Formula-E Racing Pushing the Limits on Battery and Charging Technology

Formula-E Racing Pushing the Limits on Battery and Charging Technology

Starting out very modestly in 2011, Formula-E street racing was intended to demonstrate the exciting possibilities of electric vehicles to a crowd that knew little about them and to challenge companies to improve the technology.  The first “real” races were held in 2015 with cars of limited range, so limited in fact that to complete a 50-60 mile race required drivers to swap to fresh cars halfway in order to have enough charge to finish.  In 2020, the Gen 2 race cars had better batteries of double the capacity (54 kWh and 385 kg) and could avoid the swap.  

Races are now of limited duration, compared to the usual formula car events.  The races last 45-minutes plus one lap, with lengths of 50 to 62 miles depending on the course, compared to the average 200-mile length of a Formula 1 race.  The cars have front and rear motors with a total of about 500 hp, and use regenerative braking.  They weigh about 900 kg.  Average speeds have been about 110 kph, with top speeds of 280 kph (173 mph, slower than Formula 1 and not the mind-blowing 250 mph of an Indy car).  

For 2022, the new Gen 3 specs call for battery packs weighing 100 kg less while delivering peak power output of 350 kW vs. 250 kW now.  This will likely increase average and top speeds, resulting in longer races.  For the first time, there will be an option to provide a 30-second fast charge in a more typical pit stop, at a rate of 600 kWh/hour, giving an extra 4 kWh charge or about an additional 4 miles.  While modest now, the idea is to increase the fast recharge rate to add significant length to the race.  Williams Advanced Engineering won the contract to supply the new battery packs, still based on lithium-ion technology.  

The organizers of Formula-E clearly want to keep pushing to achieve parity with their bigger cousins and intend to increase the specs with each new generation.  The assumption, and a pretty good one based on prior experience, is that many of the advances in the race cars will end up improving production vehicles and commercial fast-chargers.  That is likely why some big manufacturers like ABB are big supporters of Formula-E.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStart’s Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

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People will Demand a Million Charging Stations

People will Demand a Million Charging Stations

Will we need 1.2 million public chargers? Gary Simon highlights how innovation will enable us to charge electric vehicles with fewer. This is an innovation in the ‘quality’ of charging as opposed to the ‘quantity’. The innovation may also be cheaper low end chargers, quantity over quality. I think quantity will be inevitable, everyone will drive EVs and demand access to reliable charging. Businesses will compete to meet the basic charging needs at the lowest cost. 

“Think of it like buying an employee a cup of coffee.” Will Barrett VP of Sales at ClipperCreek puts it succinctly. There are several things employers and businesses do to support employees and customers. The average employer spends over $100 on coffee a year per employee. If your employees and customs drive EVs, charging will be a perk people will expect. For a business, it represents a relatively small increase in cost and a potential revenue generator.

Reliable charging will influence people’s habits. 90% of daily drivers drive less than 65 miles; cars are parked for over 20 hours a day. Finding reliable spaces to charge for 4-8 hours is more valuable than a Fast Charger. Consumers driving EVs will change where they shop if it means getting a little extra charge. After buying my EV, I have changed where I shop based on charging availability.

The demand push for charging will be accelerated by public funding. The CEC is spending $384 million on ZEV infrastructure over 3 years, Southern California Edison is spending $436 million over 4, and San Diego Gas & Electric announced $44 Million recently. 

Innovation will make level 1 and 2 charging pervasive. EV drivers will value convenient access to reliable charging over fast charging. Businesses (Employers and Retailers) will do what they do best, compete.  Will that get us to the CEC 1.2 Million public charging stations? Perhaps, but it should make charging more ubiquitous.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas is the Executive Director of CleanStart. Thomas has a strong background in supporting small businesses, leadership, financial management and is proficient in working with nonprofits. He has a BS in Finance and a BA in Economics from California State University, Chico. Thomas has a passion for sustainability and a commitment to supporting non-profits in the region.

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SMUD CEO Embraces Innovation as Key to Reaching Zero Net Carbon Goal by 2030

SMUD CEO Embraces Innovation as Key to Reaching Zero Net Carbon Goal by 2030

Pau Lau, the new General Manager and CEO of SMUD appointed early this year, said that further innovations were a key to meeting 10% of the requirements to reach a zero-carbon power system by the end of the decade. Known technologies and applications would be enough to get 90% of the way there, but the rest depends on people creating new options no one has yet imagined. SMUD intends to spend the money to unlock this creativity, hopefully much of it close to home. This was welcome news to the sizable crowd that joined this special Perspectives Zoominar on Monday July 12. 

SMUD’s plan is very ambitious. It includes supporting “climate-friendly business growth” and “leaving no community behind”, all while capping rate increases at the inflation rate. Lau could not have been clearer about wanting to hear more ideas from the cleantech community. He pledged to sponsor meetings where the community could brief SMUD staff on the solutions they could offer to meet the 2030 goal. SMUD has always been a supporter of sustainability and clean energy, but this was a big step beyond anything SMUD has ever done before. Being open to more innovative ideas and offering support to early stage companies was a welcome message. The biggest innovations are needed in buildings and transportation. 

Lau said he wanted to lead the charge to bring as much of the money for clean infrastructure, EV charging, and renewables promised in the President’s budget to our region as possible. He wants to make the region a clear clean tech leader and test bed for as many good ideas as possible. He talked about shutting down all SMUD’s gas-fired power plants except the Cosumnes plant which will be repurposed for meeting peak needs, hopefully using green fuels. He wants to see at least 100 MW of grid-scale storage (and we would urge him to target more). He is a fan of vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home applications to use the growing EV fleet to become part of the storage solution, a sector where engineering innovation will be key to working out the problems with rearranging the grid to accommodate such changes. 

There was so much that he discussed, it can’t possibly be described in this summary. It is all recorded and available on our YouTube channel. If you didn’t attend, you really need to watch this. And if you were there, tell your cleantech friends that they need to tune in as well.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStart’s Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

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Concrete: it’s more than hard science

Concrete: it’s more than hard science

Concrete is all around us, being the second most widely-used substance in the world. It’s a simple material to make, yet buildings made of it can last for thousands of years. It is also responsible for about 8% of all CO2 emissions, so it is the target of research to try to make it “greener”.  

Concrete’s CO2 emissions come from its critical ingredient, cement.  At our recent perspective we heard from Jose Garcia PhD, assistant professor at Sac State researching concrete and explaining how to shrink its CO2 footprint.  Check out the video. 

From Prof Garcia presentation Source: NRMCA Concrete CO2 Fact Sheet

Prof Garcia broke down why concrete has high emissions. Most importantly, what Garcia most frequently corrects people on, concrete and cement is not the same thing. If Concrete were cake, cement would be the flour. Cement is to concrete as flour is to cake,  both binding agents holding things together. Cement holds aggregates (like sand, iron ore and rock) together to form concrete. To make cement limestone is heated to 1000 C resulting in the calcium carbonate becoming calcium oxide (Quick lime) and CO2. They then combine the quick lime with aggregates to create cement.

​For every 1 kilogram of cement that is produced, there is 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide that is produced. 60% comes from the chemical reaction, and 40% comes from the burning of fossil fuel. While cement is carbon intensive, concrete has the opportunity to be more environmentally friendly. Waste materials that would normally end up in landfills like fly ash, slag cement, and silica fume, can be added to concrete, reducing its emissions impact.

Professor Garcia researches alternatives to cement called Supplementary Cementitious Material and Portland limestone cements. He looks at how they could be used in more specialty applications. There are even opportunities for concrete to be injected with CO2 collected from the atmosphere making it stronger. But there are also issues with that.

Make sure you watch the video and look for us to invite Professor Garica back. 

Giovannie Smith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giovanni Smith is currently a junior going to Sacramento State University. Working towards his BA in mathematics with an emphasis in statistics and a minor in computer science. He wants a career using his knowledge in mathematics and coding.

"I’m excited to be working with CleanStart to learn more about the energy space and apply my mathematics to help solve real-world problems." - Giovanni Smith

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INN>CHRG Creating an Air BnB for EV Charging

INN>CHRG Creating an Air BnB for EV Charging

You bought an EV.  You bought an in-home charger for a hefty sum, but 90% of the time it is not in use.  Why not use it by selling charging to those traveling to your neighborhood who want a convenient way to get a top-up while they visit friends and make a little extra money on the side?  That is the kernel of the idea that Angel Melchor, Koral Buch, and Meredith Roberts had when they entered the UC Davis Graduate School of Management’s Big Bang! Competition in 2020.  They developed that idea and now won the Big Bang’s $10,000 Clean Energy Prize.  And they have gotten serious about making this into a real business.  Recently, they presented their concept at one of our Perspectives events and you can watch it here.

“Borrowing” an EV charger has been a feature of the EV community since Tesla and Nissan introduced marketable EVs.  If there was a charge for this, it was handled informally.  Mostly it was just a courtesy.  There were websites listing contact info for those participating in this network, and arrangements were made peer-to-peer.   INN>CHRG believes this is not good enough to accelerate the adoption of EVs, with range anxiety still a significant point of reluctance to buy one and more assurance needed that charging will be available at a destination.  No need to hunt up a charger in a grocery parking lot and kill time waiting to accumulate a decent charge.  Better to park your car at a charger near your intended destination in a residential area and walk. Their bet is that if the personal investments in chargers – and even in chargers at commercial locations — could be used more efficiently, the worries about having enough charge for a trip would vanish.

The genius comes in making use of someone else’s charger certain and convenient but not complicated.  INN>CHRG intends to provide “matchmaking” software plus hardware to provide secure access to a charger, a billing and payment system, and a way to collect money from users for the service that does not run afoul of any legal restrictions.  They also need a system to be sure the price charged covers all the costs and leaves enough left over that, when split between the charger owner and INN>CHRG, keeps both happy.  They do not have all this done yet.  They are working diligently to make it happen.   They have a team working on the key software.  They have been accepted into two incubators that provide coaching and connections, and they have won two awards, with the most recent one the largest to date.  They will be entering other competitions and applying to CalSEED to continue the work of getting a prototype together.   They don’t have numbers yet on what it will cost the owner of the charger to install the equipment and apps required to make this work.  

They intend to work with those that at least have Level 2 chargers, preferably 32 to 80 amp chargers models that can give 25-50 miles of charge in an hour..  The charger itself costs $500-1000, with installation of a 30-850 amp 220v plug on top of that.  Many of these chargers are WiFi enabled and that may be a requirement to participate, since that may provide the way to assure.  The total price might be on the order of $2000 to be in the game, with maybe a $500-$1000 increment over what someone would have paid anyway.

There are faster chargers that operate at 480 v and over 100 amps that can provide 100+ miles of charge in 20-30 minutes, but these come at a prohibitive price for homeowners.  They require a 480 v transformer from the utility to be hooked up, plus equipment prices that would exceed $25,000.  These are more suited for commercial establishments.  However, the INN>CHRG app could still be useful as a way to reserve time on the chargers.

The team estimates they may get $500,000 in revenue in the first year the app is ready, and be up to $11.5 million by the fifth year.  This is consistent with the app being wildly popular.  This is likely going to be a function of convenience (low hassles) and price.  EVGo charges $1.50/hr on its L2 chargers for 25-40 miles of added range in that hour (4-6 cents per mile) and $0.35 per minute on its fast DC charger, providing 60-100 miles of added range in 20 minutes (7-9 cents/mile).   People will pay more for convenience and peace of mind, but how much more?  And the price needs to be high enough to make it worthwhile for the owner of the charger.  Would people pay $10 per hour for renting a neighborhood charger?  The cost of electricity for the 10 kWh used would be below $2 in almost all cases, except for charging during the most costly period in the early evening.  That leaves $8 to be split.  INN>CHRG proposes to take 40% ($3.20) and leave the owner of the charger with 60% ($4.80) to pay off the extra cost of providing the service plus enough incentive to make it worth doing.  Would that work?  That’s the next big question INN>CHRG will need to confront. 

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStart’s Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

CleanStart Sponsors

Weintraub | TobinBlueTech Valley, Revrnt, 

Moss AdamsPowerSoft.biz, Greenberg Traurig, Momentum,

College of Engineering & Computer Science at Sacramento State