The Cooperative Research Network along with four electric cooperatives are conducting one of the nation’s largest and most geographically diverse tests in a two-year study of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). In this “Special Report” published in the February issue of RE Magazine, Peter Nye provides an intriguing account of developments emerging from the research.
According to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit utility-sponsored consortium in Palo Alto, PHEV’s can supply part of the answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The EPRI roadmap to reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2030 sets a goal of ten percent market penetration for PHEV’s by 2017.
By driving prototypes and collecting data on mileage and performance, Jackson Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) in Georgia is helping make that goal possible. The cooperative is testing one of a handful of after-market retrofits, a Toyota Prius. Alan Shedd, a commercial-industrial marketing engineer at Jackson EMC who drives the car all over the Jackson service territory outside Atlanta. Shedd has logged 30,000 miles since the conversion.
The converted Prius runs on a lithium-ion battery that recharges in four hours from a standard 120-volt house outlet, using about 40 cents of electricity. “If you’re driving in the range of 25 to 30 miles, the battery will power the car so you get infinite mileage – you’re burning electricity instead of gas,” Shedd explained. At this stage in development, however, the battery and conversion package increases the cost of the car by about fifty percent.
Basin Electric Power, a multi-state generation and transmission cooperative in North Dakota, Four County EMC in North Carolina, and Salem Electric in Oregon are also participating in the study. In 2008, the study will expand to include three more converted cars to be tested by Central G&T in South Carolina, Central Indiana Power in Indiana, and Bluegrass Energy in Kentucky.
Excerpted with permission from the February 2008 issue of Rural Electric Magazine © National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.