Use Your Car To Power Your House 271
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."
Been done already (Score:2)
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There was a QST magazine article about half a decade ago about using the prius traction battery and what amounted to a VFD to provide emergency power. Which is nice, except for the Prius legendary HF RFI problem. You can hear a prius from quite a distance on the radio due to interference; the irony of providing emergency power for radio gear using a prius which interferes with the radios was not lost on many readers. I guess for the VHF FM only crowd it works pretty well.
I cannot find the article in goog
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not that simple (Score:3, Interesting)
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Chevy Volt comes with a 110V charging cord. Of course, it takes ~8-10 hours to charge at that voltage due to current limits. the charging station you can install gives you 220V and supposedly cuts that to 3-4hrs. so it can do either.
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My understanding is that you can't charge one of these from regular wall current but need at least 220V
Nope, you can charge using 120 V, but it takes a lot longer. 120 V charging is defined as level 1 charging, while 240 V is level 2 charging. There's also a level 3 charging for very fast charging, which I think from memory is only being tested in Japan right now.
Search on SAE J1772 for more details.
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And on a side note, no lineman that intends to go home at night would ever grab a line assuming it was not live, would he?
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The lineman first checks the line -- not hot. He shorts the line. He starts working on it. He gets to go home at night.
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Yup, although I suspect that linemen take precautions just the same.
At work they have some 33kV supply lines running 3-phase. They needed to do work on expanding the lines, and I noticed that the first thing they did was attach cables to short the three lines together using large fiberglass poles with tools attached (the lack of a spectacular display demonstrated that they had turned off the power successfully). The place I work is actually pretty anal-retentive regarding safety so the chance of a breaker
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Imagine the car owners surprise when his car is trying to power the entire neighborhood and the power inverter burns out in a few seconds.
I'm sure they'll have some safety device.
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Its a nice story, and VERY popular to retell, but if the drop line fuse is not blown, trying to backfeed an entire subdivision will instantly stall the engine, if not burn out the alternator and/or blow the drop fuse.
The actual failure mode is the drop fuse blows, the lineman tries to replace it, your generator happens to be out of phase with the national grid, and either the fuse pretty much detonates in the linemans hands, or the generator literally blows up, as in crankshaft sheared off and piston flys t
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Actually, linemen have, in fact, been electrocuted by improperly connected generators. This is NOT an urban legend.
http://www.electricenergyonline.com/?page=show_news&id=38786 [electricenergyonline.com]
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Its an urban legend, its not even true. Unless your hybrid vehicle is a multi-megawatt nuclear submarine, backfeeding an entire neighborhood will instantly kill any normal sized generator.
Now there are interesting ways to kill someone using a generator, but they don't involve backfeeding a neighborhood. The drop fuse goes off like a grenade, unfortunately while the lineman is holding it. The lineman walked thru a rain puddle energized by an extension cord laying in the puddle, coincidentally for the purp
Doesn't suprise me (Score:3)
It doesn't surprise me much as I have heard industry rumors of doing similar things with the smart grid and basically using EVs as a storage medium. Yes I work in this industry so /. here say seems to be correct on this.
As a side note I have also used a car to heat up the garage in the winter to work on it or just change oil. Basically you go and attach a vent hose (aluminum dryer vent works great) to your exhaust and route it out the door. Then start your vehicle and let it run for half an hour. In my uninsulated garage I can get the temp up near freezing from below zero (Fahrenheit). Once warm shut off the car and change your oil. If there is one thing a car engine is good at it is producing heat.
Convenience (Score:2)
soaks up excess grid capacity (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Yes and no. I suspect less excess is available than you might think. Excess capacity costs money, and utilities have spend decades either finding customers for that excess or finding ways to minimize it's generation or not generating it at all.
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One of the big problems with "smart grid" as a term is it's so nebulous. There are plenty of people who are really, really clever and very, very experienced who will argue passionately that we already have a smart grid and we should be more properly talking about a smarter grid. But there are as many definitions of smart grid as there are consultants looking to make a buck.
Look at this definition [nerc.com]:
smart grid - The integration and application of real-time monitoring, advanced sensing, communications, analytics, and control, enabling the dynamic flow of both energy and information to accommodate existing and new forms of supply, delivery, and use in a secure, reliable, and efficient electric power system, from generation source to end-user.
Frankly, I don't like this definition because it's way too verbose. If you want to get to the essence, it's two
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It's an elegantly simple concept, indeed. The biggest problem is finding the right topograpy (although there are ways to deal with that - but then it becomes less simple). FERC has a paragraph [ferc.gov] that points out some of the crucial points quite succinctly:
These projects are uniquely suited for generating power when demand for electricity is high and for supplying reserve capacity to complement the output of large fossil-fueled and nuclear steam-electric plants. Start-up of this type of project is almost immediate, thus serving peak demand for power better than fossil-fueled plants that require significantly more start-up time. Like conventional projects, they use falling water to generate power, but they use reversible turbines to pump the water back to the upper reservoir. This type of project is particularly effective at sites having high heads (large differences in elevation between the upper and lower reservoir). /QUOTE
Penny drops (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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No, there is absolutely no black or brownouts, it was considered at first, but once everybody was asked to stop wasting electricity with aircooling at full blast with windows open on every shopping mall the demand became actually 30 to 40 % lower than the year before. This with the fact that the summer is really cool compared to usual means that Tepco is FAR from being maxed out. Check the operation Yashima website to have data: http://kanmisikou.net/lab/power/ [kanmisikou.net]
Really really useful here! (in Vietnam) (Score:3)
You know, this would be really really useful here in Vietnam where the extraordinary growth rate coupled with communist era bureaucracies/corruption has left power supplies lagging far behind demand. I would dearly love a generator I could use to power my abode when the power goes out (typically in the hottest part of the day which in Vietnam is pretty hot!). This is probably true of a lot of developing countries.
Also in my previous career in the film industry having a powerful generator that is not only mobile but transports itself (and cargo and crew!) would be a godsend for shots not on the studio lot.
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You know, this would be really really useful here in Vietnam where the extraordinary growth rate coupled with communist era bureaucracies/corruption has left power supplies lagging far behind demand. I would dearly love a generator I could use to power my abode when the power goes out (typically in the hottest part of the day which in Vietnam is pretty hot!). This is probably true of a lot of developing countries.
Also in my previous career in the film industry having a powerful generator that is not only mobile but transports itself (and cargo and crew!) would be a godsend for shots not on the studio lot.
But could most people in developing countries afford a Leaf? And, if they could, where would the extra power come from to keep recharging them? If the electrical infrastructure is not up to the task before adding a bunch of electric cars, how will it support them. This isn't something that applies to just 3rd world countries. California is concerned that their electrical grid cannot support wide spread adoption of all electric vehicles, too.
Whether in a Nissan Leaf or a a dedicated storage pack, a batte
Oops! Thought the Leaf was a hybrid! (Score:2)
My bad, I thought the Leaf was a hybrid (like a Prius)! So you're right, having lots of Leafs (Leaves?) would make things worse not better. However that's for society as a whole which is usually the last thing on the average person's mind around here. :(
As far as the affordability goes though, the wealth distribution in Vietnam is very bad. Lots of motorbikes but also some Mercedes, Bentleys and Maybachs. I figure anyone whose stolen... I mean made enough money to afford a car can afford a Leaf.
did it for 'canes (Score:2)
When we had 2 hurricanes hit here in N Fla in 2005 I did it with my Nissan Altima and 2 400 watt inverters I got from a car stereo store. No generators to be found *anywhere*, I had myself my wife a 3 year old and a newborn to worry about.
One inverter kept the fridge and freezer going, the other ran a few flourescent shop lights and some low wattage fans.
No power for 10 days, had power back for a week, then no power again for 7 days. Didn't live in luxury, but we were mostly comfortable in the evenings an
Outdoor night film shoots (Score:2)
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the pros mostly use those loud generators on the other side of the trucks with "welding grade" extremely heavy gauge extension cords.
Just sayin, in case you wanna try it on the cheap, you don't need to buy a new car, just some (expensive) extension cords.
The "rave" guys did the same for their audio. That's how I know. In that case, once the subwoofers get louder than the gens it doesn't really matter, I suppose.
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A few potential drawbacks (Score:2)
So I've been thinking about this a little and here's a couple of drawbacks I see:
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On the contrary. An electric car has much more power than the typical house. Accelerating a 1 ton mass to 65 mph in 15 seconds takes 50 kilowatts. You can turn on all the appliances in a normal house and not get close to that.
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Forgot a factor of 1/2 in there. It takes 25 kilowatts. Still, plenty to power a house.
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Oh, the batteries certainly have the juice to do it. However, the charging circuit can't handle that amperage. I suppose if you attached a monstrous inverter directly to the batteries, you could possibly do it. But the charging station you put in most houses in Japan and the US can only support maybe 30 amps at 220/240v. That's a couple of circuits for lights and the fridge and you're tapped out. If you're using the standard household plug circuit, that's only 12 amps at 110v. That's not enough to run
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Supposedly Nissan has developed a new charger that can be used for this purpose.
With modern electronics, the inverter doesn't need to be that monstrous. Similar kind of power electronics is needed inside the car to control the motor(s) already, and I'm sure it's not monstrous. And 30 amps at 220V is more than you need for a few lights and a fridge. A fridge is something like 300W. That's only 1.5 amps.
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If you live in the US, you may be overestimating your grid reliability--it's not what it once was. With increasing automation, secondary distribution grids have become very good at rapidly isolating individual faults, so that their impact is minimal. However, that same design makes them vulnerable to multiple faults. When a natural disaster causes damage in many locations, the grid operators have to take down the entire system until everything is fixed. That can take one to two weeks, leaving tens of th
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I don't doubt that. But the chance of that actually happening is still very low. Sure, it may start to get worse over the coming years. I have no doubt it will given how little this country spends on infrastructure maintenance. But here's the thing. Grid reliability is the only thing that lets people rely on electric cars. If the grid starts crashing more often, the draw for pure electric cars will vanish and most people won't buy them. Why buy a car that you can't reliably charge? The very thing th
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Using the leaf battery pack, I show it having 24kwh of capacity that will run my house for a few hours. Not massively useful that's only marginally better than the 5kw gen that will run my whole house save the electric drier.
Depending on the hybrid they can be efficient generators. The battery pack actually helps as it can run at max efficient output and charge the batteries with the excess and cycle on and off. This is one of the big potential advantages for hybrid work trucks.
Cost of operation is gener
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A 240V, 30A circuit won't feed as much as you might think. That circuit could feed four 15 amp 110 circuits. That might power your fridge, several lights and maybe a TV. Forget an electric cooktop (usually a 220V, 50A circuit). Though you may be able to get away with just one burner. No way can you run your A/C system. Electric heat? Not a chance. You'd probably have to choose between running the gas powered furnace and the television (a hard decision for some I know).
30 amps just doesn't cut it for
Why do you even need the car?... (Score:2)
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Residents are not* billed hourly rates, just daily rates at the most, eliminating the rationale.
Businesses are billed minute or hourly, so it makes sense for them, but they consume way more than the battery can put out, eliminating that rationale.
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I have a double meter in my house. The electric company puts a special pulse on the line, once at night, and once in the morning, that makes the meter switch from one counter to another.
You can choose between several tariff plans. You can have them switch the meter in the evening, or you can have them switch at night, or not switch at all.
These meters are very common around here.
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You insensitive dolt! (Score:2)
Use an EV car as backup energy source (Score:2)
Good idea if you have an electric car. But backup gas powered generators are a few hundred dollar to a couple of grand at your local hardware store.depending upon power output.
Dangerous if done wrong (Score:3)
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Not to mention, that I don't want to be trying to power the entire neighborhood from my personal generator. I would like to hope there are regulations that ensure a properly licensed person would be connecting a system like this, so the proper safety features are enabled. The 2 problems with this are:
#1 There are a lot of asshats out there that will try to connect something like this themselves and bypass safety features.
#2 There are licensed electricians that are asshats too.
done that (Score:2)
Even better... (Score:2)
Lineman safety (Score:2)
At first thought, this seems to be a good idea but precautions must be followed. How many people will use this system without making the necessary alterations to your house circuit box? I had an emergency power generator and made the needed changes to disconnect the house from the power companies lines when the generator is being used. Without these changes, the generator (or electric car) will push the electricity out to the power grid. What a lineman (repairing downed wires) considers to be a dead wir
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If the system is used regularly, it could also help cut energy bills. By charging the car overnight, when power demand is low and electricity is cheaper, the stored energy in the battery can be released in the daytime when electricity costs are higher.
Let's try this again...
If the system is used regularly, it could also help cut energy bills. By charging the car overnight, when power demand is low and electricity is cheaper, the power demand at night drastically increases above and beyond the power demand during the day, bringing the grid to its knees and driving up night time prices.
Re:Inefficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets try again:
If used regularly, the batteries in the leaf will need to be replaced a lot sooner than if this system wasn't used at all, which will add a significant price to the setup
Re:Inefficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, as soon as day/night usage are the same, the difference in price disappears, and people will stop additional night time charging.
At the end, you'll get a much more stable power consumption which allows much more efficient power generation.
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90% of homes do NOT have variable rate power. so you dont pay less at night. the losses involved with this setup are enough to offset any savings even if you had a variable rate billing based on time of day.
It's a net loss no matter how you look at it.
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90% of homes in which country?
I'm not sure where you live, but my night time electricity is *considerably* cheaper than my day rate.
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He confused his dollars and cents. In the middle of the U.S. where I live I pay $0.11544 per kWh from June through August. (That's 11.544 cents.) So yes, you still pay three times what we do. But not 450 times more.
My electric co-op also offers a controlled interruptible service plan. For all my heat pump electricity, instead of $0.11544/kWh I pay only $0.0480/kWh year round, but it's hooked to a controller that can interrupt electricity to it during peak seasons or during emergencies. During peak usa
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Depends on where you live. Where I live, 90% of homes have variable rate power.
Also, the difference in power generation efficiencies is quite big. Base load plants can run at 60% efficiency, while peak plants run at 30%. If enough people power their own house during the day, and charge during the night, you can leave the peak plants off-line. The charge/discharge efficiency of the battery is about 90%, combined with 60% efficient power generation results in 55% which is much better than 30%.
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Afaict at least here in the UK most homes have single rate power BUT dual rate is readilly available and if you are running large loads overnight (traditionally running storage and immersion heaters in an electrically heated house but charging an EV overnight would also fit the bill) then you would be pretty mad not to sign up for it.
Full on variable rate systems are being trialled but afaict are not yet widely deployed.
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Re:Inefficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Or do what most electrical companies do, build a power reservoir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant [wikipedia.org]
Problem is a LOT of power is lost in the process, Just like using the car battery or even a dedicated battery would.
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Why build a huge single reservoir when you can have a lot of smaller distributed reservoirs?
In an emergency situation where I have the choice between lights, or no lights, I will be dragging cables to may car. Whether or not it's electric is immaterial.
- Dan.
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In an emergency situation where I have the choice between lights, or no lights, I will be dragging cables to may car. Whether or not it's electric is immaterial.
That's the thing... how much more are you spending to buy that electric car, and how does that compare against buying a $1000 electric generator to power your appliances? That's about what I spent on my current genny, which produces 7.5kW (got it on sale, regular price was $1400), and that's plenty for the sump pump, the freezer, the fridge, and the percolator. Our neighbours run their sump pump off our genny too, actually.
It's a really good idea if you're buying an electric car anyway, but buying an electr
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The key thing is that this setup is actually very good for emergencies, specially in densely populated areas like urban Japan where you can't put easily a household generator like in small apartments.
From TFA:
The lithium ion batteries in a Leaf can story up to 24kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity, which Nissan estimates is sufficient to power an average Japanese home for about two days. That means if the system was used for a few hours during the day, the car would still retain enough power to make trips.
Since supply is very tight in central and eastern Japan and they are forecasting that these zones will be facing power shortages up to the year 2014, this system is a very good fit to smooth the power demand. For example, for Tokyo Electric Company service area, the demand curve is in this link:
http:// [tepco.co.jp]
Re:Inefficient (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious about this though: from TFA: "..is sufficient to power an average Japanese home for about two days" - I wonder how that translates to the "average" US home (assuming there is such a thing).
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I'm curious about this though: from TFA: "..is sufficient to power an average Japanese home for about two days" - I wonder how that translates to the "average" US home (assuming there is such a thing)
about 15 minutes.
More if a few of the 55" plasma TVs are shut off.
Even more if homeowners realize that, with proper landscaping and insulation, it is possible maintain a very comfortable temperature with the windows open and air conditioner off even when it is 90 degrees outside.
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Actually, with proper insulation, you'd want the windows closed, otherwise all the hot outside air just blows in. I don't have AC in my house, and during hot summers it's quite a bit cooler inside than outside, provided I keep all windows closed.
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"Even more if homeowners realize that, with proper landscaping and insulation, it is possible maintain a very comfortable temperature with the windows open and air conditioner off even when it is 90 degrees outside."
I had a home that we almost never ran the AC during the summer because it was properly built and engineered. IT was a Geodesic Dome home that had a row of windows at ground level on the windward side and a cupola at the peak of the dome with windows that would open. Even on 98 degree days it w
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Even more if homeowners realize that, with proper landscaping and insulation, it is possible maintain a very comfortable temperature with the windows open and air conditioner off even when it is 90 degrees outside.
Nope, impossible here in Florida. The high temperatures coupled with the high humidity make not running the air conditioner not an option. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking moron. You can get away with murder here in Central Florida, but not without an air conditioner.
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Even more if homeowners realize that, with proper landscaping and insulation, it is possible maintain a very comfortable temperature with the windows open and air conditioner off even when it is 90 degrees outside.
Nope, impossible here in Florida. The high temperatures coupled with the high humidity make not running the air conditioner not an option. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking moron. You can get away with murder here in Central Florida, but not without an air conditioner.
That's because you insane people live in the Florida interior fit only for Republicans and other alligators and snakes. The coast is fine. Except of course in Hurricane season, but cinder block construction solves that little problem. If God had intended man to live in the interior regions of the deep south, he wouldn't have made it a giant swamp.
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Hint: it doesn't have to be YOUR HOUSE that you're supporting. How many cars are in areas of Japan that were unaffected by the tsunami? How many of those owners would have charged up, driven a little closer to the region, and donated the remainder of their charge to help their neighbors? The elders in Japan once scoffed at the current generation of Japanese youth as lazy and disconnected with society-- until they came
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Dude, it's an electric car. It probably has close to 20KWh of storage. That means 20 killowatts for an hour or 1kW for 20 hours - you get the picture. The problem is that the leaf is a pure electric vehicle. Doing this with a Chevy Volt would be better since it could run on gas like a regular generator. There is some additional cost to make the charg
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I have seen a few writeups of people using their Prius as a whole-house UPS: http://www.priups.com/ [priups.com] http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/priups.html [hiwaay.net]
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"vehicle to supply electricity to power a house during a power outage or shortage"
How often do those happen where you live? In Toronto, it's about once every decade, or less.
Given that this occurs less often than I would replace the car, the effect on lifetime would be effectively zero.
So then I would be perfectly happy to draw on my batteries when there's a blackout.
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In many countries where electricity is expensive, even small factories buy and maintain their own diesel generators to save money.
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Plenty of US users buy Lister-style diesels for off-grid use.
Example only, there is much more info for the Googling:
http://www.centralmainediesel.com/stats/PRINTABLE/K09944.asp?page=K09944 [centralmainediesel.com]
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I live in the Cayman Islands so this could be useful here. When a huricane hits, there are no options to drive somewhere that has electricity.
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OR get a fridge that is actually efficient to begin with. front door fridges are a very dumb design.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/chest_fridge.pdf [builditsolar.com]
From over 6 years ago.... this setup would keep food cold for several days without power. and at 100 watts used per day (4.2WattHour) a very small computer UPS will keep it running for most of the outage.
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That's fine except for one big issue: size. To get the same amount of space in a chest refrigerator as a conventional one would mean either you make it deep or long.
If it's deep, you run into issues with people not being able to reach to the bottom without leaning in, like one does with a current chest freezer, or you have to make it long to accommodate the same internal space.
Either way, this type of device would require nearly everyone to redo their kitchen to accommodate this new device as it will not f
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"Also, what about the freezer portion? Nearly every fridge made has a separate freezer section. Adding that into the equation would, again, increase the overall size."
do what rich people already do.
1 fridge
1 freezer
And the size stays the same... just laying down, look at photos of chest freezers. and there are already homes that use these types of systems already. the only problem is that people use the top of the fridge as counterspace.
Honestly who cares about pushing wide adoption. if you really care
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Personally, I just leave them in there. It's like having having a personal food assistant, because they know where everything is. Just last night he handed me some frozen steaks from the bottom of the chest that I forgot I even had.
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Ha ha ha... that reminds me of this time... oh... 10 years ago. There was this guy at work that had just bought a 2kg block of cheese from Costco, and the power went out. He was so worried about his cheese spoiling that he sat down and ate the whole block of cheese. Couple hours later, the power came back on.
We did have an extended power outage due to a forest fire once where people were evacuated for 2 weeks. When they returned, they were told to move their fridges/freezers to
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Mistake due to insufficient coffee consumption...
My rates are $0.0667/kWh to $0.0962/kWh.
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Because:
-Your day-to-day house energy usage doesn't involve accelerating a ton of mass to 60-70 mph repeatedly
-As a corollary, your house is not having to constantly spend energy to fight air resistance to maintain a high velocity
-Your car is poorly insulated with very large windows meaning the reduced volume of air to climate control is offset by the inefficiencies of dealing with thermal and light energy outside the car (even on pretty hot days, your house A/C generally gets to cut off a lot, in a car, th
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Though 24kWh lasting two days still seems *very* optimistic
According to my last electricity bill, I used 924kWh over six months, or around 5 per day. To use 24kWh in two days, you'd need more than double my electricity consumption. Given that I work from home (so have computers on and music playing most of the day), watch films on a projector (300W bulb), use a tumble dryer for all of my clothes and a dishwasher for all of my washing up, that seems insanely high.
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And according to my TED power meter, 12kWh is close to the MINIMUM my house has ever used in one day. Usually it's 30-40kWh in fair weather and 60-80kWh in summer with AC running. It's an old house with poor insulation, five active people using indoor lights all day, two fridges, and lots of cooking on the electric range and laundry in the electric dryer. We also do crazy things like paint the house in the summer which requires the AC be running with the windows open. Granted, if the power went out and
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Yes but why does it take as much energy as it takes to run your house for 2 days just to drive your all-electric car a few miles?
The other answers are getting bogged down in wordiness and too many numbers.
Here's a simpler way to look at it, just look at the ratios of power output vs time duration.
The motor in your car is about ten to a hundred times bigger than the sum of the working electric motors in your house, right? Very roughly?
Given that, a chunk of energy runs your house about ten to a hundred times longer than it runs your car, right? Very roughly?
Makes sense to me...
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How about turning on your car radio unstead?
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since when does previous use prevent a corporation from patenting?
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Because those people who have solar, generator backup, etc. are all blowing the grid 24 hours a day, aren't they?
You install a breaker (mandated by law in some places, for exactly this reason). That breaker cuts off the grid supply and powers the house from the car instead. Power comes back up, you switch it back over. You could probably even design a "smart" breaker that will do just that for you automatically.
At no point has anyone ever suggested that you pump power back to the grid (but that, also, is
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Why not just...have battery powered LED lights for the short term emergencies (since that's all your car would cover well, anyway)
Uh, not quite.
My wife's prius generates about 60 horsepower.
conservative 60 hp * conservative 700 watts per hp / conservative 220 volts = sometime like 190 amps. Probably, with the help of the batteries, a short term surge of 400 amps would be possible.
Its an older house; I believe we only have 100 amp service. Technically I could run both my house and my neighbor's house across the driveway 100% full blast. In practice I don't think either of us own 100 amps of load; but then again running a car flat o
Re: (Score:2)
They have newer batteries coming out in the next 5-10 years that will store 10 times the power and charge/discharge 10-100 times faster. They already have working prototypes of full size batteries.
Lets see what kind of cycle life these have before we go around saying batteries are a dead end.