Original article written by: James Morris
According to Power Logistics Project Manager Craig Hardeman, "we started off with an APC hydrogen fuel cell for season one race one." The ancillary equipment was then powered by backup generators. At that point, there were no sustainability benchmarks, so we were embarking on a journey. We've created power monitoring for all of it, so we can view real-time data on the performance of each generator and fuel cell. We may watch live updates on the charging of each team's electric racing SUV in addition to their utilities, catering, broadcast, and production. We were able to plan to get the complete series on solely green generation using the data we collected over the previous two years.
Extreme E uses hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) generators, which emit additional emissions and use biofuel with a low carbon footprint (albeit not as low as the Kaizen system). The necessity for backup generators has been eliminated with the introduction of batteries. The Zenobe system fits into three conventional shipping containers and has a storage capacity of slightly under 1MWh. It uses second life packs that are removed after their use in applications like electric buses. Welch states, "These are the same batteries Zenobe provides for grid support." "After being used for transportation, second-life batteries can be used as grid backup for an additional five to seven years."