Response to Big Wind

There were a number of emails relating to the posting on Big Wind a few weeks ago and I would like to make some clarifications.  My numbers were off, primarily based on the fact that “retail” rates for electricity such as you and I pay, are much higher than the wholesale rate which utilities pay.  The actual cost of electricity is around 4 to 5 cents depending on a variety of conditions that can influence the rate.  Based on that fact, the estimated payback for a large scale wind turbine is 2.5 times longer than my estimate in the posting.

In an effort to check the facts, I visited the American Wind Energy Association website.  There is a brief article (www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/EconomicsOfWind-Feb2005.pdf)  that goes into some detail on the costs of large wind projects.  I used some of that information for a reality check.  They put a utility scale project analysis in the article that starts with a 50 MW capacity.  They say that a project this size would probably cost around $65 million to install.  I put in the recently published national average $1.93 million dollars per megawatt and got $96 million, a whole lot more expensive.

If the turbines are located on a site with wind available 35% of the time, and that’s a big number, the site should generate 150 million kilowatt hours per year.  The revenue will be around $6 to $6.75 million dollars a year not including maintenance, property taxes, management costs, etc.  Best case, the project will break even in about 10 or 11 years.  Worst case, 15 or more. Don’t know if the life expectancy of the equipment is 20 or 25 years.  I’ll check into that.

And by the way, medium size photovoltaic projects operate on about the same basis.  They are too expensive to make it worthwhile to take your home off the grid.  So the DOE’s “Million Roofs on Solar” project is doomed.  You can legislate a program, but you can’t make it work unless it pays for itself.  And the government doesn’t have enough money to pay for it for you.

These are really big numbers to be tossing around, and it makes me uncomfortable that the mainstream press doesn’t report on the facts.  Maybe that’s too much to ask.  It is a somewhat technical subject.

OK.  Here’s the real point.  The projects have many financial incentives like State and Federal subsidies, accelerated depreciation and investment tax credits helping to subsidize the costs.  That’s how we get to payback periods of 6 to 8 years.    So my math was wrong, but the final results are as represented.

When politicians make policy without facts, it comes out wrong.  Wind is great.  I am an avid wind energy enthusiast.  But we cannot create these massive alternative energy industries with billions of dollars of commerce that require government subsidies in order to operate.

I have done some numerical analysis of the wind energy problem and there are solutions that will result in 2 year paybacks for investors.  We need more innovation that integrates financial responsibility in the equation.  This is the kind of engineering that is self sustaining and will result in new jobs without government subsidies.

More on Electric Cars

Hoping to set the electric car story straight, I wrote last week about the Chevy Volt.  But some context may be necessary to make the distinctions more clear.  Currently the Toyota Prius and various of the Honda cars have what is called “parallel hybrid” drivetrains.  These are systems where the car can run on a combustion engine and drivetrain, or it can operate on an electric motor and drivetrain.  And there is a complex balancing act required to get the best mileage out of the vehicle.  Some of that balancing act is based on the programming of the 4 Power PC modules which control the vehicle and make some of the decisions about which system is operating, and some of the performance is based on the driver’s ability to control the vehicle to help achieve the best mileage possible.

So let’s put this in context.  The obvious goal of electric car engineering is to achieve a pure electric vehicle which is one that runs off of a battery pack and nothing else.  But the automotive community put an artificial performance metric of 400 miles per charge in order for an electric car to be equivalent to a combustion powered vehicle.  Because a minivan with 26 gallons of gasoline can drive 468 miles without refueling.

But how many times do we need to go 468 miles.  At 65 miles an hour that would be 7.2 hours.  That’s not a typical daily commute for most people.  So some of the smart marketeers in the smaller companies started saying, we can do shorter range vehicles because an average commute of 60 miles one way is only 120 miles a day, and if we can achieve that range, then the owner can charge the car overnight.  So there began to be a number “out of the box” thinkers offering to manufacture the NEV – the neighborhood electric vehicle.  And a new industry was born based on the golf carts and industrial vehicles that have been around for year.  And yes, they can get you to the grocery store and back.  The Th!nk vehicle which was purchased for sale by Ford for the US market, will be back next year with a 120 mile per day pure electric vehicle.  The Tesla Roadster is a pure electric vehicle.

If you consider electric cars in comparison to combustion vehicles you have to have a different system.  The California Air Resource Board considers ZEV – Zero Emission Vehicles (which is intended to mean pure battery electric) and NZEV – Near Zero Emission Vehicles (which is intended to mean hybrids) as the major categories.  Their measuring stick is the amount of CO2 and NO per mile driven is being put into California’s air.   Different perspective.

But no one developing these technologies could forsee the ingenious variations that were spawned by government funded development programs.  There is an electric starter/alternator that was developed to sit where the clutch used to go in one demonstration program.  It could start the engine in 20 milliseconds and generate electricity or act as a motor and electric power assist the drivetrain.  You could stop the engine at traffic lights and as soon as you put your foot on the gas, take off again.  Very clever.  Great mileage too!

But all the recent “catch up” activity is a by product of the lithium battery.  We knew, back in the 1990’s that the battery mass fraction was the key.  Lead Acid batteries are too heavy.  GM found that out with their Lead Acid EV-1.  We knew that if we could get a 4 times improvement in energy density, anything was possible.  And indeed, it appears that the age of the electric car is upon us.

Factory Automation Systems Inc. announces an addition

Atlanta, GA – Factory Automation Systems (FAS) has announced the addition of Ron Potter as Director of Robotic Technologies.

Mr. Potter has over 40 years experience in the robotics industry and has been involved in the development and implementation of 2000+ robotics applications.  Mr. Potter will be responsible for further developing growth of the robotic applications segment of FAS’ automation business.

Ross Pryor, President of Factory Automation Systems, says “Ron’s knowledge and expertise of industrial robotics applications is well-recognized by his peers, as evidenced by his receipt of the Joseph F. Engelberger Award for Robotic Applications.”  “He is a welcomed addition to our professional Sales staff”, states Mark Ligler, Vice President.

Robotic applications include palletizing, material handling, and the FAS FlexTend™ Robotic Machine Tending System—a pre-engineered integrated robotic solution designed specifically to automate machine tool loading/unloading applications with significant reduction of custom engineering.  Proven, reliable solutions reduce risk and debug time!  FAS has a large library of robot end-of-arm tooling.

Factory Automation Systems Inc.

www.factoryautomation.com

The Volt Can Transform Detroit

A lot of press lately has been has circulating about the upcoming release of the Chevy Volt electric car.  While I tend to be skeptical, and frequently critical of the automotive industry, this time I am critical of the critics.  They don’t seem to understand the subject.  And it’s easy to read a claim like 230 miles per gallon and just freak out.

When I was involved in the electric car industry, the parallel hybrid didn’t exist.  It was considered to complex to be reliable and probably a lot less efficient, so no one was pursuing it.  Leave it to our friends in Japan to master the ultimately complex and make it reasonable.  More to their credit is that Prius owners who have been interviewed recently reported very high satisfaction with their car’s performance and reliability.  Having reviewed the vehicle’s engine and controls architecture from SAE documents prior to it’s release, I was very concerned about how two complete drivetrain systems being controlled by 4 Power PC modules (each equal to a MAC laptop computer) would fare in the long haul.  So far so good.  Although I remain skeptical about who will fix them if they do break down.  (me, skeptical?)

But the recent controversy about the Volt is really a problem because it is misinformed.  The greatest feature of the car is it’s simplicity.   It is a simple hybrid, a battery powered drivetrain with an engine generator to supplement the power required.   Let me suggest a couple of equivalent technologies that us a similar drivetrain; the diesel electric locomotive and the two story tall 35 ton earth moving loader which have been around for decades.  An on-board engine generator makes electricity and the wheels are turned by electric motors with gear reduction systems.  The power train is completely drive-by-wire.  No mechanical linkage from the engine to the wheel.  Which makes engine operation extremely efficient.

In the case of the Volt there is an interposing technology, the lithium battery pack which will power the car with no fuel usage for 40 miles.  So here comes the really tricky part.  How many miles per gallon does it get?  Well, the recently reported 230 miles per gallon has really raised some eyebrows.  And I was pretty skeptical (surprised?) until I read the EPA discussion of methodology.

It’s simple.  You start with 40 miles of battery capacity and no gasoline usage.  If you drive 50 miles to work, depending on the drive cycle you might end up with 30 miles on battery, to maximize battery life, and 20 miles on gasoline.  That would be .4 gallons assuming the published 50 mpg for the vehicle running with the generator on.  At $3. per gallon that would be $1.20 worth of gasoline in one direction.  If you charge at work, it’s the same thing going home.  So you’ve driven 100 miles a day on .8 gallons of gasoline.  Which is 125 miles per gallon equivalent.  Cool!

Notice I didn’t provide a cost per mile driven.  At 50 miles per gallon with $3./gal gasoline, it’s only 6 cents a mile WHILE THE GENERATOR IS RUNNING.  If the car had no batteries, 50 miles per gallon is better than anything on the market.  And better than most parallel hybrid vehicles.  No transmission system, no drive shaft, no differential, substantially lower vehicle weight, all of which spells reliable.

The real point of the Volt, as a “true” hybrid electric, is it’s simplicity and reliability.  As battery technology continues to improve, we will surely see pure “plug in” electric cars, but the Volt is a great solution that we can use right away until that day comes.

The Volt may be a new page in the history of the automobile, transposed and modernized from the electric vehicle industry of 100 years ago.  It still has the power to transform the car making business.  And right now, that’s also something we all need.

OEM’s and Control

I have had number of occasions to be involved in helping clients with control systems where several hundred to several thousand systems per year were going to be manufactured.  Over the years, I have done several market research projects on the economics of machinery building.   The Department of Commerce reports on quite a few industry segments and I haven’t come up with a total, but, so far, the segments I have looked at total in the tens of billions of dollars.

Machinery building is a very tough business for a variety of reasons.  It’s all about price and performance.  And there’s always competition.  For example, in electronic assembly machinery, the customer is paying for 10’s of thousands of part placements per hour.  The more throughput, the higher the price.  And the greater the complexity of the machine.  Doesn’t matter if you’re baking cookies or making cars.  It’s all about throughput and cost.

Machinery building, at a minimum, involves mechanical and electrical disciplines.  Many other technologies may be required depending on the situation.  Even though the system may be predominantly electrical and mechanical, there may be sub systems that are hydraulic or pneumatic.  So like all mechatronic systems, there can be a broad range of technologies involved.

Each machinery market involves years of learning and development in order to achieve the cost performance that makes it successful.  And sometimes that involves development of control strategies that are proprietary or operating code that is root of unique performance advantages.

The amount of control gear going into the machinery markets is also very significant.  The Department of Commerce tracks significant inputs to the businesses it reports on if the commodity is significant.  And one consistent feature of the machinery manufacturers is that they purchase a lot of motors and electrical control equipment.

Traditional electrical manufacturers sell a lot of control equipment.  But there seems to be a gap in the ability of traditional control vendors to be able to supply cost-effective solutions for machinery builders.  And this has contributed to a broad division in how engineers choose to solve their control applications.  The type of control selected may be dictated by several external factors, one of which is the need to connect to existing plant control systems.

And as control systems are increasingly more data centric, the need for higher level communications make traditional control solutions subject to substitution by PC and embedded control systems.  This trend has some history in semiconductor machinery industry.

And it may be coming to an application near you.  More processor choices at lower prices are coming to the market all the time.  Real Time operating systems with mission critical reliability are becoming competitive.  So the options, and the prices, are becoming more attractive.  With the right network, lots of options need to be explored.

Motion Control and Communications

I used to caution customers, actually I preferred to talk customers out of the idea of using control networks with motion control applications.  But having been around motion control, now mechatronics, for 30 years, a lot of things have changed.  In fact, the whole game has changed.

Motion control has always been challenging to control systems because it is the hardest of hard real time applications.  But our notion of time has changed.  The processors that manage electronically commutated motors operate at 50mHz with incredible code efficiency, requiring nonosecond precision oscilloscopes to measure events.  Considering that we used to be thrilled at the prospect of controlling things in the microsecond world, I’d say that’s game-changing (another over-used catch phrase).

So corresponding changes in the communications realms shouldn’t be a surprise.   Though I think that we hadn’t even invented Ethernet 30 years ago.  But ignoring that detail, we’ve seen Ethernet technology bloom from a mere megabit per second to Gigabit Ethernet.  Bandwidth is not a problem.  And with universal adoption of the technology by business and telephone communications systems, the cost of the physical layer and connectors have dropped to incredibly low levels.  As you would expect.

In fact, Ethernet is so cost effective, it’s starting to take over the industrial control landscape.  To the point where Ethernet connectors are available for dust tight and wash down environments.  That’s pretty extreme for a consumer grade communications platform.  But that’s wasn’t my primary point.

The dilemma for applying a communications protocol to motion control is it’s ability to move data faster than the synchronous control of the motor.  So industrial networks, even at a few megahertz, can’t keep up.  Particularly when there are two axes of motion which must coordinate their relative motion at the update rate of their position feedback sensors.  And in the case of linear motors with extremely high resolution tape scale encoders, you can end up in situations where the feedback is running 20 mHz.  So good luck coordinating 2 or 3 linear motor axes.

But, of course, we do this kind of thing every day.  With micro controllers.  But not with networks.  But what if you could?  It’s coming soon.  IEEE-1588 is a time synchronous version of Ethernet that permits precise coordination of data movement over Ethernet.  And it’s compatible with existing Ethernet networks.  Sounds like a pretty good deal.  And that makes it a workable solution for coordinated axes of motion control.  It’s been tested at a technical university in Zurich Switzerland.  And like good solutions, may have many other applications.  Look for it in new motor control products coming soon.