Tag Archives: energy

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I haven’t been blogging for a while – and I have missed taking the time to jot down some thoughts on things that are happening in my various roles at the University.  The end of the summer has been a busy time – lots of grant writing, and preparations to bring in a new class of both undergraduate and graduate students.

This week I’d like to focus on our new group of postgraduate students in the Master of Energy program.  The program is an interdisciplinary program for students from Science, Engineering and Business.  The program had around 40 students in various phases of their degree right now.

This week I’ve really enjoyed meeting the new intake of students.  They are all extremely energetic (excuse the pun!) and have a real hunger for knowledge that they truly hope to “change the world” with.  The majority of the students came from overseas – and literally come from every corner of the globe.  We have students from North America, South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific all in class together.

I travel a lot and believe that global problems – such as improving access to clean energy worldwide – are best solved through global collaborations.  We kicked those collaborations off at an icebreaker event last week where the students worked on building models of energy related devices (such as wind turbines) from some kit-sets.  I look forward to seeing what ideas the students build while they are with us.

I enjoy the fact that the staff and students I work with have tremendously diverse backgrounds but share a passion for common scientific questions.  I am also proud that NZ’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade lists renewable energy as a priority area for their scholarship funding.  That means some of the students in our new cohort are supported through this scholarship scheme – which is then a mechanism for exporting Kiwi energy “know how” offshore.

Access to reliable/affordable electricity is transformative in society.  Most (but not all) New Zealanders can take that their access to grid-connected electricity for granted.  Locally I was part of a team late last year which reflected on the state of the nation (in particular in my section access to clean energy) as part of the Habitat III report to the United Nations.  Sharing ideas and experience via organisations such as the UN is important.  However our postgraduate program is like a mini UN on a daily basis!

 

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Like many New Zealanders I was (till July last year) the owner of an older car (I won't say how old!) that had a lot of kilometres on the clock.  When it came time to change vehicles I decided to "walk the talk" and buy an electric car.  I took the plunge and bought a second hand Nissan Leaf - and it was "love at first drive".  The car is very quiet, accelerates beautifully and is generally fun to drive. There's no petrol engine in the car, and it charges overnight (in about 6 hours) from a household plug (with a higher current "caravan" socket).  So does "driving electric" make sense?  There were about 1,250 electric vehicles registered in NZ when I bought mine - today there are more like 2,250 (see www.driveelectric.org.nz for current stats).  That means more and more NZers think it does make sense.

Nissan Leaf vehicles charging at a Vector charging station in Takanini. Mine was headed on a day trip further south that day.

I was pleased to see research published by EECA in New Zealand that confirmed the environmental benefits of electric cars.  They state:

"Across the lifecycle, pure EVs have around 60% fewer CO2 emissions than petrol vehicles. When we just look at the CO2 emissions from use, New Zealand’s high proportion of renewable electricity generation means EVs have around 80% fewer CO2 emissions when driven in New Zealand.  As the renewable proportion of New Zealand’s electricity continues to grow, the CO2 emissions from an EV will reduce further."

EECA's research also dispels concerns re net environmental impacts associated with lithium production for electric vehicle batteries.

So what's the catch?  The typically advertised range of my model of Nissan Leaf, with its 24 kWh battery capacity, is 125 km on a full charge.  That assumes driving on the flat on smooth roads etc. - so in reality I get less commuting range than that since we live at the top of a long winding hill.  I have a fairly significant commute so I charge the car every night at home.  What happened to my power bill?  I opened the first one with bated breath!  However the car's energy demands are relatively modest - so I traded filling up on a full tank of petrol every week, for an increase of $20 to $30 on my monthly power bill (I have a discounted rated for night rate electricity, and also have solar panels on the roof of my home that help charge the car when it's home at the weekends).

Colleagues in the Department are interested in supporting NZ's transition to more electric vehicles.  We've had a student project building web-based mapping tools that assess the viability of the use of an electric vehicle in Auckland for commuting taking into account speed limits and terrain (note that driving downhill regenerates charge in the car battery).  The tool is not quite ready for public use but I looked forward to seeing it deployed.

Companies such as Vector are deploying fast chargers that will charge a car like mine in 20 minutes or so.  Their chargers are currently free for public use, but that will change at some point.  The Government, via EECA are also trying to accelerate the transition to  electric vehicles, via the Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund.

So, a longer post than usual, but I have a lot of love for driving electric!

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