You know what I hate about wind turbines?

You know what I hate about wind turbines?

The smokestacks.
The smoke.
The smog.
The mercury pollution.
The cooling towers.
The explosions.
The spills.
The limited fuel supply.
The other countries that control the wind.
The military cost to defend the wind.
The radiation.
The death of miners.
The fly ash.
The tailing ponds.
The methane gas releases.
The huge carbon footprint.
The increasing cost over time.
The inefficiency.
The fracking.
The train derailments.
The refineries.
The supertankers.
The pipelines.
The contaminated water.
The damage to our lungs and overall health done by wind turbines is horrendous.
The acid rain is nasty.
The mountaintop removal.
The carbon dioxide released.
The waste.

I also hate the fact that they look like graceful wind sculptures, that let us see the wind.  I hate the fact that they are much quieter than a highway.  The ranchers and farmers with wind turbines hate the "mailbox money".

+++

Not really...

PUT THEM IN MY BACK YARD -- PLEASE!

What Do We Do Now? -- Continued

Electricity is the nexus of many renewable energy resources.  Renewable energy sources are all over the place, and no one can monopolize them.  These are quite democratizing -- energy is available virtually anywhere and everywhere.

Sure geothermal on the surface is only in a few places (Iceland, parts of the USA, New Zealand, etc.) but wind is in many places, including the corridor from Texas up to the Dakotas, and basically all around the midwest, California, and offshore from our coasts.  Wind scales up well, getting more efficient as the turbines get bigger.  We now have direct drive turbines that eliminate the weakest piece of the previous generation -- the transmission, and so they generate more power, break less often, cost less to build and maintain, and they save about 17 tons of weight, to boot.

Solar can be virtually anywhere -- Germany even!  Germany is about as sunny as Washington state, which is the least sunny place in the lower 49 states.  Solar is great for the highest load which is for air conditioning -- and there are no grid losses when it is right in the same building.  Solar scales down nicely.

Combining solar and wind along with a few gas turbines (methane from sewage or farm wastes) for peak load, and a hydro power station with an elevated reservoir works very well.  Here's how this works in Germany:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4

Here's a Scientific American article on powering the USA with renewable energy 100% by 2030:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

And we can use wave power -- there are three companies (at least) around the world that already make these -- here's the one in New Jersey:

http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/

Most of the world's people live close to the coast, so wave power and tidal power are close by.

We need to transition to renewable energy NO MATTER WHAT.  Eventually, the finite resources we are using now -- oil, coal, gas and uranium will run out, by definition.  The earth is just one planet; and it is the only one we have.  The other more likely scenario is that we will cause too much climate change by burning up the carbon fossil fuels dumping all the carbon that has been packed away over million and millions and millions of years back into the atmosphere in less than 200 hundred years, and we will have more chaos in our climate than we can adapt to.

So, hopefully oil and coal gets too expensive so that we will switch to renewable energy -- which will last another billion years -- until the sun explodes!  And it will not pollute in ways that we cannot deal with. 

We need to stop subsidizing oil and coal.  We need to be able to stop requiring a huge military to defend oil supplies.

We need to stop using up all of the finite resources -- our factory agriculture is totally dependent on oil and gas and phosphorus and chemical pesticides.  It kills the natural life cycle within the soil -- the dirt that we are utterly dependent on for our lives.  Dead unproductive soil that erodes into the sea won't grow anything.  It won't hold water and it won't let it filter down into the aquifers that we are pumping dry as fast as we can.

Life itself created all the soil, and we are made of the exact same materials that are in the soil.

Oil is the primary reason that we have accelerated so quickly from living within that cycle of life to living beyond what the earth can sustain.  We need to use our intelligence and our scientific knowledge, and our adaptability to change what we now know needs to be changed; before we lose too much of the life support here on this earth that we cannot live without.

There is no "planet B".

What Do We Do Now?

It is critical that we do something about global climate change and our unsustainable consumption of many important resources -- because we can have an affect. We started the ball rolling, and by the same token, we can work to reverse what we have started. It won't be easy and it will be painful, but as moral beings we have to try.

Paul Gilding in his book "The Great Disruption" talks about an approximate time line of 5 or 6 years of status quo before we hit a big tipping point, and then very aggressive reduction of carbon output over the next 25-30 years, followed by as much carbon sequestration as we can muster.

We need to take the 2C increase very seriously, and we must not pass ~450ppm or all hell will really break loose. We need to return back down to <350ppm to avoid the worst effects. The equilibrium we had for ~650,000 years was ~270ppm.

When and if we can do this, the world won't be back to what we had, because there is real and lasting damage to biodiversity, but it will probably settle down.

We and all life forms here in the present are the results of all life that has come before us. We would not even have oxygen in the air without plants splitting water in photosynthesis. Each and every molecule in our bodies has been part of myriad other life forms before, many times over.

Think of this as a kind of reincarnation.  I love this quote from Neil deGrasseTyson:

We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically  ***

Each and every drop of water has been cycling through life forms, the soil, and the rocks of this planet -- over and over and over and over again and again and again... The oxygen carrying iron in our blood came from the stars. All the gold we have came from supernovas.  The soil itself was produced by all of life forms down through the eons.

This is a balanced and efficient and bountiful cycle. The carbon we have so blithely thrown up into the atmosphere in less than 2 centuries was packed away underground over a couple of billion years. We have made a very basic change, and we must take responsibility for it.

***

A recent study said that 83-95% of ALL daily drives in the USA could be done in a Nissan Leaf.

Can you imagine the day when ~90% of all cars in America are electric?  We wouldn't need a military any where near as large as we have now. We would stop spending 1.5 BILLION a DAY on foreign oil. Our carbon output could be 20-25% lower (if I am anywhere close on this?), and the air pollution would be hugely reduced, saving many lives and many people would be far healthier with out it.

We could all have solar PV panels on our roofs and we would save another 20-30% of carbon output because all the oldest coal plants could be shut down.  We can get almost all out hot water from solar heat vacuum tube collectors, and the most efficient heat pumps, some being geothermal heat pumps would let us heat and cool our houses completely carbon free.

We could employ 250,000+ people building and assembling wind turbines and wave power machines, and in a few decades we could get 100% of our electricity from fuel free renewable energy sources. We would lower our carbon output by 80% overall and we would stop killing coal miners and have zero oil spills and not need to devastate the boreal forests of Alberta or dig for uranium around the Grand Canyon, or poison drinking wells with fracking fluid.

If we switched back to farming like we did it 75 years ago, we would not be poisoning the rivers with chemical runoff, not create dead zones in the ocean, and not add nitrous oxide (the results of chemical nitrogen fertilizers!) to the atmosphere, adding to global climate change. We would all be much healthier and all food could be local and fresh and in season and safer and cancer rates would drop and all food would be fully nutritious and have full flavor. 

And we would avoid the worst of global climate change.  If we can stay below ~450ppm and keep the Antarctic ice sheets frozen and not mess up crop productivity too much, and not cause too many 1,000's of more species to go extinct and not flood our most populous river deltas and low lying coastal plains and only displace a few million people -- then we might just survive the next millennium, and have chance to correct what we have done in the last century and a half.

We would come back into step with the natural cycle of life that has sustained life for millions of years.

 *** This was used in a song, that I blogged about earlier, called "We Are All Connected"

Tar Sands = Peak Oil

Tar sands is proof of peak oil -- and that should be worrying to anybody who thinks we "have" to have as much oil as we want, and that we have a "right" to use it as quickly as we want to.

Oil is finite.
Coal is finite.
Natural gas (methane from underground sources) is finite.
Uranium is finite.

So why do we humans of this particular generation -- think somehow that we can use up these finite resources as quickly as we want to?

Renewable energy all come either from the sun -- solar, wind, wave, biofuel; or from the earth's core -- geothermal; or from the moon's gravity -- in the case of tidal energy. And all of these will be here as long as the earth is here -- scientists estimate about a billion more years.
There is a huge abundance of renewable energy, all around us. It is available in an excess -- we only need to gather a tiny fraction of it, to more than meet all our needs.

None of these energy sources cause any pollution, and none cause global climate change, and no one has to pay another country to get them. No one can control these energy sources. They are there all over the world, and nobody can dominate them.

So, here's where we are at:
We have burned up a huge amount of these finite energy sources in a very brief period of time, leaving very little for all the generations of humans to come.
We have caused global climate change, that is an unavoidable result of releasing the carbon from millions and millions of years back into the atmosphere in about a century.
We have also caused myriad of more localized damage to the earth we depend on to live.

Oil is running out.
Coal is running out.
Natural gas is running out.
Uranium is running out.

It is totally possible to use renewables for all our needs.  The hardest is certainly flying, but biodiesel is coming along fine.   There is a huge abundance of energy all around us.  And we do not need to "go back to an earlier time" -- electricity and the Internet are here to stay.

Materials for PV panels are (probably) recyclable.  The energy to do this can come from ... renewable sources.  And we don't have to sit still -- there are going to be new and better ways to gather renewable energy.

Enough sunlight energy hits the earth in one hour to power ALL of human needs for one year.  Of course, we cannot gather all of it, so it might take us a week to gather enough energy for the whole year -- and that is just solar energy.  Wind power would take about a month to provide enough energy for an entire year.  Wave power might take a month, as well.  Geothermal energy can be drilled.  Tidal power in places like the Bay of Fundy are truly awesome.  Biogas (methane aka natural gas) can be produced from every sewage treatment plant in existence, and from farm waste (plant and animal), too.

There is way more renewable energy than we could know what to do with.  Energy is the least of our worries.

The true costs of burning oil and coal and gas (and nuclear fission for that matter) are way beyond what we pay for them, in money.   We cannot pay enough to make up for the true costs for these finite energy sources.  They are far more valuable than the cash/money we pay for them.

We will all pay dearly -- but we cannot afford to not transition to renewable energy.  For many reasons, truly renewable energy will be the only energy that be here as long as the earth exists.

Once wind turbines, solar installations, wave power systems -- are installed and producing power, all those jobs are guaranteed to stay local.  The profits from the power produced stays local, too.  Renewable energy is here to stay as long as the earth exists.  And they burn zero fuel and produce no pollution.

The amount of water pollution from the processing the tar sands in staggering.  It will take lots of natural gas to heat the water need to even get the tar separated from the sands, and that gas has to be fracked out of the ground, which uses even more water and causes it's own pollution.

A "growth" economy is by definition going to end. It cannot continue to grow forever, even if we humans figure out how to limit ourselves to ~7 billion.
The inevitable conclusion is that the only thing we can do is use renewable energy, if we want to continue to live as we are, here on this earth. This has been a hard lesson, and we had better pay attention.

Sincerely, Neil

CarBEN EV5 Open Source Project part 4 [Updated 10 May 11]

CarBEN EV5 open source project Part 3

CarBEN EV5 open source project Part 2

CarBEN EV5 open source project Part 1

Some new images of the SketchUp model (Mk 3.9) -- I've arched the trailing roofline -- there is 1-2" more headroom in the passengers seats now, and I think the air flow is better, too.  The roof just above the windshield is smoother, too.

I was also considering slightly elongated the front, as well, but I think the aero is better with it as it is?  On the (subtle) styling front, there are now two "hard chines" on the edges of the hatch door, and along with the "spine", the three together balance the three hard chines on the hood and front fenders.

Here's a video animation of the SketchUp model:

I'm working on a 1/4 scale model of CarBEN EV, which I am going to do some aerodynamic tuft testing -- or maybe in a wind tunnel?  If you have any leads on this, I would greatly appreciate it!

CarBEN EV 1/4, 1/12, and 1/24 scale models

CarBEN EV 1/4, 1/12, and 1/24 scale models

CarBEN EV 1/4, 1/12, and 1/24 scale models

CarBEN EV 1/4, 1/12, and 1/24 scale models

I'll be repairing / correcting with epoxy, and then doing tuft testing as soon as possible.  The slot in the front and the gaps in the back in particular, need to be filled in.

The 1/24 scale model (the purple and blue one) is what started it all -- I photographed it and then used these to loft the model in DataCAD X3, and then used that in SketchUp to make a 3D model.  The 1/12th scale egg crate model and the 1/4 scale EPS foam model are generated from the SketchUp 3D computer model I made.  After I do what aero testing as I can on the 1/4 scale model (maybe in a wind tunnel, too?), I will start on a full size shell; using foam ribs, with a 1/4" foam skin and then overlay that with epoxy fiberglass.  At that point, I hope to work with someone, to get it to a working prototype!

If you want me to send you the SketchUp model and/or the CAD drawings, please email me, or comment here, and I'd be happy to send it!

Edit: I've now done a couple of preliminary tuft tests!  Here are the (noisy) videos:

CarBEN EV5 by Neil Blanchard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

On Regenerative Braking and Coasting

Having to hold the accelerator pedal exactly in one position to be able to coast is difficult and tricky, and should not have to be learned.  Driving long distance like this is not good for efficiency, or for the leg muscles.  I do a lot of ecodriving, and coasting is by far the most efficient way to roll -- in an EV, you would use zero energy, and reclaim the potential energy directly.

If you have to use the brakes, then you have accelerated too much.  Regenerative brakes should only be used to slow the car in unanticipated situations, and at the last moments to come to a stop.

Not only is ecodriving much more efficient, but it also helps to improve traffic flow.  The worst thing for traffic flow is also the least efficient way to drive: accelerate hard and then brake hard.  This sets up lots of oscillations in the traffic flow, which causes many drivers to apply their brakes for no apparent reason.

Smooth predictable driving results in smooth and predictable traffic flow, and it is the most efficient way to drive.

Heated brakes are to be avoided, and having hot brakes for normal driving is the clearest indicator that the driver can improve their efficiency.

Coasting uses the weight and momentum of the car in the best way possible.  So, it makes sense that making it as easy as possible to coast -- by just lifting your right foot completely off the accelerator to coast will predictably; and by the way, provide a couple of moments to relax the muscles in the driver's leg, too.

All the braking should be engaged by the brake pedal; pure and simple.  On an EV, all the regenerative braking should be used to regain as much of the energy as possible -- but this is less efficient than coasting, by definition; so it should not be the way you drive to maximize range on an EV.  So, as much braking as possible should come from regeneration, and the engineers need to integrate the hydraulic brakes to provide emergency braking and stop the car at slow speeds; when regen cannot.

Yes, the data is out there -- how do you think a Honda CRX HF gets 118MPG?

http://ecomodder.com/blog/20-yearold-modified-honda-crx-hf-scores-118-mpg-fuel-economy-run/

Coasting is better for several reasons:

When you coast you are getting most of the energy that it took to accelerate back; as you only lose from aero and rolling drag.

With regenerative braking, you lose the aero and rolling drag AND from the losses of the generator/charger/batteries, too.

More importantly, in many situations if you cannot coast easily -- it is too easy to accelerate and then immediately brake.  So, you over accelerate and then have to over brake.

Think about it: there are three possible modes of driving, right?

1) Accelerating
2) Coasting
3) Decelerating

Accelerating uses energy, depending on the weight of the car, the steepness of the grade, and the rate of acceleration.

Coasting uses no added energy, and it uses the accumulated momentum / kinetic energy gained by the acceleration.  It only loses energy to aerodynamic and rolling drag.

Decelerating loses energy to energy to aerodynamic and rolling drag and either to losses in the regen, and/or converting kinetic energy to heat in the brakes.

To be the most efficient, we need to minimize the energy it takes to accelerate and the energy lost through braking, and we need the car to lose a minimum amount of kinetic energy by being as low aerodynamic and rolling drag as possible.

To cover the most distance with the least energy, we need to accelerate up to a speed that will then allow the car to coast as close to the end as possible, and then use regen to regain some of the remaining kinetic energy.  The brakes needs to stay as cool as possible.

Of course, cruising longer distances and/or up hills requires some additional acceleration; either to maintain a constant speed, or to climb a hill / slope.  You can do pulse and glide instead of constant acceleration (using the terrain as possible) and climbing hills well requires what I call "swooping".  This involves accelerating ahead of the uphill slope (when gaining speed takes less energy) and then use this to help carry speed up the hill.  Think how a bicyclist would climb a hill, and you'll understand.

Coasting downhill is a no-brainer, and it certainly is easier to do this when you don't have to constantly fine tune your foot on the accelerator pedal.  If you go too fast, then use the regenerative brakes, on the brake pedal!  And prepare to "swoop" if there is an uphill.

If coasting is the most efficient way to cover distance, then it should be the easiest mode to achieve; not the hardest.  If all the regenerative braking is integrated into the brake pedal, and lifting your right foot off the accelerator lets you free-wheel coast -- then you will quickly learn how to maximize the time spent coasting.  You will learn the dynamics of your car, on the routes you routinely drive, and you will maximize your range / efficiency; ICE or EV.

Sincerely, Neil

CarBEN EV5 Open Source Project Part 3 - Updated 12 Jan 2011

CarBEN EV5 Part 1

CarBEN EV5 Part 2

CarBEN EV5 Part 4

The single entry is probably the most controversial feature of the CarBEN EV -- it has to do with weight savings and surrounding safety structure.

It's not like the the benefits aren't well worth the minor sacrifice: the CarBEN EV could well be the most efficient car yet made, and it could be one of the first electric cars to have a range of 400 miles (or more) on a single charge.  If I was able to take part in the X-Prize, the CarBEN EV would have held the most people of any car in the contest.  It might have a Cd under 0.14 and weigh less than a ton; hopefully less than a ton with the driver onboard.

I'm serious about these goals, and I have to make choices that save weight, while not diminishing safety, and yes, body gaps add aerodynamic drag.  The Bionic increased the Cd from 0.095 (the early blue clay model that I am starting with) up to 0.19.  The main reasons for much of this increase is the uncovered wheels and the cooling for the diesel engine.

Since about 97% of all accidents involve impacts on the front and sides of the car, I want to have maximum protection in those areas.

Since a square encloses the most area with the least perimeter (except for a circle, naturally), it is the best shape to make a car with a given frontal area, and it gets the most usable interior volume.  The Mercedes Bionic/Boxfish model provides an amazing opportunity: it combines an amazingly low coefficient of drag (Cd) in a shape that is nearly a square in the frontal area.  This makes it possible to have comfortable seating for 5 people in a car less than 14 feet long.

A compact car can be much lighter and stronger, and still keep the frontal area down to ~25 sq ft (2.323 sq m).  If the Cd of CarBEN EV is 0.14, then the effective frontal area (CdA) is 3.5 sq ft (0.325 sq m).  And it is possible to get the Cd as low as 0.11 or so, and that would lower the CdA to 2.75 sq ft (0.255 sq m).

These would be unprecedented drag numbers for any car, let alone one that seats up to 5 people.  Having an electric drive train also contributes a lot to this packaging efficiency: the electric motor is much smaller than an equivalent ICE and it's transmission (an electric motor only needs a reduction gear -- or can be direct drive!) and they need just a fraction of the cooling air flow.

And here's one of the reasons where the aero and the aero shape enter into why the entry door is in the back: since truncating the back of the shape (called a Kamm back) makes the vehicle makes it much more practical, and has a very small increase in drag (and the Boxfish model achieves it's staggering Cd of 0.095 with a Kamm back), and this is where a small fraction of the accidents occur anyway, this is where I chose to put the main entry door.

Side doors add weight and reduce the safety; by cutting big holes in the structure (think about a large box beam web) which then has to be reinforced all around the perimeter, and the door itself has to have a similar frame all around the perimeter, and you add the hinges and if you want to have as much strength as possible, you need 2-4 latches (instead of the usual 1).  Adding the latches, means that you gain back some/much of the strength you had with no side doors, but it will weight more.

Since I would need a rear hatch door anyway if I put in a side door; I can save a lot of weight and get the safety protection even better than most cars.

Another aspect of the aero that affects many other things, including the seating arrangement: the tapered shape required for ultra low drag means that conventional rows of seats is not the best way to fit everything in.  Since the electric motor is so compact, the driver can be moved forward between the front wheels, opening up more room.  And the staggered seating means that even more legroom is available by angling your legs off to the side.  So, the CarBEN EV fits 5 comfortably, in a package that most cars fit 4 less comfortably.  The mesh seats are also a big part of this.

On the asymmetrical seating -- basically, the most the weight would be unbalanced is about 300-350 pounds (the two "extra" seats are for shorter adult/kids), and that weight is on the higher part of the road crown; and away from the much rougher right side edge. I've only ever had to replace wheel bearings and the like on the right side of any of my cars. The battery pack in the floor is 800-900 pounds, and since most cars have the driver on the left -- and most often the driver is the only person in the car; so, most of the time the CarBEN will be in total balance! On the other hand, most cars are usually out of balance by up to 250 pounds (or more).

I think I've shown that the choices I've made so far, are aimed at achieving unprecedented ultra-efficiency, in a compact, very practical people moving machine.  Since the most import part of that function is just that: moving people with safety, the small inconveniences of slightly more effort getting in and out of the car are more than offset, if I can get anywhere near the performance I think are possible.  Form follows function, and I think the CarBEN EV can function at a very high level, indeed.

As Oliver Kuttner says: you must get the physics right to get to higher efficiency; and all design choices affect the efficiency. Using less energy is my focus, and that is where I cannot compromise.

After I get a prototype and running, I hope to experiment with rigid wheels and solid (non-inflatable) tires and regenerative shock absorbers.  The solid tires and rigid wheels could be much lighter weight (which counts double to weight losses anywhere else), and they could have vanishingly low rolling resistance, and they would pass along most of the energy to the regenerative shocks; making their effect greater than it would be with conventional tires.

The ride quality could actually be better than with conventional tires, since light wheels makes the system more compliant (they move rather than moving the car), and the suspension can be fully tuned and damped to match the wheels.

This could help get the energy consumption even lower than 100Wh/mile, and that could extend the range, as well as recharging the batteries (a bit) from the energy regained from the shock absorbers (instead of wasting it as heat).  Every little bit counts.

****************

Here's the latest video animation: Final Design Intent Video

Here are the newest images and of the SketchUp model.  If you want a copy of the model, I'd be happy to email you a copy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some pictures of a 1/12th scale (1" = 1') model of the eggcrate frame similar to what could be used to lay the fiberglass shell:

CarBEN EV5 by Neil Blanchard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.