Batteries and energy storage

Electric car maker BYD to charge into home energy

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Chinese battery manufacturer BYD, which is readying a line of all-electric vehicles, plans to introduce a home energy suite that includes solar panels and batteries.

BYD, which gained prominence in the U.S. when Warren Buffet invested in the company, plans to start testing its all-electric e6 sedan in the U.S. later this year, said Michael Austin, vice president of BYD America.

High-volume auto battery manufacturing helps the company's entry into home energy products by bringing costs down, he said here on Monday at the Lux Executive Summit during a panel on energy storage. BYD plans to supply solar panels, battery packs, car charging pedestals, efficient LED lighting, and inverters to manage energy flow within a home, Austin said.

"The vehicle market is driving scale for the energy market and we're already well below $500 per kilowatt-hour (for batteries)," he said. BYD electric cars will have a range of about 250 miles, he added.

Two weeks ago, BYD announced a partnership with KB Homes to build a low-energy home in Lancaster, Calif., which is equipped with solar panels and batteries and costs about the same as comparable new homes, according to Austin. BYD America plans to offer similar systems elsewhere in the world. In the U.S. it will target communities where homeowners can finance energy-efficiency investments through property taxes over 20 years.

So far, many of these property assessed clean energy financing (PACE) programs have run out of money, but Austin said BYD expects it can work when backed by commercial banks. The company plans to introduce its home energy line in China this year, he added.

The 15-year-old company started out making batteries and other components for consumer electronics, such as cell phones. Now, as many companies push into electric vehicles, BYD advertises battery prices significantly lower than other companies, which it expects will drive adoption of all-electric cars. … Read more

Solar Pebble could light the way for rural Africans

A solar-charged light might seem like just another green gadget to the average American, but for families in rural Africa, it could prove revolutionary.

Product design consultancy Plus Minus Design is vying to replace unsustainable and potentially dangerous lanterns in the homes of off-grid Africans with the Solar Pebble. Engineered with the economic constraints of developing-world citizens in mind, the Solar Pebble will provide one hour of LED light for every two hours of charge, and will cost only $2.70 to manufacture.

Plus Minus Design, based in Leeds, U.K., was founded by three undergraduate students at the University of Leeds. While studying product design and engineering, Adam Robinson, Henry James, and Tom Eales were given the opportunity to work with SolarAid, a charity in the U.K.

SolarAid, which works to fight poverty and climate change, worked with the students to develop a solar-powered alternative to kerosene lanterns. Those lanterns, commonly used in rural Africa, draw 20 percent of an average Malawian family's income, SolarAid said, and pose respiratory health problems, as well as create fire hazards. … Read more

Think's electric cars to roll into New York

Think will begin selling its all-electric City cars in the New York metropolitan area within the coming months, the company said Thursday.

Think's City model is a highway-legal electric vehicle that runs solely on a lithium ion battery system and gives off zero emissions. The car, which has a top speed of 60 mph, can be charged from either a standard U.S. 110-volt household outlet, or a fast-charging 220-volt station that can be installed for home use. The small two-door car, clearly intended for city driving and parking, has a battery system with a range of about 112 … Read more

Report: Energy storage market to double by 2015

The market for electric-vehicle energy storage devices is expected to grow from $7.7 billion in 2010 to $14.5 billion in 2015, according to a report from Lux Research. But that's not the most interesting part of the analyst report that was released last month with seemingly little notice from the media.

Lux Research said that the predicted big growth in the overall market for batteries, fuel cells, and ultracapictors is not going to come from an increase in electric vehicles, but from the explosion of smart grids. In its report "Emerging Technologies Power a $44 Billion Opportunity for Transportation and Grid," … Read more

AT&T to sell eco-friendly phone charger

Are you thinking of new ways to go green this spring? Try getting a new AT&T Zero Charger for your cell phone, which will stop drawing an electrical charge if your charger is plugged into the wall, but the phone isn't attached.

Conventional chargers continue to draw power when devices are plugged into a wall, even when the battery has finished charging or when no device is attached to the charger. AT&T said Wednesday that it will soon be selling this replacement cell phone charger starting in May for $29.99.

The AT&T Zero Charger automatically senses when a mobile phone is not plugged up to the charger and it cuts the power supply from the wall socket. Other devices, including TVs, computers, and all kinds of home appliances, also draw power from the power grid when they are plugged in even if they aren't turned on. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that standby power makes up as much as 20 percent of home energy use in the U.S.

The amount of power that is consumed by individual phone chargers plugged into the wall is small. But when you add it up over a long period of time, it can be significant. For example, AT&T estimates that if 80 percent of the wireless subscribers left their cell phone chargers plugged into a wall for a year, their phones would draw enough electricity to power 24,000 homes for a year, or brew 3 to 4 million cups of coffee each day.

The wireless operator wouldn't specify which of its phone will use the Zero charger. But spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung said it will be available for AT&T's "most popular devices." Judging from the picture AT&T provided, it will work with at least some BlackBerry phones. And the USB interface could mean that it will be compatible with the Apple iPhone. Details about the phones that can use the charger will be available closer to the launch of the product, Hornung said.

The new Zero Charger can also help environmentally-conscious wireless users stay green by reducing the number of cell phone chargers that eventually get thrown away.… Read more

Toyota, Nissan to standardize electric car rechargers

Top Japanese carmakers Toyota and Nissan helped set up a group to standardize fast-charge stations for electric cars on Monday in a bid to promote the spread of the zero-emission vehicles.

The group, led by Japan's biggest utility, Tokyo Electric Power, Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors, and Fuji Heavy Industries, will set a standard for Japan and later aim for an international standard.

Some 158 companies and government bodies are expected to join, including 20 non-Japanese firms such as PG&E, Enel, Endesa, and PSA Peugeot Citroen.

Electric vehicles are seen as one solution to meeting stricter … Read more

It takes a village (of scientists) to reinvent energy

National Harbor, Md.--Attending the ARPA-E Summit this week was sort of like roaming the halls of clean-tech high school, one investor quipped when I asked him what he thought of the conference. It's an analogy that holds up pretty well.

There were the popular "kids" that everybody wanted talk to--high-profile green-tech investors like John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures. Authority figures who set the rules were out in force as well, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, multiple senators, and other high-level Department of Energy officials.

And then there … Read more

DOE's Chu looks to past for energy breakthroughs

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland--Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees the solutions to today's energy challenges in the work of scientists in decades past.

Chu delivered the opening keynote here Tuesday at the first ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, where he used examples of historic technology breakthroughs as the model for making new discoveries in clean energy. The Department of Energy is seeking to re-create the structure of research that yielded great technology jumps, such as the precursor of the Internet or the laser.

ARPA-E, which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, was funded for the first time last year. Its goal is … Read more

Innovations grow at Greener Gadgets confab

I recently saw the film "2012," where Earth appears to finally tire of the human race and decides to get rid of us. That, coupled with what seems to be an increasing number of natural disasters, makes me think that maybe it's time we take this green-tech thing seriously.

Apparently I'm not alone. Last week in New York, eco-minded thinkers gathered for Greener Gadgets, a conference aimed at sharing ideas for environmentally friendly gizmos. One stand-out event was the Green Gadgets Design Competition, where concepts from around the world were voted on by the public, then assessed by a panel of judges, as well as audience members.

First place went to a concept app using an iPhone as a demo. The Augmented Living Goods project, invented by a student in the U.S., uses your smartphone's camera to scan the bar code on produce. It then consults a database and, after fixing your position with GPS, tells you how far your potential food has traveled and if it's currently in season locally, as well as historical pricing among other data that's useful for helping consumers make more informed, sustainable choices in what they purchase and eat.

Second place went to something I'd actually like to see in every apartment in the near future. It's a solar panel with two integrated USB chargers. As more and more gadgets (cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, etc.) start adopting USB "trickle" charging, the demand for USB power goes up. This Illumi-Charger by U.S.-based GreenWaves.org stores power when it's not charging your devices in integrated batteries. That way the bottleneck is in the USB interface, not the amount of light it's absorbing. Pretty smart. … Read more

Live blog: Bloom box press conference

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Bloom Energy is holding a press event Wednesday morning where the company is expected to unveil further details on its Bloom box product. In case you're just joining us, these boxes promise to not only bring ample amounts of power in a small amount of space, but to change people's dependency on traditional power grids. All for less than $3,000 a unit.

A quick primer on the technology can be seen on this segment from CBS' "60 Minutes," which aired last week. We've also got an FAQ that explains more about what it does here.… Read more