GAINESVILLE, Florida, December 15, 2008 (ENS) – The gas price roller coaster and climate change concerns are making plug-in hybrid-electric cars look increasingly attractive to many people. Now, a new University of Florida partnership is testing to determine if they are in fact a cleaner, cheaper and more reliable choice than other cars.

Pierce Jones, a researcher with the university’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, is working with North Carolina companies Progress Energy, Advanced Energy and Duke Energy to test a Toyota Prius modified to use electricity delivered through a regular household electrical outlet.

“This isn’t a new idea, but it is one that now has to be closely examined because it’s likely to be a reality in just a few years,” said Jones, who is participating in the research as part of UF’s Program for Resource Efficient Communities.

“There are a lot of questions to be asked and a lot of details that have to be ironed out beforehand,” he said.

The UF car is one of 12 plug-in hybrids that will be deployed throughout Florida and North Carolina. The researchers will chart basic use patterns, such as how much gasoline and electricity are consumed per mile traveled. Jones says similar vehicles can travel more than 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

Researcher Pierce Jones demonstrates how to charge
the experimental plug-in hybrid electric car at
the University of Florida, Gainesville. (Photo
by Thomas Wright courtesy University of Florida)

Jones is helping to test the vehicle’s efficiency, which may someday keep widespread use of electric cars from overburdening local electrical grids. For years, one concern about electric cars is that too many of them plugged in at the same time could cause power failures.

“Developing the necessary infrastructure to enable widespread use of electric vehicles is part of our balanced strategy to address the challenge of global climate change, while meeting growing energy needs,” said Bill Johnson, CEO of Progress Energy. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Progress is a Fortune 250 energy company serving 3.1 million customers in the Carolinas and Florida.

The test hybrid car is equipped with new smart-charging hardware that moderates the time and pacing of the charging.

Additionally, Jones’ test car will be using a technology dubbed Vehicle-to-Grid, or V2G, functionality.

V2G allows the car’s charging system to synch with the local electrical grid. Not only does this stop the car from drawing on an overtaxed grid, it could contribute small amounts of electricity back in, helping the entire electrical grid become more reliable and earning a few dollars for the car’s owner.

The plug-in hybrid test project also will document drivers’ patterns, to help determine how charging stations and billing should be implemented.

“It used to be that electric vehicles were rare, but I think they’re going to be here before we know it,” Jones said. “That means that we’ve got to figure out the tricky details of how they’re really going to work so we can make the best use of this new technology.”

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So, we can all agree that less is more [www.sundancechannel.com], right? It is — we’ve got some more high-level examples below — except, when it isn’t. What?

1) Okay, first of all, we’d encourage you to keep this in mind [www.treehugger.com]: “The key to sustainability is simply to use less, and the key to happily using less is to design things better.” Example? The notebook computer did not develop as a green replacement for a desktop, yet there is no question that it has a smaller physical and ecological footprint — it is greener by design, and now customers are demanding greener manufacture.
2) Given this info, we decided that when it comes to cars for TreeHuggers, less is definitely more [www.treehugger.com].
3) When it comes to melon-scratchers, here’s a honey of a doodle: which is better — a hybrid vs. a small, compact, super-efficient conventional car. You might be surprised at which less is more [www.treehugger.com] in the Toyota Prius hybrid vs. Toyota Yaris smackdown.

4) TreeHugger is fond of using the networking power of the internet to help people connect and share their stuff; Switchplanet [www.treehugger.com] is
a good example of this model. It’s fast, easy, cheaper than buying and more sustainable than collecting huge amounts of stuff that only gets used once in a blue moon.
5) For homes, we turn again to our pals at Apartment Therapy, who completed a 250 square-foot apartment renovation in preparation for a baby and blogged the whole thing. Believe us; 250 square feet never looked so good [www.treehugger.com], so livable and so TreeHugger, down to the bamboo kitchen and rope insulation.
6) We opined that participating in Buy Nothing Day — a TreeHugger’s version of “Black Friday,” right after Thanksgiving — doesn’t have to mean living with less [www.treehugger.com].

7) There are occasions when more is better than less. An example: the glut of alternative energy-powered web-hosting [www.treehugger.com] options out there.
Another good example: more hybrid taxis [www.treehugger.com] are on their way to New York City; in fact, the city’s taxis will be 100% hybrid by 2012.

One of the biggest words associated with solar power (and with many forms of alternative, clean energy, really) is “potential.” Potential to create a clean energy portfolio, potential to reduce our consumption and demand for fossil fuels, potential to change the way we live and power our lives…the list goes on. Some sobering numbers that back this up: More energy from the sun hits the Earth in one hour than all of the energy consumed by humans in an entire year. According to the US Department of Energy, in 2001 the world consumed at an average rate of more than 13 trillion watts (that’s 13 terawatts, or TW), just a fraction of the 120,000 TW of energy available that falls to Earth, all for free. While it’s unfortunate that solar hasn’t lived up to its potential thus far, it is exciting to take a peek into the near future at some of the projects it could be used for; in some cases, the future has already arrived. Check out some of the best possible implementations TreeHugger has seen for the ability to turn the sun’s rays into usable energy.

1) We first saw [www.treehugger.com] the solar-power-assisted hybrid car option a few years back, including a rough estimate of a 10% improvement in fuel economy. We’re happy to see a similar implementation [www.treehugger.com] that offers, in the case of the Toyota Prius, up to 20 miles per day of all-electric driving, thus improving fuel economy by up to 29% (depending on driving habits and conditions, of course). Though the future is here with this product, we hope to see a lot more of similar projects that could potentially cut fuel usage by up to half.
2) In an idea that just makes sense, and another one that we saw coming awhile back [www.treehugger.com], a company called SolCool recently launched [www.treehugger.com] what they’re calling a “hybrid solar air conditioner” that runs on solar panels, or a wall socket, or batteries. The unit operates at a maximum of 500 watts, which is less than half what typical air conditioning units use (and within reach for residential solar projects). Imagine: using the sun to cool you down. We love it.
3) Though kitschy and pretty impractical, we found enough to like in the solar bikini [www.treehugger.com] concept to feature it twice [www.treehugger.com]. Sure, a solar bikini doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but how cool would it be to be able to charge your cell phone, iPod or laptop computer with just the clothes you’re wearing today?
4) In a version of the technology that will surely continue to help the clean, green energy realize its potential, solar thermal power [www.treehugger.com] — the kind that uses the concentrated power of the sun to do work — has a conversion efficiency of around 40%, using essentially mirrors to direct the sun instead of expensive (though continually and quickly evolving) photovoltaic cells. While more traditional solar is catching up to this efficiency, it can be a lot easier to gather a group of mirrors than it is to develop better solar technology. Still, no need to worry about the mix: there’s plenty of sunlight to go around.