Through improvements to the MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly) and the separator flow path, which make up the structure of Fuel Cell, Nissan significantly improved the power density of Fuel Cell Stack to 2.5 times greater than its 2005 model and realized a world’s best (Among auto manufacturers) 2.5 kW per liter.

Furthermore, molding the supporting frame of the MEA integrally with the MEA enabled stable, single-row lamination of the Fuel Cell, thereby significantly reducing its overall size by more than half compared to conventional models.

Additionally, compared with the 2005 model, both the usage of platinum and parts variation has been reduced to one quarter, thereby reducing cost of the Next Generation Fuel Cell Stack to one-sixth of the 2005 model.

The latest technology development is part of the company’s continuing efforts towards the realization of a Zero Emission society.

The two companies are building a prototype that could lead to Chevrolet Volt battery packs storing energy, including renewable wind and solar energy, and feeding it back to the grid.

The system could store electricity from the grid during times of low usage to be used during periods of peak demand, saving customers and utilities money. The battery packs could also be used as back-up power sources during outages and brownouts.

Using Volt battery cells, the ABB and GM team is building a prototype system for 25-kilowatt/50-kWh applications, about the same power consumption of five U.S. homes or small retail and industrial facilities.

GM and ABB estimate that, during an outage or brownout, 33 recycled Volt batteries will have enough storage capacity to power up to 50 homes for about four hours. Over time, batteries lose their storage capacity. After seven to 10 years, their storage capacity decreases to about 70% of what they had when new. Furthermore, the batteries are the most expensive component of plug-in electric vehicles. These tired batteries are still suitable for grid storage.

Chevrolet Volt provides an eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty on its battery pack, GM expects these batteries will be able to power the Volt for 10 years so the earliest application likely would come in 2021.

“Our tests so far have shown the viability of the GM-ABB solution in the laboratory and they have provided valuable experience to overcome the technical challenges,” said Pablo Rosenfeld, ABB’s program manager for Distributed Energy Storage Medium Voltage Power Products. “We are making plans now for the next major step – testing a larger prototype on an actual electric distribution system.”

ABB has determined its existing power quality filter (PQF) inverter can be used to charge and discharge the Volt battery pack to take full advantage of the system and enable utilities to reduce the cost of peak load conditions. The system can also reduce utilities’ needs for power control, protection and additional monitoring equipment. The team will soon test the system for back-up power applications.

Last year, General Motors signed a definitive agreement with ABB to identify joint research and development projects that would reuse Chevrolet Volt battery systems, which will have up to 70 percent of life remaining after their automotive use is exhausted.

The projects, supported by the Swedish Energy Agency and the EU, encompass three potential technology combinations. Tests of the various concepts will get under way in the first quarter of 2012.

The company’s technological developments in this area currently encompass three different technology combinations, with three-cylinder petrol engines being installed to complement electric drive to the front wheels. All the variants feature brake energy regeneration. The engines can run on both petrol and ethanol (E85).

Two of the solutions are based on the Volvo C30 Electric and one is based on the Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid. In both cases, the standard battery pack has been somewhat reduced in size to make room for the combustion engine and its fuel tank.

Technical concept I: Volvo C30 with series-connected Range Extender
This is based on a C30 Electric with a three-cylinder combustion engine producing 60 horsepower (45 kW) installed under the rear load compartment floor. The car also has a 40 litre fuel tank.
The combustion engine is connected to a 40 kW generator. The power it generates is used primarily to drive the car’s 111 horsepower (82 kW) electric motor, but the driver can also choose to let the generator charge the battery, thus increasing the car’s operating range on electricity.

The Range Extender increases the electric car’s range by up to 1,000 km – on top of the 110 km range provided by the car’s battery pack.

Technical concept II: Volvo C30 with parallel-connected Range Extender
Here the car gets a more powerful three-cylinder combustion engine at the rear and a 40 litre fuel tank. The difference between this and the first solution is the parallel connection, whereby the turbocharged 190 horsepower engine primarily drives the rear wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission. This gives a better fuel efficiency rating when driving with the combustion engine cruising on the highway. Via a 40kW generator the battery can also be charged to give the car increased range on electricity alone.
Here too the electric motor is a 111 hp (82 kW) unit. The two power sources give the car more than 300 hp in total, and acceleration from 0-100 km/h of less than six seconds.

The Range Extender increases the electric car’s range by more than 1,000 km – in addition to the range of up to 75 km provided by the car’s battery pack.

Technical concept III: Volvo V60 with parallel-connected Range Extender
This is a solution whereby the entire drive package is installed under the bonnet at the front. The 111 hp (80 kW) electric motor is supplemented with a three-cylinder petrol turbo engine producing 190 hp (140 kW), a two-stage automatic transmission and a 40 kW generator. Power from the combustion engine drives the front wheels via the gearbox and recharges the battery pack whenever needed.
Up to 50 km/h, the car is always powered solely by electricity. The combustion engine is activated at higher speeds. What is more, it charges the battery pack when its charge drops below a predetermined level.

The battery pack is located under the rear load floor and it gives the driver a range of 50 km on electricity alone. The car also has a 45 litre tank for petrol or E85.

With this technology, the Range Extender increases the car’s total range by more than 1,000 kilometres.

Testing of this new charging system began today at Nissan’s Global Headquarters in Yokohama.

In the new charging system, electricity is generated through 488 solar cells installed on the roof of the Nissan headquarters building. Four batteries from the LEAF had been placed in a box in a cellar-like part of the building, and store the electricity generated from the solar cells.

With seven charging stations (three quick charge, four normal charge) located in the headquarter grounds, the total electricity that can be generated and stored is the equivalent to fully charging approximately 1,800 Nissan LEAFs annually.

This new system will enable electric vehicles, which do not emit any CO2 when driven, to be charged through a completely renewable energy source. This is one solution to create a cycle where CO2 emissions resulting from driving is zero. By using the same lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles as stationary storage batteries, electricity can also be supplied to EVs regardless of the time of day or weather, enabling efficient use of renewable energy sources.

4R Energy Corporation, a joint venture established by Nissan and Sumitomo Corporation in September 2010, has already started tests on a compact electricity storage system installed with second-life lithium ion batteries previously used in Nissan LEAFs. Based on the outcome of this larger system, 4R Energy plans to enter the market of mid-sized electricity storage systems for commercial and public facilities.

Demonstration test outline

Solar cell: Maximum power output: 40kW
Power conditioner: Rated power output: 40kW (10kW×4)
Storage battery capacity: 96kWh
Grid management unit: Rated power output: 200kW
EV charging equipment: Quick charger: 3 (50kW×3), Regular charger: 4 (3.3kW×14)

In a paper published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, they said the approach has the potential to boost battery storage capacity many times today’s levels and could even make “refueling” such batteries as quick and easy as pumping gas into a conventional car.

The new battery relies on an innovative architecture called a semi-solid flow cell, in which solid particles are suspended in a carrier liquid and pumped through the system. In this design, the battery’s active components — the positive and negative electrodes, or cathodes and anodes — are composed of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. These two different suspensions are pumped through systems separated by a filter, such as a thin porous membrane.

The work was carried out by Mihai Duduta ’10 and graduate student Bryan Ho, under the leadership of professors of materials science W. Craig Carter and Yet-Ming Chiang.

One important characteristic of the new design is that it separates the two functions of the battery — storing energy until it is needed, and discharging that energy when it needs to be used — into separate physical structures. (In conventional batteries, the storage and discharge both take place in the same structure.) Separating these functions means that batteries can be designed more efficiently, Chiang says.

The new design should make it possible to reduce the size and the cost of a complete battery system, including all of its structural support and connectors, to about half the current levels. That dramatic reduction could be the key to making electric vehicles fully competitive with conventional gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, the researchers say.

Another potential advantage is that in vehicle applications, such a system would permit the possibility of simply “refueling” the battery by pumping out the liquid slurry and pumping in a fresh, fully charged replacement, or by swapping out the tanks like tires at a pit stop, while still preserving the option of simply recharging the existing material when time permits.

Flow batteries have existed for some time, but have used liquids with very low energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored in a given volume). Because of this, existing flow batteries take up much more space than fuel cells and require rapid pumping of their fluid, further reducing their efficiency.

The new semi-solid flow batteries pioneered by Chiang and colleagues overcome this limitation, providing a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, and lower-cost manufacturing than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Because the material has such a high energy density, it does not need to be pumped rapidly to deliver its power.

The key insight by Chiang’s team was that it would be possible to combine the basic structure of aqueous-flow batteries with the proven chemistry of lithium-ion batteries by reducing the batteries’ solid materials to tiny particles that could be carried in a liquid suspension — similar to the way quicksand can flow like a liquid even though it consists mostly of solid particles. “We’re using two proven technologies, and putting them together,” Carter says.

In addition to potential applications in vehicles, the new battery system could be scaled up to very large sizes at low cost. This would make it particularly well-suited for large-scale electricity storage for utilities, potentially making intermittent, unpredictable sources such as wind and solar energy practical for powering the electric grid.

The team set out to “reinvent the rechargeable battery,” Chiang says. But the device they came up with is potentially a whole family of new battery systems, because it’s a design architecture that “is not linked to any particular chemistry.” Chiang and his colleagues are now exploring different chemical combinations that could be used within the semi-solid flow system. “We’ll figure out what can be practically developed today,” Chiang says, “but as better materials come along, we can adapt them to this architecture.”

Chiang, whose earlier insights on lithium-ion battery chemistries led to the 2001 founding of MIT spinoff A123 Systems, says the two technologies are complementary, and address different potential applications. For example, the new semi-solid flow batteries will probably never be suitable for smaller applications such as tools, or where short bursts of very high power are required — areas where A123’s batteries excel.

The new technology is being licensed to a company called 24M Technologies, founded last summer by Chiang and Carter along with entrepreneur Throop Wilder, who is the company’s president. The company has already raised more than $16 million in venture capital and federal research financing.

GM broke ground Tuesday for the previously announced addition to the complex housing its two-mode hybrid and Heavy Duty transmission operations. The electric motor plant results from two investments totaling $269.5 million announced last year.

Electric motor design and production is a core business for GM in the development and manufacture of plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles.

The campus will be powered in part by a 1.23 megawatt rooftop solar array, expected to generate nine percent of its annual energy consumption and save approximately $330,000 during the life of the project.

Constellation Energy will build, own and maintain the solar power system, and GM will purchase all of the electricity generated by the solar panels under a 20-year power purchase agreement. Constellation Energy’s first solar array for GM was a 951-kilowatt system at its Fontana, Calif., Service and Parts Operations warehouse.

GM’s Baltimore Operations has the dual distinction of being powered by renewable energy and generating no landfill waste. It earned zero-landfill status in 2007 by recycling, reusing or converting to energy all wastes from daily operations.

The charging of a plug-in hybrid or electric car could be as simple and convenient as parking near an embedded charger at a home or in a parking facility.

WiTricity’s charging technology uses resonance, which allows charging without direct contact and is more efficient than electromagnetic-induction, another wireless technology—but one that requires contact—that is starting to come of age in mobile phone and other chargers.

WiTricity’s technology delivers up to 3.3 KW of electricity, making it comparable to the rate provided by wired Level 2 chargers today. WiTricity’s equipment has been able to achieve 90-percent efficiency in the lab, which means a 10-percent loss between when the electricity leaves the grid and arrives at the car battery pack.

[source: WiTricity]

The electric vehicle platform maker has revealed a new production prototype in conjunction with filing for a patent for the company’s Enertube tubular battery storage system.

The TREXA vehicle platform has been designed to be scaled up or down for various vehicular applications, and the heart of this system is the Enertube energy storage system.

TREXA plans to offer Enertube-based platforms in a range of diameters and lengths.

Enertube can be sized up or down along with the chassis size to create a whole range of electric vehicles, from 7kWh of storage capacity for a small city electric vehicles to 100 kWh for a big Class 8 truck.

The Enertube battery storage system can come unplugged from the platform without removing the vehicle’s body.

TREXA has formed an alliance with a large publicly-traded specialty vehicle manufacturer to commercialize the platform and Enertube technology. TREXA is also exploring electric racing in connection with a major auto racing league. In addition, the company is working with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute to develop advanced functionality platforms for government and agricultural applications. The company plans to make specific announcements about its developer and supplier relationships in the coming months.

The first TREXA vehicle platforms will be shipped to customers for evaluation in May.

[source: TREXA]

The batteries in Illinois professor Paul Braun’s lab look like any others, but they pack a surprise inside.

Braun’s group developed a three-dimensional nanostructure for battery cathodes that allows for dramatically faster charging and discharging without sacrificing energy storage capacity.

The newly cathode allows extremely fast charging and discharging to the tune of 400C for lithium-ion and 1,000C for NiMH batteries in which, ”C” is the charge (or discharge) rate where 1C equals a charge in one hour. 400C means a full charge in 1/400 of an hour. This means normal lithium-ion batteries could be recharged to 90 percent in just two minutes.

The performance of typical lithium-ion (Li-ion) or nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries degrades significantly when they are rapidly charged or discharged. Making the active material in the battery a thin film allows for very fast charging and discharging, but reduces the capacity to nearly zero because the active material lacks volume to store energy.

Braun’s group wraps a thin film into three-dimensional structure, achieving both high active volume (high capacity) and large current. They have demonstrated battery electrodes that can charge or discharge in a few seconds, 10 to 100 times faster than equivalent bulk electrodes, yet can perform normally in existing devices.

This kind of performance could lead to phones that charge in seconds or laptops that charge in minutes, as well as high-power lasers and defibrillators that don’t need time to power up before or between pulses.

Braun is particularly optimistic for the batteries’ potential in electric vehicles. Battery life and recharging time are major limitations of electric vehicles. Long-distance road trips can be their own form of start-and-stop driving if the battery only lasts for 100 miles and then requires an hour to recharge.

The group published its results in the March 20 online edition of Nature Nanotechnology.

[source: Illinois University]

Developed by Evatran LLC, Plugless Power is a Level 2 (7.7 kW, 240V at 32A) inductive charging system.

Plugless Power is based on inductive technology, which has been used in electrical transformers for more than 100 years, and streamlines the charging of electric cars and extended-range hybrids by eliminating the nuisance of the cord and the plug.

Using inductive technology, Plugless has managed to harness the electrical power produced by the station and send it all, wirelessly, into the surrounding air, charging in the process the plug-in hybrids and the electric vehicles that happen to be in the vicinity.

Evatran is actively seeking other fleet trial opportunities with corporations and municipalities to experience the Plugless Power technology in the third quarter of 2011.

Most EV models are eligible for Plugless Power through a simple retrofit process. In addition to fleet distribution, Evatran is currently working with automotive manufacturers to integrate the Plugless Power technology into mass-market EVs by 2012.

Google has multiple low-speed electric vehicles for short-range travel around its campus and includes plug-in vehicles in its on-campus employee car-sharing program. The company will initially use the Plugless Power station to charge a retrofitted short-range electric vehicle. Google showed interest in testing the Plugless Power technology and understanding how its features could simplify the charging process for its plug-in EV fleet vehicles.