Author: Jonny Hankins

Jonathan's Author Bio: Co Editor of the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, and author of Responsible Innovation, A Narrative Approach, Jonny works for the Bassetti Foundation in Milan publishing articles on innovation and responsibility on their website and in academic and trade journals and also blogging about his interests. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and member of the the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation

Some Thoughts on Fast Charging for Electric Vehicles

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

Practical Questions

Living in 2 countries simultaneously (Italy and The Netherlands) means that I tend to travel long distances by car. This year I have driven between homes 4 times, and a couple of years ago it became apparent that soon I would need a better car.

This brought me to looking around and the possibility of energy choice, could I buy an electric car?

As I travel up and down Europe I have noticed that there are a lot of electric fast charging stations appearing. The majority service a corridor that runs from the South of the UK through the Netherlands and Germany and down to Switzerland. This is my route so (today) that certainly looks possible.

But how long would I have to stop in order to charge the car? Well not very long it appears.

I could charge the car with a 350 KW CCS system in a very short time, in 20 minutes I could have the car 80% charged and ready to go.

Just enough time for a coffee and sandwich.

What is on Offer?

I was pleased to discover that there is a new charging station round the corner from my house, so I went to investigate. The station is on a sider road in an industrial area, just off a major route. It is small, minimalist, but that should not lead to too many assumptions, as this little point offers a host of charging capabilities.

CCS: 50 KW

CCS: 175 Kw

CCS: 350 Kw

CCS: 350 Kw

Plus a 50 Kw CHA de MO system.

Well I was not sure what all of that meant, but I understand that it requires a lot of potential capacity: 970 Kw of potential.

In my house in Italy I have a 3 Kw contract, I cannot extract more from the grid without it throwing the switch. I could pay more and have access to a higher load, but it isn’t necessary. In the Netherlands I have a 3 Kw solar system that covers all of my needs.

So the little charging station down the road has the potential of about 323 of my average houses. So not only does it require serious infrastructure in its building, but it is also a source of power drainage and loss that should not be underestimated.

For example 5 to 7% of the original primary energy is lost during the delivery of electricity through the transmission and distribution system. The energy becomes waste heat released in the air due to line losses and conversion losses in transformers and other line equipment.  And this type of capacity is not available everywhere, even in the Netherlands, as this article about parts of Amsterdam explains (Amsterdam Power Grid at Maximum Capacity).

Geopolitical Questions

I imagine that most of the charging will take place during the day, this is a high energy use period however meaning the local system might already be running at high capacity. But that is also the time that solar energy is produced, so maybe the percentage of renewable energy might be higher.

Or maybe the move towards the exponential expansion of these facilities will require a rethinking of how energy is produced (better not to go down that road).

According to this study, the EU will require 1.3 million of these charging stations by 2025, and 1.8 billion Euros of investment. This may sound a lot but it is only about 3% of its annual transport infrastructure costs.

Or will these costs be borne by the electric companies, and their customers?

And who will pay for the expansion beyond the richer countries and what will the geopolitical effects be?

Charging the car from solar panels on the roof of your house in one thing, almost circular, but the mass development and deployment of this kind of infrastructure raises a host of socio-technical and political questions.

The Future of Electric Shipping

3 Replies Jonny Hankins

Electric cars are becoming common to see in Europe these days, but did you know that electric shipping is on the horizon? And like cars these will also move into the realms of autonomy. And this is much close than you think!

At the end of last year, shipbuilder VARD delivered Yara Birkeland, a zero-emissions container vessel, to Yara International, a Norwegian fertiliser company. Its maiden voyage was manned, but this 80m-long, 15m-wide container ship is expected to gradually shift from manned to fully autonomous operations by 2022.

The ship has a been specifically designed for a particular purpose. It will transport cargo between Yara’s fertiliser plant in Porsgrunn to the Brevik and Larvik ports in Norway, which is expected to take approximately 40,000 truck journeys off the road annually and reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

This is interesting because this is a short route, so rather than having to imagine designing a ship that could sail half way round the world, the builders have designed something that can make short trips by sea, similar to the short-range electric delivery vehicles that we see making home deliveries from supermarkets in Europe.

And this is reflected in its surprisingly small power-pack. This little beast has a 7MWH battery capacity (about 100 large electric cars) and promises to be entirely emission free, which is important if you know that shipping emits over 1 billion tonnes a year of CO2 and is growing — and already produces more than all but the top five individual country emitters.

Although the project is still very much a work in progress, its an exciting prospect as currently 90% of the world’s goods are moved by sea and with shipping generating between 2% and 3% of all global emisions this must be a welcome move.

Before you go, take a look at the other posts on this website about electric transport.

The Earth BioGenome Project (and Some Questions it Raises)

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

This week I want to take a look at the Earth Biogenome Project, and pass on some comments that I heard at a recent conference.

The Earth Biogenome Project aims to sequence the DNA of all life on Earth in the coming ten years in order to benefit human welfare, protect biodiversity and help in understanding ecosystems.

The following comes from the project press release from its launch:

An international consortium of scientists is proposing what is arguably the most ambitious project in the history of biology: sequencing the DNA of all known eukaryotic species on Earth. 

The benefits of the monumental initiative promise to be a complete transformation of the scientific understanding of life on Earth and a vital new resource for global innovations in medicine, agriculture, conservation, technology and genomics.

The central goal of the Earth BioGenome Project is to understand the evolution and organization of life on our planet by sequencing and functionally annotating the genomes of 1.5 million known species of eukaryotes, a massive group that includes plants, animals, fungi and other organisms whose cells have a nucleus that houses their chromosomal DNA. To date, the genomes of less than 0.2 percent of eukaryotic species have been sequenced. 

The project also seeks to reveal some of the estimated 10 million to 15 million unknown species of eukaryotes, most of which are single cell organisms, insects and small animals in the oceans. The genomic data will be a freely available resource for scientific discovery and the resulting benefits shared with countries and indigenous communities where biodiversity is sourced. Researchers estimate the proposed initiative will take 10 years and cost approximately $4.7 billion.  

What and Undertaking! And what promise!

As regular readers will know, my interest in technology is focused on ethics, and such a project raises a few questions that I would like to leave you with (as raised by Tess Doezema in her recent presentation at the European Biotechnology in Society Seminar.

  1. Ethical guidelines and frameworks for research into humans are generally based on the idea of informed consent: the researcher informs the participants about the implications of the research and the participants accept the possible outcomes. This model is difficult to apply however to other natural objects (such as animals). What should guidelines look like?
  2. The aim of the project seems to be preserving species. The website shows lots of statistics related to how many types of animal have become and will become extinct in the near future, leading me to conclude that de-extinction plays a role in the project. But that is problematic in itself. It raises the question of whether conservation practices will be improved or lessened, after all if we can bring an extinct animal back to life maybe we will not work as hard to save it!
  3. What are the implications for creating a global market for the DNA of all living things?

I look forward to comments and suggestions.