News and Events
August 2009
Brass: State taking electric car, solar lead
By Larisa Brass (Knoxville News Sentinel)
Posted Aug 11, 2009
Already on the national radar in the up-and-coming solar industry, Tennessee is now among the go-to states for electric vehicle deployment — and the two are not unrelated.
Last week the Department of Energy announced a nearly
$100 million grant to Arizona-based ECOtality, which will use the funds via a subsidiary — Electric Transportation Engineering Corp. or eTec — to establish a charging infrastructure for electric cars now in development at Nissan. The company, with U.S. headquarters in Nashville, has announced it will put all-electric vehicles on the road by 2010 and has partnered with the state to test the infrastructure needed for the new technology.
Tennessee is among five states that will receive ECOtality-built charging stations, both for private home and public use at places of work, shopping centers or other locations. The company will partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to configure and erect solar-powered charging stations in an effort to prevent overtaxing the existing power structure by tapping the sun’s rays.
The lab will likely get about
$15 million in funding for the project, although project specifics are still being worked out, according to Dana Christensen, associate laboratory director for energy and engineering sciences at ORNL.
While electric vehicle owners’ primary charging stations would be located at home, others would be set up to allow drivers to “top off” their batteries while at work or running errands, he said.
“We’ve got an initial design for 10 cars in a pod and, depending on how the dollars work out, we’ll (equip) between a dozen and 20 pods … maybe as many as 200 parking spots,” he said. One will be located at Nissan’s Smyrna headquarters and another will likely be located at ORNL, where Christensen said many employees already have expressed an interest in purchasing a Nissan vehicle. The lab also will include electric vehicles in its own fleet, he said. The location of other charging stations across the state are in the works.
With the charging technology already developed by ECOtalilty and commercial solar panels readily available, the lab will be working on connecting the two for a new purpose, Christensen said.
“The power electronics and the connectivity of those systems is the problem,” he said. Some systems will feature solar panels only, he said, while others will include battery banks to store electricity generated by the sun. Technology must be developed to effectively connect the charger to the battery bank as well as to the grid and interface seamlessly with the car at the same time.
ORNL researchers also will work with ECOtality and TVA, another partner, to determine the charging patterns of electric car owners and what preparation must be made for a potential mass of plug-in vehicles to come. The project will help answer questions such as, “Do they (utilities) need more smart metering? Do they have to tell you to go charge the car at midnight when the power is low?” Christensen said.
The project, he said, gives Tennessee a front-row seat in what could amount to one of the biggest technology transitions in automobile history.
“This is the most significant turnover in our surface transportation since the introduction of the internal combustion engine over 100 years ago,” Christensen said.
Larisa Brass is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.
ORNL to Support Nissan's Plan to Build 5,000 Short Haul Electric Cars
Nissan's plan to build 5,000 short-haul electric cars with a range of 100 miles will get a boost from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The laboratory will help to provide a solar power infrastructure to relieve the nation's electric grid power supply, according to ORNL's Dana Christensen.
"If we have lots of cars that plug into the grid all at once, it would put a huge demand on the grid, damage the grid or take out portions of the grid," said Christiansen, ORNL's associate laboratory director for energy and engineering sciences. "What the laboratory has proposed to do is to look at how we can buffer that impact onto the electric grid. That buffer would come in the form of providing solar recharging stations."
Christensen said there are alternatives to regular solar recharging stations.
"An alternative would be to actually charge battery packs on ground," Christian said. "When you drove you car up, you could recharge your car off the battery pack. Another variant would be to actually have that solar panel connected to the grid so that when the cars are not present, electricity would be produced by the solar panel and put onto the grid and could be used for normal activities."
Christensen says the new electric vehicles could be on the road between the next 6 to 18 months.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.
Posted Aug 9, 2009 (AZo Journal of Materials)
July 2009
Engineer Studying Hurricane Damage
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Photo by Julio Cortez//Houston Chronicle/AP Kara Bridwell, 26, left, and her brother Paul Bisso, 17, stand on the roof of a neighbor’s house on Sept. 14, 2008, in Surfside Beach, Texas, after Hurricane Ike washed away the home. ORNL aeronautical engineer Andre Desjarlais went to Houston last year as part of a team from the roofing industry to study the damage left by Ike. |
OAK RIDGE - As we enter the hurricane season for 2009, building researchers are still learning from hurricanes of the past - including last September's Hurricane Ike.
Andre Desjarlais, an aeronautical engineer who heads Oak Ridge National Laboratory's building envelopes research group, traveled to the Houston area last fall as part of a team from the roofing industry to study damage from Ike, which hit Texas.
Desjarlais' work focused on the vulnerability of buildings with large open areas, such as a garage or loading dock.
The ORNL researcher said high winds may cause those buildings to lose their roofs or suffer unusual damage, even if the construction meets up-to-date building codes. The door to a garage or other open spaces is usually the first to fail, creating additional stress on the building, he said.
"What happens is the door mechanisms are typically not designed to withstand the force of a hurricane," Desjarlais. "The railings are not attached to the frame of the building securely enough to maintain the doorway in place for the brunt of the storm. So the doorway will blow in, and then the building begins to pressurize."
As winds rush in, the air pressure pushes the roof up, the ORNL engineer said. That stress amplifies the "sucking effect" of winds blowing over the building's roof, he said.
"The higher the speed of the wind, the higher the pull-up force on the room," he said. "You add another force, another load on the roof, and typically the combination of those two forces is beyond the attachment means of the roof. … Buildings are designed to withstand the sucking force, but not the combination."
That's why it's not uncommon to see commercial buildings or houses where only the section of roof over a garage or loading dock is missing following a storm, Desjarlais said.
Desjarlais has studied on-the-scene destruction from at least five hurricanes, including Katrina, as well as a couple of tornadoes and other storms.
The damage from Ike when it reached the upper Texas coast wasn't as bad as it could have been, he said, because the strongest winds are always on the eastern side of a storm's eye. Hurricane Ike skirted Houston to the east, where there was much less development, he said.
The Houston area was mostly hit by weaker winds on the west side of the eye, but still there were lessons to be learned, he said.
"You go into a neighborhood and there are 10 buildings with no damage, and one does (have damage)," Desjarlais said. "Why did this one not survive?"
In a reverse situation, when there are few surviving structures, researchers study the positive elements that allowed a building to withstand the worst that Mother Nature could throw at it.
There were two recurring themes in assessing Ike's damage, Desjarlais said.
One was the damage related to buildings with "large apertures," such as a garage, and the other was the impact on buildings that had not been properly maintained, he said.
Building maintenance is always an issue during major storms, he said.
"Just because you design and construct buildings to withstand these storms, they still have to be maintained - especially in the Southeast where you see a lot of metal corrosion because the South is so hot and humid," the Oak Ridge researcher said.
Twenty years after construction, the integrity of many buildings can be compromised by deterioration, he said.
"Codes don't require us to go back and fix everything," he said. "We always test (for compliance with building standards) when they're brand-new."
With increasing emphasis on energy efficiency, researchers at ORNL's Buildings Technology Center are studying the potential impact of energy conservation on a building's storm-worthiness.
"Are we marching blindly down a path where buildings become more energy efficient but can't withstand wind storms anymore? If we start seeing buildings fail, is it because of what we advocated?" Desjarlais said.
Fortunately, he said, the answer is, "Not yet."
But researchers are looking closely at new building codes proposed for 2010, which probably will increase the building insulation levels by 50 percent, he said.
"Suddenly you have longer screws and fasteners holding things together," the engineer said. "We need to rethink the structure, and we want to make sure we don't forget our lessons."
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. (Knoxville News Sentinel - July 12, 2009)
Related Links:
Roofing Industry Committee on Weather Issues
ORNL's Buildings Technology Center
Green Car Congress
http://www.greencarcongress.com/
Grid expert Liu named UT-ORNL Governor's Chair
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Liu |
Power grid technologies expert Yilu Liu is the fourth member of the University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor's Chair.
Liu currently directs the Center for Power Engineering at Virginia Tech. She will hold appointments at ORNL's Energy & Transportation Science Division and UT's department of electrical engineering and computer science.
The Governor's Chair program attracts accomplished researchers around the world in effort to boost joint research. The partnership leads in fields of biological science, computational science, advanced materials and neutron science. ORNL's Electric Grid Research and Development Program conducts about $20 million in research each year.
While developing ways to monitor and understand the flow of energy through the nation's power grid on a large scale, Liu researches ways to develop the "smart grid," a term describing the next generation of electric transmission technology that will move energy more efficiently and effectively.
"A smarter, more efficient power grid is vital to the nation's energy plan and a key part of ORNL's research portfolio," says ORNL Director Thom Mason. "Dr. Liu's work will greatly strengthen our scientific efforts to address this energy challenge."
KAT, H.T. Hackney team with ORNL on project
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Photo by ADAM BRIMER Helmut E. Knee, group leader of transportation technology with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Heavy Vehicle Safety Research Program, stands in a bus in the Knoxville Area Transit service bay next to the data acquisition system that he helped design. The equipment will gather 60 sets of data from the buses in a study of fuel efficiency, emissions and safety. |
Knox Area Transit and H.T. Hackney Co. are working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on a project to install data collection systems on buses and trucks, hoping to get information that will help improve fuel efficiency, cut emissions and improve safety.
KAT and H.T. Hackney, a regional wholesaler of grocery products with headquarters in Knoxville and its main distribution center in Roane County, hope to use the data to analyze speed, load, types of terrain, tire and brake wear and other variables to improve routes, driving techniques and other procedures.
ORNL also wants to get a bank of "real world" data that will be helpful in evaluating the benefits of hybrid vehicle technology. Three KAT buses and three of Hackney's medium-duty trucks have been fitted with $35,000 in equipment to measure 60 sets of data from the buses and about 80 sets from the trucks.
"This will be a 12-month program," said Helmut E. Knee, group leader of transportation technology with ORNL's Heavy Vehicle Safety Research Program. "We are going to get a lot of data. The research community always has a hunger for data collected from real-world performance."
As the buses travel their routes, ORNL will be able to monitor fuel consumption as the loads shift from passengers getting on and off, as buses go up and down hills, make turns and stop, speed up or slow down. ORNL will track the vehicles by global positioning satellite systems and use equipment it developed for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to receive data from the bus in "real time."
On the H.T. Hackney Co. trucks, ORNL will be able to get similar data plus information on tire and brake wear, to be provided to FMCSA for safety analysis.
Bryan Trentham with H.T. Hackney said the company already gets a lot of information from messaging and satellite locator systems installed in its fleet, but the ORNL project will provide even more.
"We are open to any kind of information that can help with efficiency," he said.
In addition to using the data to boost fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, KAT and ORNL also see the project as a springboard to get stimulus funds available for transit companies through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Si McMurray, chief maintenance officer with KAT, said KAT and ORNL plan to seek a share of $100 million available through the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction fund. With the ORNL study as the basis, the plan is to apply for funds so that KAT can replace 20 aging buses with 20 hybrid buses, allowing ORNL to expand its study and allowing KAT to work with the University of Tennessee to develop a program for teaching energy-efficient driving techniques for KAT's drivers, McMurray said.
McMurray said bus companies across America will apply for these funds, but KAT has an advantage over most.
"I certainly think that we have a competitive edge because of our partnership with ORNL," he said.
If the grant money is approved and KAT gets the hybrid buses, ORNL will expand its study to compare the hybrid buses with the regular diesel KAT buses.
"Once we start getting the new hybrid-bus data, we will start comparing it," Knee said. "We might find that there are particular routes that are better suited for hybrid buses than traditional buses. Hybrid is generally better in stop-and-go traffic and hilly routes."
If the grant is approved, KAT probably will have the hybrid buses by February, Knee said. Looking beyond to 2011, ORNL has an even bigger project in mind.
It wants to work with several companies that have large fleets of trucks. Instead of collecting 60 or 80 sets of data, ORNL may only try to get five or six critical sets, but on thousands of trucks, Knee said. Such a large study could have national significance, he said.
"We are trying to settle the question of whether a fleet of hybrid vehicles is more economical than a fleet of traditional vehicles," he said.
Business writer Ed Marcum may be reached at 865-342-6267. (Knoxville News Sentinel - July 7, 2009)
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