TUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – Automakers around the world are pushing hard for new networks that can charge electric cars fast. In Europe, some power companies and grid operators are testing whether it might be smarter and cheaper to move into the slow lane.

A 15-month study of electric car charging behavior in Germany has concluded that consumers can be persuaded to accept slow, overnight recharging that could help avoid brownouts from surges in electricity demand or costly upgrades to power grids.

The prospect of millions of EVs hitting the roads as governments gradually ban new diesel and gasoline cars is seen as a major challenge for power companies, especially in Germany which is switching from nuclear and coal to less predictable sources of energy such as wind and solar.

The small study in the wealthy Stuttgart suburb of Ostfildern-Ruit though has helped alleviate the concerns of some grid operators that too many electric vehicles (EVs) charging at peak times could cause network crashes.

The engineers at Netze BW, the local grid operator behind the trial, found that all the households involved came around to leaving their electric cars plugged in overnight and only half ever charged simultaneously.

“Since the experience with the project we have become a lot more relaxed. We can imagine that, in future, half of the inhabitants of such a street own electric vehicles,” said Netze BW engineer Selma Lossau, project manager for the study.

Still, with limited EV battery ranges for now, slow, overnight charging doesn’t get around the problem of how to persuade drivers to ditch petrol cars altogether.

Without a network of fast-charging stations offering quick refueling, drivers may be wary of using EVs for long trips – which is why some automakers want lots of fast-charging stations to encourage the widespread adoption of electric cars.

‘CHANGED MY OUTLOOK’

Slower, or delayed, charging has already gained traction in Norway, Europe’s leading EV market, where nearly 50% of new car sales are zero-emission vehicles.

A study by energy regulator NVE showed that Norway faces a bill of 11 billion crowns ($1.2 billion) over the next 20 years for low- and high-voltage grids, substations and high-voltage transformers – unless it can persuade car owners to charge outside peak afternoon hours.

The investment cost to the country of 5.3 million people could drop to just over 4 billion crowns if cars are charged in the evening, and may fall close to zero if batteries are only plugged in at night, NVE said.

NVE is now working a tariff proposal which will penalize peak-hours charging. Tibber, a Norwegian power company, already offers cheaper electricity for EV charging if you let it decide when your car is charged while firms such as ZAPTEC offer ways to adjust charging to the available grid capacity.

Some of the 10 households participating in the Stuttgart trial said they initially wanted to keep topping up their cars for fear of running out of juice, but soon adapted to leaving the power company to handle it as it saw fit overnight.

“At the start, I did not want to take any risks and charged frequently in order to feel secure. Over time, I changed my outlook,” said Norbert Simianer, a retired head teacher who drove a Renault Zoe during the trial. “I grew used to the car and became more at ease in handling the loading process.”

Simianer and his neighbors were given electric cars and 22 kilowatt (kW) wall-boxes for their garages, alongside two charging points in the street, all free of charge.

In return, they gave up their normal cars and allowed Netze BW, which is a subsidiary of German utility EnBW (EBKG.DE), to monitor and carry out a deferred and down-scaled charging process during a seven-and-a-half-hour period overnight.

Netze BW tried various options, either slotting cars in at the maximum 22 kW charging flow one after another, or lengthening the charging time for individual cars by adjusting the power flow, or combining both methods, Lossau said.

The participants, who used apps to check the status of their car batteries, grew accustomed to the lack of instant charging capability because their vehicles could always handle their everyday commutes of up to 50 km (31 miles).

EnBW said nine of the 10 households in the trial on Ostfildern-Ruit’s Belchenstrasse had opted to keep the wall-boxes and most were exploring leasing electric car.

TWO-WAY STREET

Lossau said monitoring 10 households did not in itself provide the “empirical mass to draw conclusions for the load profile of all of Germany”.

She also said there would need to be better two-way communication between EVs, the grid and consumers for the system to function efficiently on a large scale.

“There will have to be more exchange of information between e-cars and the grid to update the loading status in real-time, because otherwise, there can be the wrong impression about the speed of loading,” she said.

Utility companies developing so-called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services, however, are struggling to persuade some automakers to use technology that allows two-way flows of information, and power, between batteries and grids.

Carmakers such as Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and Ford (F.N), for example, are prioritizing one-directional fast-charging instead to overcome consumer resistance to EVs.

Japan’s Nissan (7201.T) has been leading the way among carmakers exploring V2G though Germany’s BMW (BMWG.DE) has now decided to develop it too, saying cooperation between cars and grids will be key to making e-mobility ready for mass markets.

“It is about making sure there is enough supply for the electric cars and that the lights do not go out elsewhere,” a BMW spokesman said. “The cars don’t just load when it’s best for the market, but they can also supply power back to the grid to help even out demand spikes.”

“There has to be more progress on the data exchanges, however. It is not yet the standard,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Ostfildern-Ruit trial has raised hopes that power grids might be able to cope with an influx of electric cars, especially if the consumers play ball.

Even if drivers resist overnight charging, suppliers of software and equipment to power grids, such as Germany’s Siemens (SIEGn.DE), are also looking at safer and more efficient ways to manage how and when power is used to charge cars.

MORE DATA PLEASE

The German city of Hamburg, for example, started a three-year pilot project this month with Siemens to pre-emptively identify overloads on transformers and along cables, and manage EV charging points accordingly.

“Loading processes offer so much flexibility that the overload on the networks can be reduced by deferring loading times or reducing the load that is supplied,” said Thomas Werner, expert at Siemens Digital Grid.

“This happens through the digitization of hardware and software and with communication technology,” he said.

Using software to help protect aging power networks from predictable surges could also avoid costly hardware upgrades to parts of the 1.7 million km of distribution grids in Germany.

With few than 100,000 electric-only cars in Germany at the moment, there is little threat of blackouts from over-demand. But the Transport Ministry in Berlin envisages up to 10 million electric cars on the roads by 2030.

The number of charging points across the country also only stands at 21,000. That’s up 50% over the last year but still barely a fraction of future needs.

Next up for Netze BW is a trickier test.

Managing the power for 10 households with electric cars in a suburban street of 22 homes is one thing, now the power company is launching a study of car charging behavior in an apartment block with 80 flats, where quarrels over access are likely.

It is also looking at a study in rural areas, where the longer cables required present challenges in maintaining stable voltages for charging.

But that’s still only part of the story. Lossau said power companies would have to work more closely with carmakers to fill knowledge gaps and exchange information.

“It can only work if we get more data from each other.”

Total SA started production at a new biofuel plant in southern France, taking on rivals such as Neste Oyj and Eni SpA for a share of Europe’s biodiesel market. The refinery, in La Mede near Marseille, will process vegetable oil, animal fat and used cooking oil to produce as much as 500,000 tonnes a year of so-called hydrotreated vegetable oil, or HVO, which is blended by distributors with diesel to meet government biofuel requirements.

However, the project has been criticised as it will use palm oil for almost half its main feed- stock at the start. “Our biorefinery will allow us to make biofuels in France that were previously imported,” Bernard Pinatel, Total’s head of refining and chemicals, said on Wednesday in a statement in which he championed the role of biofuels in cutting carbon emissions. In a September report, Total said it wanted to take more than 10% of the European market for HVO production. It has spent €275mn ($310mn) since 2015 transforming the unprofitable La Mede oil refinery into a biofuel plant, a conversion similar to one carried out by Italy’s Eni in Venice. Finnish companies including Neste operate the most HVO capacity in Europe. Total’s refinery has been controversial for its planned use of palm oil, whose production in countries such as Indonesia is slammed by environmental groups for causing deforestation.

Use of the oil also denies Total French tax breaks that apply to other renewable fuels, meaning the facility can’t compete with European peers, Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne has warned. The oil major has lobbied the government for a change of stance on the tax break, arguing that it’s working with palm-oil producers that are certified under a European Union system that tracks sustainable practices and respect for human rights. Total’s plant will use as much as 300,000 tonnes of palm oil a year, and at least 50,000 tonnes of French- grown rapeseed. An analysis by the Palm Oil Transparency Coalition shows European palm-oil importers are unlikely to be able to ensure that the products they sell are “deforestation-free” by a self-imposed goal of 2020. Only about a third of the palm oil imported into Europe by the survey respondents could be traced to the plantation it came from, according to the report.

US electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc is in advanced talks with South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd to source batteries for vehicles to be made in its Shanghai plant, a person familiar with the matter said.
The move represents a push by Tesla to diversify sources of the key component for its electric vehicles from its exclusive supplier, Japan’s Panasonic Corp.
Another source said LG Chem agreed to supply batteries for Tesla’s China plant, without elaborating.
LG Chem is expanding its China battery capacities and modifying some manufacturing facilities in Nanjing to make a different type of auto battery, according to the first source.
The company currently mainly makes pouch-type auto batteries, but as a major battery maker, it is not hard for it to revamp facilities to make cylindrical auto batteries that Tesla uses, the source and separate people familiar with the matter added.
The source said Tesla is still likely to use Panasonic batteries in the initial phase of production and source from other suppliers including local names in the future. A third person said Tesla may source batteries from CATL later, as the Chinese battery maker does not have much experience in making cylindrical batteries used by Tesla.
All of the sources declined to be identified because of the confidentiality of the deal.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
LG Chem and CATL declined to comment. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said in November the US company would manufacture all its battery modules and packs at the Shanghai factory, which will make Model 3 and Model Y cars, and planned to diversify its sources.
LG Chem has signed battery material supply agreements with China’s Huayou and Tianqi, as the South Korean battery maker is trying to expand its foothold in China.
It said it would set up a joint venture with a unit of China’s Geely on batteries.
China has scrapped its so-called “white list” of recommended battery suppliers, which did not include foreign firms when it was first published in 2015 to spur a domestic battery sector, a decision foreign companies said could open up the world’s biggest market for electric vehicle batteries.
Panasonic has said it could supply batteries to Tesla’s Chinese plant either from Japan, the United States or China

South Korean electric vehicle (EV) battery maker LG Chem is considering building a second US factory, three people familiar with the matter said, accelerating a race to add capacity to meet growing global demand for green vehicles.
LG Chem, one of the leading EV battery makers in the world that counts General Motors and Volkswagen among its customers, is weighing investing about 2tn won ($1.70bn) in the plant that could begin production in 2022, one of the people said.
Kentucky and Tennessee are among the candidates for the plant’s site, the person said.
A decision on the plant’s site is expected to be made by the end of this month, another person said.
Automakers are pushing ahead with billions of dollars in investments in electric vehicles to meet global regulatory requirements.
A new plant by LG Chem would come as South Korean companies have stepped up US investments, moves that have been praised by US President Donald Trump.
LG Chem’s new factory would primarily supply to Volvo, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and potentially to Hyundai Motor, GM and Volkswagen, one of the people said.
LG Chem, the most valuable company of the LG conglomerate, said in a statement issued to Reuters it is reviewing various ways to meet its global clients’ orders, but there are no concrete plans at the moment.
The sources declined to be named as the plan is confidential.
A second US plant would come amid a growing rivalry between LG Chem and crosstown rival SK Innovation, which recently broke ground on its $1bn US EV battery plant to primarily supply to Volkswagen.
Earlier this year, LG Chem sued SK Innovation in the United States for alleged theft of trade secrets by hiring its former employees.
“We are currently pursuing another production base,” LG Chem’s new CEO Shin Hak Cheol told reporters this week, without elaborating on the country.
Electric vehicle sales are projected to reach 1.28mn vehicles by 2026 in the United States alone, compared with less than 200,000 in 2018, according to market researcher IHS Markit.
Trump praised US investments by SK, Lotte Group and other South Korean conglomerates and raised hopes that Korean companies will continue to expand in the US. “Thank you very much. Congratulations. It’s a great job,” he said during his meeting with South Korean business leaders in Seoul on June 30.
The participants included group holding company LG Corp’s vice chairman Kwon Young Soo.
LG Chem, the battery supplier for GM’s Bolt, currently operates an EV battery plant in Michigan.
LG Chem also has production bases in South Korea, China and Poland.
It drew attention during the groundbreaking of its first US production facility in 2010, when former president Barack Obama travelled to Michigan for the event. LG Chem is also being wooed by the government of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to build a new domestic factory to create jobs – one of Moon’s top priorities.
CEO Shin said LG Chem is in talks to build a production facility for cathode materials used in EV batteries in the southeastern city of Gumi in South Korea, but details have not been finalised.

Wind turbines may be carbon-free, but they’re not recyclable.

A photograph of dozens of giant turbine blades dumped into a Wyoming landfill touched off a debate Wednesday on Twitter about wind power’s environmental drawbacks. The argument may be only beginning.

Fiberglass turbine blades — which in some cases are as long a football field — aren’t easy to recycle. And with BloombergNEF expecting up to 2 gigawatts worth of turbines to be refitted this year and next, there could be heaps more headed for dumps.

Cynthia Langston, solid waste division manager for the city of Casper, declined to say where the turbine debris came from. But she’s happy to have it. The 1,000 blades will bring in about $675,000 for the landfill, helping keep trash costs low for local residents. Plus, Langston said, wind-farm junk is less toxic than other garbage.

“It’s much cleaner than the contaminated soil and demolition projects from the oil and gas industry,” Langston said in an interview. “These are about as non-toxic as you can get.”

Wind turbine blades represent a “vanishingly small fraction” of overall waste in the U.S., according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Sachin Shah, chief executive officer of one of the world’s largest clean-power operators, Brookfield Renewable Partners LP, said “there will be an aggressive effort to re-use materials” in the years ahead.

Sasol said some of its South African plants are under threat from sulfur dioxide emission standards that it will need to comply with by 2025.

The company, South Africa’s biggest by revenue, operates plants that convert coal into motor fuel and chemicals in Secunda, east of Johannesburg, and Sasolburg to the south. Flue-gas desulfurisation equipment needed to cut emissions of the gas, which causes acid rain and a range of health complications, is too costly and technically difficult to install, Sasol said.

Globally, as well as in South Africa, the company produces a range of chemicals.

Air pollution in the area around coal-fired plants operated by Sasol and Eskom east and south of Johannesburg rivals levels in some of the most polluted cities on earth. The government has proposed doubling the new limit, but is coming under increased pressure to act against the two companies as it’s being sued by environmental activists over the breach of current emission limits.

Sasol will have to comply with new sulfur dioxide emission limits for coal boilers of 500 milligrams of the pollutant per normal cubic meter. Its 2018 emission reports show that some equipment at both Secunda and Sasolburg regularly exceeds 1 000 milligrams.

“The new plant standard for sulfur dioxide will pose a compliance risk challenge for Sasol post 2025 from both a technical and financial feasibility point of view,” the company said in an emailed response to questions. “All commercially available technologies for the abatement of sulfur dioxide to meet new plant standards have been evaluated and we continue to scan for new technologies.” A failure to comply could lead to fines and the closing of plants.

While Sasol has already won a postponement, Eskom is yet to hear whether its applications to have its compliance with the sulfur dioxide emission standards delayed from 2020 until 2025 are successful. It has argued that it would only be economic and feasible to fit the pollution abatement technology on its two newest plants.

Eskom, which operates about 15 coal-fired power stations, has said that flue-gas desulfurisation equipment can cost between R20bn and R40bn per plant. Environmental activists including Greenpeace put the cost significantly lower.

“Sasol is still saying they can’t afford flue-gas desulfurisation,” said Robyn Hugo, program head for pollution and climate change at the Cape Town-based Centre for Environmental Rights. “Sasol itself has confirmed that there are no other means to meet these minimum emission standards.”

In addition to being technically difficult and costly, flue-gas desulfurisation equipment would require that additional water and limestone are brought in from the Northern Cape province. Existing limestone mines in that province are 450 kilometers (280 miles) to 800 kilometers away from Sasol’s plants.

“Flue-gas desulfurisation technology is proven,” Sasol said. Still, “it would be significantly challenging to retrofit” the equipment at the existing plants, it said.

In a separate application for a delay in meeting emission limits for a range of other pollutants, Sasol has asked for permission to significantly exceed caps for nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter and carbon monoxide until 2025. By that time, it says in the application, new equipment should enable it to comply.

On incinerators at its Secunda plant, it wants limits of as much as 90 times the new cap to be applied for carbon monoxide and particulate matter.

Sasol shares have declined by 27% this year as the company battles cost overruns at its Lake Charles chemicals project in Louisiana.

Oil and gas operators planning to prolong fields’ lifespan may find themselves increasingly in conflict with wind farm developers

A consortium of Dutch, German and Danish companies wrote in a concept paper on 9 July that the North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) they are developing would have an estimated capacity of 180GW by 2045, providing clean power to “hundreds of millions of Europeans” in those countries and the UK. “To meet the ambitious targets as set in the Paris Agreement, a large-scale roll-out of offshore wind is required. Increased spatial use by offshore wind energy and transmission infrastructure is then expected accordingly.” Because the turbine foundations deemed the most cost effective need a water depth of less than 55 metres—and as the targeted area is already used extensively for shipping, military exercises and fisheries—there is not currently enough available space for the required number of offshore wind farms (OWFs). “If we take an exclusionary approach, and only install farms in areas that are not currently being used, there simply is not enough room for a cost effective, large-scale build out of offshore wind power in the North Sea” says Peter Larsen, a development consultant at Danish grid firm Energinet. The firm is developing the project with the Dutch power grid operator Tennet, its gas equivalent Gasunie and the Port of Rotterdam.

Competing timeframes

The NSWPH’s first phase would be connected to shore as early the 2030s. But the British authorities expect decommissioning work to continue in the area until 2060. Larsen says the eventual decision on whether projects such as the NSWPH should take precedence over the oil and gas sector in the North Sea is one that must be taken by governments. “Which will be the most cost-effective source of power from a social-economic perspective, as part of the green energy transition?” he asks. It is fair to say that it is a leading question. Currently only 3pc of the area the NSWPH would need is available, or only 14,000 km2, according to the NSWPH researchers’ February feasibility study. The largest spatial risk created by the oil and gas sectors is not platforms themselves, but the helicopter landing safe zone of 2.5 nautical miles around these. In some cases, it may be possible to site an OWF’s turbines to accommodate these zones—but not all. “After drawing OWFs in the GIS mapping tool, it was discovered that there are attractive farm locations that have so much overlap between helicopter zones, that one can actually not adapt the wind farm, so the oil and gas function needs to adapt,” the study says. The authors also say confidentiality on which specific platforms will be gone by the year 2030 makes it harder to make spatial plans. While that information is commercially sensitive, oil producer lobby goup OGUK found last November in a report on decommissioning that higher oil prices and a “relentless focus” on efficiency were pushing field retirements further into the future. Its report forecasts that decommissioning activity will remain relatively stable over the next decade.

Peaceful co-existence

OGUK’s view is that there is no need for conflict between the wind power and oil and gas in the North Sea—and that sharing the spatial resources could be beneficial. “Strong cooperation between different sectors is crucial as the UK invests in all forms of energy production to meet its future energy needs”, OGUK says. “The overlap phase when decommissioning takes place alongside the installation of new offshore wind structures could provide the opportunity for the different sectors to align interests and collaborate on things like logistics costs and stakeholder engagement.” For its part, the NSWPH developers also accept that “co-utilisation” will be necessary in the future, adding that “the extent to which co-utilization will be needed highly depends on future developments such as the decommissioning of oil and gas platforms”. https://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/politics-economics/europe-eurasia/2019/wind-farms-threaten-to-speed-up-north-sea-decommissioning?hootPostID=271f29a013ef2922e07192d9cb92b6b3

Mergers and acquisitions have been stuck in a rut since Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) was caught cheating pollution tests in 2015, triggering a global tightening of emissions regulations that depressed the value of petrol and diesel technologies. But the market is beginning to separate companies capable of meeting new emissions standards from those struggling to do so, which could close the gap in price expectations between buyers and sellers over the next 12-24 months, industry experts say. The auto industry has all but stopped developing next-generation combustion engines as limited resources are directed towards building electric and self-driving cars. However, electric vehicles are still a niche product, accounting for only 1.26 million – or 1.5 percent – of the 86 million cars sold worldwide last year, and analysts forecast it will be the middle of the next decade before a tipping point comes when electric cars overtake combustion-engined variants. That means there will still be demand for emissions-compliant combustion engines and so manufacturers and suppliers able to offer that are likely to see valuations recover, said Reinhard Kuehn, co-head of European Automotive at Deutsche Bank. “At the same time, suppliers that struggle with this will remain a hard sell,” Kuehn said. Meanwhile, as production capacity of petrol and diesel engines is cut back, the impetus for mergers among suppliers should increase, bankers believe. Germany’s Volkswagen, one of the largest manufacturers of petrol and diesel engines, has said it will develop its final generation of combustion engines by 2026, while U.S. rival Ford (F.N) last month said it would close two engine factories in Europe. “The profit pool of companies with combustion engine-related technology – once the envy of the industry – is shrinking with the rise of electric vehicles and the digitization of the industry,” Goldman Sachs managing director Axel Hoefer said. “You would expect someone to come in and consolidate to benefit from economies of scale.” Volkswagen is now warning its suppliers to prepare industry-wide solutions for winding down combustion-engine manufacturing as it ramps up mass production of electric vehicles. The company is retooling 16 factories to build electric vehicles and plans to start producing 33 different electric cars under the Skoda, Audi, VW and Seat brands by mid-2023, transforming the industry’s supply chain. “It makes no sense to have factories running at only 40% capacity,” Stefan Sommer, Volkswagen’s procurement head, told Reuters. “The auto industry is obliged to develop structures to consolidate combustion engine assets, to decide where to bundle certain activities.” “If we end up with uncontrolled insolvencies, it will be a problem for the industry,” he said.

MISMATCH

There are more than 120 plants making combustion engine components in Europe, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. German auto industry association VDA says 436,000 jobs are tied to building petrol and diesel engines in Germany alone. Demand for compliant combustion engine assets has already triggered consolidation among carmakers themselves – PSA Group’s (PEUP.PA) takeover of General Motors’ (GM.N) Opel business in 2017 was driven by that issue. “With emissions regulation getting more stringent, particularly in Europe, some manufacturers are getting left behind in terms of their ability to develop compliant engines,” Franciscus van Meel, BMW’s (BMWG.DE) head of vehicle development, told Reuters. Until recently, deals have still proved difficult to do because of lingering disagreements over valuations. U.S. group Dana (DAN.N) late in 2018 launched the sale of its European head gasket business, a key component for combustion engines, people close to the matter said. With the help of Bank of America it invited suitors to bid, but pulled the auction several weeks later due to muted interest. The sale of Germany’s closely-held Ifa Group, a maker of shafts mainly used in combustion engine-powered cars, was announced a year ago, but never got over the finishing line. Among the few suitors was China’s Wanxiang, but differences on pricing proved insurmountable, people close to the talks said. “The main problem is that buyers’ and sellers’ price expectations don’t match,” KPMG partner Juergen Schlangenotto said. “A seller typically says: I have a robust order book and good margins so I want a valuation of 6 times EBITDA (annual core earnings), while a buyer says there’s no long-term growth so I am paying 4 times.” A fresh test of interest in combustion engine assets will be the sale of engine parts and gear box parts maker Tekfor. Private equity owner KKR is in talks with a Chinese buyer, according to people close to the matter. James Kamsickas, CEO of U.S. drivetrain supplier Dana, believes internal combustion engine (ICE) demand could persist for many years. “People are overbaking a little bit on how much the internal combustion engine is just going to go away,” he told Reuters. “If anything, I’m a very strong advocate that it’s going to be a world of hybridization for the next 15 years. Last time I checked, that still requires an ICE.”