After Gutenberg

jcwinnie

And, ‘ere we ‘av it from the Big Gav:

“Overall I’m quite excited by this project,” posts the Big Gav, though he does hedge on his enthusiasm. “Obviously, executing the plan, in terms of setting up all the infrastructure and getting a significant volume of electric cars on the market at a competitive price, will be challenging.” Well, BG, it ain’t the cars, it’s the batteries.

Project Better Place founder Shai Agassi was in town last week announcing that Australia will become the third country to implement the group’s vision of electric vehicles powered by renewable energy, following Denmark and Israel.

Better Place and Macquarie Capital Group will raise $1 billion to build a network of 250,000 charging stations and battery exchange stations in key locations along the east coast by 2012. The network will be powered by wind turbines owned by AGL Energy.

“If the 3 countries piloting the idea can demonstrate it can work successfully,” opines the Big Gav, then “it will provide a blueprint for personal transport in a post-oil world.”

Agassi has been promoting the plan as a way to reduce our dependence on oil (the starting premise for the project was “how do you run an entire country without oil”) while creating jobs and boosting the local economy.

(See this interview on the Today Show for his explanation).

Operating in Australia will also help the group prove it can work in large countries as well as the much smaller geographical areas covered in the first 2 rollouts. Agassi also noted that the Federal Government’s $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund played a part in encouraging them to set up in Australia.

Green Car Congress describes the Better Place network as consisting of three primary components:

Charge points.

These are to recharge car batteries. Better Place is planning a 2.5:1 ratio of charge spots to cars.

“Better Place has a partnership with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to provide electric cars. The prototype electric eMegane sedan features a 160+ kilometre range.”

Better Place says it is committed to open network access and using industry standard, with the goal being to allow customers to have a choice of make and model of car.

Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC, a joint venture between Nissan Motor, NEC Corporation, and NEC TOKIN Corporation) and A123Systems have been identified as lithium-ion battery providers to the system.

Better Place in Australia plans to start by setting up charging stations in the Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, and then connect them with “electric highways,” with stations set up every 25 miles.

Better Place plans to own and operate the batteries and power generation (via AGL Energy, in Australia’s case), and to sell kilometres travelled to drivers on a subscription basis, in similar fashion to the mobile phone industry.

jcwinnie

More news from New South Wales. Climate action group Rising Tide reports that 29 people were arrested at the NSW power station protest.

The Sydney Morning Herald carried a report on the protest, which started at 8am (AEDT) on Saturday and finished about 2pm.

Rising Tide spokeswoman Georgina Woods said the protest [was] aimed to send a message to the Australian government that it is not acting fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We are waiting for the government to announce our greenhouse gas reduction strategy in December,” she said.

“We are here to send a message to the federal government that they are not acting fast enough, that there is a growing level of frustration in the community about this, the biggest single challenge that we face.”

Bayswater power station was commissioned in 1985 and has been the state’s greatest source of energy, producing about 17,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year which is enough for two million average Australian homes.

The plant uses about eight million tonnes of coal each year.

Ms. Woods said Rising Tide was planning another protest on November 22 at Australia’s equal largest power station, Eraring Power Station, south of Newcastle.