Hawaii Planning State-Wide Electric Car Network

MojoKid writes to tell us that Hawaii is planning on implementing a statewide electric car charging network. While the initiative seems to highlight the lower carbon footprint, Hawaii doesn't exactly seem like the ideal candidate for this initiative. One reader pointed out that perhaps a solar or wind power generation initiative might be a little better suited for the island state. "We have tons of wind and sun here that could be harnessed for electricity, but Hawaiian Electric Company has enough control over the government to block most wind and solar projects, and they make more money burning oil and diesel because the PUC lets them pass the fuel costs directly on to the consumer. Gov Lingle is taking all the credit, but if she actually wants to make a difference in oil consumption in the islands she needs to get large scale wind and solar projects pushed through first."

Comments

Ride a bike.

[Zoson]

Being from Hawaii, and knowing how small Oahu really is.

Get a bike.

You can drive around the circumference of the island in about 2 hours. Enjoy paradise before you're whisked away to college and never get to go back.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're saying goodbye to the electric car?

It is already there.

[arthurpaliden]

The infrastructure for electric cars is already in place as the majority of places are already on the electricity grid. All that has to happen is for the cars to be fitted with a plug and be able to charge off of house current (110/220). Then some enterprising person will come up with a 'coin operated' charging unit to be placed at the front of all comercial and public parking spaces. And it is all done.

Re:It is already there.

[ArsonSmith]

Yeah, most places in the US are on our aging, antiquated electric grid. If all cars operated today were electric, and charged at night when there is less demand, there would still not be enough generation and transmission capacity to power them all.

Lucky all cars today are not electric. All cars tomorrow will not be electric. All cars next year will not be electric. All cars next decade will not be electric. Perhaps in 50+ years when all cars are electric we may have had time to incrementally increase electric supply to match the slowly growing demand. Stretch I know, but it's possible. Much more possible then waking up tomorrow in a world full of electric cars and not enough power to charge them.

Re:It is already there.

[Rei]

With this, the time it takes to charge a battery is non-trivial. Its not comparable to the five minutes it takes to fill your gas tank.

Oh really?

Altairnano solved this problem by using an innovative approach to rechargeable battery chemistry by replacing graphite with a patented nano-titanate material as the negative electrode in its NanoSafe batteries. By using nano-titanate materials as the negative electrode material, lithium metal plating does not occur because the electro-chemical properties of the nano-titanate allow the deposition of lithium in the particles at high rates. These electrical properties mean that even at very cold temperatures there is no risk of plating. No undesirable interaction takes place with the electrolyte in the Altairnano batteries, which permits the battery to be charged very rapidly, without the risk of shorting or thermal runaway. In fact, in recent laboratory testing, Altairnano has demonstrated that a NanoSafe cell can be charged to over 80% charge capacity in about one minute. Actual charge rates achieved in specific applications will vary due to the application environment.

Altair has demonstrated the use of their cells in cars and trucks, giving them 5 to 10 minute charges. It's similar to Toshiba's SCiB that was covered here a couple months ago. Of course, even some non-titanate chemistries can charge quite well. Phosphates and stabilized spinel packs can usually take a full charge in 15 to 20 minutes.

Not necessarily

[Once&FutureRocketman]

Gov Lingle is taking all the credit, but if she actually wants to make a difference in oil consumption in the islands she needs to get large scale wind and solar projects pushed through first."

This isn't necessarily true. Solar and (especially) wind generation technologies are developed and being deployed. The barriers in this case are political and secondarily economic, but once those barriers fall (due to cost of fuel, or due to political changes), adoption can be relatively rapid. Deploying large-scale wind is an understood problem.

Electric cars, on the other hand, are likely to require a much longer adoption curve. For one thing, they are private vehicles, subject to private decisionmaking and biases. For another, there still isn't a really good, affordable electric car on the market. Third, they will require a well-established infrastructure before anyone but the early adopters will use them.

So IMO it makes sense for them to focus on electric cars now, and on wind/solar tomorrow, because the leadtime on cars is going to be long. On the other hand, the benefit of moving to renewable electricity will hit the bottom line much faster, so they have an incentive to be working that angle actively too.

One problem at a time

[jmorris42]

Don't try to solve multiple problems. If electric distribution can be solved, great. But idiots saying "If we can't solve every problem and have a green wonderland NOW then screw it." are just holding back progress. Solving power generation is a totally seperate problem and should be tackled by a different effort.

Specifically, wind and tidal energy are NEVER going to be close to cost effective. If you want to solve generation build nukes. We know how to build them safe, we know how to recycle the fuel and we have enough domestic supply to last a century or so. If we can't move on to fusion or some other super tech by then we deserve a Darwin Award.

I live in Hawaii

[pwnies]

...and let me tell you something about planning here. For the last 30 years they've been "planning" a system of rail transport on Oahu, and it simply hasn't come to pass. A lot of development projects here are simply shut down because many of the locals are very adverse to change. Even projects like these that have good environmental impacts at face value will require a ton of development. Behind that development will be an equal amount of litigation just to get the permits.
I'm not one to try and sound negative, but it will never happen in Hawaii outside of Waikiki (a lot of development happens there in order to help boost tourism).

That is what they're doing

[megamerican]

That's exactly what they are doing. They are using solar energy to power the car charging network.

FTA:

The infrastructure for this network will be powered by Hawaiian Electric Companies, with much of the electricity coming from renewable energy sources, such as "solar, wind, wave and geothermal."

Even the editor didn't RTFA!

Re:That is what they're doing

[DragonWriter]

CO2 isn't dirty. It is a life giving gas.

Like many things, its good in moderation (for CO2, at the naturally occurring level in the atmosphere.) OTOH, adding CO2 faster than it is taken out of the atmosphere by natural processes is considerably less good; as such, it is "dirty".

However, coal and gas powered things do emit more than CO2 which is bad for the environment.

True. As do oil powered things, though CO2 is the main global threat (most of the other forms of pollution produce effects that, while more severe in the short term, are more localized.)

That's why I don't understand why the Western nations want to cut carbon emissions while givng countries like China, India and Russia a near free pass.

Uh, they don't. OTOH, they do want to reduce global carbon emissions, and given the actual per capita emissions, they don't have any credibility doing that unless the developed countries, which emit more, start the process.

China and India have almost no environmental regulations compared to the US and Western Europe.

True.

Shipping our industry overseas is actually going to increase pollution.

The idea is to make industry cleaner, not ship it overseas.

Great testbed....

[jemenake]

I've seen some comments that didn't think Hawaii was such a great venue for this, but I think it's perfect.

For an alternative-fuel demo, you need to have infrastructure (ie, fueling stations). In places like California, this results in the governor picking a single stretch of highway which runs the length of half of the state and plopping down hydrogen fueling stations at manageable distances between them. The problem being that, you better not miss your next fuel stop because every station is pretty much "Last Hydrogen for 100 Miles" and you better not need to stray too far off of the anointed highway. On the other hand, some cities are trying to plop charging stations everywhere so that you don't have to *plan* your fueling... but that stops at the city limits.

To really give people a picture of an alternative-fuel future, you need to have fueling/service available as ubiquitously as fossil-fuel stations are today.... and they need to extend as far as anyone might care to go. To keep costs down, you'd need to try a place that geographically limited... where people *can't* go too far away.

An island is perfect for that. And Hawaii, in particular, is even better because it's a vacation hotspot. People will vacation there, drive their electric rental car, get a tan, have lots of sex, come back home and have all of those memories intermixed. So, electric propulsion gets a "cool by association" bump.

So, I just want to be clear... I view this as a great *PR* move for alternative fuels. True, from an engineering point of view, there are better places to do it. True, it's a drop in the bucket compared to our continental consumption. True, we burn an assload of fuel to fly over there. But I see this as more about getting the U.S. to "buy in" more quickly to a future that doesn't involve petroleum. Something like this would finally be a testbed where people could experience electric cars without ever worrying about "Oh crap, where am I going to fuel it?". A possible true glimpse into the future.

Re:Ideal location

[Rei]

Common misconception.

Your car has trouble starting in the cold because it uses a lead-acid battery. Lead-acid batteries lose power output *very* fast at low temperatures. Nickel-metal-hydride are a little better, but not much. NiCd, Zebras and the advanced forms of li-ion do excellent in the cold (traditional li-ion are fine in the cold, but you damage them if you charge them during below-freezing temperatures). A123s, for example, are rated for storage at down to -50C and usage at down to -30C.

Most upcoming highway-speed EVs use advanced li-ion.