Old Electric-Car Batteries Put Into Service For Home Energy Storage 198
Hugh Pickens writes "Josie Garthwaite writes that old electric car batteries degraded below acceptable performance levels for autos still have enough life to serve the grid for at least ten years with a prototype announced by GM and ABB lashing five Chevy Volt battery packs together in an array with a capacity of 10 kilowatt-hours — enough to provide electricity for three to five average houses for two hours. 'In a car, you want immediate power, and you want a lot of it,' says Alexandra Goodson. 'We're discharging for two hours instead of immediately accelerating. It's not nearly as demanding on the system.'" (Read on, below.)
Pickens continues: "Deployed on the grid, community energy storage devices could help utilities integrate highly variable renewables like solar and wind into the power supply, while absorbing spikes in demand from electric-car charging. 'Wind, it's a nightmare for grid operators to manage,' says Britta Gross, director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization for GM. 'It's up, down, it doesn't blow for three days. It's very labor-intensive to manage.' The batteries would allow for storage of power during inexpensive periods for use during expensive peak demand, or help make up for gaps in solar, wind or other renewable power generation. One final advantage of re-using electric car batteries is that the battery — the most expensive part of an electric car — remains an asset beyond its useful life in the vehicle. 'If there is a market in stationary power for spent batteries, consumers could recognize this as an increased resale value at end of life, however small,' says Kevin See."
This will boost the electric car market (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can reuse parts of your electric car for your household for economic benefit (and maybe as backup for blackouts) it makes these high priced cars more valuable and therefore expand the potential market.
This will also potenially create a battery market for house backup for blackouts or accomodation to possible day to night price difference. :)
Which also will expand the battery market. All this will lower the production unit costs for batteries.
And here the cycle begin again...
Re:This will boost the electric car market (Score:5, Interesting)
They are already using EVs as whole-house backup power supplies in Japan. A Nissan Leaf, a relatively small car, has a 24KWh battery pack. You can run a typical Japanese house for a few days from that in the event of an emergency.
Re:This will boost the electric car market (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This will boost the electric car market (Score:5, Informative)
That's an interesting solution. A Leaf's battery (24kWh at 400V) will actually power a whole house for a couple of days, but that would require getting direct access to the main battery output to sustain whole-house amperages. What he did was to connect his fridge to a small inverter, which he connected in turn to the Leaf's 12V battery. The 12V battery in a Leaf is pretty much an ordinary car battery (a little smaller than most), whose normal use is to power the interior amenities of the car. Like any other 12V car battery, it would be depleted before too long... but the Leaf automatically recharges the 12V battery from the main battery as needed.
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"but that would require getting direct access to the main battery output to sustain whole-house amperages"
That shouldn't be too difficult in the near future" [engadget.com].
The new high performance charging connector allows direct access to the EV battery via low impedance connection.
2005 GM Hybrid pick-up truck (Score:3)
For off-grid homes (Score:4, Interesting)
While I agree that this doesn't make much sense for most people--the cost of the electricity to keep them charged isn't worth having a few hours coverage in blackouts for most people, this is quite useful for people with off-grid homes in remote locations. I had friends building in a remote location, and running the power lines to the house would cost as much as a solar array with batteries to last through the night. With used electric car batteries, the cost of such a system would drop significantly.
The idea isn't to have electric car owners make use of their worn-out batteries, but to create a market for them to sell them.
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The question here is startup costs versus operational costs. Solar panels and batteries both required maintenance and have to be replaced regularly... Power lines generally require little to no maintenance and require replacement only at great intervals.
Lackin
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the cost of the electricity to keep them charged isn't worth having a few hours coverage in blackouts for most people
Surely once they're charged all you need is a trickle to keep them topped up? It's not like an electric car runs flat if you don't drive it for a week...
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What energy is taken to "keep them charged"? Where does it all go? The only possible outlet for it is heat from the batteries. So if you're doing it over times of year when the house needs heating anyway, then there'd be zero wasted energy. (But I find it hard to believe that even a small amount would be lost as heat).
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Actually, given net metering [wikipedia.org] and variable rate time of day [wikipedia.org] metering, it might be economical to charge your batteries at night (low power rates) and sell that back to the utility during peak periods (high rates). One would have to work out the economics. And be willing to live with the deleterious health effects of a smart meter [slashdot.org], of course.
The best solution would be to install a battery system at the site of each wind turbine, making the control of the battery charge/discharge algorithm tightly coupled to i
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Combine it with solar and it costs nothing to keep the batteries topped up. Batteries are just one more piece of the puzzle.
It is so common to see it in India. (Score:5, Interesting)
In USA they do not have much use. For emergencies like Sandy, FEMA should simply develop a plan to send the fuel trucks from the army and drive around the affected neighborhoods and dispense fuel for cars in the drive way of homes. The municipalities can collect the cost of the fuel from the homeowners through utility bills later. And the collected money can be considered emergency grants from the federal govt to the municipalities. Once you have an assured supply of fuel in an emergency, we can use the hundreds of thousands of power plants that are already present in these locations.
The hundreds of thousands of powerplants are typically four cylinder gasoline engines, and a good portion of them are six and eight cylinders, the automobile engines. Presently the alternator is sized to provide just enough electric power for the car. If we design a generator that runs at the right RPM, and connection kits that will allow it to be coupled to an car engine it would be very helpful. I am thinking of some kind of frame, a new serpentine belt, or some way to work off the belt driving the alternator. If FEMA funds the R&D to create these kits, builds them and stocks them, they can be deployed in an emergency.
In an emergency so many people would happily stay at home and avoid driving around, if they can. But they are all forced to run around looking for food, gas and water. Municipalities should develop emergency plans where their residents simply text to some known number information like, "running short of water/food/gas", "Medical attention needed", "Number of young children = XX". They should consolidate and send around FEMA trucks to bring food/water/gas to them. If people have the peace of mind, they will stay home and let the roads free for people with real emergencies.
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just about every farm tractor has a "power take off" essentially an output shaft off the transmission or directly off the engine on smaller machines to run other equipment.
I agree it would be really really nice if at least larger autos like pickups and SUVs had this; maybe with a little electronic interconnect to allow external device to control the throttle servo the cruise control ordinarily uses. Naturally safety interlocks to make sure this stuff is only usable when the main transmission is in neutral.
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You can add a PTO to any American pickup. Just add a transfer case (or a second if 4x4).
The rigs are called 'crawlers' (thought they only use the second low gear, kits are available). Leaving the PTO would put it into an inconvenient location. You will need another drive shaft to bring the power to the front/rear bumper. Maybe you can reuse the stock one as you will need a new, shortened, rear driveshaft and lengthened front driveshaft.
That said a typical healthy American V8 is too big for a household
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As someone who lives in the south and has gone through a lot of hurricanes I don't think your idea really makes sense.
If you properly prepare for a hurricane then running short of water/food/gas isn't a problem during the period when it would be unsafe to drive around to get those things.
Portable or whole-home generators that already exist make much more sense and are probably cheaper than designing something new to attach to cars.
And quite honestly the only thing people NEED power for in these situations i
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You want to couple the generator to the crankshaft directly. A vee-belt that you can reasonably run from the existing pulley can only transmit a couple horsepower before it gives up, five tops. A multi-vee belt, maybe twice that. The easiest thing to do is to buy a generator and couple it to the crankshaft. The cheapest thing to do would be to get rare earth magnets anywhere you can, then inset them into the existing flywheel, and build a generator based around that. You have to get incredibly great toleran
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Now you've just gone off the rails completely... It's one thing to draw a little power from your car/battery in an emergency to power a few critical appliances (raido, cell phone, flashlights, etc.), and quite another to try and press them into extended, heavy-duty service.
Automobiles aren't designed for stationary use to begin with. You'd have cars overheatin
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The phone and power companies are private sector. Why the hell aren't they handling the emergencies better? It is completely irrational for private sector to set aside resources to handle emergencies. The free market will not reward them for it. All those resources are opportunity cost, they diminish profits. When an emergency hits, they will feign innocence, "no one could have seen this coming", "it is an act of God", "it is an
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FEMA? LOL.
They can't find their butt in the dark with both hands.
Utilities already share crews etc. The simple fact is you can't anticipate everything. Attempting to prepare for all contingencies in a chaotic system isn't possible, even if you can print money.
Living off the grid is different. (Score:3)
This development will help a lot of folks who don't have reliable access to power. Just because it doesn't matter where you live doesn't mean this feat of technology does not matter to other people somewhere else.
http://www.haitianproject.org/updates/2012/9/living-son [haitianproject.org]
The same problems remain (Score:2)
The problems with these kinds of distributed system aren't so much technological anymore... but economic and operational. Who pays for them? Who maintains them? Who operates them? Who manages operations?
These are the hard questions to answer. (Though no doubt, I'll get plenty of replies with a variety of shallow and ill thought out answers...) These are the questions that need to have at least trial solutions before the system can be rolled out.
Math (Score:2)
Why five houses for two hours? Does it not power one house for ten hours? I would prefer the latter...
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Why five houses for two hours? Does it not power one house for ten hours? I would prefer the latter...
Because it's not being designed for homeowners, it's being designed for renewable energy generators to smooth out power swings inherent in renewable power sources; like when a 1.5 MW wind turbine blow a gearbox and catches on fire.
Hybrid Batteries (Score:3)
I looked up the capacity of Prius batteries in case anyone is interested: Normal = 1.31kWh (MH), Plug-in = 4.4hWh (LI).
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Not sure, but if its generating capacity is 67 HP, that's about 50 kW.
That's peak. Something like a Prius probably consumes about 15 Hp cruising on the highway. So that's what its cooling system will be sized for. That's not bad, from a standby power point of view. It will provide adequate emergency power for a household (without electric hot water, air conditioning, etc). Just don't get carried away with the marketing numbers or you'll melt the motor.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Pure unadulterated BS... (Score:2)
This is not the power capability (except at a minimum draw) for 2-3 houses. If you've got ANY high-demand devices such as an on-demand water heater, oven/range, or a washer/dryer- you're going to burn through the pack MUCH faster- it'll almost power a SINGLE house fully.
do it right (Score:2)
deep cycle marine batteries, why have two hours when you can have twelve or more
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Right from a cost/capacity/maintainability standpoint wet lead acid batteries make much more sense. These MH and LI batteries virtues are density and weight neither of which nearly as big a concern when you don't need have them mobile. The only reason they are interesting at all is the economics, where their performance might be to degraded for automotive use but they could see a second use life as stand by power.
Still I find it highly questionably. Most LI batteries work near original capacity for their
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Look into NiFe batteries [wikipedia.org], tollerate overcharging/overdischarging very well as well as any over abuse you can throw at them
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Li-ion in general, and variants currently used for EVs (e.g. NMC) in particular, dramatically outperforms lead-acid:
- 3 to 5x the energy density
- 5 to 20x higher sustained discharge current
- 10 to 20x faster charge
- 2 to 10x cycle life
- higher charging efficiency, lower self-discharge, longer calendar life so less maintenance, etc. And all those figures keep improving, albeit slowly.
EV battery packs are expected to be retired when they reach 70 to 50% capacity. As Li-ion's capacity fade slows down with age
Catching up to Nissan (Score:4, Insightful)
This plan has been built into the Nissan LEAF program since the beginning. The recycling plan for their batteries is to build power storage substations, not just for a few houses. This is a better plan because it keeps the batteries out of people's houses and off their block, for the most part, while not moving them so far away that they won't do any good.
Use compressed air instead! (Score:2)
Instead of generating electricity directly in wind turbines, generate compressed air. Transport that energy in pipes and store it on land. On land you have an compressed air driven electricity generator for generating your electricity.
Now you go from peak energy to base load energy. With this, wind will not be an nightmare for grid operators to mange anymore.
The different to use compressed air as a storage for energy instead of batteries, is that you
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ok. fair enough.
How've gonna store the water energy in your residential? With compressed air you can.
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Yeah, so? [wikipedia.org]
It's not like any of this is going in someone's house. That was never the point.
=Smidge=
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compressed gases are usually a terrible way to store energy in terms of loss.
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I'm talking about compressed air, which I think, is some kind of a gas.
If you store energy in a battery, it will loss it's energy over time. I think this is the same for a compressed air tank...
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Compressed air heats up during compression. It then losses pressure as it cools. It also condenses water, which will cause corrosion in the tank unless the water is regularly drained. Which also costs energy/pressure.
If the tank is ignored it will eventually fail. 150psi*30squarefeet*144squareinches/squarefoot is enough energy to throw pieces of metal hard enough to cut you in half.
Also compressors are loud and annoying. All tanks/plumbing leak, some just leak faster then others.
Desulfate lead acid batteries instead (Score:4, Interesting)
The FA talks about Li-ion batteries but I've read about people buying dead car batteries real cheap and bringing them back to life by desulfating them with a simple circuit based on a 555 timer. The idea is to pulse the battery at its resonant frequency of about 4 MHz with high voltage pulses to break up the lead sulfate crystals that often cause a battery to fail. Car batteries might be a cheaper alternative to Li-ion batteries for a home system. Here's a link to the circuit:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Battery-Desulfation.htm [reuk.co.uk]
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There are a lot of failure modes for car batteries.
You can't see the reason for the failure just by looking at it before buying it.
If you buy one with other (eg. physical) damage, you've wasted your time and money.
Even if you're lucky, your desulfated battery is going to have lower capacity and shorter useful life than a new battery.
The "core charge" for a dead battery runs about 1/4th the cost of a
In this thread (Score:2)
Are tons of proud americans bragging against each other how much power their home needs.
Without understanding concepts like peak power, or the insight that they are idiots if any of their claims are true.
Recycle? (Score:2)
Aren't ordinary car lead batteries easy to recycle into new batteries by the manufacturers.. or is there some part which can not be recycled? Chemistry not my strong point.
Re:If it's too puny for a car... (Score:5, Insightful)
2 hours?! For us, east coasters, 2 hours don't make any difference... for others will be too... soon enough...
And you can't use it in an off-grid solar setup - there aren't many charge/discharge cycles left...
It's difficult to read your post and understand what you are trying to convey; but I am assuming that you're talking about Hurricane Sandy based on your reference to the East Coast. This is not for that.
Re:If it's too puny for a car... (Score:4, Funny)
I think he's trying to say that taking two hours to deliver the power necessary to accelerate a car is not only acceptable but commonplace where he lives. If nobody around you is moving, you don't need to be able to react very quickly either.
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Re:If it's too puny for a car... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure all those houses that burned down in Queens had piles of batteries laying around, that's what caused the fire. I'm also sure it's impossible for a normal car without a HV battery pack to catch fire for any reason, including flooding.
Meanwhile, two dozen all-electric Nissan LEAFs failed to catch fire after the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan [torquenews.com].
(Maybe the Fisker Karma is just a piece of shit. Don't blame the HV battery.)
=Smidge=
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I'm going to get modded down again.
Fires during floods are caused by people with fire insurance, no flood insurance and lighters.
Simple fact. Modding me down doesn't change it.
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(How much higher is a question for you to assess in your local conditions. For my local conditions when we moved, a minimum of 35m above MSL was mandatory along with at least 2deg of surface slope. YMMV.)
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heh... tell that to the firemen who could do nothing but stand in the pouring rain and watch entire blocks burn down...
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Ummm... try testing that theory by tossing a chunk of elemental sodium or calcium into a bucket of water (or swimming pool, or jacuzzi). There are plenty of videos on Youtube illustrating the outcome...
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Until we have a major breakthrough on battery tech it simply doesn't make sense to go electric on cars.
Well, you could ban everything but glorified golf carts from cities, which would make them much nicer to be in, and those could reasonably be electric since it doesn't take so much battery for a golf cart or a GEM car as it does for a Leaf or what have you. But you're right, until the batteries get much better and/or much cheaper, biodiesel would still be a much better solution. Problem is, TPTB are hostile to biodiesel.
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Informative)
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
I have a modest 4x2 house, with a stay-at-home wife and 2 kids. Big screen TV, and all the other creature comforts and I wouldn't even come close to use 10Kw.
In this instance I have to say 'you're doing it wrong'.
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An 800W microwave, 3kW kettle for heating water, 3kW washing machine, and 3kW electric oven leaves you just enough change from 10kW for your big flatscreen TV. At peak time I would also have the tumble dryer running, my 500W PC running, lighting (only 240W, bargain!).
In total, it's about 14kW at peak usage (thank heavens the heating is natural gas powered, as are the oven jobs and hot water). Heaven forbid if anyone tried to use a hairdryer at that time as well...
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a wild idea I'll just throw out.
Don't use the microwave, kettle, washing machine, electric oven, flatscreen TV, tumble dryer and PC at the same time when you're running your generator.
Crazy I know, but it might work.
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So what's the hour figure?
I find it interesting that you mention your kettle. A 3kW kettle when full can bring water to boil in what... 2min? That is a total of 0.2kWh of electricity used. Similar thing for the microwave.
The reality is even though you are capable of drawing 10kW at a time I find it very unlikely that you will be drawing 10kWh in a 1 hour period. A typical fully loaded home like yours will use about 30kWh over a 24hour period, probably less even when I look at what you have compared to the a
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2000 W is quite typical for an electric kettle, so 3 kW is not crazy. Of course the kettle runs for only a few minutes, so while you can certainly get over 10 kW peak usage, 10 kW sustained is still enormous.
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Accordin
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Informative)
Yo' space ....
I monitor my power consumption using a Current Cost system (don't necessarily suggest this device, it's a bit wonky, but it works). I get 6 kW running the oven AND the dryer. The hot water heater fires a few minutes every hour during the day. I cannot see a sustained 10 kW load. Ever.
YMMV but if you're really pulling down that many amps, either you have a bunch of very, very clean people in your household.
Or you're doing it wrong.
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Or your house has a fresh, skunky smell all the time and you have no visible means of support.
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Sounds to me like you got oversold by the company that sold you the setup, and now don't want to admit it. 10kw is huge.
I'm sure you trivially buy a 2kw kettle, there you save 1kw right there, it'll just take slightly longer to boil the water. Then don't run the microwave and kettle or oven at the same time, and you're already down to around 5kw to 6kw peak - and you've saved a farkload of money on the system.
If you are rich and have lots of money to waste, then sure, go for it, 10kw system is OK.
500W PC? T
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No he probably does not keep the kettle on 24/7. Maybe you missed the multiple uses of the work "peak" in the grandparent. Still I don't think its the least bit unusual, especially for those that don't live alone to have that or a similar combination of appliances running all at the same time. I often have the washer dryer running while I am cooking dinner, and have the TV on so I can see the news. So swap out your tea kettle for electric stove top and there you are. Now consider the things you don't r
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Maybe his GF has a hand held shower massage. You know what they use those for?
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:4, Funny)
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
Grow lamps, dude!
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Your on-demand water heater uses ~100A (@220V which is line power in the US) continuously? That is my entire house's electricity supply (100A breaker) and would cost me about $3-4/hour, that is half a minimum wage in the US.
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If you turn off heating and air conditioning you should be using a lot less than 10kW.
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If you turn off heating and air conditioning you should be using a lot less than 10kW
No. Our house uses gas for heating and cooking, we live in a country that doesn't need a/c and the daily electricity consumption: lights, computers, washing, kettle, TVs, microwave, fridge comes to about 9kW*Hr per day.
The idea that a stack of 10kW*Hr batteries could power 5 houses for 2 hours is what happens when you apply statistics without any common sense. During the night, those batteries could power lots more houses (like ours) for much longer. However come waking up time, when every household uses a
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I strongly suspect you are a retard, or do not know how to use units.
9kWh per day means that this battery could power your house for over 1 day. That would be a lot more than 2 hours for 5 houses of equal resonse.
9kW continuous power draw (what you seem to imply by ignorance) would mean that you would burn >$500 in electricity per months, even at extremely low american prices.
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I'll type this slowly, so you can keep up. The statement "power 5 houses for 2 hours" makes little sense, since power consumption is not at a constant level throughout the day (or even in a week). Some hours use more power than other hours. Thus, overnight, when people are sleeping, that 10kW*Hr stack will be enough to keep many houses running for many more hours. However, at peak demand: morning, when everyone gets up or maybe evening, then a 10kW*Hr suppl
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:4, Insightful)
That'll work as long as power outages occur only during California weather conditions
Living without AC is unpleasant but doable. Many millions did it in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Heat is more important, but in emergency situations you really only need to heat one or two rooms, not your whole house. In the 1998 ice storm, when many Quebecers were without power for many days, people moved into their living room and slept around the fireplace.
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Many millions did it in the 19th and first half of the 20th century
I'll up you one on that. Pretty much everybody did before the first half of the 20th century, everywhere.
Dying in the desert heat when the power goes out is the price we pay for not living like desert people. Freezing to death when the power goes out is the price an idiot pays when they don't have good shelter, plenty of warm clothes, and if cold enough, a moderate heat source (you don't need much with good insulation). Living in a modern (desert) city with tons of asphalt, things painted dark colors, and p
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The batteries are for night time (yes it can still be too hot in some tropical humid places at night).
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In other words, you can always put on more clothes, but there's a limit to what you can take off.
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Really not true...
Here on EARTH at least, there's no locations that are too hot for a healthy person to tolerate. And for those who aren't healthy, dumping a bucket of water over their head will very significantly drop their body temperature...
Meanwhile, those in really extreme cold are going to have a difficult time surviving. The GP's plan of setting-up a 4-season tent indoors, and crawling into a -20 degree
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:4, Interesting)
A 10kW generator is *barely* enough to run 2 or 3 10,000BTU window air conditioners. I believe you need ~24kW of 220v capacity to start a normal 2-3 ton central air conditioner.
It's a shame companies like Carrier, Rheem, etc can't put a little effort into designing central ac units that are "generator friendly" & can start with less inrush current. Like, maybe some kind of transmission that would allow the compressor to spin up slowly, instead of just soaking up 20+ kW for 3 seconds before settling down to half that amount. Or logic to start up the compressor, THEN the blower fan, instead of both at once.
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Wiring a delay between the compressor start and outdoor blower would be trivial and thermostats with even a small amount of smarts delay starting the indoor airhandler a few seconds after the outdoor unit starts. But, no matter how you slice it, a motor just starting up is effectively "Stalled" and draws a crap load of inrush current. There's designs to reduce that a bit, but they're expensive to build.
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Interesting)
They do. Newer units are starting to use inverter-driven compressor motors for variable speed. The actual reason to use them is higher efficiency while operating, but a very nice side-effect is virtually no inrush.
I spend time on several off-grid / renewable-energy forums, and one of the biggest changes for off-grid homes recently is that you can buy inverter-driven mini-split AC units that can cool a (small) home from solar / battery banks without any issue. Several people set the unit to "low" in the morning, and let it run all day, draws only 300W. Won't keep the house cold, in fact the temp slowly climbs through the day, but only to 78 instead of 85-90.
I have a portable AC unit (roll-around, with the flex hose to exhaust hot air out the window) that uses an inverter. 9000 BTU, draws 1200W or so while running, starts just fine with a little Honda EU2000i generator (1600W continuous, 2000W peak). The 9000 BTU mini-split (standard compressor) in my server closet won't even try to start, the generator just bogs down.
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Soft start or VFD
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As an offline system, no, that amounts to a pitiful amount of power.
As a grid-tie supplementary system, most likely your "background" power use comes in at somewhere between 0.5 to 1kW.
Charging this bank overnight at $0.015/kWH, then using it d
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If your 10KW generator doesn't run your whole house, either your generator needs load testing, or you have some really hellacious electric bills. Perhaps a Kill-A-Watt [thinkgeek.com] could help you figure out why your electric meter is spinning like a top. For planning purposes electric utillities assume a household uses 1.6KW, your claiming your using 6 1/4 times the typical.
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A kill-a-watt is nice (I got myself one) but it's only good for things you can plug in through it that draw 15A or less.
If you're really serious about finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when, I can suggest a somewhat more expensive Energy Detective [theenergydetective.com] system that installs in your main electric panel.
=Smidge=
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Lets see, my 10kW generator doesn't even power my whole house, ...
You don't seem willing to cutback your power consumption during a power outage, but you are willing to sit around in the dark and twiddle your thumbs.
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The average US house uses about 1.3kW averaged over time. Obviously it can spike up to several kW or over 10kW when lots of appliances and any heating/cooling is turned on, but the batteries can handle spikes in load.
Source: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3 [eia.gov]
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All the replies complaining that I can't possible need 10KW should go and read some list like this
http://www.generatorsales.com/wattage-calculator.asp [generatorsales.com]
and look at both what you would want to run not just for a short time, but in the case of a generator for say days at a time in a major outage, and also since my generator is auto start/auto switch over, look at the *peak* loads that might be generated by devices like sump pumps air conditioners, the various submersed pumps in the house to pump 'stuff' from th
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who needs emergency power isn't going to be using the inductive cooktop, air conditioner and three oil column heaters. This keeps the fridge, tv, radio, and microwave going.
In addition, if you are wanting to go solar or off-grid, then power supply is only half of the equation. The other half being how to reduce consumption. For example getting a LED based TV instead of a plasma based one or putting stuff into standby (or off) when not bring used.
As for 10KW per hour, that is huge. What is consuming that much? An industrial level hair dryer?
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:5, Informative)
Geez. My house never hits 10 kW peak. Period. I suppose if my wife were baking something, we had the dryer on AND I was running the welder we might hit that.
I use a 2.5 kW generator for the house - works great except the electric stove and the dryer. If we are on generator because of a power outage, we can avoid baking, use the propane grill and just air dry clothes. That leaves the computers, lights and miscellaneous bits of civilization to work just spiffily.
I can't even imagine what he uses 10 kW for....
Re:Doesn't add up (Score:4, Informative)
As for 10KW per hour, that is huge. What is consuming that much? An industrial level hair dryer?
It's 10 kilowatt hours not kilowatts per hour. A kilowatt hour is a unit of energy which could supply a 1kW load for 10 hours, or equivalently a 10kW load for one hour, or any other load at power P [kW] for a time t [hours] where t=E/P where E is the energy in kilowatt hours. Power is the rate of consumption of energy, where a watt is 1 joule per second, and energy is what's actually needed to do a given unit of work.
kW/h is basically a nonsense unit which means 10,000 joules per second per hour. This would be a power "acceleration" unit if you actually wanted to use it. Calling kWh kilowatts per hour is a pretty common misunderstanding that you see a lot in the news so as a EE I feel compelled to clarify when possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
This is for grid-level storage, not in-your-home backup. Space and weight are a distant concern compared to cost.
There is an important concept called demand (or load) leveling. How much electricity the grid demands changes significantly over the course of the day, so you much design your power plants and infrastructure to handle the peak load. However the peak load is only experienced a small fraction of the time, meaning you are considerably overbuilt for maybe 16 to 18 hours of the day - especially late at night when most people sleep. The problem is so severe that many utility providers offer Time-Of-Use rates where electricity during off-peak hours is considerably cheaper (and on-peak considerably more expensive) to encourage people and businesses to use less during the day and more at night.
Batteries connect to the grid though a charge controlling inverter - a single piece of equipment. During the off-peak hours they absorb excess energy by charging, meaning the generation equipment runs more efficiently and more economically. During peak hours they release the energy decreasing the demand on the system so it doesn't have to be so overbuilt and therefore less expensive to maintain and operate.
The process of shifting load from peak to off-peak is sometimes referred to "filling the bathtub" [youtube.com] and utility providers love it since it makes their lives much easier. Battery storage is a great way to achieve this at the grid level and anyone who manages to develop a cost effective solution stands to make a LOT of money selling and installing such systems.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely. If you haven't already, you should check out Sadow's liquid metal batteries [ambri.com]. Development appears to be coming along nicely. They are designed for cheap grid-level storage.
Re:Questions! (Score:4, Informative)
This is a concept study, sponsored in part by GM. The batteries they have are the ones for a Volt, so those are the ones that were used. I'm also going to go out on a limb and guess that they don't have a warehouse full of these setups ready to sell at Home Depot, but that they had some batteries that were used during development of the Volt and have a lot more miles on them then the average consumer-owned car.
This does show what a technical challenge electric car batteries are: these were charged and discharged beyond the point where they could deliver useful, sustained power to a car, but are still more than capable of handling the lower current, long duration needs of a house. If the nuclear industry could figure out a cool application of their discarded (but still quite energetic) fuel, maybe we could get off of coal ...
Re: (Score:2)
I think so far the sales curve of electric cars pretty well matches the sales curve of hybrids when they first came out a decade+ ago. It takes time to ramp things up.