Japanese car manufacturers Nissan and Mitsubishi say batteries from their electric-powered vehicles may soon be able to dischage enough electricity to power a rice cooker or a microwave. According to a Bloomberg report, Mitsuibish is looking to upgrade the discharge from its i-MiEV from 100 watts (good enough to charge a mobile phone) to 1500 watts, powerful enough to power cooking implements.

Nissan and Mitsubishi say the electricity shortages caused by the reduction in capacity by the country’s nuclear crisis is highlighting the usefulness of having EV batteries as a backup. Yoshikazu Nakamura, head of Mitsuibishi’s EV business, told Bloomberg the company has intensified battery-development efforts since the March disaster and aims to introduce a battery that can discharge as much as 1,500 watts by the end of this year.

Nissan is also planning a similar device for its Nissan Leaf, although it is yet to decide on the level of discharge it will allow.  The company says its lithium-ion batteries, supplied by Automotive Energy Supply Corp, take about eight hours to be fully charged to 24 kilowatt hours, which can power the car for an estimated 200 kilometers, or all the electricity needed for a  regular household for two days. Toyota also expects to introduce a system that will enable its Prius hybrid car to discharge as much as 1,500 watts within a year.

Green boost to Iberdrola

A sharp rise in production from its renewables portfolio has underpinned the first half earnings of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. The company, which is the fifth biggest electricity company in the world by market capitalisation, said non-hydro renewable energy produced 15,017 million kWh in the first half, mostly from wind, and accounted for 20.1 per cent of its overall production. For the first time, this exceeded output from nuclear plants (16.4 per cent) and hydro (14.4 per cent).

Combined cycle gas plants produced 37.5 per cent of the total, while the company noted that 51 per cent of its output was emissions free, and overall emissions of CO2-e per kWh was 4.1 per cent lower at 234 grammes. In Sain, this figures was 102g/kWh. The renewables business, which had been spun off in a separate entity but was bought back erlier this year, lifted earnings by 11 per cent and accounted for 20 per cent of overall earnings. The company has 13,000 MW of installed wind capacity, with more than half of this outside Spain. Most new capacity was built in the US in the last six months.

Fast reactor for China

China this week connected to the grid an experimental nuclear reactor that produces less radioactive waste than current designs. Bloomberg reported that the 65MW fast-neutron reactor near Beijing, which was built by the Chinese Institute of Atomic Energy and with help from the Russian government, is now running at 40 per cent capacity. The experimental fast reactor took a decade to build and achieved criticality, or started controlled and sustainable generation, a year ago.

Fast reactors are designed to reduce radioactive waste by using most of the fuel during the nuclear reaction, use up to 70 per cent of uranium feedstock compared with 1 per cent for existing pressurized water reactors, according to the report published by China National Nuclear. A spokesman for the institute says the next step is to lift the output to 100 per cent of capacity, when it can then move to commercial deployment. He told Bloomberg China plans to start construction of a 1-GW fast reactor at Sanming city in 2018 using home-grown technology, and China National Nuclear will start building two 800-MW fourth-generation reactors using Russian designs in 2013 or 2014, he said. The reactors will also be at Sanming.