combustion, just like in other internal combustion engines. But tank to wheels, we eliminate CO2 and VOCs. That is the goal.

delay in helping to get us off imported oil/gas.

I appreciate the link!

:-)

When you unplug, with a full charge, the computer never allows the battery to completely recharge.

That way when ever you get home, or wherever, the battery is only charged up to 75%, or whatever,...you plug in and the utility tops off your battery to 100%.

unused. I have read on the internet that as much as 20-50% is wasted. Most of that is coal and nuclear base load which doesn't really stop burning, at least not much. In the future some of that will be wind or perhaps solar-generated. And as you know, it is very difficult to store electricity.

By charging up personal transport vehicles of any kind off-peak, you are using energy that would otherwise go to wasted to replace gasoline or diesel, which may be in short supply and which generate more greenhouse gases.

At least that's what has been discussed on an energy-related Yahoo group where I lurk.

It is possible; hybrid cars interfaced with the grid could put power into the grid as well.

http://www.udel.edu/V2G/

What is V2G?
Electric-drive vehicles, whether powered by batteries, fuel cells, or gasoline hybrids, have within them the energy source and power electronics capable of producing the 60 Hz AC electricity that powers our homes and offices. When connections are added to allow this electricity to flow from cars to power lines, we call it "vehicle to grid" power, or V2G. Cars pack a lot of power. One typical electric-drive vehicle can put out over 10kW, the average draw of 10 houses. The key to realizing economic value from V2G is precise timing of its grid power production to fit within driving requirments while meeting the time-critical power "dispatch" of the electric distribution system.

http://www.acpropulsion.com/Veh_Grid_Power/Veh_grid_power.htm

As cars and light trucks begin a transition to electric propulsion, powered by batteries, engines, or fuel cells, there is potential for a synergistic connection between such vehicles and the electric power grid. The aggregate power rating of the US vehicle fleet is much larger than the total US generating capacity. If even a small fraction of vehicles could be harnessed as generating assets, benefits would accrue both to the electric power grid and to the vehicle owners. The potential exists for the economic value generated to significantly offset the costs of electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicles.