This week on the Power Hour we have Doug Stansfield who talks about converting a gasoline car to electricity. Doug has gone on to forming a company that does plug-in conversions for the Prius, does full electric conversions of cars and has a system to make delivery trucks into hybrids. Come get the perspective of someone who has done it by himself, plus all the tidbits that will help you in your conversion. Even if you aren't doing a conversion listening in will give you a new found respect for what is involved in doing a conversion.
Don't just listen to the EVcast -- experience and be a part of it! Join us at 1:00pm Eastern, M-F, in our live video broadcast and chat along with us!
I'm still keeping an eye on those EV grins! I found Doug's interview interesting, very interesting.
Phil Galati
quote comment add new comment
Joe, Despite the editing problems, I really enjoyed your podcast. Always nice to hear what converters are up to.
With regard to the Binary Cycle Geothermal plants, let me try one more time.
I think you are correct when you say that a binary cycle plant is probably not any more expensive to build than a normal high temperature steam plant.
Let's say that the plant costs $200M to build.
If it is a high temperature plant, it will be about 30% efficient and deliver 100 MW.
If it is a low temperature plant, it will be about 10% efficient and deliver 33 MW.
So the high temperature plant is $2000/KW and the low temperature (binary) plant is $6000/KW. The low temperature plant is 3 times more expensive per unit of electricity produced. If the high temperature geothermal plant produces electricity at $0.10/KWH then the low temperature binary plant will produce electricity at $0.30/KWH, i.e. really really expensive.
This is necessarily oversimplified, but they broad strokes are correct. The following wikipedia entry shows the efficiency of geothermal binary plants to be between 10-13%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_cycle_power_plant
Later
John C. Briggs