News Blog

This post was updated at 9 a.m. PDT with clarifying details on GasBuddy.com's data source and the correct spelling on Milt Krantz' name.

Perhaps you heard Wednesday's news about the price of crude oil once again reaching all-time highs, and, like me, you're wondering how that's going to affect gas prices at the pump as you fill up for your Memorial Day weekend trip.

Rest assured, you've got the likes of Milt Krantz on your side.

Krantz, 71, a retired social worker from San Jose, Calif., is also a designated gas price spotter for GasBuddy.com, one of a handful of increasingly busy sites for finding cheap gas in your vicinity.

"It's a little something I can do about the price of gas," said Krantz, adding that the payoff for his efforts is the feeling that consumers are working together to make a difference. "We're in it together."

And what a difference such information can make: In San Francisco on Tuesday, for example, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline ranged from $3.86 to $4.53, depending upon location, according to Gas.Buddy.com's regional site SanFranGasPrices.com. That's a 67-cent difference, or $10.05, when filling a 15-gallon tank.

That potential savings, combined with the scary sound of $4-a-gallon gas, has been driving up traffic to such sites.

"For about the last 60 days, we've seen a nice steady ramp up," said Brad Proctor, founder of GasPriceWatch.com, which offers price data from about 130,000 gas stations.

The results of a search on MapQuest Gas Prices using CNET's San Francisco ZIP code.

(Credit: MapQuest)

GasBuddy.com, which serves as an umbrella site for 180 regionalized sites covering some 170,000 gas stations in the U.S. and Canada, has seen more of a steady climb in traffic, said co-founder Jason Toews. When we last talked to Toews in 2005--as gas prices were hitting a then-shocking $3 per gallon--GasBuddy was averaging about 700,000 to 800,000 unique visitors a day. Now it gets about 2 million visitors a day, he said.

Of course, gas price sites vary greatly in terms of format, functionality, and info-gathering methodology. GasBuddy.com and GasPriceWatch.com, both 8-year-old sites, rely on their networks of registered members/spotters, but also factor in information from retailers and other sources. GasBuddy has some 1.4 million member/spotters and GasPriceWatch has about 166,000. And both have arrangements to share their data with other media outlets

Spotters are community members who are usually offered incentive points or a chance to win a "thank you" prize such as a discount on gas. But for Krantz, who uploads prices at least once a week, the motivation is more the idea of exposing the stations that are gouging consumers and rewarding the ones that are not.

"People still want to think they have a little power with their dollar," added Proctor.

AAA's Gas Price Finder, unlike the other two sites, uses data derived primarily from credit card transactions. And MapQuest Gas Prices and MSN Gas Prices rely on data supplied by the Oil Price Information Service, a pricing database that collects information from 125,000 North American retail outlets.

It should be noted that new technologies have changed the way consumers are accessing information from the gas price sites. Some, like me, are still looking at the sites on their PCs. But other gadgeteers are getting such information through in-car GPS systems, text messaging, and smartphone applications.

As far as tools go, GasBuddy.com has one of the coolest in what it calls its Gas Temperature Map, an interactive display of gas prices around the country, with areas color-coded according to their average price for regular unleaded gasoline. Through the map, and with a little guidance from Toews, I learned Tuesday the lowest gas price in the country was found in Rapid City, S.D., at $3.38 per gallon, and the highest was in Beaver Island, Mich., at $5.19 per gallon.

"In 2000, I never would have thought gas prices would be this high. It doesn't surprise me anymore," Toews said. "We've gotten desensitized to the high prices." Nonetheless, he does expect activity on his site to be brisk before the three-day weekend.

Toews offered a closing hint for bargain shoppers. Look for Arco service stations, which don't accept credit cards and therefore can offer cheaper prices.

GasBuddy.com's Gas Temperature Map is an interactive display of gas prices around the country, with areas color-coded according to their average price for regular unleaded gasoline.

(Credit: GasBuddy.com)

(Credit: Sandia)

It took 20 years, but here it is--again: the new and improved flash-bang grenade.

Sandia National Laboratories, which created the original Mk 141 flash-bang two decades ago, is having a second go at marketing a "fuel air" version of an old SWAT standby that it says is far safer for law enforcement and the military.

Traditional flash-bangs are basically big fire crackers--the "flash powder," a mixture of aluminum and potassium perchlorate dust, explodes quickly when ignited and produces an intensely bright light along with its huge bang. The body or canister is generally a steel tube with holes positioned to allow the blast and flash to be emitted without producing shrapnel (PDF).

Traditional stun grenade

The new device, which works differently, is basically a fuel-air bomb. A gas generator spews out a cloud of aluminum powder that, when ignited, causes a small-scale dust explosion. Think: exploding grain silo. All of this occurs outside the canister, making it safer for all concerned, according to Sandia. Apparently, it also resolves the flammability factor; flash-bangs have been known to ignite flammable materials, as was the case in the Iranian Embassy Siege in London.

But the flake aluminum used here, while creating a flash comparable to looking directly into the sun for 60 milliseconds, causes no permanent damage to vision. In addition, the flake aluminum poses no appreciable burning hazard because it cools to the ambient temperature quickly.

Stun grenades or flash-bangs--the official nomenclature is "Noise and Flash Diversionary Devices" are non-lethal weapons generally tossed through a window or door by law enforcement to temporarily distract or disorient crooks or crazies in hostage rescue, forced-entry, or crowd-control situations.

Sandia has licensed the device to Defense Technology Corporation of America, of Casper, Wyo., the second company to try to bring the product to market (PDF). It may be that discerning agencies are holding out for the "Multisensory Grenade," which promises pepper irritant, indelible paint to mark-up the miscreants, and a stink bomb or teargas feature.

Daimler and Ford Motor are partnering on a privately held company to develop automotive fuel cell technology, both companies announced Thursday.

The companies plan to buy the automotive fuel cell business unit of Ballard Power Systems, a British Columbia-based supplier of hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles. From that asset, they plan to start a private company, according to a joint statement.

Daimler will own a 50.1 percent share of the new company, Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), the companies said. Ford Motor will own a 30 percent share, and 19.9 percent will be owned by Ballard.

AFCC will consist of about 150 employees and specialize in developing fuel cells for cars and buses. Ballard on its own will continue to concentrate on nonautomotive fuel cell applications.

The new company will allow Daimler to "go full steam ahead in our preparations for the series production of fuel cell cars," according to Daimler.

"The fuel cell remains one of the most viable solutions to develop a sustainable, zero-emissions vehicle. The creation of the Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation is an investment in our future," Gerhard Schmidt, Ford's vice president of research and advanced engineering, said in a statement.

In October, Daimler invested in Choren Industries, a company that specializes in renewable-fuel technologies.

Algae fuel is going uptown.

Chevron, the honkin' big oil company, and the National Renewable Energy Labs have announced they will collaborate on identifying and developing strains of algae for fuel. Potentially, the research could result in jet fuel that uses algae as a feedstock.

The collaboration is part of a five-year deal, kicked off in 2006. The two are already cooperating on research for bio-oil reforming, which involves taking bio-oils and turning them into hydrogen and other oils.

In the past few years, a number of start-ups such as LiveFuels, Solazyme, and GreenFuel Technologies have come up with plans to turn algae into a basis for biodiesel or a synthetic form of petroleum. Some of the companies want to genetically manipulate the algae, while others will use natural strains of algae. GreenFuel, meanwhile, will put its algae-growing ponds near electric power plants so that the microorganisms can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and cut down greenhouse gases.

Chevron will work with start-ups too. The idea is that start-ups will incubate ideas and Chevron will try to commercialize the promising ones, said Don Paul, Chevron's retiring CTO, in a speech earlier this month. Start-ups will have a tough path if they want to commercialize fuel themselves. Building a full-fledged commercial-scale fuel plant takes about $3 billion and takes more than a decade, Paul noted. A prototype plant--a facility that can crank out 1,000 barrels of oil a day, a drop in the bucket in the world's 85 million barrel a day diet--costs around $300 million

Algae is an incredibly oily microbe--some species are nearly 50 percent lipid. Algae also grows fast so a hectare can produce 15,000 to 80,000 liters of oil a year, far more than most other oily plants. It also has almost no other value, unlike corn.

So the catch? It's not easy to convert into fuel. Separating water from algae has been one of the big problems. It's not uncommon to have 1 gram of usable algae in every liter of water, according to John Sheehan, vice president of sustainability at LiveFuels. "That's 1,000 parts of water for every part of algae," he said in an interview earlier this year.

Cost is also a problem and it's unclear at this point when or if algae fuel will compete with fossil fuels. Sheehan knows of what he speaks. He oversaw some of the early algae fuel projects at NREL. A lot of the start-ups rely on research from the national labs.

If anything, fuel is clearly running out. We've used up about 1.1 trillion barrels of the traditional sources of oil on the planet, said Paul. By 2012, we will have used 1.5 trillion barrels and not everything down below can be extracted. Thus, there is an opportunity for alternatives.

Here's a renewable energy source most of us haven't thought of: dirt.

Living Power Systems, a company being spun out of Harvard University, has made a microbial fuel cell that is able to tease a trickle of electricity from garden-variety bacteria in the ground.

The ability to generate a tiny flow of electrons from organic material has been understood for decades and is a staple at elementary school science fairs.

Living Power Systems has developed a system that it says can create a useful amount of power, at least for specialized uses.

A sonar beacon powered by the dirt it sits on.

(Credit: Living Power Systems)

Its technology consists of a material that encourages microbes in the ground to grow across the surface of an electrode and specialized circuitry that siphons off the electricity microbes create during metabolism.

"There are terawatts moving through our biosphere. Solar energy ends up in our soil and sediment," Peter Girguis, the founder and chief scientist of Living Power Systems and professor of microbiology at Harvard. "Think of it as underground solar energy."

The company, which is now looking for funding, has built prototypes of a few products for low-wattage applications.

One, called the Light Bucket, will provide enough electricity for an LED light and a cell phone charger to people in the developing world who are not connected to an electricity grid. The company is also designing a power supply for wireless sensors and outdoor lighting.

These devices only need to plug into the ground to operate, according to Girguis, who made a presentation along with other clean tech companies at the Conference on Clean Energy in Boston on Tuesday.

Although the company is targeting a few specific markets initially, Girguis said that microbial fuel cells have the potential to provide 15 percent to 20 percent of household energy by tapping into the electricity in people's yards or septic systems. The technology could be used to power a cell phone tower today, he said.

Right now, its devices can generate about one half a watt per day from a square meter of ground, or 12 watt-hours per day. In its labs, it's been able to generate 10 times that amount, according to Michael Keating, the company's co-founder and acting CEO.

That kind of power generation won't run a refrigerator or even a PC screen, but it does make sense in the developing world, Keating said.

Company executives call microbial fuel cells the "bicycle of electricity" because they are simple to operate and can be manufactured locally in developing countries.

Natural versus designer microbes
Wireless sensors, too, are compelling use for microbial fuel cells because of the high costs involved in replacing sensor batteries, company executives said.

A sketch of a planned light and cell phone charger for developing countries.

(Credit: Living Power Systems)

For the past two years, a device using the company's technology has been drawing electricity from the sediment at the bottom of Monterey Bay in California. The sonar navigational beacon for nuclear submarines was deployed as part of a military grant. A device in a lab has been operating for six years.

"The best implementation of this is to use it in a setting where you want to deploy a device and leave it alone," Girguis said.

A number of organizations are researching microbial fuel cells, including universities that are designing microbes specifically to generate electricity. Synthetic Genomics, headed by genetics pioneer J. Craig Venter, and other firms are looking to make power from human waste by manipulating microorganisms.

By contrast, Living Power Systems is focused on trying to harness energy from naturally occurring bacteria rather than those specially designed for power generation, said Girguis.

Next year, the company intends to have products for a combined light and cell phone charger aimed at the developing world. It expects to have its garden light and wireless sensor power supply next year as well, according to Keating.

Boeing's HALE (high altitude long endurance) unmanned aircraft runs on hydrogen fuel.

(Credit: Boeing)

Boeing is reporting progress in simulation tests of its HALE (high altitude long endurance) aircraft, an unmanned plane that runs on hydrogen.

While it has not yet gone aloft, the propeller-driven HALE aircraft was able to run for a total of three days in a chamber that simulated flight at 65,000 feet. The eventual goal is to get it to fly for more than a week at a time with a one-ton payload.

The turbocharged hydrogen combustion engine, which was developed by Ford Motor, managed to maintained proper torque control while getting better than expected fuel usage, according to Boeing. Boeing was particularly impressed with the aircraft's endurance, according to a company statement this week.

The gasoline version of the engine is used in the Ford Fusion and Ford Escape hybrid vehicles, according to the automaker.

The HALE aircraft is a drone that could be used as a tool for border patrol, communication, telecommunications, general surveillance, battlefield intelligence gathering, reconnaissance missions, and port security.

UAVs are a hot field for development and actual use these days as an economical alternative to manned aircraft. The Pentagon is especially drawn to them: Just last month, the Air Force began flying the Reaper UAV--a bigger, more heavily armed version of the Predator--on missions in Afghanistan. The aircraft have civilian uses, too: NASA has its own (unarmed) version of the Predator, called Ikhana, that is being used to monitor fires in California.

Successful testing of the Boeing HALE aircraft could help convince people that hydrogen power is a viable option for aircraft, Boeing said.

Oasis electric-cooled truck

(Credit: Global Refrigeration Systems)

Refrigerator trucks may not be sexy, but they play a vital role in our day-to-day lives by carrying food and supplies from one part of the country to another. However, they also contribute a significant amount of pollution on our roads.

Aura Systems, a company based in El Segundo, Calif., on Wednesday introduced a mobile-power system that keeps produce cold by using electricity instead of diesel fuel.

Traditional refrigeration trucks use a separate diesel engine to drive the compressor that keeps the inside of the truck cold. The extra engine not only emits more pollutants, but is also extremely expensive to operate.

The first vehicle with the new system, the Oasis, is a midsize Isuzu refrigeration truck. The truck's cooling compressor is jump-started by a large power surge (the system can handle between 5 kilowatts and 8.5 kilowatts of power), and it is kept running by the truck's main engine. And although the system still relies on diesel to keep it going, Aura reps say the elimination of the second motor saves, on average, about $250 in fuel costs per month, per truck.

The Oasis is set be on display at the Worldwide Food Expo October 24 through 27 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

For more information, visit the sites of Global Refrigeration Systems and Aura Systems.

Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle

(Credit: Donovan R. Unks)

Chevrolet is in the midst of launching "Project Driveway," an ambitious program where more than 100 fuel cell electric vehicles will be put in the hands of select consumers for the largest market test ever of its kind.

Fuel cell power train

(Credit: Donovan R. Unks)

Testing will take place over the next several months in the Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., metro areas. Drivers range from average consumers to business owners to policy makers. Chevy reps also promise that some cars will go into the hands of "celebrities," but no names have been dropped yet.

The cars are modified Chevy Equinox crossover SUVs that draw hydrogen from three on-board, carbon fiber tanks to power an electric motor. In addition, a nickel-metal hydride battery pack captures and stores energy from a regenerative braking system to provide extra power when needed. The fuel cell Equinoxes get a range of about 150 miles on a single fill-up with 700-bar hydrogen.

The Equinox fuel cell cars run solely on hydrogen, which, at this point in time, is a drawback for the average consumer. Although we produce 40 billion kilograms of hydrogen globally every year--enough to power 130 million fuel cell-powered cars--hydrogen fueling stations are still scarce.

Interior display

(Credit: Donovan R. Unks)

The three test metro areas were chosen, in part, because drivers have access to hydrogen filling stations within a reasonable radius of their homes and/or places of business. General Motors reps say building a hydrogen fueling station infrastructure wouldn't be as difficult as some might think; they say the initial investment of about $10 billion to $15 billion required to put 12,000 stations within two miles of the top 100 urban areas is close to the amount of money being currently spent on maintaining existing oil pipelines and gasoline manufacturing equipment.

The specs for the vehicle aren't overwhelming--it goes zero to 60 in 12 seconds and has a top speed of about 100 miles per hour. But that's still impressive considering the only thing that comes out of the quad exhaust is water vapor.

Carbon fiber quad exhaust

(Credit: Donovan R. Unks)

Features include antilock brakes (ABS), driver and passenger front air bags, roof rail side-impact air bags, and StabiliTrak stability system. The cars are also equipped with the OnStar navigation system, which testers are encouraged to use to ask questions and provide feedback as they drive.

But don't get in line at the local Chevy dealership just yet; the test fleet won't be available for sale to the public. However, the information gleaned from this market test will help shape the next generation of fuel cell vehicles, which GM is working on now.

For a further look at the Equinox vehicles, see "Photos: GM's Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell."

Ecotality is lending its hydrogen technology expertise to a municipal electricity project that aims to squeeze natural gas from coal without emitting carbon dioxide.

The company is partnering with the Arizona Public Service public utility company, which received $8.9 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for its Advanced Hydrogasification Project (AHP), according to Ecotality.

Hydrogasification is a process in which natural gas is made from coal without releasing the pollutant carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

For the AHP project, Ecotality will contribute its so-called Hydrality technology, a process it developed in conjunction with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory that produces hydrogen from magnesium pellets and water, with water as the only byproduct. The company has previously used the Hydrality process as an inboard source of power for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

In this case, the Hydrality process will be examined to figure out reactor and storage dynamics for large-scale hydrogen production. The hydrogen will be used in a high-temperature and high-pressure reaction with coal to produce methane.

Ecotality has been expanding its interests beyond hydrogen fuel and electricity. In September, the company purchased Innergy, a San Diego, Calif.-based company that makes mobile solar power technology, and in June it bought the fuel cell retailer Fuel Cell Store.