The Plug In Vehicle Scam -- Seeking Alpha

The Plug In Vehicle Scam -- Seeking Alpha: "

New Car Sales (Thousands)	2010	2015	2020	2025	2030
Gasoline ICE Vehicles	5,554	7,567	7,999	7,878	7,678
TDI Diesel ICE	53	152	359	596	802
Electric-Diesel Hybrid	0	3	8	7	5
Electric-Gasoline Hybrid	195	546	985	1,471	2,034
Plug-in 10 Gasoline Hybrid	0	101	138	198	250
Plug-in 40 Gasoline Hybrid	0	49	57	81	113
Other alternative power systems	312	823	1,176	1,150	1,155
Total New Car Sales	6,114	9,241	10,722	11,381	12,035
Percentage of New Cars With Plugs	0.0%	1.6%	1.8%	2.5%	3.0%
New Light Truck Sales (Thousands)	2010	2015	2020	2025	2030
Gasoline ICE Vehicles	5,152	4,701	3,664	3,332	3,033
TDI Diesel ICE	195	381	637	921	1,174
Electric-Diesel Hybrid	0	1	1	1	1
Electric-Gasoline Hybrid	92	336	620	951	1,223
Plug-in 10 Gasoline Hybrid	0	32	22	43	65
Plug-in 40 Gasoline Hybrid	0	0	0	0	0
Other alternative power systems	950	1,884	1,613	1,394	1,269
Total New Light Truck Sales	6,389	7,334	6,557	6,641	6,765
Percentage of New Trucks With Plugs	0.0%	0.4%	0.3%	0.6%	1.0%

"

Greenlight's new electric-car recharger comes at a price | Green Tech - CNET News

Greenlight's new electric-car recharger comes at a price | Green Tech - CNET News: "The exception is electric cars that use 480-volt charging, which according to the company is not yet an established standard for upcoming electric cars.

A number of electric sedans are planned for market introduction in the next two years. But automakers say that establishing a charging infrastructure in public places is critical for their acceptance with consumers."

…My heart’s in Accra » ETech2008: Saul Griffith and personal power footprints

…My heart’s in Accra » ETech2008: Saul Griffith and personal power footprints: "all geothermal potential is 32TW. Tidal potential is 3.5TW. All photosynthesis is 90TW - “that’s one reason why biofuels are a bad idea. They’re basically 1% efficient solar cells.” There’s 100TW in thermal gradients in the ocean, “but you don’t want to screw with it because that’s what keeps Europe from freezing.”

A new fuel mix is going to be dominated by thermal and wind power. He offers us a tiny share from biofuels, 2 TW from photovoltaics, 2 TW from solar thermal power, 2 from wind, 2 from geothermal and 3 from nuclear. Good enough. But that’s going to require a bit of work. Oh, say, 100 square meters of solar cells every second for the next 25 years. And 12 3MW wind turbines per hour. And 1 3GW nuclear plant a week for the next 25 years."

Intel Jones Farm PV system

Solar In Action

Hypermiling: Drive Like a Girl

Hypermiling: Drive Like a Girl: "Google's RechargeIT project demonstrated this in typical Google style - with technology, mounds of data, and a little friendly competition. They converted a fleet of Priuses and Ford Escape hybrids to plug-ins and then set their drivers out on the road to test the average fuel economy. The news was great! The converted Prius really DOES get 100 mpg or so in real-world conditions. Cool! Then...

...after the 'project' was over, they used the same fleet of Priuses and Escapes as errand-running cars. And what happened? Those same cars got really bad fuel economy comparatively, about half what they'd done in the 'project'. Seattle City Light got about the same results; a grouchy Seattle Times columnist made much of it here, along with Consumer Reports' stab at the Hymotion Prius conversion kit. CR's resulting opinion? You'd never recoup in gas savings the 11K it costs to do the conversion, but they kinda dug it, anyway."

YouTube - Computing in the Cloud - Introduction

YouTube - Computing in the Cloud - Introduction: "Center for Information Technology Policy brings together experts from computer science, law, politics and industry to explore the social and policy implications of `computing in the cloud`.

'Computing in the cloud' is one name for services that run in a Web browser and store information in a provider's data center — ranging from adaptations of familiar tools such as email and personal finance to new offerings such as virtual worlds and social networks."

Hartford Advocate: Leisure - Plug Power

Hartford Advocate: Leisure - Plug Power: "EV charging is becoming a growth business. In addition to the Alliance, players include ECOtality, Coulomb, Better Place and Project Get Ready. They've agreed on a single standard so plugs and ports should be universal. The ideal is widely available fast charging (15 minutes, an average stay in a Starbucks) at the office and the big-box shopping paradise. Home recharging will probably take longer, and take place late at night when rates are low. But a charge will be less than $1."

The Automakers: Where do they go from here? | Green Energy News

The Automakers: Where do they go from here? | Green Energy News: "The Detroit Three have already started to redesign and retool with efficiency in mind. But will they be dumping the big SUV’s and squeezing people into small cars? Not likely. Will they walk away from gasoline altogether is favor of electricity? Not in this time frame. What will they do? There’s no way to say exactly, but looking at trends in automotive technology one can make some educated guesses. Here are some in no particular order of importance:

1) Offer more diesels. Outside the U.S. diesels are very popular.
2) One world market for cars
3) Light-Weight
4) continuously variable transmissions (CVT)
5) More gears for manual shift - expect 6 speed transmissions to become the norm
6) Some electric cars and plug-in hybrids
7) More conventional hybrids
8) Flex fuel vehicles

Eventually the roads will be totally filled with something entirely different, but not by 2016."

I Like Wikipedia T-Shirt - Headline Shirts - Funny t-shirts, graphic tees, and political tshirts

I Like Wikipedia T-Shirt - Headline Shirts - Funny t-shirts, graphic tees, and political tshirts: "Some people say Wikipedia can't be trusted, but I think it's great for getting general information on a topic. Like, did you know that the Civil War and the War of 1805 were actually separate battles, despite the fact that they occurred in the same century?"

Da Vinci T-Shirt - Headline Shirts - Funny t-shirts, graphic tees, and political tshirts

Da Vinci T-Shirt - Headline Shirts - Funny t-shirts, graphic tees, and political tshirts: "Da Vinci Rock Man T-Shirt"

Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

Green Car Congress: NOAA: February 2009 Ninth Warmest February for Globe

Green Car Congress: NOAA: February 2009 Ninth Warmest February for Globe: "The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for February 2009 was the ninth warmest since records began in 1880, according to an analysis by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC."

Green Car Congress: SAE Hybrid Standards Committee: Works In Progress For 2009

Green Car Congress: SAE Hybrid Standards Committee: Works In Progress For 2009: "Estimated completion of J1772 is summer 2009. A separate standard is being developed for the European market by a consortium of utility operators and vehicle manufacturers, independent of SAE efforts.

The different approaches, Kissel had noted before the session, are based on the different electric infrastructures in place (single phase in the US and Japan, 3-phase in Europe). Noting that while it was far from ideal to have two major approaches, Kissel said the global automotive industry would work around it."

Electric Car-Charging Startup GreenlightAC Joins the Fray

Electric Car-Charging Startup GreenlightAC Joins the Fray: "Better Place may be making the most noise in the electric car charging field, but it isn’t the only game in town. And now there’s a new player — one-and-a-half-month-old GreenlightAC, which unveiled plans yesterday to deploy electric vehicle-charging stations in the Washington, D.C., area, although it has yet to reveal if it has any customers lined up. Based in D.C., GreenlightAC is reportedly set to close on a $500,000 first round of angel investment, and expects to release a prototype of its car-charging station, called the ChargeBar, this month.

The company says its ChargeBar will work with standard plugs (both 110 volt and 220 volt) for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, but unlike Better Place or Coulomb Technologies, GreelightAC isn’t building its technology around a subscription-based service. And it’s not going for the curbside market, either. GreenlightAC is focusing on garages for both office and residential buildings — installation sites that Mark Duvall of the Electric Power Research Institute and Bob Hayden, clean transportation adviser for the City of San Francisco have said will be easier and cheaper than curbside stations. GreenlightAC says it handles the installation and maintenance of the chargers, while the building owner pays for the elec..."

Charging Station, EV Charging

Biomass, wildfire and climate change: Protesting like it's 1989 - OregonLive.com

Biomass, wildfire and climate change: Protesting like it's 1989 - OregonLive.com: "This isn't just a matter of a few die-hard environmentalists in Eugene demanding that the Eugene Water & Electric Board refuse to buy the electricity that Seneca is planning to produce -- at two-thirds the cost of wind power, by the way, and less than a quarter of the cost of solar. This same debate is happening in the halls of Congress, where environmental groups are trying to write restrictions into the energy bill to exclude renewable energy produced from biomass taken from public lands.

The term of derision now is 'greenwashing,' and the cynical claim is that Seneca and the handful of other Oregon timber companies still in business are only interested in biomass and renewable energy because they see it as a key to get back to clear-cutting public lands.

Seneca plans to generate electricity by burning sawdust and other wastes from its mills, along with slash from the company's timberlands. But what exactly would be so threatening, so wrong, about a timber company like Seneca converting some of the brush on public lands into renewable energy? Which is the greater threat to Northwest forests, and to global climate"

David Zach, futurist: Handouts

David Zach, futurist: Handouts: "How to Think Like a Futurist"

Saving Electricity: How to Save Electricity

Saving Electricity: How to Save Electricity

Hybrid car sales heat up

Hybrid car sales heat up: "Nearly 88,000 hybrid-electric vehicles were sold nationwide during 2004, making up 0.52 percent of the total U.S. light-vehicle market, reports J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing information and research firm based in Agoura Hills, Calif.





Industry experts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating sharply in the next few years."

Hybrid Cars May Require Hundreds Of New Power Plants To Be Built, If Owners Charge Up During Peak Hours

Hybrid Cars May Require Hundreds Of New Power Plants To Be Built, If Owners Charge Up During Peak Hours: "A growing number of plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks could require major new power generation resources or none at all— depending on when people recharge their automobiles."

The TV As An Energy Hog

The TV As An Energy Hog: "Well, that's what the headlines that caught my eye basically were saying. TV gluttony is confusing the environmental issues around energy consumption.

When I pondered why my LCD monitor would be more energy efficient than my old CRT monitor it didn't make sense the opposite would be true for TVs. With some digging around I learned LCDs are up to 66 percent more energy efficient than CRTs in the computer monitor world, so I expect that's true in the TV world -- when you compare like-sized TVs. And, to make the argument for LCDs even stronger, they produce less heat, meaning you don't need as much AC cooling."

http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/energyeff/tv.pdf

Scrum and Supporting Your Existing Products | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.

Scrum and Supporting Your Existing Products | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.: "Paying the bug tax, sustaining team or not?

Obviously it depends on your exact situation but I’d always choose to spread bugs across all the teams over creating an SE team. If at all possible I’d try and add these to the backlog, prioritize them accordingly and give teams time to plan to fix them in the next sprint. This is less painful that dumping them on the team to be fixed immediately. Sometimes this is unavoidable, if for example you’ve committed to a particular service level agreement around fixing bugs.

The initial pain of doing this may be large but over time the bug tax will become predictable and teams will learnt to plan for it. In the long term there are other benefits as your feature teams will have a better understanding of customer pain points and better overall knowledge of the product code (a reduction in silos).

Another alternative, which just occurred to me but I’ve not seen tried. This would be to have each feature team run periodic SE sprints. Every N’th sprint would be devoted to SE work. This theoretically has some advantages over the two approaches especially if the SE sprints were staggered across teams so there was always at least one team working on SE. I’ve not tried this. If you have I’d like to hear from you."

Managing Bugs with Scrum | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.

Managing Bugs with Scrum | #2782 - Agile software development, patterns and practices for building Microsoft .NET applications.: "

The bug tax

There’s actually another completely different reason for minimizing the number of active bugs… Tax.

Having a lot of active bugs means that you have to manage them, triage them, track open/closed and fixed rates. All this takes time and effort and adds no value to the product. Imagine if you only had seven bugs to track? Two relating to work in the current sprint, these are being worked on by the team. The remaining five are to be prioritized and worked on in the next sprint. With seven active bugs you don’t need long triage meetings and reports!

The tax of dealing with bugs is greatly reduced and you can spend more time working on features. I worked on a project a while back where we ended up with a large number of bugs kicking around. Eventually things came to a head and we got the number down to something mush more manageable and it was amazing how much time we saved by not having to track these bugs not to mention time spent working with buggy features."

AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House | RePower Oregon 2009

AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House | RePower Oregon 2009: "AP: Law to curb Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions passes House

by Jeff Barnard
05/08/2009

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- The Oregon House on Friday passed a piece of the governor's global warming legislative package designed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks over the next decade through new standards for fuel, tires and replacement parts.

The vote in Salem was 32-28.

Inspired by steps taken by California, the bill gives the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission authority to develop standards reducing the carbon footprint of gasoline and diesel fuel by 10 percent by the year 2020, set mileage standards for tires, and require large and medium-size trucks to be more aerodynamic.

It also would require repair shops to make sure tires are inflated for the best fuel mileage, make available replacement parts that help reduce carbon emissions, and prohibit trucks from wasting fuel by long-term idling.

The bill now goes to the Senate."

Plug-In Hybrids: More Hype Than Hope?

Plug-In Hybrids: More Hype Than Hope?: "EV advocates are quick to note the Prius wasn't designed to be a plug-in hybrid, and in fact makes a lousy one. The biggest problem is the electric motor is too small, so the car relies more heavily on the gasoline engine. Cars designed from the ground up to be plug-in hybrids, like the plug-in Prius that Toyota is working on or the Saturn Vue plug-in – will almost certainly offer far better fuel efficiency."

GM says plug-in hybrid coming by early 2011 even if Saturn brand goes away

GM says plug-in hybrid coming by early 2011 even if Saturn brand goes away: "DETROIT — General Motors’ new product development chief says it will have a plug-in hybrid sport utility vehicle ready for fleet testing in early 2011.

The SUV was supposed to be a Saturn Vue Green Line, but GM has announced it will sell or phase out Saturn by the end of this year.

Vice Chairman Tom Stephens says GM will still produce the vehicle under one of its four remaining core brands — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. He would not identify the vehicle or say when the hybrid would be in showrooms.

A plug-in hybrid can be recharged with a home outlet and be powered by electricity or a conventional engine.

Stephens says the new SUV will get about double the city gas mileage of any other conventional SUV."

Solar refuelling stations for electric cars

Solar refuelling stations for electric cars: "Solar energy and electric vehicles are an inevitable partnership that is one more step to reducing our dependence on foreign oil."

Chery Launching Five eco-friendly cars in 2010 - Beyond Fossil Fuel

Chery Launching Five eco-friendly cars in 2010 - Beyond Fossil Fuel: "Chinese automaker Chery is on the move! In last week’s Shanghai Motor Show, Chery displayed a few of their electric concept cars: the Tiggo 3EV and Riich M1 EV. Both vehicles are powered by advanced lithium phosphate batteries. In addition to these two electric cars Chery displayed hybrid versions of their A3 mall card and Futwin Coupe II. A few months earlier Chery introduced the S18 electric hatchback, which was its first electric car ever.

That is quite a few electric cars for one manufacturer. Chery reports they have plans for more EV cars. Yin Tongyue, the company director says all five of these cars will be in production by 2010. Chery plans to offer electric vehicles in small sedan, minicar, midsize sedan, MPV and SUV. That is bold! But of course, you are talking about the Chinese."

Recycle Lithium Today for Tomorrow's Cars | Green Energy News

Recycle Lithium Today for Tomorrow's Cars | Green Energy News: "The companies which are embracing lithium with such passion are focusing their hopes and dreams for clean vehicles on a relatively scarce metal. While at least one study claims there is plenty of lithium available from a variety of sources for anything we want to do with it, lithium battery developers are most likely hoping that those current evaluations of global resources are wrong and there is much more lithium available than now thought. That kind of logic says that as the demand for a resource goes up so does the exploration of it. Oil companies have found more crude than ever thought possible 100 years ago. So, lithium might be in greater quantities too if lithium miners look a little harder. Abundant supplies of lithium would make it cheaper and cut costs for battery makers.

Part of the appeal, one of the green credentials of lithium, is its recyclability. Religiously recycled, much of the lithium stashed away in batteries should be able to be recovered, reprocessed and reused.

Given that lithium is so rare, and the market for it is increasing almost daily, you’d think that there would be plans to increase recycling capabilities. The growth of lithium batteries should be equal to the ability to recycle them at their end of life a few years hence. That is, for every new lithium battery that comes o"

Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008 | Wired Science

Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008 | Wired Science

HVAC Video

See the complete Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® video.