For all you off-grid people

I thought this link might be interesting. Using the Nissan Leaf as a portable battery. http://www.gizmag.com/nissan-leaf-providing-household-power/19411/

Like hybrid cars this is another idea from the 1970s that is coming around again. It's still a good idea.

Great idea, charge it up at cheap night-time prices, power the house from it during the day and forget using it as a car lol. I wonder if theyd sell just the battery pack.

The real problem with this is that stock "house wiring" is too small for 12v dc, making the whole scheme "lossy." If you build a house with larger gauge wiring everything is honky-dory. 30 years ago some commuters who lived off grid would put in a HD alternator from an RV and hook up a dual charging setup with a big deep cycle battery and then just plug their car into their house when they got home -- but you really do need larger gauge wiring than what is used with 110v ac.

If an inverter is used, well, that is problematic, too. The best way to use 12v dc is as 12v dc.

PapaLumen said:

Great idea, charge it up at cheap night-time prices, power the house from it during the day and forget using it as a car lol. I wonder if theyd sell just the battery pack.

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You really don't want to buy Li-Ion batteries for this application. Lead acid is cheaper and higher capacity with more cycles between replacement. The Li-Ion batteries are used in care bacause of the weight + energy density. Neither are a concern in a garage.

Daniel

Sub_Umbra said:

If an inverter is used, well, that is problematic, too. The best way to use 12v dc is as 12v dc.

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The battery in the LEAF is not 12 volt. It is a couple of hundred (200v??) . Yes, they use an inverter to make AC so that the house is happy.

Daniel

yep but can you charge them in 8 hrs? Ive no idea. (or 1/2 hour if you happen to have a 480v 125A DC supply lol)

PapaLumen said:

yep but can you charge them in 8 hrs? Ive no idea. (or 1/2 hour if you happen to have a 480v 125A DC supply lol)

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The lead-acid ones? Sure can.

Besides, most people use less electricity than they think ON AVERAGE. If a 24kwh battery in the Leaf will run a house for 2 days, then your daily use is 12kwh, and that means you only need to put back 12 amps at 120 volts foro 8 hours to replenish the day;s use.

Daniel

imagine what a huge lithium ion battery would do to a neighborhood if the house catch fire

The obvious problem here being most off grid homeowners live in places that a Nissan Leaf can't get to. Have to wait for the Ford F-250 version.

The "PriUPS" website shows how the owner uses an inverter wired to recharge a large surplus server UPS that backs up his home.

When the power goes out and the server UPS batteries are depleted the Prius automatically starts to recharge the batteries.

A flywheel suspended in a vacuum with mag bearings is probably best. Nowadays you may get 100,000 RPM out of it.

Call me stupid, but I don't understand the point.

You have a vehicle, which could be used to move from point A to B.... and so on and so forth.

Then you take that same vehicle, and using it to power a home... Potentially using all of its stored energy.

So you've taken a transport device, and payed to charge it... in the home (incurring potentially great losses of energy due to transformer and charge circuit inefficiencies)... that you're now powering with the vehicle, incurring more losses, as you're converting from AC, to DC, to AC (or keeping it DC, but at a lower voltage, and losing energy in the wiring of the home)... If you have the power in the home to charge the vehicle, to drive from point A-B, but instead decide to go the more complicated/less efficient/logical route, and power your home with your car, then aren't you an idiot? I could see in an emergency where you need power in a home while there's a black out or power lines are down or something.

But stranding a vehicle in the woods at your off the grid cabin with limited means to re-charge it seems silly to me, especially when you can use it for transport, and use your limited means for charging to charge a battery bank to power the home, keeping the energy for the car, for the car, and the energy for the home, for the home.


Am I missing something here?

John_Galt said:

I don't understand the point.

Am I missing something here?

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with the Priups you can run your house off your car for a few days if you lose power. If you're at a site with no power you can use the car to run power tools while you work. It's not something you build your life around, it's just another feature. If you get yourself stranded somewhere you're doing it wrong.

One of the advantages of using your car to power your home when you're on the grid is to reduce peak demand. Power companies have no way to store electricity, so they must have enough generators available to fullfil a few hours of peak demand and idle them for the majority of the day. Reduce peak demand and you reduce the cost of producing electricty.

derangboy said:

Power companies have no way to store electricity.....

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This is why we need to invest Big Dollars in this tech. Think moon-shot dollars.

We could support a doubling or trebling of our population with no additional power generation infrastructure increase if a high-efficiency storage mechanism could be developed.




That, and cheap super-batteries for us.

I agree with you John_Galt... also I wouldn't want to waste cycles on my car battery to inefficiently power my home. I do think it is awesome for emergencies/power outages, but only for air conditioning and the like, we have flashlights to cover the lighting.

For those who are truly living off the grid . . . Solar-power is likely what they use. I'm sure many of them own batteries and use them. (While available, why not?) But when things really go bad, solar-power.

As for cars, anything back before you needed a computer technician instead of a mechanic in order to trouble-shoot and fix your ride. Maybe a Bronco from the '70s.