Green Energy News | December 9, 2001

December 9, 2001 – Vol.6 No.37

ENERGIES... week of December 9, 2001

INSTANT GRATIFICATION. Drivers of cars with internal combustion engines under the hood are used to near instantaneous operation. Turn the key and go. No waiting. Slow start-up time for some fuel cell vehicles has been a stumbling block in their development path. Some vehicle designs which incorporate a reformer, or fuel processor, to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon fuels, can take 15 minutes or more to get started and ready to be driven. This would not be acceptable to drivers. Now, Nuvera Fuel Cells can lower fuel cell vehicle start-up time to 10 seconds with its new, multi-fuel reformer technology.

Developed with funding assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy, the new reformer design was created to operate with fuel cells with a power output in the 50 kilowatt range, enough power for a mid-sized car. Nuvera expects the technology, built under the company’s Hi-Q program, to help advance the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles.

Though not mentioned by Nuvera, fuel cell vehicles could turn out to be hybrids - a battery pack installed for additional power. In a vehicle with the Nuvera 10-second processor, the first 10 seconds of operation could be powered by the battery. This configuration would give the near instantaneous operation consumers have come to expect . Visit Nuvera at http://www.nuvera.com/ .

NO FOSSIL FUEL FUEL CELL VEHICLE. DaimlerChrysler has introduced yet another fuel cell vehicle. This one, the Chrysler Town and Country Natrium, is fueled by sodium borohydride, a close cousin of borax.

The sodium borohydride technology developed by Millennium Cell, known as Hydrogen On Demand (tm), departs from other fuel cell technology under development. This one doesn’t require a hydrocarbon fuel from which to extract hydrogen. If this technology were advanced, and eventually became the norm for fuel cell powered vehicles, fossil fuel companies (read Big Oil) would be left out of the loop in the fueling of the next generation of vehicles. (Unless, of course, they got into the borax business.)

DaimlerChrysler and Millennium Cell expect the Natrium to travel 300 miles on one fueling of sodium borohydride. Visit Millennium Cell at http://www.millenniumcell.com/ (click News and Events, Press Releases)

PUBLIC EV SALE. Thought battery electric vehicles were dead? Think again. Toyota will begin offering its RAV4-EV to retail customers in California in February 2002. First offered in 1997, the RAV4-EV has only been available through a special lease program to major corporations and utility companies. There are now 900 of the electric sport utility vehicles on the road nationwide in the U.S., 700 of them in California.

The RAV4-EV will sell for $42,000, but with incentives from the state of the California and the U.S. Federal Government price to the consumer will be $30,000 - roughly $8000 -12,000 more than the current gas version. Lease options will also be available. The RAV4-EV has a 50 kilowatt electric motor (67 horsepower), a range of 80-100 miles per charge and is fully equipped.

Toyota has also announced it has upped its U.S allotment of Prius hybrid sedans by 40 percent to 17,000 units per year. The reason? Growing demand despite economic recession. Visit Toyota at http://www.toyota.com/. (click About Toyota, News)

RUSSIA UNDER GROUND. The first geothermal power station in Russia is now nearly complete. The 50 megawatt facility on the Kamchatka Peninsula is being built by Unified Energy Systems with Siemens supplying equipment for the facility.

The project is being built to reduce the need for transporting fuel to the remote region. Visit Unified Energy at http://www.rao-ees.ru/ .

WORLD WIND WATCH. What could be the world’s largest wind farm yet is now in the planning stages in the UK. A 600 megawatt facility for the Isle of Lewis off the coast of Scotland in the Western Isles, has been announced by British Energy and U.S.- based Amec, an engineering company. If built and connected to the National Grid before the end of the decade, the on and off-shore facility will have up to 300 turbines and will supply one percent of the U.K.’s power needs. The output is similar to a medium-sized conventional or nuclear power plant.

The project, as envisioned, is so massive that on-site production facilities are being planned to manufacture turbine blades and towers. Those facilities alone are expected to have 150 employees. The project is expected to cost 600 GBP ($876 million) and more than six years to construct. Visit British Energy at http://www.british-energy.com, and Amec at http://www.amec.com/ .

Enron, hip-deep in bankruptcy proceedings, has announced to newswire services that it does intend to sell Enron Wind. No one has yet to jump forth with a briefcase full of cash.