Frodus's Brammo Empulse R #24

[frodus]

Thanks! I'll be meeting up with TheElectricGeneration.org next week. Still deciding if I'm going to the OEVA meeting tonight. I want to go to these events, it makes sense!

[frodus]

Scored some CRG LS mirrors on Craigslist locally for half off... And they were barely used! The guy was super cook and wants to ride sometime.

Definitely helps seeing behind me. I like the look better too... Looks more like a street fighter now.

[ttxgpfan]

pic?

[frodus]

Figured I'd document my mods a little.

Added a Progrip "tank" protector. My coat was rubbing on the "tank" and it had some small scratches, so I installed a protector. Not an exact fit, but it works well. Carbon fiber style design.


I found a guy local on Craigslist that had some CRG Lane splitter mirrors for sale. I offered him $100 for the pair and he accepted. They didn't have the inserts, but I used some inserts I had from my bar ends and had some screws sitting around that fit. I like the mirrors a ton better, as I can now see behind me due to the curved mirror.




Lastly, this is from Brammo. A few weeks ago, people mentioned that their chain was hitting the swingarm. I looked and mine was slightly hitting as well. I talked to Brammo and they had mentioned they had a solution and asked if I wanted to test one of them. This is a prototype that was CNC machined out of plastic, not the final form. I said sure, and they sent me one. The fit is great and the kit comes with everything you need to install (parts + loctite + directions). The roller chain rolls right over it when heavily accelerating or decellerating. It apears to be some sort of Delrin/UHMW material. I don't know anything about availability or cost.

[flar]

I just installed that exact same "tank" protector on my black R, right where the exposed zipper on my jacket was dulling the finish...

[frodus]

charging while I'm at lunch.

[frodus]

So, I got the bike with ~500 miles on the odometer and now I'm at 1070 miles.... not bad. 570 miles on the bike since I got it March 2nd! And that doesn't really illustrate how rainy it's been for most of March and some of April.

It doesn't really feel like 570 miles though.... as all my riding is 20-30 miles at a time, with a couple 40mi trips.

Still going strong 2 months to the day since I got it.

[frodus]

I have a Kill-A-Watt meter that measures current and voltage and time, and you enter in your cost per kWh and it spits out kWh used, cost of use, power factor, etc. Pretty cool, I think everyone with an Empulse should own one.

I've always kept my Clipper Creek J1772 plugged into it just to keep an eye on useage. Well, 315 miles ago, I reset the trip meter on the Empulse, and reset the accumulation of cost on the Kill-A-Watt. I pay about $0.10/kWh here in Beaverton, just outside of Portland, OR and put that into the KAW.

So after ~315 miles and charging after that distance driven, I looked on the KAW meter and it said $4.68. That works out to ~$0.015 per mile. That's pretty awesome! It works out to 46.8kWh from the wall. That gives ~148Wh/mi which isn't anything spectacular.......

But...... that's all the way from the wall to the wheel and takes into account the charger inefficiency, operating the battery heaters and the parking lights and BMS as well as the battery charge/discharge inefficiency. Usually when we're doing these calculations, we're only looking at battery side and not taking any of that into account.... which is not terribly accurate because you aren't really measuring the kWh into the motorcycle, only the kWh out of the pack. So with a Kill-A-Watt meter, I'm measuring the actual energy that I use from the wall, and what it costs.

For comparison, Gas is $3.65/gal and when I drive my A4 Quattro to work and back, I average ~22mi/gal which works out to be right around $0.16/mi of cost.... but that doesn't include oil changes at ~$70 every 7000 miles, an additional $0.01/mi. Oil changes on the Empulse are ~$11 per 3000 mi or $0.004/mi.... for a grand total of ~$0.019/mi. So $0.17/mi on my A4 compared to $0.019/mi on my Empulse.

So Lets say I drive to/from work every work day for the next 4 months (80 days) and my trip is ~15 miles each way or 30mi RT. That's right around 2400 miles. Maybe add on another 1000mi for fun and I'm at 3400mi.

Audi total cost for 3400mi: $578
Empulse total cost for 3400 mi: $64.60

Not bad, Not bad!

[flar]

The way I like to think about energy usage is that for about $4 an ICE is given a gallon of gas, which works out to about 36+kwh of energy.  They then squander it like it was going out of style (pun intended) and get very little in return for the energy we entrusted them with.

The empulse holds just about ~9kwh of electrical energy which is the energy equivalent of about 1/4 gallon of gas.  Now, if that energy came from burning fossil fuels then there was probably much more than 9kwh worth of gas burned to get that energy to you, but I view that as an issue for the energy industry to work on.  I'm more concerned with what I do with the energy I was given.

To that end, the Empulse goes much further on its 1/4 gallon(equiv) than most any ICE vehicle goes on a full gallon of gas, which means it goes much further than 4x the distance per energy unit than any ICE vehicle.

The prices work out similarly.  36kwh of electricity costs many people about what a gallon of gas costs.  That may change over time, and that is interesting to track, but I'm more impressed by the actual efficiency of the energy usage happening inside my vehicle as that is the part that I directly control with my right wrist and my travel plans...

[flar]

I guess to summarize my last post - you can think of 56 miles highway as being not that big of a range, but when you consider that it is on a bike that holds "1/4 gallon of gas" then you start to really appreciate how impressive that 56-mile figure actually is...

[frodus]

Good point!

I looked at wikipedia (because it's damned interesting) and it said 34kwh or 1 MPGe =  0.0292 miles/kW·h so I'll use those numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equivalent

On an Empulse, going with my useage numbers of 315 miles and 46.8kwh from the wall. That's ~6.73mi/kWh. Divide that by 0.0292mi/kWh and we get  230.5MPGe. Going by kWh only, 148Wh/mi and 34kWh would be 229.72MPGe... close enough.

Note: there's a lot of highway on my commute, and I took it out for fun on the highway and rode for almost an hour before returning home, so I expect this to be fairly low.

From Brammo's website:
City: 438 MPG-e
Highway: 203 MPG-e
Combined: 279 MPG-e

So it looks like I'm somewhere between "Highway" MPGe and "Combined" MPGe. 6.73mi/kWh and 9.3kWh in the battery is about 62.6mi on my daily commute, which is also in between Highway range and combined range.

Also, I wondered where they calculate energy useage from. Wikipedia says:
"For EPA, this considers the tank-to-wheel for liquids and wall-to-wheel energy consumption for electricity"

[protomech]

I'm dissatisfied with most of the comparisons to gas.

1. Comparing using a genset

1 gallon of gas burned in a genset will produce about 6 kWh of electricity. By that measure frodus is getting about 40 mpg. Not a good 1:1 comparison because there's an extra set of steps to convert mechanical energy into AC grid energy, then back into DC energy to charge the batteries.

It does approximate the efficiency of burning fossil fuels in the power grid and using that energy to charge the bike .. which for most of us is a good representation of how we charge our bikes.

6 kWh/gal / (148 Wh/mile) = 40 MPG

2. Comparing using thermal energy AKA EPA

1 gallon of gas contains about 33.7 kWh of thermal (chemical) energy. Ignores all combustion losses in a gas vehicle as well as combustion losses in the grid. Good because it compares just the efficiency of the vehicle itself, but bad in that ignoring combustion losses makes for a useless comparison against a gas vehicle.

33.7 kWh/gal / (148 Wh/mile) = 228 MPGe

3. Comparing using cents

Using frodus's costs:
$3.65/gal / ($0.10/kWh * 148 Wh/mile) = 246 MPG$

4. Comparing using CO2

This accurately reflects the portion of the grid that combusts fossil fuels.

I ran my calculations earlier and get about 90 MPGco2 on my Zero using Alabama's relatively dirty energy.

Punching Beaverton's zipcode (97007) into the EPA GRID 2009 numbers gives us 819 lbs CO2/MWH for Portland Electric.

( 8.8 kg / gal ) / ( 819 lbs CO2/MWH * 1 kg/2.2 lbs * 148 Wh/mile ) = 160 MPGco2

So even though frodus uses slightly more electrical energy than I use on my Zero (probably I ride more slowly), he's substantially cleaner due to Portland's high mix of hydro.

[protomech]

33.7 kWh per gallon of gas is the amount of thermal energy released when you fully combust a gallon of gasoline.

An engine's job is to converting thermal energy into mechnical energy. They're about 20-25% efficient at best, and many bike engines are notably less efficient.

[frodus]

Good points Protomech... I REALLY like your MPGco2 calculations.
The only issue with that website, is that it does not take into account Wind in the area and that we've signed up for this:
http://www.portlandgeneral.com/residential/renewable_energy/green_source.aspx

That really drives the message home.... how much less am I poluting with Oregon Renewables than: National average, All Oregon Energy, SV650, Genset and my car.

The Portland General website states that my household is at ~1% of the national average for CO2 (1216 lbs/MWh from the website you linked) or 551.6g/kWh... and 1% of that is 5.516 g/kWh. Then at 0.148 kWh/mi and 5.516g/kWh we get 0.818 g/mi. Using the 819lbs/MWh number, I get 55g/mi.... so I'm doing 67times better by having my electricity come from renewables, rather than "everything"

Then, here's the insane part.....If I use your conversion to MPGco2, (8800g/gal)/(0.818g/mi) = MPGco2, we get 10,757 MPGco2

SV650 gets ~45mpg, that's about 195.5 g/mi.
Genset gets 40.5mpg, 8800g CO2/1gal would produce ~217g/mi
Audi A4 gets ~22mpg when I ride to work (better highyway), that's about 400g/mi.

My Empulse, by Protomech's equations, is:
489 times better with respect to CO2 Emissions than my Audi A4
265 times better with respect to CO2 Emissions than a gas generator
239 times better with respect to CO2 Emissions than my old SV650


That's even more reason to ride my motorcycle!

That'd go up even more if I were to invest in Solar/Grid tie.

[protomech]

Ha, hold on a sec.

Yeah, the numbers are from 2009. So they don't account for recent developments (TVA locally has switched to more natural gas and less coal, due to NG's price drop in recent years).

Not sure I buy 1% of the national average. Maybe it means in the top 1%?

Even if you buy into the "renewable offset" programs (I do), electricity on the grid is very fungible. When you drop an additional load on the grid - like plugging in the Empulse at 3.3 kW - the aggregate grid load will shift. As the grid load shifts upwards, some engineer hits a button (okay, a computer) and dumps more coal into a hopper or releases pumped hydro or throws more natural gas into the turbine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation

So even though I pay for a certain portion of the grid to be fueled by renewable sources - for TVA that almost exclusively means landfill methane, though TVA just opened up a PV-only renewable credit - the reality is that my bike is at least in part sips down a nice coal puree.

Same thing applies if you have on-roof solar panels and you use the grid for "storage". PV will help reduce peak grid consumption during the hottest part of the day, which is very cool.. but when you charge your bike at night you'll be pulling down whatever your region uses for dispatchable power.

That's part of why we need smart charging for EVs. I don't care when my EV charges, as long as it's full by the time I leave in the morning. Giving the grid the freedom to shift EV charging forwards or backwards, within constraints set by the customer, can potentially significantly reduce the need for dispatchable power and increase baseload power (eg nuclear.. cheap, clean power!)