This Solar Power Station Kept the EVs Juiced at Performance Vehicle of the Year
The Mobile Energy Command by Renewable Innovations delivers emissions-free electricity wherever it’s needed—no grid required.
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Because today's batteries only carry the equivalent energy of a few gallons of gasoline, the fun doesn't last long in an EV when you're ripping it around a racetrack. Just a handful of hot laps in a Porsche Taycan GTS or a Kia EV6 GT can suck down more than 20 percent of the battery's energy, bringing a quick end to your day if you don't have a place to plug in on site.
Enter the solar-powered Mobile Energy Command (or MEC-S), a 53-foot-long EV charging station that helped power the six EVs we evaluated at this year's Performance Vehicle of the Year. Built by Renewable Innovations, a Utah-based company that's developing modular and scalable zero-carbon power systems, the self-contained unit can be trucked in and set up within a matter of days or hours to provide electricity for the likes of music festivals, data centers, military outposts, or in this case our test cars.
Looking like it came out of a Mars colony concept sketch, the MEC-S captures up to 50 kilowatts of energy using two rectangular solar arrays and two solar Smartflowers, which tilt and rotate to track the sun throughout the day. Four Level 2 charging stations provide up to 10 kilowatts each for charging EVs and plug-in hybrids. There's a 220-kilowatt-hour battery for storing excess energy and providing power when the sun isn't shining, and if things get desperate, its onboard diesel generator can be fired up.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Charging Speeds Things Up
Although its solar station is impressive and worked flawlessly for our needs, Renewable Innovations has built its core business around hydrogen power. The company's MEC-H2EV packs hydrogen fuel cells, lithium-ion batteries, and DC fast chargers into a semi trailer that delivers far more power than the MEC-S. The fuel cells can generate up to 250 kilowatts, and the batteries store 440 kilowatt-hours of electricity. With two 180-kilowatt DC fast chargers for refueling EVs, it would have been an even better solution for our charging needs at Willow Springs International Raceway. But hydrogen isn't as readily available or as cheap as the sunshine in Southern California, and it doesn't help that a current shortage of hydrogen has suppliers charging exorbitant rates.
Conceptually, the MEC-H2EV is similar in scope to the Mobile Power Generation System GM's Hydrotec division provided to help us charge the EVs at our 2023 SUV of the Year evaluation. That's not just a happy accident. Renewable Innovations is a Hydrotec customer, buying fuel cells from GM to integrate into its own power systems. GM is also a customer of Renewable Innovations. The automaker's self-driving outfit, Cruise, uses a MEC-H2EV to charge up to 70 vehicles a day in San Francisco.
Mobile Powerplants Aren't Just for Cars
Ultimately, EV charging is likely to be just one part of the Renewable Innovations product portfolio. CEO Robert Mount is betting that the world's growing appetite for clean energy will lead to situations where it would make more sense to use onsite hydrogen fuel cells, storage batteries, or solar panels to meet power demand rather than upgrade the electrical infrastructure.
For example, a data center might use energy stored in batteries or hydrogen to meet its peak electricity needs rather than pay a utility's demand charges, or an off-grid green community could power up to 75 homes using a fuel cell power station. Electric utilities could even rely on the technology to bolster their own power generation during extreme heat waves and cold snaps. And maybe—someday—a certain rural California racetrack will use buffer batteries connected to the grid to provide bursts of power for a permanently installed 350-kilowatt DC fast-charging station.
I fell in love with car magazines during sixth-grade silent reading time and soon realized that the editors were being paid to drive a never-ending parade of new cars and write stories about their experiences. Could any job be better? The answer was obvious to 11-year-old me. By the time I reached high school, becoming an automotive journalist wasn’t just a distant dream, it was a goal. I joined the school newspaper and weaseled my way into media days at the Detroit auto show. With a new driver’s license in my wallet, I cold-called MotorTrend’s Detroit editor, who graciously agreed to an informational interview and then gave me the advice that set me on the path to where I am today. Get an engineering degree and learn to write, he said, and everything else would fall into place. I left nothing to chance and majored in both mechanical engineering and journalism at Michigan State, where a J-school prof warned I’d become a “one-note writer” if I kept turning in stories about cars for every assignment. That sounded just fine by me, so I talked my way into GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant for my next story. My child-like obsession with cars started to pay off soon after. In 2007, I won an essay contest to fly to the Frankfurt auto show and drive the Saturn Astra with some of the same writers I had been reading since sixth grade. Winning that contest launched my career. I wrote for Jalopnik and Edmunds, interned at Automobile, finished school, and turned down an engineering job with Honda for full-time employment with Automobile. In the years since, I’ve written for Car and Driver, The New York Times, and now, coming full circle, MotorTrend. It has been a dream. A big chunk of this job is exactly what it looks like: playing with cars. I’m happiest when the work involves affordable sporty hatchbacks, expensive sports cars, manual transmissions, or any technology that requires I learn something to understand how it works, but I’m not picky. If it moves under its own power, I’ll drive it.
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