Gas Prices Up, Solar Prices Down.

Gas Prices Up, Solar Prices Down. This is a pattern you can expect to continue. In the words of a famous Men’s Warehouse Tailor:
“I guarantee it”

Gasoline prices will rise now that we have passed peak oil, pushed higher by 3 billion new consumers in China, India and the Middle East, pushed higher by increasing governmental regulations and the public’s desire for cleaner less polluted air. Billions of new consumers hunger for the same quality of life and quantity of consumption as 600 million Americans and Europeans. A quality of life fueled by the energy dense miracle of prehistoric composition, oil.

Decreasing supply, a five fold increase in consumption, a stricter regulatory environment… you can draw your own conclusion on what the price of gasoline will be in the future, say nothing about inflation.

Solar P.V. prices are dropping (have been dropping since their begining in the 50’s.) Currently in Southern California a residential installation will run about $3.75 to $4.25 per kw of Solar P.V. net cost. A 5kw P.V. system will net cost the owner between $18,000 and $22,000. Each kw of solar P.V. will produce 1600KWH of annual energy in Southern California, more on that later.

I have driven 24,000 miles in the past 19 months in Mini-E #183. An electric car driven by electrons produced 100% by solar energy. I consider it nothing short of amazing, incredibly fun to drive, it has transformed my life and my energy, transportation beliefs.

My Mini-E drives 3.5 miles per KWH. Using the national average of 12,000 mile a year, I need to generate 3500 KWH a year to “fuel” the Mini-E. This requires a 2.2 kw Solar P.V. system, (remember the 1600kwh per year?) however because of my TOU (time of use) rate structure, I get paid 29 cents a KWH during the peak hour when I am producing electricity and I get charged at night a cost of 14 cents per KWH. This is essentially 2 for the price of one. To make a long story short based on our SDG&E TOU rate structure and actual experience over two years, a system that is 1.65 KWH that generates 2640 peak hour KWH will provide 3500KWH of off peak electricity.

About the graphs:

The Solar P.V. chart is my actual cost, adding an additional inverter in year 15. I choose 25 years as that is the warranted period of the solar PV system. It will degrade slightly over that time this is true, but it will also provide electricity far past it’s 25 year warranty. All the charts depict 12,000 miles of driving. The gas charts use the U.S. fleet average for cars of 20mpg with the first year cost of fuel at $3.50 a gallon for 600 gallons. Your mileage or annual driving numbers may be much higher or lower but that is the fleet average. Electricity prices vary far more than gasoline so make sure to check out your own unique situation.

The gas charts are at 5% and 7.5% annual increase. The past 25 years gas has increased at 3.5% this would be about $84,000 in total cost. What do you think gas prices will do? 5% to 7.5% is my best guess.

I have driven for 32 years and up until the Mini-E, I purchased gas. It is my conclusion that the electric car is already cheaper than the gas car to own and operate for many areas of our country that are renewable energy based such as the Pacific Northwest, or for those such as I, that produce their own energy. I also believe that the electric car if adopted in mass quantities can clean our air and end our dependence on foreign oil.

Of special note is that the total cost of the solar P.V. system required to drive an electric car 12,000 miles a year for over 25 years, is less than the cost of buying gasoline for four years for a gasoline powered car.

Again, in the words of the Men’s Warehouse tailor, You will be buying fuel for your car for the next 25 years “I guarantee it”

The question is what type of fuel will you buy for what type of car?

Solar is $0.35 cents a gallon fixed in price forever.

It's a new world America!

Cheers
Peder

There is safety in the status quo.

There is safety in the status quo.

As a driver of an electric vehicle, Mini-E #183 powered by renewable solar power for the past 18 months and 23,000 miles I enjoy greatly and many times find humorous, reading the many pundits writing and perspectives written about the electric car.

I divide the writings into three (general I admit) camps. The Preachers, the Practitioners and the Protesters.

The preachers are noble, hopeful, and imagine a more perfect world, a healthier planet, embracing an emerging technology that can lead us to the promise land of energy independence, renewable energy, and pollution free air. A more perfect world that can lead us away from war and dependence. The preachers at times, overlook practical roadblocks, real problems and market limitations in the message of a noble good. The preachers have very seldom produced a product in the marketplace meaningful to the real world.

The practitioners want to go beyond theory and the preacher, and put into practice the future. In this case the electric car.

They are the bleeding edge (there is a reason they call it the bleeding edge) early adopters willing and financially able to take part in the new electric mobility world. Similar to those who manufacture or purchase the first $3000 cell phone, the first $5000 computer, the first $15,000 plasma television, the first $200,000 ride into space and the first electric car.

The goal of the practitioner is to experience the new world and prove to themselves, either pass or fail, on the technology they embrace. They are inquisitive by nature, entrepreneurial by craft, they are motivated by many varied factors but united in the experience of discovery, of being pioneers, of imagining and creation of the future.

They are equally ably to reject technology that does not deliver on the promise, solution or intent as promised by the manufacture to the early adopter. Failure is not a final destination to the practitioner but rather a road traveled, a calculation on the path to the future.

The protesters are protectors of the status quo. They warn against perceived whimsical flights of fancy into the new world, they warn against the new and unproven, they decry changes to the structure to a society comfortable to them. They rail against government support of the new enterprise while ignoring the government support of companies of existing enterprise. They are assured by the performance of the current, they are rooted into today and what works for them.
They take comfort as shepherds of the docile.

The protesters have never advanced the cause of humanity through any endeavor in the history of mankind. They take pleasure in proving wrong the preachers and advocating to the malleable heard, the perils and dangers of the practitioners and the preachers.
There is safety in the status quo as the vast majority of the population lie here within.

Your interested in an electric car. So who's writing to believe?

I will let the reader answer that question themselves.

I end this writing by quoting in part “Security” written by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).

"A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies.

These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

Cheers

Peder
Mini-E #183

Mini-E California Cruising...

Zipping around in the cold California sunshine.

Mini-E #183 now has 22,500 miles on the odo.

Status: Incredibly fun, extremely reliable, cheap to drive, and I still occasionally burst out in spontaneous laughter, I am literally driving on sunshine with no emissions from the power source or the car for less than 50 cents a gallon. Best car in 32 years of driving.

Anxieties: Lots of them.

Giving Mini-E# 183 back to BMW, waiting for the Active-E, waiting for the Megacity, waiting for a plug in hybrid SUV with the first 40 miles electric, (are you listening BMW?) watching the San Diego Chargers play football, dry turkey on Thanksgiving.

Hopey Changey: I "hope" the 2010 “Tea Party” realizes that the original Tea Party of 1773 was made up of American Patriots of all political beliefs unified in freedom and liberty, not just “repackaged right wing republicans.” That the “Al Gores” of the world stop preying on fear and stop playing the American public for political fools and realize the world is not going to end anytime soon. Nice "change" on Ethanol, Al,

That 2011 brings new cars, new motive power and cleaner air.

Cheers!
Peder

Electric Cars, A Stadium and A Declaration.

click on the picture to go to the Eagles 100% sustainable stadium website.

Welcome NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles to the renewable energy sustainability party!

Rush Limbaugh , George Will, and others pundits made comfortable by the status quo, have attacked General Motors and the Chevy Volt, They now have a new target. They can focus their “quills and shrills” at another American icon, the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles.

They must be thinking how un-American that the Philadelphia Eagles seek energy independence and seek to provide clean renewable energy via wind/solar and cogeneration spurred on by U.S. policy.

Will and Rush the wealthy happy “Revisionist Tea Party” scribes, write wrongly about American companies, American cars, American people and no doubt in the near future, American Football.

I would suggest that EV Drivers, renewable energy providers, GM, and the NFL, who seek to end the taxing of Americans to pay for war cost on far away lands, who seek to end the enriching of foreign nations to protect our national weakness and dependency on oil, reflect the true values and intentions of the Boston Tea Party.

The parallels are remarkable.

The Tea party took place in Philadelphia, New York and Boston with American Patriots refusing to pay the illegitimate taxes imposed by the British, to pay for the costly price incurred by the British in the French and Indian wars concluding in 1763. The British miscalculated that American Colonists who loved their tea as a dependent staple of early American life, would choose to pay the tax as opposed to not having their tea.

In Boston the ships would not leave harbor without collecting their duty. On December 16th 1773, Tea from three ships was dumped into the harbor.

How wonderful that in the same Philadelphia, the NFL Eagles wrote their Declaration of Energy Independence on November 18th 2010.

As a conservation minded American, I would not suggest dumping the oil from three ships into the Boston harbor on December 16th 2010 in protest, as the environmental disaster would be unacceptable.

I would suggest however that both Rush Limbaugh and George Will, like the British, have miscalculated the American Patriots of 2010 who "need" their oil as a staple of American life, and would choose to “pay the tax” thus strengthen foreign countries economically, weaken and make more dependent the USA, and pollute our country as opposed to not having their oil.

We can, are, have and will become energy independent in this country. We will reclaim our Independence. We can do that by buying and producing clean domestic energy instead of importing oil and paying the “tea/oil tax” for wars afar.

Deep breath, “You can make your own fuel at home” cheaper and cleaner than buying it from the gas station.

Our cost to do that for our electric car a BMW Mini-E is $0.45 cents in solar electricity to drive the equivalent of a gallon of gas which is 25 miles. Said another way. Our cost to drive electric, 15,000 miles a year for 25 years will be $10,000. To drive a gasoline powered car the same distance and years would cost $85,000 for the gasoline.

We have been shouting from the rooftops to get America to open its ears to a path to energy independence and a cleaner environment. Now we can shout from the roof top of an NFL Stadium.

The Philadelphia Eagles have issued their Declaration of Energy Independence.

The Eagles soon to play in an energy independent stadium will give a National platform, on National TV, every football Sunday to renewable energy, and by extension (cord) the electric car.

That voice will be far more important and wide reaching than Will or Rush.

Like the Philadelphia Eagles, we have choices on how we power our buildings and how we power our cars. We can do both with clean renewable energy provided domestically. It's now our choice.

Throw the oil overboard

Welcome to the real “ Tea Party” and congratulations to the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles!

Peder Norby

Norby is a San Diego County planning commissioner. He and his wife, Julie, were awarded the 2007 SANDEE Award from the California Center for Sustainable Energy for the home they built in Carlsbad. They have driven 22,000 miles in an electric car powered by solar energy.

The “Noise” about the Mini-E

We humans are sensory creatures, what we know of our world is collected via our sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing.

For the electric car, our Mini-E, most of the "noise" conversation has been centered on the fact that we are very tuned into car noise. If there is a lack of noise from the car, that constitutes a hazard that needs to be mitigated by the addition of ( hard to believe it ) noise. We rely on our hearing as much as we do our vision in collision avoidance.

Imagine a deer in the forest listening for danger.

We rely on our hearing as we do all five of our senses in all aspects of our life. A lack of noise can be a detriment as in the case of low speed pedestrian safety, or it can be an improvement.

What does the electric car bring us in terms of improving our quality of life? A whole bunch is the answer.

1. Managing the noise in a shopping district is huge. If you're a pedestrian, a bicyclist, or a café customer enjoying an alfresco dining experience on an outdoor patio, a lower decibel level will greatly improve that experience. The quieter our “mainstreets” the more enjoyable-thus profitable-thus valuable they are. At low speeds up to 70% of the noise is from the drivetrain. It’s one of the reasons walking streets and malls are so popular is that they eliminate the largest noisemaker, the automobile. Imagine your favorite "go to spot" with the quietness of electric cars around you.

2. A typical town development pattern in a residential neighborhood consist of less expensive apartments or attached housing near the prime arterial and largest intersections. The further away from the traffic you go the more into the more expensive custom home neighborhood you get ebven though it's less conveiniant.

Why?

One of the biggest reasons is noise. The lower priced homes have more noise associated with them and the higher price homes less noise. If you remove the noise penalty and share traffic loads equally in a grid pattern, town development patterns would revert to basic principles of neighborhood quality instead of design principles centered on mitigating car noise. Imagine your home or apartment and the quietness of a neighborhood filled with electric cars.

3. “They live next to the freeway” That is seldom a compliment for a location of a home. My guess would be a home adjacent to the freeway would have a 30% lower cost than the same home one mile away in the same town. The main reasons? Noise pollution and emissions pollution.

According to the American Lung associations 2010 State of our Air Quality Report, it is unhealthy to live near a freeway. (Like I needed to tell you that) At freeway speeds half of the noise is from the motor and half is from road noise and wind. But imagine reducing the noise by 50% what an improvement that would be for those living next to a freeway. Imagine reducing the tailpipe emissions by 100% what an improvement that would be. To the extent we make our transportation quieter and emission free will be the extent that we reduce the penalty for living next to a freeway, It might even be healthy to do so in a few short decades.

4. We seek solace in nature, Central Park in New York, or the Rocky Mountains in the west. In this escape to nature we seek all of her gifts to our senses including quiet. Nothing tops a camping trip to a remote desert or mountain campsite where we can listen to the sounds of nature. Our conversations with each other are more meaningful, our nerves are soothed, and our spirits lifted by the experience. To the extent that we reduce the noise in our day to day world, we will increase our enjoyment of living and working there. Imagine your urban jungle populated by the quietness of electric cars.

5. Generally, luxury cars are quieter and they are more expensive. Why? In part because they spend a lot of money on sound dampening strategies to keep the noise of their motor and transmission away from the passenger cabin, thus a more enjoyable driving experiance. Imagine your car interior having the same quietness of electric cars.

Driving the Mini-E for 17 months, being able to hear the birds around our lagoon as I drive by the water, hearing a conversation of a couple as I wait for a light, and having a chat with my wife in the passenger seat is pretty amazing. The silence as I drive around is a huge improvements in my life. I think this is one of the reasons I and others love driving the Mini-E so much. I had a neighbor approach me a few months ago and say “do you know how much better it would be if all cars were as quiet as yours”

There are lots more reasons why the quietness of our electric cars will improve our day to day lives, The past several months the focus has been on the problem of no sound with the electric car. The benefits are far greater.

I’m interested in hearing from you some of your experiences as EV drivers and what ways you think the quietness of the electric car can improve a persons sensory experience.

I look forward to “hearing” from you

Cheers
Peder
Mini-E #183, 21,000 miles



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A Zero Energy Home Overview

Click on the chart to enlarge and as your reading the chart remember, if we had no electric car our savings would be about $700 a year greater.

Many folks have asked exactly what is a zero energy home?

It is not a home that uses no energy.

A zero energy home is simply one that use less energy than it produces. This is accomplished 75% by conservation and efficiencies and 25% by generation of electricity.

We prepared this chart including our utility bills for a recent tour of the home.

Living in a zero energy home and driving on sunshine need not be a great sacrifice.

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."
Frank Lloyd Wright

The not so fun, but very important part of being a field test driver for BMW.

About 600 drivers in the Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, a bit later, Berlin, London and now France and China are field testing the BMW Mini-E Electric Car.

This is phase one of a three phase roll out of the future BMW Megacity car scheduled to arrive in 2012-13. This is a methodical multi nation undertaking of both machine and driver behavior and habits, infrastructure challenges with many housing types, varying climates and differing cultural attitudes from around the world.

While I am sure that much data is being held as intellectual property by BMW, other data points and the experience in general is being shared with the world and other drivers and manufacturers.

It is worth remembering that the driving and experience is being done in real world conditions with individual drivers from all walks of life who are sharing their stories warts and all, and not by a closed group of employees or contractors with NDAs.

In short BMW is putting forth an amazing global effort , trusting their intentions with the grip of the steering wheel in our hands, producing extremely valuable information. Some results contradicting commonly and firmly held beliefs regarding the heretofore alleged poor performance, practicality and range anxiety involving electric propulsion.

It’s with great imagination, adventure, driving fun and now a growing pride and confidence of sorts, that I have been a ”lab rat” for this large scale field trial of the electric car. It continues to be an amazing journey that has profoundly changed my view of our transportation future.

I am the driver of Mini-E #183, and have driven the past 16 months and 21,000 miles in an aggressive, sporty and carefree manor on electrons provided by the rays of the sun. Literally driving on sunshine, laughing my way down the interstate in a state of utter disbelief of what I am actually doing, driving on sunshine. If I can hardly believe it and I am doing it, I can only imagine what the many skeptics never shy of opining are thinking!

Last Monday, October 11th, BMW called and said they wanted the car for a little poking and prodding, the past week or so they have had the car back at headquarters in Oxnard going through the systems, motor and battery of #183 collecting data on the car after 20,000 miles. No doubt analyzing the electric motor, control software and each battery cell to see how they are holding up at 21K.

That’s the not so fun, but very important part of being a field test driver for BMW. This is my 4th service (they look at the car every 5000 miles) but my first time away from the car for more than a day.

It is a field test and BMW needs to understand how the car progresses through its lifespan in detail, so they can asses and improve if needed minor and major systems on the future Megacity car. During this several day period of time I am driving a loaner Nissan Altima.

While a fun and capable car, I detest driving it! I hate watching the meter go down to empty, I have had to put $75 in gas in the car, it is nowhere near as fast or sporty to drive, it makes shifiting and engine rpm sounds that are foreign and for the first time in almost a year and a half I find myself once again at gas stations. My garage has that old gas/combustion smell back.

It just plain sucks. It just plain sucks big time.

Looking forward to getting the Mini-E back, look forward to the phase two BMW 1 series Active E, Look forward to driving electric the rest of my life, look forward to cleaner and healthier San Diego County in the near future.

Cheers
Peder
Mini-E #183, 21,000 miles.