The US is at an energy crossroads of sorts, with decisions to make about how best to fuel our vehicles, businesses and homes in an era of abundant fossil fuels, falling alternative energy prices, climate change concerns and economic uncertainty. These are the issues Michael Levi dissects in his new book, “The Power Surge –… Keep reading →
Last week luxury electric sports car company Tesla Motors announced a major charging station build out, but a Cornell University researcher has cautioned that further scrutiny may be required. Two of the greatest barriers EVs need to overcome in order to compete with gasoline vehicles are range and charging time. You can fill your gas… Keep reading →
The rise of the consumer as advocate, reviewer and influencer has been a byproduct of technology, but has also influenced the shape and pace of technology development as communications have improved and online reviews have proliferated. The community of enthusiasts around a product or a sector now have an outsized voice – through social media and other formats – in influencing the outcomes of the products they care most about.
Capturing the interest and imagination of the enthusiast community is part of what the electrical generation sector wants to do when it comes to electric vehicles, Edison Electric Institute senior vice president Brian Wolff told Breaking Energy in a recent interview. “There have been a lot of fits and starts with regard to the EV movement,” Wolff said in discussing a new platform the association has launched called The Electric Generation. Keep reading →
What’s the value of a home that can fine-tune EV charging in the garage, solar panels on the roof, appliances in the kitchen and thermostats on the wall to maximize its energy profile?
Ford Motor Co., SunPower and Whirlpool say it’s significant, at least according to a new computer model they’ve developed with the Georgia Institute of Technology. And while they haven’t launched any commercial offerings on this front yet, Ford has already developed a database of EV charging rates from utilities across the country to give each home system some grid-pertinent data to make decisions with — and a cloud-based management platform to control it all. Keep reading →
One of the primary concerns about electric cars among vehicle buyers remains the question of where they can plug it in. IBM, which has made a specialty in recent years of using its experience with data platforms to enable shifts in energy usage and monitoring, is now working in a slate of European countries to “allow energy providers, car manufacturers and charging point owners to share integrate services on one common IT platform.”
IBM says the concept is similar to mobile phone roaming, with drivers able to charge and pay in any location across borders. The demonstration project, launching this week in Europe and called B2B Marketplace, builds on efforts to improve EV production and distribution in a number of European countries, including Ireland, Spain, Germany and Denmark among others. Keep reading →
Battery maker A123 Systems, a one-time darling of the U.S. electric car industry and recipient of millions in government funding, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday. A123 (AONE) missed an Oct. 15 interest payment totaling about $2.7 million on $144 million of debt. The battery manufacturer had $460 million in total assets and $376 million in debt as of Aug. 31, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Tuesday.
It might seem like a strange idea to launch a car company these days, especially in the challenged electric vehicle sector. But viewed from the perspective of evolving energy technology and shifting generation and energy use priorities, electric cars are in many ways just one facet of energy storage at a scale accessible to most consumers.
Coda, a California company that views itself as an advanced technology firm leveraging the lithium phosphate battery, is also an electric car company. Keep reading →
The greatest roadblock to developing smart grids in the US is not high up-front investment, good news when 65 million electric vehicles could be on the road by 2025, according to the results of a recent annual electric utility industry survey. Infrastructure firm Black & Veatch queried over 500 qualified industry participants about some of the most prescient issues of the day and the results may surprise you.
The top issues the industry is concerned about in 2012 are aging infrastructure, reliability and the environment. Aging infrastructure steadily crept to the top of the list over the past three years – in the 2009/2010 survey the issue ranked sixth in a list of the top ten. The importance of security has also gained importance according to the survey participants. Keep reading →
Energy storage technologies – notorious for falling into the infamous financing “valley of death” – are set to get a stronger bridge across the abyss from lab to market in California.
CalCharge, a consortium based in San Francisco’s Bay Area, launched May 29. Keep reading →
Jared Anderson
Conway Irwin
Peter Gardett