Use Your Car To Power Your House

itwbennett writes "Nissan has developed a system that allows a vehicle to supply electricity to power a house during a power outage or shortage. A prototype of the charging system running on a Nissan Leaf electric car was unveiled in Japan on Tuesday. A two-way charging device that would typically convert the household electricity supply to a voltage suitable for charging the car's battery can be reversed to feed power back into the household circuit."

not that simple

[meridien]

When the mains power is out (such as a storm or auto accident), the crews working on the problem will have the power for that grid shut off so that they can work safely. Any properly installed standby generator will have a solenoid that disconnects the house from the mains while the generator is supplying power. This is REQUIRED by national electrical code. Imagine the lineman's surprise when he touches wires that are disconnected from the generating station and SHOULD BE CARRYING NO CURRENT but are powered because some nimrod connected a standby system improperly. Not good.

soaks up excess grid capacity

[bre_dnd]

This is not as stupid as it sounds at first.

The problem with generating electricity is that you can't (normally) store electricity -- so generating capacity is dimensioned for the peak load. A lot of excess capacity is available at night -- some of which you can't just shut off. It takes a long time to power up a coal/nuclear power plant. In mountainous regions the night excess is used e.g. to pump water uphill, back into a lake that is part of a hydroelectric plant.

Charging the car at night when rates are low makes sense, and running a few lightbulbs or a TV set doesn't use the amount of power you need for driving.

Penny drops

[arkhan_jg]

I did initially think 'Why on earth would you go to the trouble and inefficiency of this with an expensive electric car?' and then the penny dropped. It's in Japan, where they were having rolling brownouts due to the nuclear disaster and the loss of capacity, and are still under threat of blackouts over the summer.