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Old Electric-Car Batteries Put Into Service For Home Energy Storage
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."
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...
Chevy Volt batteries are failing already? It seems like the Volt has only been on the market for a year.
How does he know that they will last for another ten? It's early days yet and the fact that they have failed for the Volt seems like premature failure to me.
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...
Mundus Vult Decipi
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.
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'.
If you turn off heating and air conditioning you should be using a lot less than 10kW.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
what are you doing that uses 10kW ?
That'll work as long as power outages occur only during California weather conditions.
My little 1500 watt heater wrecks their calculations. And that's just in one room of one house.
And 5 battery packs is a good chunk of space and weight.
Plus you need charge controllers, transfer switches, and some way to recharge the batterys. And if you've got enough solar/wind to recharge 10kw in a reasonable time.. You don't really need that giant ass battery pack now. Otherwise you're using the grid to recharge and just delaying your energy usage.. and losing X% to efficiency losses thru every cycle.
Nope. Sounds like bullshit put out by an industry worried they're gonna have to pickup the tab to recycle these giant toxic batteries.
In many areas, electricity is not commonly used to heat houses, and air conditioning is not commonly installed in houses. This means the electricity demand for houses is very different than your house and it will generally not use 10 KW.
In fact, in the country I live in many older houses only have a 40 ampere max connection to the grid. At 230 volt, that's not even 10 KW.
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...
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.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
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'.
Put your house at around sea level below the 30th parallel in a sunny area and watch what happens to your electric bill.
Also 4x2 house doesn't mean much. I see Europeans referring to their 4x2(?) less than 93 sq meter(1000 sq feet) inner core apartments as houses. That's a far cry from places like Texas where a 4x2 standalone house could be anywhere from 2200 to 4000 sq feet(372 sq meters) and two stories tall.
A guarantee that the latter home will have peak loads of around 18kWh or more.
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?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
Why five houses for two hours? Does it not power one house for ten hours? I would prefer the latter...
I looked up the capacity of Prius batteries in case anyone is interested: Normal = 1.31kWh (MH), Plug-in = 4.4hWh (LI).
cuz you totally keep the kettle running 24/7
What kind of kettles and washing machines do you have that consume 3,000 watts?!
Your hot water tank easily uses more than that when it's heating. Are you an idiot?
Apparently you are not the target market that this is being considered for. Often times solutions are not a good fit for many, but still work for enough people that they are worth marketing. For some people a subcompact car is totally inadequate, for others it's more than enough. Just because you have a need for more than 10kW doesn't mean that this isn't a good solution for millions of others. Many of us do not have air conditioning, electric stoves, electric dryers, or massive flat screened TVs. Our needs are considerably less than yours. I live in a household of 3 people that used 296 kWH of electricity in October. Two of us work from home. My immediate neighbors are probably not using much more electricity than we are. I don't see why a 10 kWH battery couldn't supply us with several hours of emergency power. Why are you so dismissive of a solution that would be perfectly adequate for many others?
Now if your yard is full of old cars, it's no longer a junk yard.
Just think of all the beer you can keep cold in the refrigerators too.
In Long Island, N.Y., my buddy's area lost power for almost a week from Sandy, but by using backup battery power he and his family had the only lights in his neighborhood. (He works for a company that provides backup power for office buildings, cellphone towers, phone/computer systems,...) The neighbors all wondered why he had power when they didn't. It's simply because he is prepared for outages when they occur.
No refrigerator ?
That heater has an electric pump or fan to distribute the heat...
And don't forget those vampire devices add up when you are in a crunch.
This research is extremely promising to aid a small family compound during a short outage, and when used in combination with some wind, solar, and perhaps scavenged propane, a small group of people might live quite comfortably. There is a J-Lo class but though.....there will neither be enough batteries nor enough forethought to keep everyone sustainable where they live. The earth's biggest environmental concern is that a particular species has overrun the planet.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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.
10 kW...
Let's see...
Microwave: 1kW
Stove/Oven: 3kW
Regular Water Heater: 5kW
On Demand Water Heater: 19-24kW
HVAC: 15kW
In short, there's quite a few things that use QUITE a bit of power and would deplete this quickly. As a simple backup like a UPS for short-term emergencies, this stuff would work "okay" for 2-3 houses and well for ONE house, but it's not the panacea they're painting it out to be. (Nor, are you knowledgeable about stuff like this as you think you are...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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 an electric shower for each resident, kettles, toasters and lighting and I doubt you'd get 1 house for 20 minutes out of that many batteries - assuming they didn't fail under that load.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's called an electric water heater. You know, that hot water thingy that allows you to have hot baths and the like... But then, you posted this as an anon coward on /. I shouldn't expect better.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
deep cycle marine batteries, why have two hours when you can have twelve or more
Hot water heater. An electric Dryer will consume 3kW drying your clothes because of the heating element in the thing.
It amazes me to utterly no end how FRIGGIN' CLUELESS some people seem to be on this discussion.
I wouldn't have figured that the foremost thoughts on the minds of people fighting to survive a disaster (either natural or manmade) is how Honey fucking Boo Boo is doing. I would have thought that the foremost thing on peoples' minds would be the following, in order of necessity: water, food, shelter.
Water is easy: seal and stock. Stock a couple filters as well.
Food is easy: cook, seal and stock. Most of this is already done for you; it comes in cans. Bonus! Get a hand turned can opener or a survival kit multitool and learn how to use it, forget the electric can opener - it's no good without power.
Shelter: you have a house or other manmade structure around you, right now, do you not? You have the ability or knowledge to make fire? It's something Homo sapiens has enjoyed for several tens of thousands of years, now. Surely we have not forgotten how to strike two rocks together and use hair for kindling?
Have we as a species become so dependant on Edison technology that we're destined to extinction when the last bulb flickers and dies? I hope not.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Dude, you need new water heater if it runs 24/7.
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.
It depends on what is doing your heating. If you have electric heat, then 10kW is reasonable. Fortunately, I have natural gas boiler, hot water heater, stove, and clothes dryer.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
You seem to be under the impression that this is meant to be a complete replacement for your every need.
You're the one who is consumed with an ignorant demand that this idea doesn't fill your every possible need as you use everything in your house at once.
How self-entitled do you feel you are?
This is about serving in emergencies, and is no more meant to be a complete replacement than a flashlight is meant to provide the light of the sun.
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....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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 can discharge a compressed tank more times than you can discharge a battery.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
They're designing to supplement the grid, not replace it. You're 10kW generator can't handle the peak loads on your house. When someone talks about x kW (it depends on region) powering n homes, they're talking about average demand.
Lets see, my 10kW generator doesn't even power my whole house, and a 10kWH battery set is supposed to provide electricity to 5 houses for 2 hours, that would be 1kW a house. Somehow this seems to be a new use of the word "provide" I was not previously aware of.
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 during the daytime peak at $0.285/kWH comes out to a savings of very nearly $1000/year (so the first year would cover the cost of the inverter, basically), just for squeezing the last bit of use out of something otherwise considered garbage.
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 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.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Friction clutch.
Ah yes, the old "If I can't use it, no one else should ever be allowed to have it either' mentality.
Well your computer is useless to a dirt farmer in china, does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to have a computer?
Second thought, that would keep you from posting bullshit on slashdot, so perhaps you are on to something after all!
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 really control like when the fridge compressor cycles on or even if you have gas fired hear the blower motor starts up, and you might have bigger peak loads than you at first expect.
Is it unreasonable that when on emergency power you might modify your behavior and say wait to do the laundry; sure but I think his point was that under "normal" conditions a single person might at any given time draw as much as 10kW. So estimating that much is a suitable backup power source for 5 homes; is highly optimistic at best.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
Or your house has a fresh, skunky smell all the time and you have no visible means of support.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
Grow lamps, dude!
Have gnu, will travel.
"Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??"
Marajuana grow operation?
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
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 poor building design is a great way to get heat stroke.
It's more feasible to recycle old car battery chemicals. Home energy storage should use new batteries to maximize the charge(Voltage,Wattage,Current). Old car batteries might leak and not hold electrical charge. Using old car batteries is a mess.
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.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.
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.
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 system that installs in your main electric panel.
=Smidge=
Maybe his GF has a hand held shower massage. You know what they use those for?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If it's too hot and there's no electricity it's a lot harder to get cooler than it is to get warmer.
So if I have access to good winter gear I'd rather be in cold conditions for a few days than be in too hot (> 35C) conditions without AC for a few days. Set up a few tents indoors and stay in them while wearing winter gear, sleep in a sleeping bag in the tent)
3 kW is crazy for an electric kettle because a standard home electric circuit cannot provide it. 2 kW is pushing it; you will not find an electric kettle or hair dryer that draws more than that. You will notice your electric water heater or clothes dryer is on a 220V circuit with a different plug.
I wonder how much it costs to have enough solar panels and batteries to run AC for at least one room.
The batteries are for night time (yes it can still be too hot in some tropical humid places at night).
Oh yeah I guess in an emergency/disaster many people bake cakes and take long hot showers to make themselves feel better, then turn on the air conditioning and chill...
GP: Apply cool water to burned area.
Having been through hurricanes that had several days of power outage in humid, tropical summer conditions, you kind of have to deal with no AC with or without such a system. We have a generator, but don't bother wasting effort on AC. It mostly goes to three things in such an exceptional condition: the refrigerator so we don't waste food, lighting at nights, and a couple fans which can make a huge difference. Besides, if this were meant for only a couple hours outage, living with the AC turned off in a modern home shouldn't be that bad if your house has decent insulation.
Otherwise, if you are the type that melts in such heat and don't have some medical condition, maybe you come from the background where you have enough money to just buy a bigger generator that can run an AC, so why complain about there being a cheaper model for those that don't need waste money so they can be prepared to be pampered after a major storm?
Fast Breeder Reactors, Molten Salt Reactors. Those technologies burn the "spent" fuel from traditional PWR reactors.
I have a suspicious feeling that General Motors' motivation on this project is to find a place to reuse the batteries they have to replace after warranty replacements, rather than have to pay the costs of recycling or disposing of the hazardous metals.
This shifts the cost of recycling and disposal onto the consumers, when the battery pack fails in their house.
It gives GM additional revenue stream when you buy it at Home Depot. AND they don't have to pay for disposal. I am sure the environmentalists are creaming their pants when they hear how this plan monetizes and incentivizes "green" tech. But I see it as a ruse to displace costs to the consumer, and ultimately, harms the environment---do you really think that individual citizens will actually pay for proper lithium disposal when they can just bury it in their backyard for free???
In other words, you can always put on more clothes, but there's a limit to what you can take off.
John
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.
In the UK every socket outlet can deliver 3kw (13 amps @ 230 volts). 3kw is normal for kettles which can boil one cup of water in about 90 seconds from cold. OTOH hair dryers don't need that much power because it would be ridiculously hot. For the same reason tumble dryers are usually only 1kw.
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
My current kettle: http://direct.asda.com/Breville-VKJ671-1.7L-Jug-Kettle---Moonstone/001572219,default,pd.html
Not too long ago I lived in a place where the main house breaker was 50 A (220 V)... so I am pretty sure I didn't go past 10 kW peak. It was an older house, with no central air, so instead it had two window AC units. It seemed enough to handle the US southeast summers. It didn't have gas either, so I guess there would have been a problem if I had the oven, microwave, both ACs on, the clothes dryer and the hot water heater kicked on full. Although this never came up (maybe because when I needed both ACs, I didn't frequently cook meals that needed the oven and all the range units on at the same time...).
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.
The 1107 figure is the number of electric cars in the UK that qualified and registered for the rebate, in 2011. Another thousand cars have been sold in just the first half of 2012. So it isn't good to compare one year's sale to the whole number of cars, a better comparison might be the 1.8 million vehicles that sold in 2011 (or even better, what portion of that is actually cars and not lorries, etc.). And for some reason, the UK is behind the curve compared to other European countries, where I've seen numbers that show electric cars being sold in the first half or third of a year in equal numbers to what the UK sells in a whole year, despite the much smaller populations (e.g. Norway).
A battery with a 10 kWh capacity means it can only store 10 kWh of power. At my rates that is about $1.20 worth of electricity. In order for 10 kWh to last 24 hours the average energy consumption of the house must be 416 watts per hour. If a house drew 10 kwh that battery would in theory provide power for only 1 hour. In the real world, battery capacity is reduced at high discharge rates. The capacity of the inverter is another limitation.
Oops, you're right that what I said is invalid outside the US.
A hydroponic pot growing operation.
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
Grow lamps, dude!
Use CFLs, then?
In our apartment in coastal Los Angeles, my wife and I have an average power usage of 4.75 kWh per day according to the utility company, with a daily average of 7 kWh last June when we were probably running more fans and watching much more HDTV than usual (the olympics recorded on our PVR). In practice, our peak evening load might be about 2kW if we have the microwave, fridge, HDTV, and ventilation fans all running at once. We use CFL bulbs in nearly all fixtures, and our computers are laptops that might peak at 60-70W if streaming videos or something like that.
Around here, most have natural gas stoves, water heaters, and furnaces. Some have gas ovens and clothes dryers, though electric ovens (dual fuel) and electric clothes dryers are common in spite of gas supplies being present. Those of us in coastal areas do not need air-conditioning either. Newer or remodeled homes sometimes have instantaneous gas-fired water heaters. Nobody has an electric shower heater, and very few have an electric heating element in their clothes washer, since the house hot water system is designed to support bathing and washing duties.
If we boil water for a pot of coffee or tea, we would use a kettle on our gas stove. Though more often, a dedicated electric coffee maker is employed which doesn't try to boil a whole pot at once, but rather heats a slow stream of water to support the drip brewing system (which means lower peak current too). Single-serving tea is often done by microwaving a cup of water or else using some hot water pot kept simmering rather than rapidly boiling cold water (which again means lower peak current). Due to our 120V wiring, appliances are designed to draw less power in general; a typical microwave or hair dryer is 1.2-1.5 kW peak.
The 2005 vintage GM (Chevy, GMC) hybrid pick-up tracks had a 120V/20A duplex receptacle n the and a 120V/20A duplex receptacle in the bed. GM had thought contractors might like it as they could run power tools on a remote job site. I was giving some thought to one of these trucks for camping, but ended up going the Duramax route.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one annoyed by "kilowatts per hour". Equally annoying is the use of "kilowatt hours per hour" when kilowatts would convey the same information.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
10 kWh is enough to carry my 2,000 square foot home for almost two days (~36 hours). How is this only enough for 3 or 5 houses for two hours?
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
Grow lamps, dude!
Use CFLs, then?
Then your shit will be as weak as the light from the CFLs.
Is your mission to save energy or is it to produce potent shit?
This is an issue that I have always had with modern day greenwashing.
I don't buy a light bulb to save energy, I buy it to produce light.
I don't buy a washer to save energy, I buy it to make my clothes as clean as possible.
I don't buy a car to save energy, I buy it to get me from A to B as quickly as (legally) possible.
The list goes on and on. Frankly I'm sick of poor lighting, not-so-clean clothes and slow cars. All that saving energy has done fro me is to make the providers raise their rates. Now I spend as much or more for energy despite using 30% to 40% less than before.
That's 10 kWh.
A car battery can supply 500+A at 12V, or 6kW, in a single configuration. Just not for very long.
I don't see why a 10 kWH battery
*sigh*. The largest battery I've seen for personal energy storage are in the 250Ah range or 3kWh. You can't discharge them faster rate than about 500-1000W. They cost about $200. 10 kWh battery bank would cost about $1000 and give you 2kW power for 5 hours.
10kWh storage is a little bit more than "emergency power". 1kWh is enough to provide lights in your house for a few days (eg. 20% cycle, LED lights, etc.). 10kWh is enough to run your TV, fridge, computer, lights, etc. for well over a day.
Finally, the "massive flat screen TV" uses about 40-100W (depending on backlight brightness) for LED screens. It's not the days of the old CRTs anymore where you can heat the house just by keeping TV on. And the "massive TV" weighs less than an old 16in CRT so not sure what is so "massive" about it.
As to TFA premise, I think it is dumb to use car batteries for deep cycle environments. They will die completely within weeks and months and just provide an environmental hazard while in use. It is more efficient to recycle these batteries and use proper battery design for proper job, not collecting half-usable garbage.
Soft start or VFD
According to energy.gov, clothes dryers use 1800-5000W, although the latter are surely industrial as they would need to sit on a three phase socket This still raises the question as to how long you really need to boil water for 2400W for a minute or two is not going to significantly shorten the life of the battery pack in the article.
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 average house around here and see that they have lower usage than that.
Also your 500w PC? Do you actually run folding@home all day or does it like most PCs actually use around about 100w when you're not playing games?
A DRYER is NOT a WASHING MACHINE, you ignorant fuck!
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 supply would NOT last as long, since more people in more households would be using more than the average amount of electricity.
As a consequence, the bald statement "5 houses for 2 hours" is meaningless, unless WHICH 2 hours is stipulated.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So you consider a correct, but redundant unit as annoying as a plain wrong one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Your house uses more than 10kw? I really have to ask, what the heck are you doing??
Grow lamps, dude!
You can grow lamps? I always thought they had to be manufactured ... maybe that would be a way to get around this silly prohibition of incandescent light bulbs. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yeah sure, in an emergency with power outage so you're running on battery, the first thing you'd do is take a warm shower and toast breads. Here's a hint: Most people have a little bit of common sense.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Must be Bitcoin mining!
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 rated sleeping bag would be my plan, too, but that's not entirely tenable. Things like stepping out for a few minutes to use the restroom MIGHT KILL YOU. Not to mention the difficulties of having to MELT your supply of water, and serious risks of numerous cold-related health conditions like pneumonia.
No question about it... I'd prefer to try and survive an extended disaster in Death Valley, rather than Antarctica.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
How've gonna store the water energy in your residential? With compressed air you can.
What people misunderstand about hydro power is that it is essentially a water pressure power. You make a huge dam, and it outputs certain water flow at a certain pressure, for a certain time.
If you could make a big, high pressure rated expansion vessel under something heavy, like your house or a large mound of dirt, you could add energy to it, as well as extract it from it, without a need for huge canyons and dams.
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.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I lived with poor power for decades and when I was in high school I used to take the old batteries from gas cars and use them for battery backup. I started by running on 12v car lights, since the break lights have 2 filaments they could also be recycled. I once collected so many of them I was able to get 60 volts to light a neon light that usually worked on 110VAC, but discovered that the DC input was just fine for it. I used to design relay and transistor circuits to turn on lights automatically when the power was off and it was dark and the light had been on before the power failed. So I guess I have been using old car batteries for many years already, this makes perfect sense for a house that can get solar panels, you can be up after the hurricane, maybe with less power, and only if your panels survived the winds intact, which is a big if. We did loose power for 3 weeks after David in '79. It was interesting to see how the electric company had to repair lines across town to be able to start the big power plants, the ones that could only be started with lots of power to warm them up. I still keep an old APC UPS for the day that I can setup a solar panel to do this again. Technology has become much cheaper and better, we can go off the grid with solar and wind, if I can get bandwidth, I want to go live further away from the city where the land is cheap and I can grow my own food. But who knows, leaving the big city is probably not that easy. However with rents and housing prices in Silicon Valley being what they are there is a big incentive to telecommute. Gas or diesel generators are very noisy, used to hate them, they also pollute the air, solar and wind make the idea of living out in the woods more appealing to me, I still need the internet.
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
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 the basement sink/bathroom/washing machine up to the level of the septic system, refrigerators, at the time the power fails. Also remember that when you bring the power back on many devices that weren't even running will still give you a turn on power surge. If that is higher than the generator's capacity it will stall and fail to start up.
So no it doesn't use that all the time, but when the power goes out an this single battery system for multiple houses kicks in, who is going to remember to turn off their AC? Who is going to say "well the other people will turn off their AC so I can leave mine own" Thinking "if I optimize I can make the power last X hours" isn't how it would work out in the real world for most people. And if it doesn't work for most people then it isn't as great an idea as people think.
-jon
This is already a connercial product in places like India for the last 10years! Nothing new or innovative. I created a simple version of this after my 10th grade (20+years back) with readily available items in the local electronic market - which could power a fluracent light for hours in my room. Today this has gone commercial have systems that can run house for 2days or more depending on how much you want to spend. With automatic trigger.
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? That sounds like some hardcore gaming system.
If you can't even be bothered to turn off your AC during a major emergency with downed power then you deserve whatever happens to you. If you are rich and can afford an oversupply then sure, go for it, but stop giving lectures, the majority of folks simply cannot afford such large systems, and can and must "make do" by taking such tremendously complex steps such as "turning off AC" and "not running kettles, stoves and microwaves all at the same time".
The AC isn't on the generator, but the air movers are, and the refrigerators and the sump pumps, kitchen lines for a toaster over, and a line n the garage so my elderly relatives can start the snow blower if I'm not home, some other water pumps. I'm not lecturing, although since you can't be bothered to read what I wrote about having to design for the surge load or the generator stalls, because I not being the genius that you apparently are, can't tell in advance when the power is going to go out and have everything turned off before the generator tries to start up.
Given that the generator keeps my house from flooding in long heavy rains, my pipes from freeze because I don't have heat in the winter, or the food from going bad during a rolling summer blackout. I would say that most people can't afford *not* to have plans for backup power. If you live somewhere that the power goes out a lot in bad weather this isn't "luxury" for the rich, its called a cheap investment to avoid much higher weather related losses
-jon
If his GF is using a shower massager 24/7, he's doing something very wrong. OTOH, if he tells us where she is, I'm sure we'd be happy to test her problems and provide suitable care.
Buy a clamp-on ammeter with a peak hold function. That'll go a long way in helping determine max current draw. If your power factor is close to unity, the real power used equals the apparent power, which is I * V (current * volts). Even if your power factor is not close to unity, the apparent power is what a generator has to supply, so that number is actually more useful than the real power draw.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I'm with you. I have a whole house 20kW generator and 1000 gal propane tank, and it's very close to perfectly sized for my house.
I don't want to deal with worrying while I'm not at home that the AC is on or that the oven was on or the clothes dryer was running. My generator will start and run every motor in the house.
I have 6x125 Ah batteries w/ a 2400W inverter that runs the servers, DVR, NAS, gb switch, etc while the gen starts.
I was in the Cayman islands when Sandy was supposed to hit central Va, and I didn't have to worry too much about the dog sitter having to live in a 'dead' house while I was gone. It was a nice feeling not to have to worry.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
First, it depends on your latitude. The further north you live, the more you need to prepare for disappointment in the winter. Where I live, bright sunshine delivers a peak of only about 80 watts/sq meter at local solar noon on the winter solstice, while the summer solstice provides me with almost 1500 watts/sq meter at noon. The same panels in a tropical region would deliver more. Obviously, you don't need the A/C when it's 0 degrees out, but some light to fill out the day would be useful.
If you follow the rough estimating guide of 10 watts per square foot, assuming you have a 1500W A/C unit, I think it would take 150 square feet, or about $7800 worth of solar panels. Sorry, but I don't know how much the batteries or controllers you would need would cost. I have to assume they are not free.
John
"1,107 are electric", "around 17,000"
Yes, those numbers aren't huge. But for the purposes of this application that would mean 1100+ people in the UK and 17k+ people in the USA could make a big step towards being off-the-grid. Per year.
And this using batteries that will already have been produced, used, and (effectively) disposed of.
The numbers aren't that high, but the impact would be.
But they are intending it more as an office building or apartment building UPS, for the prototypes they are messing with right now. Though considering the power consumption of some american homes, it might be enough...
Okay, well... most people in the US have 240V split phase service, so you'll need a clamp-on meter for each leg. Of course you'll have no way of knowing if the peak current measured by each meter occurred at the same time, since you won't know when it happened. You'll also only have peak data which could easily be 10 or 15 times your typical load. Basically you learn a whole lot of nothing, assuming you can get the meters to stay on long enough since they usually turn off after a few minutes or so.
The only way to collect useful data is on a per-circuit basis, which is marginally better than a Kill-A-Watt since at least you can get 240V loads and things over 15A. The tradeoff is a lot more rooting around in the power panel and a lot more manual mathematics and guesswork.
=Smidge=
Your comments are mostly valid, however not germane to the question asked (How can I determine peak load on a circuit?)
Of course you'll have no way of knowing if the peak current measured by each meter occurred at the same time, since you won't know when it happened
The question was peak load per circuit. Most high current devices in the US are 240V only (a tiny amount of current travels on the neutral for 120V things like light bulbs, etc). There is no need for two meters since the current is guaranteed to be balanced between the two 240V legs.
If you do have significant neutral current, you can measure it directly. To determine time correlation, you can put pairs of conductors in the meter - you'll get the sum/difference of the currents, depending on their relative phases. You can learn a lot from that.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Who asked how to determine peak load on a single circuit? That question was never asked (nor even implied) in this branch.
=Smidge=
I was countering your assertion that one needs to buy a special device to measure 240V or high current 120V circuits that can't be measured with a kill-a-watt. That's a single circuit device. I think we're in fierce agreement.
I went to the link you provided for the TED device - that's pretty nice.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I never assert anything about individual circuits. I said "finding out where all your power goes, and how much you're using and when."
The Kill-A-Watt is not a single circuit device. At best it's a single OUTLET device. There can be any number of things connected into the same circuit through different outlets that the Kill-A-Watt will not measure. It's ideal for examining individual small appliances but that's about it.
The TED device installs on the main feed to the panel and measures power usage. You then turn on and off individual devices and the system records second-by-second power usage and other information. This enables you to do the same thing as running around the house with a Kill-A-Watt - providing what is effectively device-level monitoring - except you don't have to unplug anything and it works for any load rather than just 120V at 15A.
=Smidge=