The price of oil nearly reached $100 a barrel recently, but a new University of Delaware prototype vehicle demonstrates how the cost of the black stuff could become a concern of the past.
A team of UD faculty has created a system that enables vehicles to not only run on electricity alone, but also to generate revenue by storing and providing electricity for utilities. The technology–known as V2G, for vehicle-to-grid–lets electricity flow from the car’s battery to power lines and back.
“When I get home, I’ll charge up and then switch into V2G mode,” said Willett Kempton, UD associate professor of marine policy and a V2G pioneer who began developing the technology more than a decade ago and who is now testing the new prototype vehicle. The UD V2G team includes Kempton as well as Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering; Suresh Advani, George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering; and Meryl Gardner, associate professor of business administration, along with several students.
Truth be told, there is an abundence of technology that can be made commerically available in a few years. I wish the governments would end subsides for auto makers and you’d find how quickly they would embrace new ideas. I know someone with modified Hummer that gets 40 MPG. If he can figure out a way to do it in his garage, why can’t GM?
All these alternate energy sources are interesting, but there is a very important REASON that the world runs on Petroleum. It is truly, marvelous, almost magical stuff.
Imagine a liquid, 42 gallons of which can perform 24,000 man-hours of work! Now, how much would you be willing to pay for this liquid? $30 a barrel? $60? $100? Figure $20 to get it out of the ground, even then $100 is a pittance compared to the amount of work it does. It’s portable, stable, and liquid, so it’s really easy to move around. It’s flexible, can be broken down into its component parts and used for millions of different applications, not just the basic cracking that gives us AVGAS, Aviation Fuel, Gasoline, Kerosene, Diesel, Fuel Oil, and/or asphalt out the bottom. It’s also right now a major component of this keyboard I’m typing on and the screen I’m viewing my words on. It’s more than likely generating (it or the natural gas that accompanies it within its own formations) the very electricity that speeds my electrons to all of you.
It’s not just powering the vehicles I see passing in front of me on I-10, it literally is in every part of the vehicle in the form of synthetic rubbers (tires, bushings, moldings, etc) plastic (dashboards and door panels, sometimes even body panels) stabilizing chemicals (paints) and the life fluids of those cars (anti-freeze, transmission fluid, power steering and brake fluids, and engine oil).
And that’s just the two applications right in front of me.
Don’t delude yourself, or let yourself be deluded, that the world can replace Petroleum and petroleum products without a lifestyle shake-up that none of us would survive. The world really does run on oil, if anyone says they can change that, just laugh and turn away.
And don’t forget, even if these electric cars become a reality, Petroleum will be required to charge them. Nuclear plants run on nuclear fuel which must be mined and processed by facilities using Petroleum products. Hydroelectric plants require massive castings and forgings all done by oil/gas fired furnaces. Solar plants use tons of plastic, all made from Petroleum.
I’m telling you this stuff is just too ingrained into our lives to let go of.
If you really want to get people to understand efficiency in automobiles, just show them how much their cars/trucks/SUV’s WEIGH relative to each other. I’ve tried this on my relatives, and it’s stunning how suprised they are to learn that they drive 3 tons of pickup truck around all day ALONE, burning gas like crazy.
Ok, end of rant!
KTF!…mrb
Michael,
Very good points; but, I think I will rig a small vehicle or two to act as ‘sponges’ at our house/boarding kennel/retreat center now under construction…completely off-grid, no well, now city water, etc. …in the southern Black Hills of South Dakota. There is no present option in South Dakota to do any ‘net-metering’ so we will be completely off the grid, infact, it will cost me less to provide my own power and be relatively maintanence free, than to connect to the co-op, whose poles are within 500 yards of our acreage, then pay monthly bills for life.