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Use Your Car To Power Your House
itwbennett writes "Nissan has developed a system that allows a vehicle to supply electricity to power a house during a power outage or shortage. A prototype of the charging system running on a Nissan Leaf electric car was unveiled in Japan on Tuesday. A two-way charging device that would typically convert the household electricity supply to a voltage suitable for charging the car's battery can be reversed to feed power back into the household circuit."
I don't think efficiency is their primary goal here. It's chief purpose is to temporarily power a house during an outage. I suppose you could use it regularly but that seems kinda odd.
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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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
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.
Or do what most electrical companies do, build a power reservoir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
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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