The Electric Bike Thingie

Got a call early yesterday afternoon that my new electric bike was ready for pickup at Volde-Mart.  Actually they were very nice about it all.  The fellow (an "assembler") who worked on it noted that he couldn't adjust the shifters because the battery pack wasn't on it.  I think that's probably not the case but it didn't matter as the 7-speed shifter seems to be working fine without adjustment. 

They did adjust the brakes which was the main thing I wanted done and they did that just fine.  Once I made it to the parking lot I could hop on and zip right over to my parked car in regular bike mode.   The other nice thing about it is that it's a short bike and fits very nicely in my Volvo wagon.

( And so on... )

The local quest for world electric vehicle domination has started.

The Electric Bike Thingie

Got a call early yesterday afternoon that my new electric bike was ready for pickup at Volde-Mart.  Actually they were very nice about it all.  The fellow (an "assembler") who worked on it noted that he couldn't adjust the shifters because the battery pack wasn't on it.  I think that's probably not the case but it didn't matter as the 7-speed shifter seems to be working fine without adjustment. 

They did adjust the brakes which was the main thing I wanted done and they did that just fine.  Once I made it to the parking lot I could hop on and zip right over to my parked car in regular bike mode.   The other nice thing about it is that it's a short bike and fits very nicely in my Volvo wagon.

( And so on... )

The local quest for world electric vehicle domination has started.

Big Money in Big Batteries

Lots of effort going into a variety of utility scaled battery technologies.  This one is already looking like a cash-in opportunity.

Sodium-Sulfur Battery Powers NGK's Unique Wind Energy (Update1) - Bloomberg - 10 Apr 08

"Nagoya-based NGK's sodium-sulfur units, costing a reported 294 million yen ($2.9 million) per megawatt, store electricity for sale when demand is greatest and have 4.3 times the capacity of lead-acid devices. They may permit Japan Wind Development Co. to triple to 27 yen per kilowatt-hour what it charges at peak times for power from the turbines in Rokkasho, while the profit surges sixfold to as much as 13 yen, said Nobuyoshi Sato, an analyst at Ichiyoshi Securities Co. in Tokyo."

Big Money in Big Batteries

Lots of effort going into a variety of utility scaled battery technologies.  This one is already looking like a cash-in opportunity.

Sodium-Sulfur Battery Powers NGK's Unique Wind Energy (Update1) - Bloomberg - 10 Apr 08

"Nagoya-based NGK's sodium-sulfur units, costing a reported 294 million yen ($2.9 million) per megawatt, store electricity for sale when demand is greatest and have 4.3 times the capacity of lead-acid devices. They may permit Japan Wind Development Co. to triple to 27 yen per kilowatt-hour what it charges at peak times for power from the turbines in Rokkasho, while the profit surges sixfold to as much as 13 yen, said Nobuyoshi Sato, an analyst at Ichiyoshi Securities Co. in Tokyo."