September 26, 2009
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News.

FPL Group and Duke Energy, two green-leaning utility companies in the U.S., have announced a new commitment to solidify their growing green leadership: Combined, the companies will invest $600 million to transition all their company passenger cars and trucks to plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicles. The changeover will begin at the first of the year and eventually more than 10,000 vehicles will have the capability of reenergizing from the power grid.

If they meet their commitment, announced at the Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) fifth annual meeting in New York City, the conversion will potentially be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 125,000 metric tons over the next 10 years. The program should be complete by 2020.

In a press release the companies note that “Plug-in electric vehicles reduce overall carbon emissions by up to 70 percent (100 percent if charged by zero-carbon, renewable energy sources) and lower fuel costs by about 80 percent. If PEVs replaced all gasoline-powered vehicles in the United States, they would reduce the need for foreign oil imports by nearly two-thirds.”

Massive reductions in carbon emissions and oil imports sound like a goal worth pursuing, particularly an effort to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles by 100 percent by charging electric vehicles with renewable energy.

This could be a national effort but, beyond commitments like this from just two companies, how do we get to even larger fleets of renewably charged electric vehicles? How do we get from where we are now to where we could be?

Intermittent renewables (like solar and wind) and electric vehicles have a common problem: range. Solar obviously has a power generating “range” of, well, daylight. Wind provides power when the wind is blowing: that’s its range. Plug-in vehicles have their range as well, of course. It’s as far as the vehicle can travel between lengthy recharging. (Lengthy could be described as anything more than the few minutes it takes to fuel up with gasoline or diesel. Drivers are impatient; even 15 minutes might seem like an eternity.)

Perhaps the common “range” problem of electric vehicles and intermittent renewables can be reduced by the two working together, working in consort. Plug-in vehicles have a battery pack for energy storage. For the most part (with a few exceptions) there is no storage of energy from renewables. This is clearly where the common problem may be eliminated: use electric cars and trucks to store energy from renewables. Further, install enough renewably powered, high-voltage, fast-charge charging stations to make charging more frequent so that long charging periods would not be necessary.

In other words, build renewable-powered fast-charge charging corridors.

This is exactly what SolarCity (r) and Rabobank are partnering to do in California. The companies have announced “a partnership to create the world’s first solar-power enhanced, fast-charge electric car charging corridor. When complete, the corridor will include four locations between San Francisco and Los Angeles (Salinas, Atascadero, Santa Maria and Goleta), allowing all-electric cars to make the trip using solar energy and provide for the fastest charge time available for public electric vehicle (EV) charges.” SolarCity will own and operate stations on the corridor which will be built in cooperation with electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors. Solar charging, using 240 volt charging (no wimpy 120 volts here) will provide a full charge in one-third the amount of time of other charging stations. (400 volts would be even better, by the way.)

The corridor will be the first interregional effort of its kind and would be the first interregional effort to include solar power at a charging station. (There are other solar charging stations, but they’re not tied to a recharging corridor.) Rabobank has installed its first 30 kilowatt array at a branch bank and is evaluating installing solar at additional locations. When not used to charge cars the power will offset power used at the locations.

There’s another problem solved with vehicles charged with intermittent renewables. Green electricity can be taken home. A plug from car to house can power-up a house overnight.

Perhaps there should be more effort to build charging corridors. Combined FPL and Duke serve customers in more than two dozen states, thus will have electric vehicles operating in them. Will they open up charging facilities to the more than 15 million customers they serve? FPL is the largest generator of solar and wind energy in North America. Duke is expanding its renewable portfolio. How much of that will be stored in electric vehicles?

Links:

SolarCity
http://www.solarcity.com

Rabobank
http://www.rabobankamerica.com

FPL Group
http://www.FPLGroup.com

Duke Energy
http://www.duke-energy.com

Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI)
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org