1. Considering that Toyota currently uses NiMH batteries on their hybrids, I find it hard to imagine that there is a patent problem here involving oil companies playing hide the salami.

2. I don't understand why nuclear plants are not counted into off-peak availability. I had always imagined, based on discussions in this forum, that they are well suited for this task.

3. I also don't understand why hydro is categorically ruled out. Unless off-peak demand is high enough to soak up all the hydro generation in the Pacific Northwest, it would seem to be a valid source. I suppose long-term seasonal supply issues may be at stake -- reserviors recharge during the rainy season, and only hold enough water to run their generators at full-bore for a certain number of hours per day during the dry season. Run the turbines at full-bore 24/7 and your water supply gives out before the end of the season.

4. V2G peak demand offset seems to make sense in light of a recent New York Times article detailing the rising transmission congestion problems which seem to be affecting this country. If those problems continue to drive up the cost of peak-hour electricity, the V2G payoff goes up, making it easier to recoup the wear and tear costs associated with increased battery cycling. How we price the costs of potential transmission upgrades becomes part of this picture -- not only do poles and wires cost money (and natural resources) to fabricate and erect, cutting up rights-of-way for the additional capacity affects the environment and harms the landscape. If we value all these things highly, paying for V2G might be a way to eat our cake (consume lots of peak-hour electricity) and have it too (preserve open spaces).

Mridul-
This sounds like a good idea on the surface, but human nature would prevent this from succeeding. Can you imagine the people complaining at the 'filling station' that the unit they are receiving is older and therefore not as valuable as the one that's being replaced? This would be a logistics nightmare. Think about it.

NBK-Boston, car companies appear to only use NiMH batteries up to a certain size. Not big enough for PHEVs or BEVs. Have you ever heard of and BEV with a NiMH battery? Here are two articles with the most details I've come across.

http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&authorid=12&blogid=83&archive=1

and

http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&authorid=51&blogid=104&archive=1

ps I should say do you know of any recent BEVs with an NiMH battery. Of course EV1 had one but that was before the patent was bought...

Ni-Mh battery works fine for HEV, but is totally unsuitable for PHEV and BEV, due to high rate of self-discharge (especially at high operational temperature) and high charge/discharge losses. To buy a license for production of PHEV battery costs money, and so far only idiots from GM managed to blow money (and their reputation) by betting on unsuitable technology.

For further reference there is my compilation from couple of respectable sources:

“Stanford Ovshinsky, an inventor of nickel-metal hydride batteries used in today's hybrid vehicles, founded Ovonic Battery in 1982 as a subsidiary of Troy-based Energy Conversion Devices Inc. In 1994, ECD chairman Robert Stempel, formerly the chief executive of GM, entered a joint venture with GM to create GM Ovonics Battery Systems.

In July 2001, Texaco Inc. bought GM's stake in GM Ovonics. Months later, Chevron acquired Texaco. In 2003, Texaco Ovonic Battery Systems was changed to Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between Chevron and ECD.

ECD contributed its rights to more than 400 U.S. and foreign patents and infrastructure for the nickel-metal hydride technology. Chevron has contributed more than $230 million in equity and loans.<< "Every NiMH battery manufacturer in the world must be licensed by Cobasys and can only produce NiMH batteries under Cobasys license, a de-facto monopolistic (albeit legal) syndicate that has been repeatedly adjudicated, upheld, and enforced by courts and arbitration bodies around the world. Cobasys has around 30 NiMH licensees at present. Its entangling web of licenses with its various licensees could only be described as Byzantine in its dizzying complexity, with numerous categories of restrictions including
geographic market segment (Asia vs. North America vs. Europe), application category (consumer electronics vs. automotive propulsion), sub-application classes within application categories (HEV vs. BEV), and even battery capacity (<10Ah vs. >10Ah). Some of these licenses pre-date Chevron's involvement and were negotiated back in the early and mid 90s by Cobasys' predecessor, Ovonics, which controlled the patent licensing rights before Chevron bailed Ovonics out of its deep, steep recurrent losses and supplied
all the capital to create Cobasys. Chevron of course had to honor those older licenses, which are grandfathered. What this means in practical terms is that the oldest licensees have the most liberal and unrestricted conditions.
"Newer licensees, many of them in Asia, are restricted to making NiMH batteries only for consumer electronics applications and are specifically prohibited from making any batteries for automotive propulsion (whether HEV or BEV). Slightly older licensees are permitted to make propulsion batteries but only for HEV applications and not for BEV applications, often distinguished by the batteries' capacity: <10Ah vs. >10Ah. Others may be permitted to make BEV batteries but only for other geographical markets and
not for BEVs that will be sold in North America. European battery makers Saft and Varta (the latter now a subsidiary of Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls) are two of the older European licensees which seem to have
somewhat less restrictive licenses, which however do not permit them to sell BEV batteries into the US market. Gold Peak is one of the oldest Cobasys licensees (inherited and grandfathered from Ovonics), if not *the* oldest, and I believe is the only one that is actually permitted to make large-format NiMH batteries (>10Ah) for BEVs that will be sold in the US, such as the high-performance, highway-capable Vectrix electric motorcycle.

"Sanyo and Panasonic, two of Cobasys' Japanese licensees, are permitted to make HEV batteries (<10Ah) for HEVs sold in the US but not BEV batteries (>10Ah) for BEVs sold in the US. There is only one small exception to that, specifically in the case of Panasonic, which came out of the patent infringement lawsuit that Panasonic lost to Cobasys in an international court of arbitration in June 2004. In that June 2004 judgment, and as subsequently amended in July 2005, Panasonic is permitted to manufacture new EV-95 95Ah NiMH batteries solely for existing Toyota RAV-EVs that experience battery failures, under warranty, and only under warranty, until the last of those warranties expire, on September 14, 2008, at which time Panasonic is no longer permitted to produce *any* EV-95 batteries or any NiMH battery with a capacity greater than 10Ah until January 1, 2015."

I wonder if there is anything stopping a car manufacturer from taking a bunch of HEV batteries and making a PHEV. After all Tesla used hundreds of batteries in its pack.

On the battery swap idea, you would have to have some prorated core charge for the pack that was being swapped. You could do it, but fork lifts at gas pumps becomes a problem.

For the battery swap idea the energy company would own the batteries (which lowers up front cost of the car) and the users would pay a monthly fee (which increases running costs) for their use plus energy usage fees. The energy companies amortize the cost of the battery. For this to work the batteries would have to be standardized. You would also have to standardize how and where the batteries load into the car so that machinery can be built to swap the batteries (no forklifts near my shiny new Tesla (I wish) please). If the batteries loaded from below then you could do in on a belt like a car wash. The energy company charges the battery whenever electricity is cheapest. I doubt this will ever happen unless big oil realizes that this is one possible way to stay in business (other than H2).

Andrey do you have any references as to why NiMH is not suited to BEVs? Why would it be so hard to obtain a license (and why would car companies be trying to get them) if the battery was not suited in the first place? I am not a battery expert but I am quite certain the Toyota RAV BEVs use NiMH batteries (put together before Chevron took over the patent) which are still going strong with a range over 100 miles.

Marcus:

Ni-Mh batteries have low charge and discharge efficiency of about 70% (means you have to charge about 2Kwh to deliver 1Kwh to the wheels, and regenerative braking efficiency is only about 50%). Useful capacity is about 30-40% from reported max, or other vice significantly shorter battery life will follow.

The biggest problem is high self-discharge (about 3% per day at room temperature), which is significantly higher at elevated temperatures – which exactly is the mode how propulsion battery is used.

Imagine one unexpectedly will have to park his BEV for a day in open parking lot under California sun, and on his commute home run out of power on highway.

Apparently, car manufacturers are not interested to purchase licensing rights for BEV battery which will be quite problematic in mainstream vehicles. And they really are not interested in niche vehicle market, where this battery is successfully used.

Turns out the NiMh patents have had little effect on moving to the newer technologies Li-Io and supercaps. Clearly the attempt to restrict access to useful technology to protect monopolies is failing. The really useful news is that 185 million PHEV and BEVs will cause the cost per kWH to plummet. Add to this the Euro, Asian and emerging markets and the future of clean liquid + electric fuel looks bright indeed.

A123, Altair-nano, and others will build the next generation of batteries and leave Texaco shopping an old technology they themselves caused to fail.

The emerging grid build-out should work toward more localized power stations to lower transmission cost/inefficiency and improve reliability. Smaller H2/natural gas and scrubbed/algal coal seems sensible. Supplemental renewables wind, solar, geotherm, etc. lower KwH costs. Adding supercaps and eventually V2G for peak buffering will all help further. And who knows, maybe there's a micro-nuke technology somewhere that is able to self-sequester spent fuel.

Batteries and motors already are in production that could make an electric car that would run for more than 400 miles, but except as an experiment why do it? In fact electric cars should not be built ever, except as an experiment.

Every car should be a hybrid even if the diesel or gasoline engine built into it, is only rated at two horse power. If a hybrid car had a 60 mile electric range, the engine in most cars would be almost never used. Ten gallons of gas and a small engine could take an EV1 style electric car at least five-hundred miles between five-minute fill-ups at any ordinary gas pump. Then there would, never again, be the need for any one to think or say that electric cars have limited range.

Honda has alredy built a lightweight generator that could be modified to be plugged into some compartment in an EV by its owner or service station attendant. If the car owner never plugged in at home, and if after thousands of miles the generator failed, it could also be replaced during a five minute stop.

The electric car was killed by the fact that gasoline cars are available by the hundred millions and the guy who forced the abrupt CARB decision had sold his soul to a fuel cell company before even 10,000 electric cars could be sold.

If you are concerned about the price of batteries, just try to buy an automotive fuel cell for under a million dollars. Even small Diesel engines can be built with a similar efficiency as the best small fuel cells and at a small fraction of the cost. Given the same amount of development money and effort, small Diesel engines systems might be constructed with the same efficiency. A Zero emission Diesel engine could be invented by any one of a million people in the US before a fuel cell is cheap enough for a car.

You can find an analysis of the use of, the already in production, Zebra battery in a Toyota Prius. At the prices charged for the Prius and for the Zebra there is not a compelling economic reason to buy either or the combination, but buying a car or a house was never an economic payback decision for most buyers.

Cheap $500 dollar used cars that are disposed of if they fail are probably the best economic decision over any new car if all you need is transportation. Bill Gates may never buy such a thing, but Warren Buffet might.

If produced in large numbers, a series plug-in hybrid car could be the cheapest cost car over its life cycle and there is no limit on the distance that could be traveled. Right now, because of low production quantities, the electronic motor controllers for an electric car, cost more than a new replacement engine for some cars. The electric motor for an electric car, even with only one moving part, also costs more than said engine. But such a car made in the millions would be very cheap and reliable.

A computer with 1 gigabyte of memory can be now bought for 500 dollars, but in 1985 you could not buy one for a million dollars.

A plug in Prius with a Zebra Battery is a way to eliminate most of the use of gasoline by a driver in this country and is available almost tomorrow with a range of 70 miles electric alone if you have enough money to bribe Ron Gremban of Calcars to build it and someone at MES-DEA or ISE for the Zebra battery.

The Zebra Battery will, without any further development, allow a Prius to run over a hundred miles on electricity alone.

The TESLA car will have superior performance and a long range, but it perpetuates a myth that good performance and range electric cars need to be expensive. Its Lithium battery has only a little higher capacity than a Zebra battery of the same weight and far less thorough service testing.

Some where in California is a total electric school bus that was refitted with Zebra batteries after its lead acid batteries failed. It only cost twice as much to build it as a regular diesel bus. This makes the amortized operating cost double, but the fuel and repair costs should be much lower, and the kids are not poisoned at the bus stops.