Lankan engineer’s solar link for electric cars

Predicts a trillion dollar industry in a few years:

Ravi Ladduwahetty

The concept is revolutionary. The parameters are both gargantuan and global.

A Sri Lankan Chemical Engineer turned Management Consultant has revealed his proposition to replace petrol completely by solar energy as the alternative automobile fuel. If implemented, he predicts, that the entire world would be driving solar powered cars whose infrastructure would then became a trillion dollar industry in ten years.

“This is the first time in history a commercially viable, technically feasible, globally equitable and environmentally friendly alternative to the use of petrol in cars is been proposed anywhere in the world,” the pioneer of this revolutionary and globally feasible environment project- K.C. Somaratna told the Daily News in an exclusive interview.

Somaratna, a Chemical Engineer by profession with a Master’s Degree in Polymer Chemistry (Plastics) from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura, heads his own consultancy firm of Somaratna Consultants (Pvt) Ltd as Chairman /Managing Director.

He expects all the major international oil companies and global motor car manufactures to support the development of the infrastructure needed for it.

The cornerstone of this revolutionary concept is that within the next ten years, road side fuel stations will be replaced by battery sheds which will replace the spent battery of your totally -battery- driven car with recharged batteries. This battery charging process in its entirety will be powered by solar panels which would be laid above the roadway to capture the solar energy and transmit the same to the battery shed.

The investment in the solar panels and corresponding structures will be recovered in less than five years if the panels were to capture solar energy at the currently available solar panel efficiency levels and at the rate research and development are taking place in this field this payback period will become half within the next ten years.

The proposed arrangement will not emit any green house gases in its operational phase unlike all the other competing alternatives proposed and whatever green house gases emitted for the initial infrastructure set up would be saved within the first two and a half years.

We live in a world where energy is becoming scarce and expensive. Fossil fuel reserves are dwindling at a significant rate and although new sources are being discovered continuously, the cost of converting these fossils to useable energy forms is going up all the time. As a result, the cost of petrol and all petroleum products go up and although sometimes such price increases may be reversed in the short term, the overall trend will always remain upwards.

As at to-day, the industry is looking at a few alternatives which do not fulfil all the criteria mentioned above. The bio-fuels which are been used in many countries do still generate greenhouse gases and would make the energy sector compete with food sector for scarce agricultural products.

On the other hand famines, plant diseases could lead to periodic scarcities when the competition between the energy sector and food sector could become frustrating for both sectors and governments.

Battery driven cars still need charging by a conventional source of energy which may be generating greenhouse gases and their outreach would be limited. Hydrogen fuelled cars would still need energy for the generation of hydrogen and this energy too would be coming from an energy source emitting green house gases.

The solar powered cars would have limited operability as for the car to run the solar power is required and this may not be available on 365 days a year. It is in this global context that we are proposing a solution which would fulfil all the above mentioned criteria.

“What we propose is to capture solar energy - which is abundantly available - along the roadways and charge batteries at battery stations by the roadside. Battery driven automobiles would drive in to such a station when the batteries are nearly exhausted and get a set of new batteries installed after handing over the spent batteries to the battery station.

The battery station will get these batteries recharged to the optimum level using solar energy. The change over of batteries would consume approximately the same time a refuelling exercise would take to-day. This proposal fulfils all the above mentioned criteria as we indicate below,” says Somaratne.

Solar energy is abundantly available and the energy capturing efficiencies are increasing all the time. The earth receives a phenomenal 342W/m2 of energy from the sun.

Even if the global per capita energy consumption rate becomes 10kWatts (the figure in 2003 was 3 kWatts) at the current level of population density, we would be consuming less than 0.1 percent of the energy we receive from the sun leaving the balance for the fauna, flora, oceans etc. As such, solar energy is abundantly available to be used for this purpose.

Since the transportation industry would be entering a new solar powered era (instead of the petroleum era) the economies all over the world would see an upward trend manufacturing (a) solar panels, (b)structures for these panels, (c) proper types of batteries, etc. This would create a boom in all these sectors which would surpass all negative impacts such a transition would have on the petroleum industry. It is our estimate that this would lead to the creation of a trillion dollars a year industry within the next ten years.

This alternative energy source does not yield green house gases in its usage phase. Of course, during the manufacture of the solar panels, batteries, cabling and structures required, green house gases would be generated.

Computation of green house gases generated during the manufacture of solar panels at today’s level of solar panel manufacturing efficiency and solar energy conversion efficiency of panels have indicated that this amount of green house gases could be saved during the first two and a half years which is known as the environment pay back period.

A normal commercially available solar panel would have only a 10% solar energy capturing efficiency and the latest Fortune Magazine carries an advertisement for a solar panel with a certified 29% solar energy capturing efficiency and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed newer technologies with still higher solar energy capturing efficiencies using solar concentrators.

The battery driven cars are a reality to-day and companies like Tesla and Lightning make even battery driven sports cars and some of these batteries would last about 20 years with 85% of its charge capacity been retained even after 15,000 cycles. As such the technologies that would be necessary for bringing the automobile part of this new fuel proposition are fast being developed.

This new proposition would make the electric car the most preferable; because all the handicaps attached to an electric car, would be eliminated through this technology. Restrictions on outreach because of the need to recharge or the dependency on an alternative source of energy - very often emitting green house gases would be eliminated. Because of the abundant availability of battery stations along the highways, people could freely enjoy the thought of their movements without upsetting the green house gas levels in the atmosphere.

Looking at the financial feasibility of the concept, one would see that the financial payback period of this concept would be less than five years. Our initial computations were based on (a) solar energy capturing efficiency of solar panels been only 10% (that is the level of efficiency of commercially available solar panels) (b) a litre of petrol been about rupees one hundred and fifty, (c)the energy to tractive force conversion of fuel been about 30% for petrol.

At the above mentioned solar energy capturing efficiency, a kilometre length of a twenty meter wide highway (Matara Expressway is about 20 meters wide at some places) would generate 14,400 kWatt hours a day which would be theoretically equivalent to 1200 litres of petrol.

Once you take the other inefficiencies of the petrol combustion to tractive force conversion, this equivalent will be about 3000 litres of petrol. As such the annual saving on petrol would be nearly Rs. 100 million.

It is our estimate that the total cost of solar panels, their supporting structures, battery charging stations and equipment would be about Rs. 500 million a kilometre. The cost of Matara Expressway is approximately Rs. 500 millions a kilometre and cost of one kilometre of high tension transmission lines is about Rs. 30 million.

So at this rate the financial pay back period will be about five years and all the newer developments taking place in improving solar capturing efficiency will definitely reduce this payback period.

Further more this proposition would also be a blessing for us in the South Asian countries as most of us in South Asia do get an abundance of solar energy. We think that this could be our first and the biggest gift to the SAARC Countries in this year under the Sri Lanka’s Presidency.

One may wonder whether the oil companies and the motor car companies would support this proposition becoming reality. But we would think that these companies would be too prudent to take such a short sighted approach. We know that, some oil companies have already started research on alternative fuels and achieved some results.

Whoever who gets on board of this proposition would definitely stand to gain and Somaratna does not entertain the slightest doubt about the viability of the concept and it becoming a trillion dollars a year industry in 10 years.