By Joe Salimando www.eleblog.com
I’m a reporter who works for himself. As such, I see my boss (in the mirror) often – and there’s no punishment for yelling (every single time) “You Idiot!” at him. However, one thing I’ve tried to learn is how to “keep tabs” on developing market niches without becoming an expert on any given field – such as electrical vehicles.
That means if you need someone to serve as a consultant on EVs, I’m not your guy. There are some tricks I can share, though – right here – on what’s going on.
Example: I learned in November that the Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy office of the Dept. of Energy has a “Clean Cities” arm – and it’s a good place to get yourself up-to-speed on EV charging.
You don’t have to become an expert on EVs, either; but they do offer opportunities. Here’s what’s awaiting you on the Webinar Archives page of the “Clean Cities” site:
Quarterly webinars (EV “discussions”), held in December, September, June, and March. There were four in 2010, the year in which these started.
For three of the four, as of early January, DoE had archived online the actual webinar recordings. I believe they’ll get around to posting the audio from December’s sooner or later Listening to all four will take some time; I listened (live) to the most recent event, and it was long (and interesting!).
Transcripts of the webinar proceedings. As of early January, these were available for the first three webinars. If (like me) you find skimming a document to go a lot faster than sitting through a 90-minute audio presentation, you might prefer these.
PDFs of the presentation documents. Whether these are useful to you depends on a lot of things, starting with how the presenter organized his/her document, what you hope to get out of looking at the thing, and so forth.
On that last: The presenter in the Dec. 15 event was Jim Francfort of the Idaho National Lab. What he said was interesting; if you want to know about EV standards (those now in place, under consideration, and planned for the future), you can probably get it by scanning his slides. Including:
- Six on charging standards, which include a big bunch of SAE standards. You are almost certainly not going to need to worry about the work of the Society for Automotive Excellence; but the automakers & electrical manufacturers sure are involved. Without final SAE standards, which we don’t yet have, the EV market is rushing to put the cart before the horse.
- Six slides on NEC 625
- One on UL 2594, Test standard for EVSE. That acronym stands for electric vehicle special equipment. See this “scope” page on one of UL’s websites.
- I also didn’t know about the standard-signage issue. How will municipalities communicate that a given parking spot is reserved for EV charging
Among the things I learned: I didn’t know about UL 2594; I didn’t know about the future (2011 and beyond) charging standards envisioned (for “reverse energy flow” – which is about V2G – and HANs (home area networks)
Here’s the content of Jim’s slide on “Future changes to NEC Article 625” –
o Add plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV)
o Expand to include “Smart” systems for power transfer & information exchange between utility, EVSE, and PEV
o Identify generic battery types & other energy storage types or maximum sizes of battery packs (PHEV) where emission of hydrogen or other flammable gases do not occur, or do not exceed 25% of the lower flammable limit
Other Late 2010 EV News
Tax credits for EV charging station installations were written in to that legislation President Obama signed in December. Here’s the Electric Drive Transportation Association’s write-up on what’s what.
NEMA in December said it had formed a new section, titled EVSES (on electrical vehicle charging equipment). Is this important? Seems so; NEMA said this was “only the second NEMA section formed within the last decade.”
“Will EV charging stations be free?” is the headline on a 12/14/10 blog from GreenTechMedia, which does some interesting stuff. I had heard, in passing, that this might be the case (the demographics of the people who will own EVs, at least the earl adopters, are great for advertisers – that’s what could make it free . . . maybe). The thing quotes the CEO of ECOtality, which is in the EV charging station biz.
A research company with which I am not familiar, Zpryme, has emitted (12/23/10) a free report (i.e., you can download it at no charge), The Electric Vehicle Study. Claim: The market for charging infrastructure and charging services “will grow from $776.8 million in 2011 to $4.45 billion in 2016.”
What about the EC end of the market? Included in the press release:
- Level II (home charging stations) sales will be $1.07 billion in 2016.
- Level II (public) sales will be $1.6 billion in ‘16.
- Level III (“fast charging)” sales will be $1.15 billion in ’16.
A NY Times site “Wheels” blog entry of 12/20/10 (from Jim Motavalli, who actually IS an EV expert) said this: The plug-in E.V. has arrived, and it begs the question: will a public charging network be available to support the cars?
NOTE: A tedmag.com Special Report posted 11/16/10, written by me, quotes Motavalli in several places, from the “EV Summit” at GridWeek.
From Honda, now being tested: A solar-powered EV charging station.