http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=835

Soon I won't be able reproduce the entire text of articles like this, which
are Premium Features...
And f you become a premium member of EVWorld.com ($29/year), you can
hear/download 25 minute interview (mp3).

PHOTO CAPTION: DaimlerChrysler is experimenting with a MercedesBenz
Sprinter plug-in hybrid, which derives some of its motive energy from
batteries like an electric car, but has a conventional internal combustion
engine to provide additional driving range. This is the first official
Electric Hybrid program by a major car company. Two groups in California
are conducting similar engineering development work using the Toyota Prius,
which already has some limited electric-only driving range built into it.

Austin Strikes Up The Band for Plug-In Hybrids

By Bill Moore

Austin Energy's Roger Duncan clears the air and strikes up the band for
hybrid cars you can plug into your home

April 06, 2005

There's "trouble" brewing in Texas and it isn't the Travis County grand
jury investigation of Senate Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

This particular dust-up started in that dad-gum, left-leaning, "blueberry
in the ketchup" city of Austin, which also happens to be the state capitol,
where the power company is a public utility called – what else? -- Austin
Energy. (I want so much to call it Austin Power!) It seems the city fathers
recently decided to officially endorse the idea of plug-in hybrids.

Now, before we start talking to one of the chief instigators, Austin
Energy's Roger Duncan, let me explain the difference between a normal
gasoline-electric hybrid and an "Electric [plug-in] Hybrid", or what is
sometimes referred to as a grid-connected hybrid or as they like to call it
in Austin, a gas-optional hybrid. Myself, I am partial to "Electric Hybrid"
'cause it puts the focus on the electric part more than the gasoline part.

A plug-in or "Electric Hybrid" lets you choose which fuel you want to use,
either electricity or gasoline and its biofuel substitutes like ethanol. Is
that really possible, you may ask?

Darn tooting! And some folks out in the 'Terminator' state of California --
wouldn't you know it -- are tinkering with the batteries and hacking the
computer code of on a couple of them fancy Toyota Priuses, but that's
another couple of stories. (See: EV World's new segment: Electric [Plug-In]
Hybrids for links.)

Clearing Up The Confusion
Several weeks ago, a newspaper story appeared that reported the City of
Austin was prepared to offer substantial rebates for purchases of plug-in
hybrids. EV World linked to and archived the story, which very quickly
precipitated a hasty email from a reader at Austin Energy who asked us to
remove the link because the story was not factually correct. We immediately
responded, but the first question I wanted to ask Roger Duncan was what
were the facts.

"Austin Energy is a public utility, and our mayor and city council...
agreed that we wanted to put together an incentive package for plug-in
hybrids. As part of that package, Austin Energy will pull together a
package of rebates for the first plug-in hybrids that come into our service
area. We have not determined the level of rebates or how many there would be.

"I gave an example during a talk recently that, for example, we may give a
$1000 to each owner of a new plug-in hybrid for the first thousand vehicles
that came into our service area; and that would be a $1 million set aside.
That, unfortunately, was printed as fact, when I was using it as an
example. But we have determined that we will be giving rebates in the
future. We just have not yet determined the amount or the date", Duncan
explained.

Goal to Be Clean Energy Capital of the World
Austin Energy is the tenth largest public power utility in the United
States. Overseen by the major and city council who sit on the utility board
of directors, Austin Energy generates nearly all of its own electric power,
nearly equally divided in thirds between coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

"We also sell a lot of renewable energy", he pointed out to me. "In fact,
the last three years we have sold more renewable energy than any other
utility in the country. Primarily, it's wind from west Texas that we
transmit in. We have also been a very aggressive energy efficiency, energy
conservation company for many years and are generally recognized in the
field as a progressive utility".

While returning home from the Fuel Cell Forum in San Antonio last November,
my wife and I drove past many of those wind turbines. Duncan said that
Austin now purchases some 200 megawatts of power from those very same wind
farms, as part of its goal to be known as the "Clean Energy Capital of the
World".

It's that ambitious goal that eventually led to the mayor and city council
endorsing the plug-in hybrid concept.

"The mayor and council asked us what else we could do to really ramp it
up", Duncan said.

"After looking at things, I came back and told council that we would
continue to expand our renewables and conservation, but that we really were
not doing anything in the transportation area more so than any other city,
in my opinion. As we began to look into it further, I also told council
that I thought that eventually there would be a unification of the
transportation and electric sectors for a variety of reasons.

"So, the council passed a resolution July of last year (2004) asking us to
look into unification of the transportation and electric sectors, and its
impact on Austin Energy. And when we got into that, we became very excited
over plug-in hybrids... We came back and told the council that we thought
that the hybrids that are on the roads today were sort of the first step
towards unifying with the electric sector, but plug-in hybrids would
provide a cheaper cost for our customers, extra revenue for the utility,
cleaner air for our city; and that eventually we thought that this was the
way that the transportation sector had to go".

Interestingly, despite Texas' reputation as the world center for the oil
and gas industry, Duncan observed that the state has more renewable energy
resources from wind, solar and biomass than it has in its remaining fossil
fuel reserves.

Austin Energy's Vision of the Wind-Powered FFPHEV
Okay, I know that's a mouthful of an acronym. It stands for "Flexible Fuel
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle". This is Austin Energy's dream machine --
and that of an increasing number of influential Washington, D.C. policy makers.

"By that we mean a vehicle that has a flexible fuel internal combustion
engine that can burn either gasoline or E85 or other mixes and has the
capability of being plugged into the electric grid to charge the battery.
It's pretty much that simple," he explained. "We're not getting into
detailed specs on the size of the battery or electric drive... We just want
the basic concept that you can plug it in any electric grid and at the same
time, you can drive it off an internal combustion engine and have that
flexibility.

"The advantages that we saw were several", Duncan continued. "First, when
we did calculations on the cost to our consumers if they were able to plug
in a vehicle overnight, we found that they would get... the equivalent of
about 56 cents a gallon of gasoline for driving in an all-electric
operating range. So, that got us very excited".

"Then we looked at the emission characteristics and we recognized that as I
mentioned earlier, we sell a lot of green power and our wind comes in
primarily at night as opposed to a hot summer afternoon, which is Austin's
peak loads. So, we were excited about the prospect that we could take in
even more wind at night for our night-time base loads and charge the
vehicles and essentially have wind-powered cars".

Duncan explained that shifting to plug-in hybrids offered the opportunity
to also replace downtown auto exhaust emissions, where the city has
difficulty meeting federal ozone standards with remote power plant
smokestacks, whose emissions the utility could better control. And in the
case of power generated by wind, solar and nuclear, there would be no
emissions.

"We even did some preliminary calculations on our coal plant and we're
optimistic that when others do the calculation there may even be some total
emission offsets even from coal, if it's properly done".

What would Duncan like to see in the way of electric-only range in an
electric plug-in hybrid? He responded that he thought a 40 mile
electric-only range would be adequate to meet most Austin residents'
driving needs. He also conceded that the concept of plugging in a hybrid
car is really so new that most people in his community are still just
getting familiar with the notion of gasoline-electric hybrids.

Plug-In Vs. Plug-Free Hybrids
As you might expect, Duncan is cognizant of the dilemma plug-in hybrids
present for carmakers like Ford, Honda and Toyota/Lexus, who have spent
significant time, money and public relations efforts to convince buyers
that they don't need to plug in their hybrids.

"That's certainly a problem, and what we're trying to tell people is
that... it's true you don't have to plug in the hybrid's you've got now,
but you also don't have the option of plugging it in. We've started calling
them 'gas-optional hybrids' here versus plug-in. When we say a gas-optional
hybrid... people's faces light up a little bit."

He went on to say that he likes to tell people that they can still drive
from Austin to San Antonio and that they don't have the limitations of
battery-only electric cars, but they also have the option of cheaper
driving and cleaner air if they do plug it in.

"Certainly the term 'plug-in' is an issue and I don't know the solution
yet, but for the time being, we're starting to talk about gas-optional
hybrids".

Energy Impact of Plug-In Hybrids
I asked Duncan what impact, if any, the eventual introduction of flexible
fuel plug-in hybrids are likely to have on the local power grid; at what
point does Austin Energy need to begin to add generating capacity and where
will that power come from?

"The initial impact of plug-ins into the electric grid system is not going
to have much impact because almost all utilities have unused capacity
siting at night," he replied, noting that other utilities, spearheaded by
the Electric Power Research Institute have examined this issue closely.

"Initially, we don't see any capacity additions. Obviously, if there's
significant penetration of the market with plug-ins, there will have to be
power plant additions", he remarked, conceding that if and when that does
happen, the utility will probably look at 'clean coal' if energy
conservation and renewable energy alone can't cover the added load.

"I think the reality is, you're just adding electric load and it's going to
vary on a regional basis as to what the power plants and utilities do to
add the load".

Duncan estimated for me that a typical Austin ratepayer would see his
electric bill increase by between $10 and $15 a month to charge a plug-in
hybrid, as opposed to $80 or more a month in gasoline purchases, assuming
the person spends $1000 a year on gasoline.

Vehicle-to-Grid Hybrids in the Future
Duncan said that he has also looked at the concept of vehicle-to-grid or
V2G in which the passage of energy is bi-directional. A plug-in hybrid can
accept charges from the grid, but can't share its stored energy with the
home or the larger power grid. A V2G hybrid has built in circuitry and
controls that permit the grid to pull some power out of the vehicle's
battery or fuel cell to help during peak demand periods. The concept is
worth more investigation in his view, but is also too immature to be
considered seriously right now, unlike plug-ins hybrids.

Firing Up Carmakers
It seems that nearly everyone in the know but carmakers are excited about
the potential of plug-in hybrids. So, how do we bring them on board, I asked?

"Our approach is to simply is to create the market. The approach that we're
taking here in Austin is that we want to demonstrate to carmakers that
there are customers that want to buy them, in fact, there's a utility that
wants to put up rebates. We want to then replicate that in the largest
fifty cities in the United States".

Duncan sees utilities in those communities following Austin's lead in
working with local government, industry, business and consumers to explain
the benefits of the concept and stimulate demand for it. The goal is to
have hundreds of thousands of people nationwide expressing interest in
plug-in hybrids, as well as millions of dollars in utility rebates.

"At that point, I think that the automakers will see that there is a
definite market there and will produce the automobiles".

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Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/priusplus
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