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Transportation Power

Nissan's Next Electric Car Could Also Provide Power To Your Home (deccanchronicle.com) 154

Posted by EditorDavid from the turning-over-a-new-Leaf dept.
From a report: The owner of an electric car will be able to meet household power needs from the vehicle itself based on a technology developed by Nissan, the Japanese auto giant.

It plans to introduce the new 'Leaf' electric cars in the Indian market next year and is on the look-out for local partners for collaboration on the application of its latest 'Vehicle-to-Home' technology (V2H) in the state. The technology allows electric vehicles to not only receive power but also store it and send it back to the source. The 'Leaf' could be an alternative to a home battery system like inverter.

Household power can be supplied from the 'Leaf' lithium-ion battery (40 kWh) of the car by installing a power control system connected to the household's distribution board. The vehicles can also be charged from the household power supply at night (lean usage period).
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Nissan's Next Electric Car Could Also Provide Power To Your Home More

Nissan's Next Electric Car Could Also Provide Power To Your Home

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  • Lean usage period (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Sunday October 20, 2019 @12:44AM (#59326734)
    And how long is that period going to stay "lean" when everyone is charging their car at night? Increasing power costs are never factored in when considering changing to an electric vehicle. I expect as they get more popular a lot of people will (excuse the pun) get a nasty shock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A power company has many interesting ways to reshape the export profit that electric vehicle was expected to make.

    • Re:Lean usage period (Score:5, Insightful)

      by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @01:35AM (#59326822)

      As long as power supply/demand fluctuates throughout the day, there will be opportunities for charging with cheap power.

      And if, ultimately, cars will be able to charge with perfect timing, this means lower power generation cost overall.

      • True, but with everyone basically having a backup battery pack in their garage, the power spikes will vanish and the power consumption will flatten out, albeit at a higher level because, well, total conversion isn't.

        In other words, the "lean times" will simply cease to exist. Because you don't expect peak times to become cheaper just because they ain't peak times no more, do you?

        • Re:Lean usage period (Score:5, Informative)

          by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @08:36AM (#59327366)

          Actually, if power consumption was level, I would expect it to get much cheaper.

          Right now, those peaks are filled in using "peaker plants" which range from all sorts of quick to start but expensive to operate power generators. When the wholesale price of power rises high enough, even a diesel motor generator set can become cost effective to run. You see, because the wholesale price rises during peaks, all sorts of less economical sources become viable.

          IF the load was always stable, or nearly so, it would be easier to be much more efficient and cost effective. Consider Nuclear power for instance. Throttling a nuclear plant can sometimes be difficult, depending on where you are in the fuel cycle. Especially towards the end of your fuel load, throttling up and down needs to be done slowly over days in order to get as much power (and profit) out of your fuel load while keeping the real nasty radioactive stuff burned off in your fuel so you can handle it faster. Having a steady load would help the economics of this engineering problem, making nuclear's cost lower.

          Other fuels have the same kinds of considerations, though to a lesser degree. But the engineering problem is much easier if you don't have to throttle your power generation capacity, or waste a portion of your capacity because there is nobody to buy your power.

          So yes, I would expect electricity to get cheaper if we didn't see the daily peak during the day, or if the peaks where less pronounced. However, that's not to say I think we will actually accomplish this dream. I don't think having your car as a peak reduction device works very well. Peaks in power usage tend to be late afternoon, about the time most of us are starting to think about commuting home from work and when our cars will most likely be on the road, not connected to the power grid. In this case the use case just doesn't match. Yea, it might help get you through a blackout, or help the person who works from home, but that's not generally true for most of us.

          • You expect something to get cheaper without the pressing need on the supplier to get cheaper?

            Care to inform us why they'd do that? Because of the goodness of their heart?

            You can certainly tell me a reason why they wouldn't just jack up the off-peak prices while keeping peak prices where the customers already are used to paying them, right?

          • You are mixing up balancing plants with "peaker plants". I put into quotes as technically peaker plants don't even exist. They are ordinary load following plants.

            • Yes, they're technically ordinary load following plants, but I think that we can have a useful definition of "peaker plants" being those plants with a high marginal cost per kWh such that you try to keep them off or at minimal production most of the time. IE they only ramp up for the most severe peaks in demand.

        • the power spikes will vanish and the power consumption will flatten out

          Why? It would be much more plausible if power consumption changed to match momentary available power generation instead of flattening out.

          • How would the power consumer determine what power is available? And more importantly, why would he care? Unless there is a monetary incentive (and even then it would have to be considerable to offset the investment in some technology that supplies that information), there is pretty little reason for the consumer to adjust his behaviour.

            • How would the power consumer determine what power is available?

              Because of either grid information or direct price signals.

              And more importantly, why would he care?

              Because of money savings.

              • How would the power consumer determine what power is available?

                Because of either grid information or direct price signals.

                How would the information make it to an actual person in time for them to change their usage quickly enough to matter? Are you expecting that many people will spend money on equipment capable of receiving these signals in real time?

                And more importantly, why would he care?

                Because of money savings.

                How much money are we talking about? That'll impact how many people care. Is this 10's of dollars per month or pennies?

                My power company used to offer a service where I could save a couple dollars per year if I allowed them to install a switch that they could use to turn off my ai

            • In most countries so called 'smart meters' will be mandatory soon.

        • True, but with everyone basically having a backup battery pack in their garage, the power spikes will vanish and the power consumption will flatten out, albeit at a higher level because, well, total conversion isn't.

          No, power consumption will shift to match power generation. In a world full of power plants that operate at something like full capacity all the time, consumption would flatten out -- and this would mean that utilities wouldn't need to have much excess capacity, lowering costs. But that's not the world we're going to have. We're going to have a lot of solar, wind and wave power generation that is extremely cheap but highly variable.

          In any world, being able to match consumption to the cheapest structure

          • Again, same question: How would consumers determine when more power is available? And why would they care?

            If the same model applies as it does now, i.e. where certain times are cheaper due to more production/less consumption, we will definitely see a flattening effect if people have the ability to store power during off-peak times for peak-time consumption because that would make sense. Which would in turn certainly change the peak/off-peak hours and result in a change of the pricing schemes.

            In the end, we

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Shotgun ( 30919 )

              Again, same question: How would consumers determine when more power is available? And why would they care?

              By joining Progress Energy's "PowerSaver" program (and, I assume other providers have a similar program). You sign up for the program, get a smart meter, and then shift your usage to "off-peak" times. You save on energy for your trouble.

          • Power Generation MWh prices are based on the marginal cost of dispatching the requested quantity of power to the grid. Then, of course, there is a cost for simply spinning. And a cost for going from non-spinning to spinning. Generally speaking adequate "spinning reserve" is required in order to be able to meet instantaneous dispatch requirements. That is, if you have a gas turbine that is shut down (not spinning) the cost to get it spinning (even though it may not be producing any power to the grid) is

        • True, but with everyone basically having a backup battery pack in their garage, the power spikes will vanish and the power consumption will flatten out, albeit at a higher level because, well, total conversion isn't.

          In other words, the "lean times" will simply cease to exist. Because you don't expect peak times to become cheaper just because they ain't peak times no more, do you?

          Isn't that a big part of the whole idea though?

          One of the big issues with legacy power generation is that the turbines aren't very quick reacting. So smoothing out the spikes is a very good thing.

          As well, it answers one of the issues of Solar/Wind for areas where either is not constant.

          Although I am still big on Nickel-Iron batteries at production sites. But this seems a fairly food thing at least to me.

        • I can see you've never been exposed to the wholesale market price before, yes the price of peaks are directly proportional to supply and demand, where supply is often met with increasing cost the higher the demand rate is. There are whole powerplants which make a profit by not running for half of the year due to electricity demand being lower in winter.

          Just look at Australia where the entire energy market is pissed at Telstra for sorting out the peaks and drawing huge profits off their tiny battery simply b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        in the past, solar (and wind etc) homes had to invest in expensive and costly-to-maintain batteries. More recently, public utilities have either offered (or been forced to allow users to sell back to the grid, saving the homeowners a lot in battery costs but often getting cheated (sometimes quite badly) in what they were getting for selling back. (fortunately a lot of it now is simply 1:1 "credits") But for many, it's still not an option and those people have to deal with costly battery systems at home to

        • So you think people will buy such a car so they can leave it at home during the day and take the bus to work?

          The whole thing is a stupid idea that will not work and will not have the intended result (no matter what that intention is).

    • Lean might flip (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 )

      More than that, people are also installing solar panels all over the place. This doesn't matter when they're rare because power demand is about 50% higher during the day than at night. But when they start busting 20% of your energy generation, the day/night divide for cost of power might actually start flipping.

      If we do end up in a solar future, you might find yourself plugging in at work during the day, then driving home and plugging in not to charge your vehicle, but to keep your lights on on the cheap.

      • ... power demand is about 50% higher during the day than at night ...

        Until more and more people are charging EVs at night.

        ... you might find yourself plugging in at work during the day ...

        This only works now due to some vanity projects. It is unlikely to become ubiquitous. Too many people, and increasing daytime demands which are already problems.

      • As solar penetration increases the more likely impact is that the duck-bill period (~4-8PM) will become the peak period rather than the more traditional 11AM-4PM. This will encourage demand-side management for the first half of the new peak period at commercial facilities that can use things like thermal storage, grid storage to buffer the window, and increased wind generation that typically buffers that period pretty well. Late night is where traditional power sources (including non-renewables) will usua

    • Re:Lean usage period (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @02:35AM (#59326936)

      And how long is that period going to stay "lean" when everyone is charging their car at night?

      As solar scales up, the cheapest power will be available late morning and early afternoon, not at night.

      People may charge at work rather than at home. My employer has several chargers in our parking lot, and will be installing more soon.

      My house has a "smart meter", and I pay different rates at different times. 30 cents/kwhr from 2 to 7 PM. 8 cents from 2 to 4 AM. 12 cents any other time. My spouse charges her EV at 2 AM.

      The electric company really should update and broadcast prices continually over the internet, with devices like car chargers programmed to automatically optimize to the lowest price. That way the demand curve can be bent to fit the supply. This will be important as variable sources like solar and wind become more dominant.

      • The electric company really should update and broadcast prices continually over the internet, with devices like car chargers programmed to automatically optimize to the lowest price. That way the demand curve can be bent to fit the supply. This will be important as variable sources like solar and wind become more dominant.

        The internet isn't actually necessary, you only need a few bytes to communicate the current power cost. You can transmit that over the power lines themselves. Then have a smart meter that reads the power and follows your settings as to when and how much to charge. For example, you might tell it to use even expensive power when the car is below 20%.

        • The internet isn't actually necessary, you only need a few bytes to communicate the current power cost. You can transmit that over the power lines themselves. Then have a smart meter that reads the power and follows your settings as to when and how much to charge.

          The problem with your solution is that the information needs to reach the individual devices, not just the meter.

          EV charging is controlled by the computer built into the car, not by the socket on the wall.

          The temperature (and indirectly, the compressor) in my smart-fridge is controlled over Z-Wave from a Samsung SmartThings hub. There is no mechanism for it to get information over the powerline from the electric meter. But it is trivial to control it over Wifi from, say, a Raspberry Pi running a Python sc

          • EV charging is controlled by the computer built into the car, not by the socket on the wall.

            If you are plugging your car into a dumb outlet, there is no control, but if you are using an intelligent charger, it can control the charging. Both must enable charging for charging to take place.

        • The internet isn't actually necessary, you only need a few bytes to communicate the current power cost. You can transmit that over the power lines themselves.

          In theory you could, but it would be much easier to use mobile data, which is cheap, mature, easy to use and much more flexible.

      • "The electric company really should update and broadcast prices continually over the internet, with devices like car chargers programmed to automatically optimize to the lowest price. That way the demand curve can be bent to fit the supply. This will be important as variable sources like solar and wind become more dominant."

        They do that now. However, the spot energy price has nothing whatsoever to do with the rate that you are charged. And even if the utility "pretends" to bill you based on the spot price

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      TFA is completely wrong, this has actually been in operation for a couple of years now.

      V2G trials started in Norway a couple of years ago, maybe earlier. Commercial use has been happening for at least a year now. There is a scheme in the UK that you can sign up to as well. So this is already happening, with current and previous model Leafs. Even the original 24kWh one supports it.

      It works nicely. The vehicle only feeds the grid during peak times for maybe several minutes tops. So the additional load at nigh

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      What they will charge themselves more money, all schizophrenic like. Your solar panels, you house battery, who are you paying for electricity, the Sun.

    • @Dunbal ( 464142 ) - I'm sorry, but you *MUST* look at this -- it's not even Gotse or Rickrolling.

      [as] a lot of people will (excuse the pun) get a nasty shock.

      Picture link [kym-cdn.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      Or, technology will adapt.

      -I top off the charge on my car at work from the solar panel sun-shader that employees will convince businesses to install. Then I deplete part of the charge on the drive home, where I use the car as an emergency backup to replace an emergency generator. All for the cost of an inverter (and the $1/day my employer charges for the premium shaded parking space).

      -The 20yr shingles that my house was built with are at EOL. Time for a new roof. I'd like to replace those with solar shin

  • Steal power from your employer (Score:3)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @12:45AM (#59326740)

    the new office supplies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Company offers free green power all day for the optics of been seen as green.
      Rent/buy a home near work.
      Drive that car almost full of power home after a long day and its free green energy all night?
      Just enough to make it to work the next day and its free green power again.
      Would the power company approve of that lack of control over home energy profits? Its their grid connected to the home and that new car is moving low cost energy around the city.

      • Company offers free green power all day for the optics of been seen as green.

        Because its a low volume vanity or green washing project. This won't continue as more people use EVs.

        Drive that car almost full of power home after a long day and its free green energy all night?

        The day, when power demand is already too high, after adding a lot of EVs to an already overburdened system.

      • My employer provides EV chargers in the employee parking lot. But they are not free. To use them, you must have an account, and are charged for each kwhr.

        The rate is lower than the home retail rate, but once you factor in round-trip efficiency losses, plus wear on the battery, you are not going to come out ahead.

    • Re:Steal power from your employer (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @04:22AM (#59327068) Homepage

      Beyond this issue (which is quite real for employers that allow charging), there's a more fundamental issue for those who plan to do this for more than just emergencies

      EV batteries are cycle life-limited, not shelf life-limited. So you can spend a given cycle on the road, or for buffering a house, but not for both. Want more cycles? You need a new pack.

      Packs can be designed for vehicle duty (lightweight, meaningful structural requirements, more abuse tolerant, designed for relatively slow discharge but rapid charging) or grid duty (maximizing cycle life for a minimum cost is key; charge and discharge rates designed for normal grid powers (for homes, generally slow) ). Vehicle packs are physically attached to an entire car that either needs to be thrown away when the pack dies, or imposes an extra expense at swapping the pack out vs. a dedicated grid battery.

      If you're going to "buy cycles", you should be buying them in the form of batteries designed for grid usage, not vehicle usage. You get a far better buy per cycle, and they're not physically attached to a car, complicating replacement and/or encouraging whole vehicle disposal. Even if one's argument is, "Well, I wouldn't have driven the car to the end of its cycle life!" - all that means is that now someone else won't get as many cycles in it. Which either A) it'll be factored into depreciation when you sell the car (just like mileage already is), or B) you're successfully cheating the subsequent buyer by hiding how many extra cycles you've put on the battery via grid duty. I hope that (B) does not become commonplace.

      All this said, providing backup power with an EV isn't a bad idea at all. The extra cycles spent to keep your home powered in an emergency aren't going to be a meaningful fraction of the total. Also, maybe some day EV battery cycle lives will be enough that the battery will be the last part to wear out on the vehicle, and relatively little degradation will be accrued during cycling. In which case, sure, using EVs as a home battery would only be the logical choice.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by AleRunner ( 4556245 )

        EV batteries are cycle life-limited, not shelf life-limited.

        This is old news. Most EV batteries are beginning to outlast the cars they are placed in. They are neither cycle nor shelf life limited - instead they are becoming vehicle life limited.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          I think that's pretty optimistic at present (read: overoptimistic). Maybe some day, though.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            It should also be pointed out that grid duty is pretty harsh. Put your car through half a cycle per day, thats an extra ~183 cycles per year. Even if you didn't drive at all, that'd wear out a typical 1500-cycle battery in just over 8 years. They last longer in driving because most people only commute over a rather small fraction of a discharge cycle, with long trips being relatively rare in-between. Batteries designed for grid service are designed around longer cycle lives than those for automotive serv

            • Put your car through half a cycle per day, thats an extra ~183 cycles per year.

              No it isn't. Half-cycles don't damage the battery as much as full cycles.

      • All this said, providing backup power with an EV isn't a bad idea at all. The extra cycles spent to keep your home powered in an emergency aren't going to be a meaningful fraction of the total.

        Quite a few people in California could have used this feature the other week. And I read that events like that will become more common in the next few years.

  • In a lot of third world countries, daily rolling blackouts are a norm of life. So it makes sense to use a car's battery as energy store. The only problem is once everyone does this, the rationing will get only worse. Although, in a country like India it's unlikely that everyone on the block can afford a new electric car.

    • That's assuming the rolling blackouts are caused by supply issues and not concern for setting the whole place on fire.

    • Re:Only good until everyone does it (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @03:22AM (#59327014)

      In a lot of third world countries, daily rolling blackouts are a norm of life.

      And in California, which isn't a third world country, but their electricity supplier, PG&E, doesn't act that way.

      I could imagine that electric cars that can power the house would be very popular in California, given that PG&E just announced that their blackouts could continue for another ten years.

      Although, I wonder how long a car battery could power a house in California. I'm guessing that things like air conditioning and refrigerators use a lot of energy. You would need to shutoff high power usage appliances.

      For the refrigerator, you could buy a propane powered refrigerator as a backup for blackouts.

      Turn off the air conditioning and sleep outside in the backyard. If you live in an apartment in the city, go out into the street, and cuddle up with a homeless person.

      Use candles instead of lights: A perfect romantic evening!

      Nine months later there will be a mini baby boom.

      • I doubt a Leaf could maintain full power to a house for a 5-7 day public safety blackout. The solution which most people in the affected areas have already decided on is propane-fueled generators (most people already use propane for water heating in these largely somewhat rural areas so the delivery infrastructure is there).

      • EVs make a terrible source of power for a home. You need the car battery to actually get places. With the planned outages, you actually have a high risk of fire... why the hell would you decide to reduce the range of your car in order to power household loads?

        Slap a properly configured battery on the side of the house and be done with it. As an example, a Tesla PowerWall (13.5kWh) can support your home electronics plus a fridge and fan for 24 hours. Add in 4kW of PV on the roof, and you have a permanent

        • What the hell are you running in your home so that 13.5kWh only lasts 24 hours?

          • I spoke too soon: Canadians use more electricity than USAdians [wikipedia.org], but it's most probably due to most places using electric heating.

            The chart lists 14930 kWh per person, per year. That's 40.9 kWh per day, welll above the 13.5 kWh you mentioned. However, if we pick a place similar to Canada or the USA like the UK, where it's 4795 kWh per person per year, we get 13.14 kWh per day which is a bit below the capacity of a Tesla PowerWall.

            This also means most Canadians would need at least three Tesla PowerWalls. Yike

          • Average residential use in the US is about 24-30kWh/day; a modern refrigerator is about 4-5kWh, and a typical set of other “important” loads— a TV and accompaniments runs about 200W for about 4kWh/day. LED lights in a house might be as much as 4kWh. Air conditioning varies tremendously based on outdoor conditions, but can range from 40-160kWh for a ~2,000 square foot home.

            But, when you add an EV into the mix you might add another 25-50kWh depending on how much you drive.

          • For an average German, that is nearly half a month.
            For me probably more than a month ...

            • According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the average electrical energy per capita (kWh per person per year) for Germany is 6602kWh, so ~18.1 kWh per day. Where are you getting your numbers from? You use less than 603 Wh per day?

      • And in California, which isn't a third world country, but their electricity supplier,

        I've been to Cali. There are places where you wonder whether you're in a developed country.

      • In a third world country there's a fair chance that the CEO of the power company would be taken out back and shot in the face if he behaved the way PG&E's has.

      • California has a rebate program for home batteries.

        You would be much better off just buying a dedicated home battery to go with your solar panels than trying to use your car.

    • In a lot of third world countries, daily rolling blackouts are a norm of life. So it makes sense to use a car's battery as energy store.

      No, it makes sense to use an electric-ICE hybrid car as an electricity source. Electric cars will not be popular in an area with a dodgy electrical grid. People that can afford a car will be people with jobs, and they can't keep that job if they often show up late because of a car with a dead battery.

      The only problem is once everyone does this, the rationing will get only worse.

      Which only emphasizes why this would be a bad idea. An electrical grid that is always on the edge of collapse will only get worse if people buy electric cars that keep needing high current supplied for many

      • People that can afford a car will be people with jobs, and they can't keep that job if they often show up late because of a car with a dead battery.
        While there are no third world countries anymore, besides Somalia and some states in the US perhaps, countries were for what ever reason a large part of the grid is down, have a much more relaxed attitude to "starting work in time" than we here from the US. After all: everyone will be late if the power is out: the worker, the boss, the customer. (*facepalm*)

  • The "second" new battery car is used for a few short distance shopping trips a day.
    That allows for a few hours of free solar charging and grid charging.
    How will different nations respond to a car as a large battery and a home with a solar system?
    1. Sell power at a fixed price all day to the home.
    How much solar to charge the car for "free" and sell back?
    Use some of the free car power at night? Thats a loss of energy sold by the power company.
    Sell the power back to the grid? The power company now has

    • If the company sets different prices for electricity at different times, and you "buy cheap" and sell it back to them at peak. Yes, you are making money.

      But they company ISN'T losing money by doing this. They're making more money. You're buying their excess wasted power and giving them back power when it costs more to produce. If enough people do this, they don't need so much total capacity.

    • What would a power company do when people have so much control over their own power use and can sell free power back to the grid?
      Say no?

      They will say no. That has happened. Well, I don't know about with people that have a battery, such systems are not likely to be configured to send battery power to the grid. Not only is this an often nonsensical action, because the batteries are there for YOUR use and not for the utility, but this is wasteful in having to go through a number of charge/discharge cycles and AC/DC conversions. A lot of the energy will be turned to heat, heat that can cause premature aging (and therefore failure) of electr

      • A lot of the energy will be turned to heat, heat that can cause premature aging (and therefore failure) of electronics and batteries.
        I told you often enough how efficient batteries are. Why don't you write it on a post it sticker and glue it to the edge of your monitor.
        No, not many energy ill be transformed to heat. <1% will

  • It seems like only a car company would want to sell you a car in lieu of a battery/inverter setup.
    What's next? Using your car's AC to cool your home?

  • Just buy some 12 volt lghts / fans for when the power goes out and power them from a regular car battery.

    • We have a Yeti 1000 “Portable Power Station” from Goal Zero - it’s just a big lithium ion battery pack. It’ll power our living room lights and a few other low load items for about a day. It’s handy when we lose power, which happens a couple times a year (usually in winter when it’s dark all evening). The worst thing about losing power is usually just the boredom - with decent lighting we can still read or play games.

  • EditorDavid needs to learn about âoetimed pos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @02:03AM (#59326886)
    Looking at today&#226;&#8364;(TM)s page, I see two back-to-back articles about the same fringe candidate and then two more about the same video game company being China&#226;&#8364;(TM)s bitch. I know &#226;&#8364;oeSlashDot Editor&#226;&#8364; isn&#226;&#8364;(TM)t a paid position, but could one of the senior editors please show EditorDavid how to use times posts to space his similar articles out a bit?

  • I'm a 2011 LEAF owner, and Nissan have made the expense for a replacement battery impractical - might as well crush them. Also, In the past 8 years they haven't achieved much. Their batteries are now the some of the smallest in the market and continue to rely on air cooling, which makes them difficult to fast charge. All modern EV's are also far more efficient with larger batteries. I was hoping they would take advantage of their massive head start - but they are burning their current owners and squandered

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Short shopping drive during the day, change up a lot later.

  • Waiting for this... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Sunday October 20, 2019 @02:15AM (#59326902) Homepage

    There's every reason to have a car just integrate into a household power system. I don't understand why this isn't already the norm. We're just building a house, with a south-facing roof covered with PV. If we have a car full of batteries plugged in, why shouldn't the power flow both ways - making the house much more independent of the grid? You would obviously set some limit, for example, never discharge batteries below 50%, but 50% of a cars batteries is a *lot* of household power.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re " making the house much more independent of the grid?"
      Thats why not. Power company will not like that part much.

  • If people feel a need to plug their car into their house to keep the lights on, or to lower their utility bill, then we've failed somewhere in our energy plans.

    There is no shortage of low CO2, low pollution, and low cost energy. This is from onshore wind, hydro, nuclear fission, and maybe some geothermal. These are existing technologies that can compete in the current market without subsidy.

    Transportation will still be internal combustion engines, only we will use carbon neutral synthesized hydrocarbons instead of the kind scooped up out of the dirt.

    There will be further CO2 reductions from improvements in industrial and agricultural practices. Such as new processes for producing aluminum, steel, and cement. Also, we can expect demands for these high CO2 emitting materials with more use of wood as a material. Wood is a CO2 negative material as it is made of carbon from the air and water. This sequesters the carbon in the wood as buildings, furniture, and other products. When these wooden products reach end of life the sequestration can continue by putting the wood in a landfill.

    We've solved the problem of CO2 emissions already, we need only extend the use of these technologies. Using our cars to light up our homes is something that should be reserved for the exceptions, not the daily routine.

    I don't see this technology being all that popular. People have an expectation of their electricity being cheap and reliable. If we can't do that then the solution isn't using our car to keep the lights on. The solution is finding an electrical utility that can do their job.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

      "only we will use carbon neutral synthesized hydrocarbons"
       
      Great. When are you going to start production?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      It's not so much about the energy sources as the (crappy) state of the distribution system. You can have all the wind and hydro sources you want. But if you can't deliver it to the end user, what good is it?

      The down side: This would work well for occasional outages like the ones experienced in Northern California. But not for generally crappy distribution systems. Sure, you live off your car's battery when the grid is down. But then when it comes back up and all the cars attempt to recharge, it just goes r

    • You are only considering supply. The other part of the problem is distribution. I'd like to use a large electric car battery to keep my lights (and etc.) on during power outages caused by distribution problems.

      Brown outs, accidents, storms and simple failures can all take down the distribution system. I'm in city limits but as semi-rural suburb without redundant feeds I lose power multiple times per year. Our lines were buried in the 1970's and at least once per year we lose power for 6 to 12 hours for repa

  • ..., although its battery is hardly good enough to last through the day, is going to power my PC?

  • I guess it's prime time to show the world what the Leaf can really do.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Most westerners commenting on this are not probably aware of the grid/power situation in India, or its affluent demographics.

    Fact 1: Indian grid sucks. Managed with various levels of competency, corruption and lack of capital, by the state governments, the electricity situation is so bad most middle class homes already use lead acid batteries to store electricity. They run a few lights, ceiling fans using the battery power using inverters. A/C units and fridges are being specifically designed for the India

    • Here is a look at the "truck batteries + inverter" being offered in India. [mysmartprice.com] To get an idea of affordability, an entry level college grad in a decent company would get paid about 20,000 Rs a month. My mom's (widow of a civil servant) pension is 24,000 Rs a month, it is half of they pension my dad would have collected. These systems cost around 15,000 Rs. Lots of poor people who dont have this level of income. But the number of people who can afford it is also huge, comparable to the population of UK, Franc
  • Random comment: "only feeds the grid during..."

    I'm sorry, how does this work at scale, when you have thousands/millions of small, individual, uncoordinated power feeders (near) into the grid ?

    The main grid is synced to voltage and frequency levels. Attaching a out-of-sync primary source is far worse than having a brownout and NOT even attaching it.

    Your house feed is AC. Cars are DC, converted to AC -- fine. Part of the "sell power to the grid" setup is protecting that said grid. But how in Hell do

    • The uplink reads the grid frequency and synchs itself automatically to it. Or how do you think the millions of small solar installations in Germany do it? And then again, you are only allowed to feed into the grid when the grid operator signaled your smart meter an ok ...

    • but if you come in out of phase, that's BAD, even if it's just your local power pole/transformer/station.

      Phase-matching is a technology nearly as old as the power grid itself. Automatic phase matching is only a bit newer. It can be done with a few analog components. Hell, I watched a video where the dude was doing it manually with a couple light bulbs.

      An electric inverter would have zero issues.

      Protecting the grid would be part of the certification for the system itself.

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