Nov 13 - The Knoxville News-Sentinel

Gas prices may be plummeting, but carmakers and the electric utility industry are planning for the day when vehicles will be powered by electrons, not hydrocarbons.

Hybrid electric vehicles have been flying off car lots, and many carmakers have announced plans to introduce plug-in hybrid or electric-only vehicles into the marketplace.

But replacing gasoline and diesel, at least in part, with electric power introduces its own set of issues for both car manufacturers and the utility industry. So researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute in Knoxville are working with a number of manufacturers to explore how to successfully add a new category of demand to the existing electricity grid and what technologies need to be incorporated into the vehicles themselves. General Motors and Ford partnerships have been publicly announced, but others are planned.

On the power-generation side, TVA is beginning a research and development partnership with Nissan to test real-life scenarios of electric vehicles under development by Nissan. And TVA is working with EPRI and its distributors to analyze the potential impacts of, say, an entire neighborhood full of electric-powered cars or trucks.

"You cannot be not excited about this technology," said Arshad Mansoor, vice president of power delivery and utilization at EPRI, an R&D organization funded by the electric utility industry. The plug-in hybrid work will be carried out in EPRI's Knoxville office, one of several primary research centers located across the country.

Mansoor talked about the burgeoning industry and how it can free the nation from oil imports and reduce the amount of carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels.

But he said plug-ins and electric vehicles make economic sense, too. A midsize plug-in hybrid sedan with a 20-mile range costs, at 10 cents per kilowatt hour, about $180 per year to power, Mansoor said. That's the equivalent of 300 gallons of gasoline, which, even at today's prices, would cost at least $600.

Many observers concede, however, that although the future for electric-powered vehicles looks promising, the technology has a long way to go. EPRI's work with utilities and automakers will focus on how to make plugging in your car, wherever and whenever power is needed, a practical reality.

How will the existing power reserves cope with a new category of demand -- and how can the demand be managed to tap power that's currently underutilized, such as nighttime capacity? How can the infrastructure be programmed to recognize a vehicle and charge the owner of the car rather than the owner of the outlet? What technology standards must be put in place to ensure that electric-vehicle owners from California to Rhode Island can plug in their cars hassle-free? These are just a few of the issues that must be addressed in order for electric vehicles to be introduced broadly, Mansoor said.

In addition, he said, EPRI researchers will be evaluating whether plug-in vehicles could produce other revenue or "value" streams. For example, could the stored power in automobile batteries be integrated to the electricity grid to stabilize power flowing from more intermittent sources, such as wind, to "in essence be a shock absorber" for fluctuations in power, Mansoor asked. "That's 10 to 15 years down the road."

EPRI will begin testing plug-in hybrid engines in early 2009. Eventually, a test bank of hybrid vehicles themselves will be deployed across the country to evaluate their use in real-life situations, Mansoor said.

"In two to three months, we will have the actual deployment plan," he said, noting that EPRI is working with a number of other car manufacturers and will likely make other partnerships public by the end of the year.

At TVA, Joe Hoagland, vice president of energy efficiency and demand response, is less bullish on adoption rates for electric vehicles than Mansoor, but he said utilities are preparing for an expected transition to the new technology.

"I believe all the stars are aligning, if you will, for the potential for electric vehicles to become much more mainstream," Hoagland said. While he said power required for the vehicles is available during nonpeak hours of demand, "there's some issues we need to understand better associated with how that charging gets done."

In the project with Nissan, part of an electric-vehicle initiative spearheaded by Gov. Phil Bredesen, TVA will work with utilities in Middle Tennessee to test fleets of Nissan electric vehicles to determine the impact of the autos when used by government agencies or businesses. Planning for the project is in early stages, he said, with actual testing to begin in a couple of years when the vehicles become commercially available.

In the meantime, TVA is working with the Tennessee Valley Public Power Association, a group of TVA power distributors, and EPRI in using data from some of these potential Nissan testing sites to determine how best to incorporate the fleets into the existing power infrastructure.

"EPRI's going to help us address that from a kind of modeling perspective before the cars even roll out," Hoagland said.

The results also will "translate to other parts of the country," he said.

And what about the need for drivers to power their electric cars away from home?

TVA, KUB and the city of Knoxville are beginning conversations about setting up a solar charging station for electric vehicles, Hoagland said.

"Those discussions, however, are just getting off the ground," he said.

While Hoagland said he anticipates electric and hybrid-electric vehicles will see widespread adoption in the long run, he predicted that the transition will be a gradual one.

"My personal opinion is it will probably happen a little slower than the car manufacturers would like it to," he said. Battery technology still limits drivers to a 20-40 mile driving range, which he said is a market inhibitor, and charging requires eight to 10 hours.

"We're used to going into a gas station, and in five minutes you fill your tank and you're on you're way," he said. Fundamentally changing such an established practice, Hoagland said, is "generally not a very fast process."

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