Transportation

In the future, utilities will pay you to plug in your vehicle. Millions will plug in their electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at night when electricity is cheap, then during the day when energy is expensive, sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid. V2G helps solve the major problem that demand for electricity is high during the day when everything from industrial plants to air conditioning is running … Read more

Scientists at the CEA/Leti-Minatec in Grenoble, France are looking at ways to produce electricity from the vibrations caused by falling raindrops.

It's the latest step toward exploiting piezoelectric principles. In piezoelectrics, bending or otherwise deforming an object can produce power. If you take a tiny wire and bend it, for example, a negative charge gets produced on the stretched side while a positive charge gets created on the compressed side. When the pressure on the wire is relieved, an electrical current can be detected.

Using the CEA's concept, raindrops hitting a flexible surface set off the vibrations … Read more

Sugar or sunlight?

That's one of the fundamental questions for companies trying to transform algae into transportation fuel or dietary supplements. Solazyme says it will grow algae through fermentation--for instance, feeding the algae sugars in a heated, sealed environment.

"We're not growing it photosynthetically. We put it in stainless steel tanks similar to what you see in a brew pub," said Solazyme President Harrison Dillon.

By contrast, GreenFuel Technologies and LiveFuels will exploit the sun to grow the single-celled creatures. And here there is a divide, too. GreenFuel grows its algae in sealed, transparent tubes … Read more

By 2010, Wal-Mart and its suppliers are going to be a lot more energy efficient.

The retailing giant has set a goal of getting suppliers to increase the energy efficiency of its products by 25 percent in three years. For some suppliers, the standards are a little more stringent. By 2010, the company will only sell Energy Star-rated air conditioners. Flat panel TVs will have to be 30 percent more energy efficient than they are now.

"If we achieved our 25 percent goal just in the U.S. we would save enough electricity to power 3 million homes per … Read more

The engineers at Tesla Motors have designed a new single-speed transmission for its sports car that will let it hit the promised zero to 60 mph in four seconds.

The transmission won't come out on the first Tesla Roadsters coming off the line, the company said in a press release. Those early production cars will have a two-speed transmission that will only let the car get to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds. Problems with the transmission were part of the reason the company delayed the cars from the middle of last year until now. Some modifications to the … Read more

January is diesel engine month, it seems.

Following announcements from EcoMotors and Transonic Combustion, San Diego's Achates Power has said on its Web site that it's creating a clean, light, fuel-efficient diesel engine.

The company has also received investments from Sequoia Capital, a relative newcomer to energy investments, Rockport Capital Partners and Interwest Partners. (VentureWire has a brief interview with Achates CEO James Lemke.)

Achates has not said how its engine will work, the company has three patent applications on file with the U.S. Patent Office. Two of the patents describe what's known as an opposed … Read more

As we told you last September, BMW has been kicking around the idea of a fourth brand (in addition to MINI, Rolls Royce, and BMW) for a while. This week it emerges that this new addition to the Bimmer family lineup may be a dedicated "green" line of vehicles focused on high fuel economy and lower emissions. If so, the strategy would certainly make sense as it will enable BMW to meet tough environmental requirements without sacrificing too much of its performance-related DNA. BMW is one of a number of premium European brands likely to suffer most at … Read more

If plug-in hybrid cars become popular, the cars could potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil. But will they cause electricity prices to zoom?

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Labs are trying to figure out that right now, according to staff scientist Michael Kintner-Meyer in an interview. PNNL hopes to issue a report this summer that will help answer that question.

Last year, PNNL studied how well the grid, as it exists today, could accommodate an influx of plug-in hybrids. (Unlike a conventional Prius hybrid, plug-ins can be charged from a wall socket. General Motors, Toyota … Read more

Correction 10:35 a.m. PST: This blog initially misidentified the prime minister of Israel. He is Ehud Olmert. It also misidentified the person whose speech can be found on the Project Better Place Web site--it is by Shai Agassi--and as such an earlier version of this post also incorrectly attributed a quote from that speech.

Renault-Nissan, the government of Israel, and an electric charging station start-up founded by Shai Agassi are mounting an effort to make electric cars part of ordinary life in Israel in the next decade.

Project Better Place, Agassi's organization, will try to build 500,… Read more