General Update (finally!)

Photovoltaic Powered Electric Vehicle Update
J.Durand 3/17/09

General Comments:
There have been many things happening since our last update about a month ago. Sorry for the long lapse, but things have been quite busy. Here is a summary of some of the main happenings:
• Almost all of the parts for our project are here now.
• Albemarle County has tentatively agreed to provide us with one of their fleet cars for conversion next year, probably a Ford Tempo.
• The UVa Facilities Management department has tentatively agreed to provide us with one of their fleet cars for conversion next year, probably a Ford Ranger pickup
• We submitted a proposal for a small in-house grant
• We are about to submit a proposal for a grant from Bama Works, the foundation supported by the Dave Matthews family
• The electric motor is almost ready for installation in the car
• A hole has been cut in the trunk for the first battery box
• We are getting close to sending out the PV mounting frame for construction
• RideForward was in the news a lot around spring break
• RideForward is now an independent student organization (CIO). As such, we have just received word that we will get about $3,100 in funding, a crucial benefit for our project which is running significantly in the red right now.

An observation: We heard a great presentation recently by one of the entrants in the competition for the X-Prize, which offers a $10,000,000 prize for the team that can build a vehicle that could be mass produced and can successfully complete a series of tests and races with an average fuel consumption of 100 miles/gallon. The entrant that spoke to us is the only serious contender that is not doing some kind of hybrid vehicle. It is interesting how many approaches there are to reducing petroleum consumption in vehicles. Although there are many ways to calculate which is best, the method that wins out, may well achieve its dominance through something that comes up by chance, or through circumstances that are unforeseen at this point. It’s truly fascinating to be participating in something that I feel will be a significant part of history…. the development of the next prime mover for our planet.

Update:
Ordering Materials: Almost everything we need is now here, and construction is under way. You can see some pictures of things at the end of this report.

Albemarle County: Dave Slutzky, a member of Team RideForward, is also a County Commissioner. He has persuaded the County to consider donating a fleet vehicle to RideForward for conversion in the 2009/2010 school year. The vehicle we have talked about is a 1991 Ford Tempo with about 90,000 miles on it. Dave is also trying to talk the County into giving RideForward the money for the conversion parts up front to reduce our fund raising requirements.

UVa Facilities Management: Cheryl Gomez, another RideForward Team member, and director of the UVa Department of Facilities Management, has tentatively agreed to donate a fleet vehicle for conversion for the 2009/2010 academic year as well. This would probably be a Ford Ranger with about 100,000 miles on it.

Grant: We submitted a grant for about $25,000 to a group within the UVa. A UVa Alum, who has become a successful venture capitalist, has donated some money to be used to encourage multidisciplinary groups who have a entrepreneurial aspect to their projects.

Foundation Grant: We are about to submit a small proposal for a grant from the Bama Works Foundation. This foundation favors projects in sustainability so we are hopeful that we can catch their eye.

RideForward in the News: Within the space of a week and a half, RideForward was:
The lead story in UVA Today
Had a link to a newspaper story in UVA Today
Had a photo in This Week in Photos on the front page of the UVA website
Had a front page story in the Charlottesville Daily Progress
Had a feature story in the Charlottesville Daily Progress
Had an article done on us in the Richmond Times Dispatch
Did an interview for the UVA radio station
Was on Chanel 19 News (the local CBS Charlottesville affiliate).

Motor Installation: The last transition piece that will allow the motor to connect to the transmission is being built. We are hoping that the process of lining up everything and doing a test fit out of the car, will take place in the next week.

Hole in the Trunk: We now have a hole in the trunk where we will put a large steel box that will contain about ½ of the car’s batteries. The box will be built out of heavy gauge steel, and will be welded into place in the car. The box will be lined with rubber padding to keep the batteries safe from bumps, and to insulate the batteries from the box.

PV Installation: We are about to have a frame built that will be used to install the PV panels on. The frame will be installed on a garage belonging to Eric Geilker, a RideForward Team member and member of the Charlottesville Community. The frame is complicated by our desire to do seasonal adjustments to the angle of the PV array (one axis tracking). We are hoping to have the design ready for construction next week.

Other Progress: Other progress by the PV Computer group, Car Computer Group, Auxiliary Group, and Digital Throttle group, is going well. We had hoped to have all systems ready for initial testing by April 1. We may not quite make that, but we hope to be close to that date.

Funding: RideForward is now an independent student group (CIO). The UVa provides some funding for CIO groups, and we were informed today that we should be receiving about $3,100 for qualifying expenses. This is a wonderful piece of news.

Upcoming:
• Build Build Build
• Apply for additional Foundation Grants
• Continue working on funding opportunities
• DOE Clean Cities
• NSF Collaboration
• Meet with Parking & Transportation

Project Update

General Comments:
The momentum is definitely increasing. The following is a summary of our current status:
• Painting by CATEC is complete, and we expect to take delivery of the car tomorrow.
• Our garage got a cleaning and organizing
• The electric motor/controller came in
• The touch screen for the car computer group came in
• We found out that we will not be able to locate our PV array on campus this spring, but we have a great off campus backup
• We exchanged our engine and automatic transmission for a manual transmission with drive axles.
• The Thunder Sky Lithium Ion batteries should arrive early this week
• The PV inverter/charger should arrive early this week

An observation:
We continue to hear of activities similar to RideForward, such as the University of Delaware professor who converted a Scion to electric drive, and set his car up so that the electric cord that went from the outlet to the charger onboard the car, could also carry power back to the grid from the car batteries. The idea of using EVs for distributed energy storage is not new of course, but not many EVs are set up to do it. Although there are many claims about payback times, driving ranges, top speeds, etc. my thoughts at this point is that the economics are not there yet for a personal EV that can perform the way a gasoline powered vehicle can (driving range, top speed, acceleration), and is competitively priced. Nor are the economics there for many alternative energy sources. The gap, however, is closing. In addition, special use vehicles may be feasible now, such as fleet vehicles with low top speed and acceleration requirements. But another way to make current EVs and alternative energy attractive is to package them in a larger system. This is why I continue to believe (until I can do a more detailed analysis that proves me wrong), that converting a community’s fleet of vehicles (such as a town, municipality, or university), combined with distributed generation (preferably alternative energy based) , and optimization of the community’s grid (microgrids) will provide a package that, with proper design, will allow the individual components that would not be economical to do on their own, to be profitable as a package, and will allow petroleum independence and true zero emissions… anywhere.

Update:
Ordering Materials: It seemed like the log jam broke on materials acquisition this week as the following occurred:
• The motor and controller arrived. The shipping was so fast that we had to rapidly shift from complaining about all the delays to scrambling to get set up for the delivery.
• The touch screen (that will be mounted on the dash of the car – hey the Toyota Prius has nothing on us), came in
• We went out to a junk yard that swapped us for our existing engine and automatic transmission, for a manual transmission and drive axles.
• We were having trouble arranging for cross country transit of our $17,000 shipment of Lithium Ion batteries, when our student leader asked an expediter company he had worked for to help. Within a day, the batteries were on their way, for a shipping cost of half of what we were expecting.
• We hit an all time record for minimum time through the purchasing system. On Tuesday, the quote for the PV inverter charger system came into the UVa system, and on Thursday, the supplier had the equipment on a truck and coming to its new home. In the past we have spent weeks getting this same process to happen, so we were thrilled at the quick response.

Car Status: There was a small mishap in the painting process at CATEC, but the car should be ready for pickup this coming Tuesday.

Spring Cleaning: In anticipation of the car coming, and our materials coming in, we gave our garage a good spring cleaning on Saturday (it was 70o on Saturday!). And it was just in time. It looks like UVa would like to do a photo shoot (and you thought that was only for highly paid models), out at the garage this week.

Siting: One of the biggest things that occurred last week was settling on the place that the PV system will be located. Our hope was to put the system on the UVa campus. But on Thursday, the initial estimates for the cost to put in the system, and the time required to get the permitting completed, make it clear that it is not possible to locate our system on campus this spring. Instead, we are going to locate the array off campus for this semester in a temporary location (see photo). Over the summer and fall we hope to raise some additional funds, and get the panels moved over to one of the two sites that seem the best (either at the Vaughan House, or the roof of the Emmet-Ivy parking garage bus shelter.

Upcoming:
• Get the car from CATEC
• Get the car batteries
• Place the final PV order
• Get the remaining items for the car ordered
• UVa Photo Shoot
• Continue working on funding opportunities

Weekly Update

General Comments:
Things have been quite busy and I have had to skip last weeks update. In the past two weeks we worked on ordering our equipment. The focus recently has been on the photovoltaic system. We are looking for a site, and at the same time, we are consolidating the design of the PV system, and how it will interact with the UVa grid, and finalizing the materials that we will need. Our first materials also came in. The car computer group received the barebone parts that they will assemble into a computer, and the photovoltaic computer group received its laptop that will be used for data acquisition and system control. Seeing the parts come in emphasizes the reality of what we are doing. We also found out that the painting of our car should be completed this week.

An observation:
We heard of a couple of interesting technological developments. First, a company in China (something like IDY or DIY) claims to have developed Lithium Ion batteries that are half as expensive as current batteries but have twice the energy density and can charge very quickly (minutes, not hours). These batteries are supposedly being used in a production EV offered by a Chinese company. The author of the article that I read, asked the designers of the Tesla what they thought, and they just rolled their eyes. I would definitely like to know more.

Also, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have developed a nanocoating for PV cells. The nanocoating can be grown right onto the PV. First the nanocoating absorbs about 95% of the incoming sunlight, as opposed to conventional materials that only absorb about 70% of the sunlight (the rest is reflected). Secondly, the nanocoating absorbs the sunlight as if the cells were facing the sun all the time. The nanocoating essentially makes a tracking collector out or a stationary system. This single coating will boost performance significantly. But can it be applied rapidly and economically and can the coating maintain its performance over time?

Update:
Ordering Materials: We are still struggling with getting our initial group of items ordered (like the car motor, the car batteries, and the PV panels). The car motor should be shipped this week. Hopefully, the batteries will also be shipped this week. We are just entering the UVa purchasing system with the electrical portion of the PV order (inverter/charger, load center, battery charger, etc.), but hopefully we can move this along a little faster than the previous orders. The PV panels themselves will be ordered separately once we find out how and where the PV array will be mounted.

Car Status: CATEC is probably painting as I type. They hope to be finished with the painting by mid week, and then we will have the car towed back over to the Reactor/shop.

Siting: We are coming down to a final selection of a site on campus. It seems that budget and schedule are most favorable at the Vaughan House over at Hereford College. We would use a 20’ pole and mount the panels near the utility area that is to the east of the house. We would then take the DC power from the PV and bring it into the utility room in the Vaughan house. At this point, the DC would be inverted and tied into the house electrical system. We are awaiting an initial estimate of the costs and the schedule, which we hope to get this week. With these estimates, we should be able to tell if we can put the PV on campus this year. If the costs or schedule are prohibitive, we do have an offsite backup location available.

Data Acquisition: The initial data acquisition systems that we looked at for the car, and the PV system, were on the order of $3,500 each. These costs were too high for this year’s budget. The first piece of good news came when we found that a number of the components we were buying (such as the motor controller and the battery management system in the car, and the inverter/charger for the PV system) already had sensors in place that were collecting much of the needed data and had it available in digital form. The second piece of good news came when we met with Harry Powell in the Electrical Engineering department last week. He was able to show us how to build some simple data acquisition equipment of our own at a small fraction of the cost of the original equipment that we were considering.

Funding:
We are looking at a variety of funding opportunities for this year, and the future. For example, we plan to submit a proposal soon to a local foundation, and to become a CIO at the UVa, which means we could request startup monies.

Upcoming:
• Meeting of siting committee to review the Hereford site
• Get the car from CATEC
• Place initial PV order
• Continue working on funding opportunities