Large electric motors, batteries and vehicles

[Funkworks]

<-- fake laugh because I don't understand bike jokes.
Well ... sort of ... after some analysis.

So while you guys are joking about bikes, I just discovered this guy who's pretty good;



And on solar cars:



DeLorean:

 

[jderimig]

Only if it has anything to do with the Prince of Darkness (Lucas Industries).

Hate on Lucas all you want but they invented the intermittent windshield wiper

 

[Tyeeking]

Only if it has anything to do with the Prince of Darkness (Lucas Industries).

I owned a Land Rover for several years or should I say, it owned me. Fun car but good grief is Lucas Electrical a pain in the arse. It had a thing where three warning lights would come on for no reason. There was a procedure to get them reset but it didn’t last long. It was so common that it had a nickname . . . The Three Amigos. There was even a T-Shirt to “commemorate that special feature”.

 

[OverTheTop]

Hate on Lucas all you want but they invented the intermittent windshield wiper

Agreed. They had a lot of good ideas and did some great things. It was a shame their reliability for some things tarnished their reputation.

I also noted a trend back a few decades ago where a lot of English engineering had great ideas but seemed to struggle with the implementation. It hasn't been evident over the past couple of decades though.

 

[Greg Furtman]

I ran across this. Driving a 14 year old Tesla. This is a fun video.

 

[Cape Byron]

Hate on Lucas all you want but they invented the intermittent windshield wiper

Yes, that is true.

And that's about all I want to have to do with Lucas electrics. I used all my cans of smoke repairing their stuff years ago.

 

[Greg Furtman]

This isn't about an electrical battery but a heat battery that runs a boiler for heating a home that can use off peak electricity. A pretty interesting idea. I'm amazed at all the R&D going into cutting our carbon footprint.

 

[Greg Furtman]

I ran across this this morning. What an amazing vehicle. There are a lot of bright young people out there doing some incredible work.

 

[Funkworks]

Lightning eMotors has a line of commercial vehicles, but a charging trailer is something I hadn't seen yet:


https://lightningemotors.com/lightn...or-commercial-and-consumer-electric-vehicles/

 

[Greg Furtman]

This video isn't about batteries for EVs but for storing wind & solar excess for times that the sun is down & the wind is low, or for when there is peak demand. And it is based on using CO2.

 

[Funkworks]

This video isn't about batteries for EVs but for storing wind & solar excess for times that the sun is down & the wind is low, or for when there is peak demand. And it is based on using CO2.

I think this can be seen as 1 of many large scale renewable energy storage systems, which also include large flywheels, gravity towers, and battery storage power stations.








All interesting ideas, but I don't how their specs compare. I suspect there's a market for each system. Water held up by a dam could be considered as an energy storage system, so I think calling all them "batteries" is a bit of a stretch. Literally "battery" is usually short for "battery of electrochemical cells".

Large companies like LG and Tesla (possibly others) make batteries for both cars and grids, so the smaller companies probably have to find a niche.

 

[Greg Furtman]

A company in England, FaradIon, is building and selling Sodium-Ion batteries. And as we know, salt is a lot cheaper than lithium.

 

[boatgeek]

A company in England, FaradIon, is building and selling Sodium-Ion batteries. And as we know, salt is a lot cheaper than lithium.

Not that the electrolyte should be getting loose, but is sodium more or less corrosive than lithium? I know sodium is pretty bad but not sure where it stands on the scale.

 

[Funkworks]

Not that the electrolyte should be getting loose, but is sodium more or less corrosive than lithium? I know sodium is pretty bad but not sure where it stands on the scale.

Sodium is more reactive than lithium. But in a battery, they can play with amounts so I wouldn't make a call based on reactivity alone.

A simple explanation is that they each have one electron in their outer shells, but sodium has a bigger radius, so it's easier for the sodium electron to react with something else.

A short video with lithium (Li), sodium (Na) and potassium (K). Calcium (Ca) is somewhat out of place. To be compared with potassium (K) only I'd say (Ca and K are neighbors in the periodic table).

 

[Funkworks]

A new vid for the Aptera.



Still lots going on. Still growth, but a lot of it feels like the same: new bike here, new battery plant there, new report about this, improvement in that, new speed record for this, sales growth in that country. All interesting, but I sort of get the idea of what's going on now. Learned a lot since starting the thread (with some encouragement). Probably won't be posting as much now.

 

[Greg Furtman]

Another battery type in development, Graphene-Aluminum.

 

[CalebJ]

Just got my son's EV going today for the first time.


Started life as a 500 watt motor, but it was due for new batteries when I got it used a few months ago. That led down the road of lithium batteries, an 1800 watt brushless motor, and a swap to hydraulic disc brakes. Next step is suspension work to tighten things up and give it more travel.

 

[Funkworks]

On those grid-scale energy storage systems, including batteries (or however you care to define that word ).

 

[Greg Furtman]

I found this quite interesting.

 

[Funkworks]

I found this quite interesting.

Just watched this, and it aligns with the other reports I've seen (10-12 or so), including some from car manufacturers themselves. I've posted a few in the "EV and ICE" thread. There is no serious debate that EVs have a lower footprint overall.

Here's a juicy one. Summarized here.

 

[Greg Furtman]

Two European companies are making electric motors for MerCruisers.

https://plugboats.com/boot-2-new-swap-in-electric-motors-for-mercruisers/

 

[KC3KNM]

Pretty cool program GMP is working on up here.

https://www.canarymedia.com/article...uring-heat-waves-while-saving-customers-money

 

[boatgeek]

On a road trip this weekend, we were behind a Rivian on two separate occasions. I noticed a side effect of having the motors in each wheel is that the underside of the truck is really clean. The ground clearance was basically completely flat once you got ~3" inboard of the tires. That will be really nice for offroading. By contrast, a Suburban we were behind had all kinds of suspension and drivetrain parts hanging down into the ground clearance. Granted, the Suburban was a particularly bad example--other 4WD vehicles (esp. Toyotas and Subarus) have nice clear undersides. I think my parents' old Citroen 2CV had better ground clearance than the Suburban with 15" outer diameter wheels.

 

[Greg Furtman]

Pretty cool program GMP is working on up here.

https://www.canarymedia.com/article...uring-heat-waves-while-saving-customers-money

What a great idea! I wish more power companies were doing this.

 

[Funkworks]

Duke Energy will lower lease payments for your Ford F-150 Lightning, if you them use your battery to stabilize the grid (V2G).

"Duke Energy has filed for North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) approval of a new demand response pilot program expected to launch in 2023 for customers in the Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) service area. Pilot incentives will reduce vehicle lease payments for program participants who lease an eligible electric vehicle (EV), including Ford F-150 Lightning trucks. In exchange, customers will allow their EVs to feed energy back to the grid – helping to balance it during peak demand.

This bidirectional, or two-way, flow of power is a smart charging technology also known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration. V2G can push and pull energy between a connected EV and the grid, supplying the grid with stored, charged power and helping balance energy consumption and production."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/illuminating-possibility-duke-energy-ford-141700522.html

 

[Greg Furtman]

Millions of PV panels are reaching their end of life. So what to do about this problem? Some interesting info.

 

[jderimig]

Duke Energy will lower lease payments for your Ford F-150 Lightning, if you them use your battery to stabilize the grid (V2G).

"Duke Energy has filed for North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) approval of a new demand response pilot program expected to launch in 2023 for customers in the Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) service area. Pilot incentives will reduce vehicle lease payments for program participants who lease an eligible electric vehicle (EV), including Ford F-150 Lightning trucks. In exchange, customers will allow their EVs to feed energy back to the grid – helping to balance it during peak demand.

This bidirectional, or two-way, flow of power is a smart charging technology also known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration. V2G can push and pull energy between a connected EV and the grid, supplying the grid with stored, charged power and helping balance energy consumption and production."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/illuminating-possibility-duke-energy-ford-141700522.html

Great idea. But Duke should also give away the power that goes to the Lightning... Downside owners of the Lightnings will see their range reduced some days. What prevents the Lightning from being discharged alot, I hope Ford provides some settable control limit on that.

 

[Tyeeking]

Great idea. But Duke should also give away the power that goes to the Lightning... Downside owners of the Lightnings will see their range reduced some days. What prevents the Lightning from being discharged alot, I hope Ford provides some settable control limit on that.

Kind of like going out to hop in your F250 to head to the lake with the boat and kids and finding out that Chevron siphoned off half your tank. Progress

 

[boatgeek]

Great idea. But Duke should also give away the power that goes to the Lightning... Downside owners of the Lightnings will see their range reduced some days. What prevents the Lightning from being discharged alot, I hope Ford provides some settable control limit on that.

If Duke pays for power at the same rates that they charge*, the homeowner would probably come out ahead. Duke's rates for central NC look something like:
36 c/kWh for critical peak times (ie when you'd be sending power back to the grid)
19 c/kWh on-peak (midday in the cooling season, morning in the heating season)
10 c/kWh off-peak
7 c/kWh discount (not sure when the discount is, likely in the middle of the night)

Presuming that you can set your wall box to make sure you always have X miles of charge in hand, you can buy a kilowatt-hour at 7 cents and sell it back at 19 cents. If there's a crisis, which is when people in this program would be tapped, you'd really make bank. The only caveat is that you can't sell more peak kWh than you consume in a year.

Duke's rate schedule with emergency rates for the gory details if you care to look closer:
https://desitecoreprod-cd.azureedge...tes/electric-nc/r4-nc-schedules-r-tou-cpp.pdf
* Duke does do net-metering for solar/wind power including peak time/off-peak time rate differences, so it seems likely that they can manage this as well. No guarantees though...

 

[jderimig]

If Duke pays for power at the same rates that they charge*, the homeowner would probably come out ahead. Duke's rates for central NC look something like:
36 c/kWh for critical peak times (ie when you'd be sending power back to the grid)
19 c/kWh on-peak (midday in the cooling season, morning in the heating season)
10 c/kWh off-peak
7 c/kWh discount (not sure when the discount is, likely in the middle of the night)

Presuming that you can set your wall box to make sure you always have X miles of charge in hand, you can buy a kilowatt-hour at 7 cents and sell it back at 19 cents. If there's a crisis, which is when people in this program would be tapped, you'd really make bank. The only caveat is that you can't sell more peak kWh than you consume in a year.

Duke's rate schedule with emergency rates for the gory details if you care to look closer:
https://desitecoreprod-cd.azureedge...tes/electric-nc/r4-nc-schedules-r-tou-cpp.pdf
* Duke does do net-metering for solar/wind power including peak time/off-peak time rate differences, so it seems likely that they can manage this as well. No guarantees though...

Wow, crazy high rates. I pay 10c 24/7.

If you have a job that Lightning probably isn't home during peak times to send power back to the grid. Sounds like an arbitrage opportunity if you can create some cheap battery storage, charge at 7c and sell back at 36c. What do battery costs per kwh stored have to drop to in order to break even? Reminds me of a Seinfeld episode....