Toyota to Test Plug-In Prius at Xcel’s SmartGridCity

SmartGridCity, Xcel Energy's showcase smart grid project in Boulder, Colo., will test out some of the first plug-in Toyota Prius hybrids to come to North America.

Toyota will send 10 of its new plug-in hybrids to SmartGridCity in March 2010, the first wave of about 150 it hopes to test in United States next year. Toyota plans to bring the plug-in Prius to a broader market by 2012.

That's out of about 500 vehicles Toyota intends to deliver for testing with fleet customers in 2010. Other announced tests include about 100 plug-in Priuses going to French utility EDF (see Toyota's Plug-In Prius Heads for France).

In Boulder, the Priuses will be at the heart of a new research project by the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, a joint venture of the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Xcel is no stranger to plug-in vehicles. Last year it tested several models – including regular Prius hybrids retrofitted with plug-in capability – to test their ability to allow their batteries to be drawn upon when the utility needed power during peak demand times.

The question remains: What vehicle charging system will be put through its paces with the test Priuses? So-called "smart charging" is a big focus of Xcel and many other utilities that worry about managing the new loads that will come if thousands of plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles make their way into customers' garages and office parking lots (see Electric Vehicles Could Surpass Grid or Support It, IBM Tests Smart Charging in Denmark and A V2G Test: Pool Electric Cars for Grid Needs).

In SmartGridCity, one obvious candidate would be GridPoint, the well-funded smart grid software startup. It participated in previous smart charging tests with Xcel, as well as with utility Duke Energy, and bought Seattle-based smart charging startup V2Green last year (see GridPoint Gets $120M, buys V2Green and Laying the Grid Groundwork for Plug-In Hybrids).

Other charging startups include Ecotality, Coulomb Technologies and Better Place, the latter proposing a "battery-swapping" business plan in addition to charging batteries that remain in vehicles (see Ecotality and Nissan Team on EV Charging Tech, Coulomb Bags $3.75M For Electric-Car Charging and Better Place and Ontario Launch Project).

Brazilians Switch to Gas as Ethanol Prices Climb: A Dark Sign of Things to Come?

Liquid fuel is a commodity, it turns out.

Brazilian drivers in many states are switching from ethanol made from sugar cane to gas as higher sugar prices are pushing ethanol prices up, says Reuters.

When ethanol costs about 70 percent as much or more than gas, drivers switch. Ethanol only provides about two-thirds of the energy content that gas does; as a result, when it passes the 70 percent mark, it effectively becomes more expensive. In big cities like São Paolo and Rio, ethanol costs 60 percent to 67 percent of the price of gas, so drivers still pick it up. After taxes, it's still economical.

Flex-fuel cars allow drivers to swap from one type of fuel to another. Most of the flex-fuel vehicles GM and Ford have sold in the U.S. have never guzzled a drop of E85 fuel, which consists of 85 percent ethanol, in large part because the stations don't exist in large numbers. In Brazil, stations are everywhere. The Brazilian experience is something that biofuel makers should keep in mind.

But does this mean that all alternative energy will be subject to commodity pricing? Probably not. Liquid fuel may be an exception because the switching costs with flex fuel cars in Brazil is nominal. If someone buys solar panels and the cost of conventional electricity goes down, they likely aren't going to unplug the panels and resell them to the neighbor. Conversely, if power goes up, no one will voluntarily plunge themselves into darkness and wait for the solar installer to arrive.

In Our Lifetime: The Fuel Cell for Phones

I thought this was going to be one of those things like moon colonies or the home colonoscopy, and going to be here in just three to five years.

But no. It's finally happened. You can buy a portable fuel cell to run a phone.

T-Mobile has begun to offer the 24/7 Xtreme Portable Power Solution from Medis Technology to run its phones. The Home Shopping Network has a demo.

Fuel cells do have some advantages over batteries. First, they require very little recharge time. You just fill up the vessel with methanol or snap in a new fuel cartridge and you are set. There's no waiting around for batteries to charge. If you are a fashion photographer who doesn't want to lug around extra battery packs or you will be camping and need a phone, fuel cells make sense. The downside? You have to remember to carry around bottles of a substance that's somewhat similar to Ronson lighter fluid.

Technical details and consumer skepticism have hampered the rollout for years. Toshiba has been showing off fuel cell prototypes for phones and TVs since at least 2003. Earlier this year, PolyFuel, a membrane maker, bit the dust.

So let's salute progress where it occurs.

Stealthy Startup Watch: Alphabet Energy

A spin-out from the University of California Berkeley is attempting to improve the economics and output of one of my favorite segments in the energy world: waste heat.

The company, called either Alphabet or ABC, is working on thermoelectric semiconductors that can convert heat into electrical power. Wrap this sort of material around a steam pipe in a factory and it could help generate electricity for on-site machinery, etc. Historically, researchers have used bismuth telluride to make thermoelectric semiconductors. Japan's Komatsu, for instance, showed off panels this year that can convert 7.2 percent of their waste heat into electricity, or 50 percent better than normal.

Newer companies like Alphabet are tinkering with things like silicon nanowires, which potentially can convert more power more economically. GMZ Energy, Promethean Power and Cypress Semiconductor are all also experimenting with thermoelectrics and various semi materials like gallium. GMZ and Cypress want to turn heat into power while Promethean converts electricity from PV panels directly into heat. Last year, we heard that UC Berkeley was contemplating spinning out this company and talking to TSMC about manufacturing issues.

Companies such as Recycled Energy Development (RED) and Ormat have successfully retrofitted factories to capture waste heat, but they largely rely on mechanical engineering. Heat is captured and then channeled into productive uses. One of RED's showcase projects coming next year is a system at West Virginia Alloys, a silicon manufacturer, that will generate 45 megawatts of electrical power from the waste heat generated by factory operations.  The company uses 120 megawatts right now: The waste heat system will effectively allow Alloys to recover about one-third of the power it now buys but wastes.

Replacing mechanical systems with semiconductors, potentially, will be the next wave for the industry.

Arun Majumdar, the Almy and Agnes Maynard professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, has pointed out that the U.S. consumes about 100 quads of energy a year and wastes around 55 to 60 quads, he said. A quad is a quadrillion BTUs. A BTU is equivalent to the energy produced by a match.

Heard Around Town: Cisco Expands Its Green Buying Team

Cisco Systems, the router and networking king, has been significantly expanding its team charged with buying greentech companies, according to sources.

We've been waiting for Cisco to start opening the wallet any day now. Back in the '90s, the company treated the telecommunications industry like its own private version of the Home Shopping Network, snapping up companies like vegetable choppers and massage tables. Some startup CEOs even admitted they designed their company strictly to get bought by Cisco. Even more remarkable, Cisco was actually pretty good at integrating new technologies and employees into the corporate fold, particularly compared to companies like Intel.

Cisco began to actively pursue the green market in 2007 with a set of rousing speeches from CEO John "Are You Ready?" Chambers. The full strategy got fleshed out this January with the release of EnergyWise, a software layer designed to curb power consumption in PCs, networking equipment, phones and eventually buildings. After that, the compulsive shopping spree became only a matter of time. Cisco has already bought one outfit in building energy management.

Verdiem, which manages power in PCs and phones, could be one of the first buys. Verdiem is one of Cisco's partners in EnergyWise. Other potential targets include Hara, Adura Technologies, and anyone with the words "smart" or "grid" in their business plans. Silver Spring Networks, however, may not be in the hunt. The two see each other as rivals, some have said. Silver Spring has also scalped Judy Lin, one of Cisco's key employees.

eBay Installing Bloom Energy Fuel Cells

The City of San Jose has granted eBay permission to install five fuel cells from Bloom Energy that will generate up to 500 kilowatts of power, according to the San Jose Business Journal.

That's a slight increase for eBay. Earlier, eBay was reported to be buying four 100-kilowatt units. So maybe the order was upped. (Bloom's fuel cells are 25-kilowatts each and you tie four together for 100 kilowatts.)

eBay and Bloom, of course, aren't commenting. Bloom's website is still the same smarmy blank it has been for months. It plays corporate/new age music and shows pictures of the urban skylines and the earth from outer space. If you want to know where and how the company has burned through hundreds of millions, it's a great metaphor.

In the meantime, here are some of the other Bloom deals out there:

• East Tennessee will be the location of a 100-kilowatt demonstration fuel cell developed by Bloom that could be a precursor to the potential siting of a manufacturing facility in Tennessee.

• Its first 100-kilowatt unit went to Google.

• The units run on natural gas which gives them about 48 percent efficiency overall. Smaller natural gas fuel cells are already being marketing in Japan.

• Some have said that Bloom is having production problems, but we can't confirm it.

• The San Francisco Airport is currently evaluating a Bloom Energy fuel-cell unit.