Bollore BlueCar for Sale in France for 12,000 EUR [Exclusive pictures]

Vincent Bollore announced yesterday that his BlueCar is for sale in 12 French cities for 12,000 EUR (after government incentive of 7,000 EUR for Electric Cars), the battery allowing 250 km of range will be rented for 80 EUR a month and it will be able to charge at Autolib Stations for 15 EUR/month as well as on a regular 220V outlet

Here is one I saw last saturday plugged in a new Autolib Station at Mairie de Paris








Focus on the Charging Options of the Blue Car: Wallbox @ 1,000 EUR, portable EVSE @ 700 EUR, or Autolib Station @ 15 EUR/month



More info on the BlueCar on BlueCar.fr

LiFePO4 DIY ESS - Added the 4 remaining Relays to the Control Board

So my goal of 8 relays fro GTIs and 6 relays for Chargers is reached and I will have to test this once the CALB batteries are charged

All wired to the Arduino board

BTW, the bottom balancing step is almost complete, with each cell showing 2.75V, but I still had some showing 2.76V or 2.77V last night, so I had to lower them again; This morning, afer a night of rest , no cell is above 2.75V; If tonight they remain at this low level, I will have finished the bottom balancing step and will move to the charging step ... 

Pack voltage shows 22.0V and all cells are at 2.75V

Nissan Passes 50,000 LEAFs Sold Worldwide

For anyone who follows plug-in sales numbers religiously, they knew this milestone was coming; apparently it was also not lost on Nissan as well.

Nissan says that as of Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2013, the company has sold 50,000 all-electric LEAFs. And while perhaps it was a little slower than originally expected, it is still a remarkable achievement given that before this decade began, there was virtually no electric vehicles at all.

Nissan Passes 50,000 LEAFs Sold Worldwide

“Today the 100% electric Nissan LEAF marked another milestone in the history of EVs as it passed the 50,000 sales mark, reinforcing its position as the best selling electric vehicle of all time.”

- A total distance of more than 260 million km (161 million miles)* has been driven in LEAFs. A fact which Nissan notes is “greater than the distance from the earth to the sun (and) all of these kilometers were covered with zero tailpipe emissions, contributing to government’s efforts to reduce levels of harmful NOx and particulate matter in cities.”Nissan also takes some time to add some random data points from the 50,000 LEAFs sold:

- The highest mileage LEAF globally has been revealed as a Japanese customer who has covered more than 175,000 km (108,700 miles)

- In 17 European countries, 7,000 cars are being driven every day, with one customer in Spain has already clocked up over 43,000 km in one year

With the introduction of a much lower priced, entry level, S model LEAF being introduced around the world ($28,800 in the US), we expect that it will take Nissan a lot less time to achieve the next 50,000 sales of its electric car.

*Figures are based on all LEAFs registered with the Carwings telemetry system, which is not mandatory and not all vehicles are registered.


Source: InsideEVs

New York City To Add 10,000 Public Charging Spots

Currently, New York has about 100 public charging stations. But in a speech planned for later today, Mayor Bloomberg is announcing a plan to bring in a lot more.

Mayor Bloomberg To Announce New “Green Initiatives” 

For New York Today (photo via NY Daily News)

In total, the new plan calls for 10,000 new charging stations to be installed over the next seven years.

As part of the plan, and by working with the City Council, the Mayor plans to change the city’s building code so that 1 in every 5 new parking spaces will include a curbside charging station.

“(We will) make New York City a national leader in electric vehicles,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

The First Nissan e-NV200 “Taxi Of Tomorrow” 
Gets Delivered To New York Earlier Last Year

Seperately, the city is planning on collecting data from a pilot program in Manhattan that would see two fast chargers installed.

The first of the fast chargers is available to the public, with the other strictly used for taxi drivers, and theNissan e-NV200 electric van test fleet in NYC.

Previously: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that $4.4 million has been awarded to ten companies, municipalities and other entities to enable more than 325 new electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations to be installed across New York State

“With New Yorkers facing higher prices at the pump, the state is stepping up to make owning an electric vehicle an affordable and convenient option,” Governor Cuomo said. “Creating an infrastructure to accommodate electric vehicles will create jobs and new economic development across the state, while reducing our carbon footprint and helping protect the environment.”
AP via WSJ, photo via NYDailyNews, and a hat tip to Alan for the Gov. Cuomo media release.



Sources: InsideEVs 

California Sets 50MW Target for Grid Energy Storage

Moving past “paralysis by analysis,” the CPUC asks Southern California Edison to find 50MW of grid energy storage by 2021

California has just set a big new target for energy storage on the grid -- 50 megawatts of it, to be exact.

That’s how much energy storage capacity the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is asking Southern California Edison to procure over the next eight years, according to a final decision issued Wednesday. It’s not a lot, compared to the total of 1,400 to 1,800 megawatts CPUC is asking the massive Southern California utility to procure between now and 2021 -- but it's still among the first, if not the first, state regulatory rulings that put grid storage at center stage.

The new decision also certifies energy storage as “preferred resources,” alongside energy efficiency, demand response and distributed generation resources, in California's Energy Action Plan, which tells utilities in which order they’re to buy the power and energy resources they need. Wednesday’s decision sets aside an additional 600 megawatts of capacity for SCE to obtain from such preferred resources.

All in all, it’s a “much-needed market signal that energy storage will be considered as a key asset class to help California address its long-term local reliability and environmental quality needs,” according to Janice Lin, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA). CESA’s member list includes some heavyweights in batteries (LG Chem, Panasonic, Saft), as well as two ice-energy air-conditioning storage players that happen to have significant operations in California: Calmac and Ice Energy.

Wednesday’s CPUC ruling comes amidst a years-long process to set energy storage requirements for the state as it grapples with the challenges of its renewable portfolio standard (RPS) ambitions. California wants to grow its share of grid power from renewable resources (mostly intermittent wind and solar, though some baseload geothermal and biomass as well) from about 20 percent today to 33 percent by decade’s end.

That’s going to introduce huge new stability problems for the grid. Energy storage expert Ed Cazalet has predicted that California could need up to 4 gigawatts of energy storagecapacity to help reach the 33 percent RPS, with both centralized, utility-scale wind power and distributed solar power as key factors to manage.

California Assembly Bill 2514, passed in 2010, called for a study of the state’s needs for grid-scale storage, but didn’t set any hard numbers on how much. The CPUC took up the issue last year, and it’s still in process.

Southern California Edison, along with big fellow state investor-owned utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric, have opposed specific procurement mandates. SCE wrote in a CPUC filing that mandates “only serve to increase the return on investment of private storage developers,” while distorting the market for energy storage technologies not yet competitive in purer market terms.

There’s no doubt that many forms of energy storage -- batteries, in particular -- remain too expensive to compete against grid power. Where batteries have been deployed is in trouble spots on the grid: far-off distribution substations where batteries are cheaper than putting in new transmission lines to handle rare peak loads, or islanded grids (like Hawaii) facing an influx of on-again, off-again wind and solar power.

Of course, utilities also don’t want to be forced to engage with storage resources they don’t control -- and it’s likely they will need to be forced to open the market to third-party storage projects that work in the context of broader energy markets. Where storage is an intelligent alternative to transmission or generation build-out, and can help integrate renewables, it should be deployed. Of course, cheap natural gas also makes the status-quo approach of using peaker plants a potentially attractive option, though not so much in California, where clean air rules are the toughest in the nation.

CPUC Commissioner Michel Peter Florio, who authored Wednesday’s decision, called it a testament to the state's need to "move beyond paralysis by analysis with respect to energy storage" -- an apparent sign of impatience with the slow approach being taken to AB 2514 implementation. We’ll see if the CPUC applies similar logic to decisions for PG&E and SDG&E.

California is home to several large-scale energy storage project funded by Department of Energy smart grid stimulus grants. PG&E is building a 300-megawatt, 10-hour compressed air energy storage (CAES) system in the Central Valley, and Southern California Edison has been working with A123 Systems on an 8-megawatt, 32 megawatt-hour lithium-ion batterywarehouse of sorts in the Tehachapi mountain range. Both are aimed at stabilizing and integrating the state’s wind power resources into the grid.

We’re also seeing some examples of distributed energy storage emerge, though far smaller in scope and just getting started, with everything from backyard or garage batteries to backup solar installations (Tesla and SolarCity, Silent Power and Hanwha) to substation-scale grid balancing units in the 1-2 megawatt range (Greensmith and SDG&E).

Source: GreenTech Media

Some more Electronic Components arrived in the mail last night

Last night, I received some more components to continue building the new DIY ESS Control Board: relays, straps, wires, etc

At the same time, I continued the bottom balancing of the rest of the cells and started over with the first ones which show, a day later, 2.77V to 2.81V

Bottom Balancing night

Last night, I continued draining the brand new CALB Battery pack, by setting a lower limit of 22.5V on the programmable dual relay voltmeter and watch carefully that the cells were going down at the same pace; 

Once the pack voltage reached this 22.5V, all cells were around 2.81V and the relay opened, opening the Tyco Kilovac contactor, stopping the cell's bleeding: Cells voltage immediatly bounced back to 2.90, 2.95 and a little later they were all around 3V

Then I started to bottom balance each cell, using my low cost bottom balancer

I had to cut the voltage reading wires and use other smaller clamps to get the voltage from the cell terminals directly - and not from the draining clamps, giving an inaccurate lower voltage -; I then changed the lower limit from 2.45V to 2.73V and upper limit to 2.76V

With this modification, the cell is really drained until its voltage reaches 2.73V, then it bounces back up slowly to 2.76V, at this point the relay kicks in and the resistor bleeds the cell again down to 2.73V, etc
I end up at 2.75V for each cell very effectively now

New crocodile clamps for direct terminal voltage reading, much better ...

This morning I have 5 cells done out of 8 ... but resting all day the cells will be back to maybe 2.80 something tonight, and I will go through the bottom balancing process again