Slashdot Mirror
Six Electric Cars Can Power an Office Building
cartechboy writes "How many Nissan Leafs does it take to power an office building? The answer, it turns out, is six. Nissan is the latest Japanese automaker to explore electric "vehicle-to-building" setups, this time with impressive results. The company started testing its latest system at the Nissan Advanced Technology Center in Atsugi City, Japan, during the summer. It found that just six Leafs plugged in to the building's power supply allowed it to cut peak-hour electricity use by 2 percent. Annualized, that's a savings of half a million yen (about $4,800 US) in electricity costs. How it works: The building pulls electricity from the plugged-in vehicles during peak-use hours, when power is most expensive, and then sends the power back to recharge the cars when grid prices fall. Nissan says the system is set up to ensure the cars are fully charged by the end of the workday. (Is this a devious secret way to make sure workers stay until a certain time?) Next up: Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?"
The batteries in a Leaf are a significant fraction of the price, few business want to spend $120k on batteries, when they can get them for 'free' from their workers.
I presume that users will be reimbursed for power they "brought from home" if the net energy movement is to the building over the course of a day?
This sounds like it would decrease the battery lifetime of my car. Unless I'm getting free charging, no dice.
A Tesla Model S sitting in a garage has enough energy onboard to run a typical single family home for many days. It's pretty impressive just how much energy our automobiles use when we're driving them; they put the power consumption of homes and small buildings completely to shame.
Looks like 6 cars can offset about 2% of this office's power usage. Hardly 'powering' the whole office.
How many Nissan Leafs does it take to power an office building? The answer, it turns out, is six.
cut peak-hour electricity use by 2 percent
So the answer, it turns out, is actually 300.
It's hard to store electricity.
That is why buildings don't do this using regular batteries.
Next up: Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?"
Simple answer: It costs a decent amount of money to buy and maintain a large battery array. Anyone in charge of a medium sized corporate server room can attest to that.
By "letting" workers plug in their electric vehicles, the company not only gets to bill it as a perk of the job, but they get to push 100% of the expense of maintaining those batteries onto their workers.
TLDR: Money.
"Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?"
Batteries have a limited number of recharge cycles, and they are very expensive (1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of the vehicle.) It's much easier to stick those expenses to the employees.
Other than that, yes, it would make a lot of sense to use stationary batteries. They wouldn't have to be light and small, for one. However it remains to be seen if the saved 2% is enough to pay for all the equipment.
I can power the entire solar system with a single AAA battery.
The idea to store all excess electricity is already being investigated. But they're planning to use super capacitors rather than batteries. The idea to buy it cheap at night and sell it back to the grid during the day when theoretically, your consumption is lower (not at home, etc.) is too good not to be exploited.
Summary says
Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?
Economics and cost sharing. If the process was done with batteries alone rather than battery-powered cars, the building owner would have to pay for the batteries. That's enough to make it uneconomic. By using the Nissan Leaf cars, the building owner gets the employees/car-owners to donate use of the batteries that the car owner has already paid for. The building owner saves money by shifting consumption to the lower-priced rate times, and in return eats the cost of building the charging hookups for the Nissan owners. Building owner saves money, car owners get free charging ports, the electric company gets a more time-balanced load. Even Nissan, maker of the cars, wins. Is there a downside to this?
captha: defraud
Electric car plugged into a building to get arrested. source: http://slashdot.org/story/13/12/04/1817227/ev-owner-arrested-over-5-cents-worth-of-electricity-from-schools-outlet
Its like super sized BYOD except in this case it is bring your own load flattening system.
The company is only saving money on its power bill because its employees are freely lending them the hardware that they invested their own money in.
Not only that the company is not even paying depreciation on the reduced number of battery charge cycles the employees will see.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...is how many Nissan Leafs it takes to power an array of Nuclear reactor cooling pumps just in case of a Tsunami, Earthquake, Volcano, Mothra, Gamera or a Howls Moving Castle incident.
Are batteries (of the sort light and energy-dense enough to put in cars) sufficiently resistant to wear that this sort of cycling doesn't get rather expensive? The Li-ions die even faster than usual if repeatedly charge-cycled. Is NiMH better on that score?
(Also, given charge/discharge inefficiencies, is the delta between on and off peak really high enough to justify that sort of thing?
I don't think it's intended for rank-and-file workers to supplement the company's electricity, it's probably more that higher-ranking employees with company cars would end up doing this.
If work gave me a car to use for several years, I don't think that the negligible electrical costs that I might incur at home would be enough to make me bat an eye at such an arrangement.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Arizona is the first state, but it won't be the last, to pass ALEC-inspired laws to crack down on homeowners putting up their own solar panels. "Net Pricing" is the current standard, if you are generating more power than you are using, you can sell it back to the utility at a reasonable price; then buy power back when you need it. This horrifies the utilities (at least in Arizona) so they were looking to shut it down. The final result was that they are charging the homeowners to sell their power back to the grid.
If you have a big set of batteries sitting in your garage, it would make more sense to charge them up during the day; and not go for net pricing. Those batteries can store a lot of juice.
"Next up: Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?"
NGK make large storage batteries and they use their own products to power an office complex in Japan, doing just what the article suggests by storing overnight lower-cost electricity in a large battery pack.
Apparently it two weeks for the resulting fire to be extinguished.
NGK have sold a bunch of these batteries around the world, including to support wind power in the Shetland Isles in Scotland.
Positioning such a battery a couple of metres from a 3,800 tonne fuel-oil tank was probably not a good idea...
This will only works on a small scale. Variation in electricity pricing is not a stable situation and will likely evolve once enough people are practicing this. It might be fun to end up in a high-frequency switching similar to the current high-frequency trading practiced by financial institution.
[Insert standard Slashdot edge use cases explaining why THIS WILL NEVER WORK IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE here.]
Remember, on Slashdot, perfect is, and must always be, the enemy of good.
The company gets to benefit from the flattened power demand and the employees get to charge their cars. Seems like a win-win to me. The additional wear on the batteries is likely minimal considering that there will probably be many more than 6 electric cars in the lot.
I doubt $4800/yr in electricity cost savings will fully offset the charger installation and maintenance costs, but it could be close enough that it can be justified as a marketing tool or as a perk to draw employees.
Knowledge Brings Fear
Clever idea. Might as well use the energy storage of your car when it's not in use.
Makes me wonder. If we ever get cheap, reliable, safe electrical energy storage we could put in every home we really good add a lot of flexibility and elasticity to the power grid. Imagine your house had enough storage to power your household for a couple of days, maybe fill the electric car up once or twice.
You could put solar panels on your roof and fill it yourself. The power grid could easier deliver power from sources that only work at certian times of the day. Power form solar and wind could be delivered as it's produced. Grid outages would be less serious. Power delivery could happen on staggered schedules. It could solve a lot of problems and pave the way to make energy distribution easy for EVs
Stream that diesel from your car/truck's gas tank into the generator's gas tank, and you're all set.
Energy companies CANNOT be gamed. If their customer base were to switch to battery storage of off-peak power, the prices would be adjusted to reacquire previous levels of profit. And in this practise, energy companies are fully backed by their national governments, and the laws passed by those governments.
As a for example, this year, people have been shocked to discover that many European nations have created laws where citizens and corporations are massively taxed for off-grid energy generation/use (like solar), justified solely on the basis that the large power companies MUST have their profitability maintained, and that UN initiatives designed to drive down the use of power by the ordinary sheeple in the West must be obeyed at all costs.
Or, take the UK. Food and energy costs are rocketing, as initiatives put in place by Tony Blair begin to bite hard. The sheeple in the UK are constantly told that the 'privatised' energy companies are responsible for the price hikes, but this is a complete lie. Blair, using the excuse of 'global warming' garbage, placed people in control of the energy companies, AND the regulatory bodies that specifically see outrageous energy prices as the best method of lowering per capita energy use.
In reality, Blair knows that a populace under constant 'attack' suffers a massive lowering of its 'immune' system, allowing such a population to be more easily manipulated into passively supporting Blair's war mongering across the globe. You are less likely to be anti-war, so the thinking goes, if your major concern is being able to feed and warm your self and your family.
Brits don't have the option of viable off-the-grid energy production, but much of sunny Europe is very different. The sheeple though that green propaganda told them that using things like solar was 'good' for the environment. Thus, Europeans have been shocked at the crack down against cheap solar options, and how their governments, quoting the UN, have happily told them that no matter how they access the energy, they WILL be paying a standard price for each Watt consumed.
In the greater sense, did any of you ever think you would be given the option of 'opting out'? This really isn't how modern societies operate, even when monsters like Blair are not interfering. The principle of 'the greater good' is always hiding around the corner waiting to bite you. Remember when nuclear propagandists promised 'free' electrical power? Those that rule over you need you dependent, not 'free'. You must 'feel' the connection to their systems in your daily lives, and in every major sense be subservient to their systems.
Vanishing rarely, something like the Internet arises to challenge this system, and we can watch, in real time, how the elites attempt to regain control in this new phenomenon. But for existing systems, the elites are determined to never allow changes that would undermine their control.
Take an autonomous-driving system with enough of the bugs worked out. Put it in a semi cab, pulling a trailer full of batteries. Build fleets of them.
Every morning, they filter into the city, tethering themselves to various load-transfer facilities. All through the day, they help to level out demand peaks.
At night, they filter out, and flock around whatever generating plants are hardest to throttle up and down -- hydro, nuke, whatever -- and refill themselves.
What battery price/performance levels would we have to hit to make this more attractive than building more peak capacity and power lines? Would it ever make sense to do it this way, instead of having static battery farms (and additional line capacity into the city)?
Right now, peak prices are during peak demand, which is typically in the afternoon. However, there are two factors that may change this over the next decade.
In many places, solar power will soon be a significant portion of the power supply, and solar production matches peak demand. Solar is a sunk cost, so any dynamic pricing is based on being able to scale back production at gas-fired plants and the like. Hence, it may be that power costs will be higher when it's dark, even if demand is lower. Expect peak prices in the evening and morning hours.
Also, as electric cars become a significant portion of the vehicles, demand for charging at night will go up significantly, so peak demand may well be at night. Utilities will certainly work to get car owners to install smart chargers that optimize charging based on power availability with the goal of a full charge by a certain time (such as when you typically leave in the morning). [And of course, by "full," that means 80% to maximize the life of the battery unless you're planning a trip.]
Of course, the combination of widespread adoption of both solar power and electric cars suggests that the optimal time to charge is during the day, but good luck getting that to work for the majority of workers.
Due to inefficiencies in electricity storage, wouldn't this result in more electric consumption? How is this not counterproductive?
If I'm running a datacenter, the REASON I want a large battery array (i.e. a UPS) is to keep my gear running in the event of a power outage. For a transient power outage, a RAIL (Redundant Array of Independent Leafs) is a great solution. For an extended power outage, however, PEOPLE GO HOME.
Using a RAIL as your main battery resource will get you through the initial cut, and last you long enough to get the generator up. But when the mains power is back on several hours later, you're screwed in making the transition back off the generator unless the cars are still sitting there. Which they won't be.
this is simply a further evolution of the Bring Your Own Device movement ..
So my car is sitting in the parking lot getting heavy load on the battery packs all day... how much more wear and tear is that going to be putting on my batteries? How many charge/discharge cycles are these being rated for?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Homes and smaller offices can do this too, but it would require dual pricing of electricity. The thing that stops these technologies from coming to homes is the single flat rate we all pay for electricity. If we price it like the old phone systems, peak/off peak, people would adapt and they will invest in load balancing appliances. Doing the laundry and the dishwasher at nights, cooling and storing cold water overnight to blunt the peak energy demand,... People will do all these things, if we make it worthwhile for them to do it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I wonder which would be cheaper ...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/12/20/0429200/toshiba-builds-ultra-small-nuclear-reactor
I'd rather save my batteries TYVM. And getting them charged free would then become a real perk.
In order for this sort of energy trade to be made the building and cars must operate using DC Fast Chargers, which will permit a flat car battery to charge to 80% in about 30 minutes. These chargers are the largest and most capable and are not cheap.
Slavery was always cheaper than actually paying employees. Abusing employees' cars, destroying the batteries and wearing down the electronics in a never-ending charging loop every work day is obviously cheaper than buying your own batteries.
Cradle to grave is always a very different calculation -- one that most people never make.
As is pointed out regularly on other /. threads about alternative electricity generation, it's possible to draw electricity during low-cost time periods and store the energy either directly or indirectly. So how does the cost of what's basically a large battery backup system compare with, say, a pump, a large water tank on top of the building, and a dynamo?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
All this does at scale is move "peak" time to be all the time, same goes for just with batteries. The more power you take out of the grid "off hours" is simply skewing those off hours to become peak hours eventually with batteries deploying at scale you'll simply move the peak time and or flatten demand across the entire day/night which while beneficial in the short term doesn't do much long term.
So Nissan just needs to come up with a new version of the Leaf that has the same battery capacity but sells for $10k and comes with a 12-year battery warranty? I can't wait!
If the company is providing cars to its execs, this seems like a good use of a company resource while the execs are at work, but I don't think I'd be willing to do this with my own car without a battery replacement contract between me and the company I'm plugging into.
You get a job at some company and then your boss is like, "you know, everybody else here drives a BMW, a Benz, something that speaks to our prestige". You get the sense that if you don't trade in your VW, you'll lose the job.
This is just another version of that.
Electricity prices are higher during the work day, lower at night. The employees drive the car home and it gets charged overnight in their home on their own power bill.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's called PSH (pumped storage hydroelectricity) and it's the only way to store large amounts of energy for later consumption at an even remotely reasonable cost. Basically it involves running a turbine hydroelectric generator in reverse to pump water uphill to a reservoir during off peak hours and then run the turbine off of that water during peak times for load balancing. Since nuclear and coal based power plants can't be ramped up or down quickly to match demand, pumped storage hydro is used to soak up a lot of the excess capacity that's unused during off peak hours. Obviously you're paying for the inefficiencies of turbine power generation, but they're pretty good (70-80%) and the differences in peak vs off peak pricing more than make up for this cost. No battery bank in existence can even come close to matching the amount of potential energy that can be stored in a reservoir dollar for dollar. That's probably why it accounts for more than 99% of global bulk storage capacity.
Many companies lease cars to their employees. They could include some kind of battery-sharing deal in the contract. This may actually lower the price of owning the cars as they can be seen as part of the power system.
So let me guess, you're one of those "IT bridge trolls" who build and hide in indecipherable structures and hoard troves of secret passwords, holding their organization for ransom, and mumbling and grumbling to themselves.
While thinking they're pretty damn good at their job, they are actually a worst nightmare scenario waiting to happen.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
... the office building still gets crappy mileage and performs poorly on the highway.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why not just buy the batteries and charger and skip the cost of the car?
Depending on source, Japan's electricity cost is 50-100% higher than the U.S. At $20k per car and the above $800/yr per car saved (In U.S.$400-530), what is the return on investment per year (this question doesn't include upkeep like maintenance cost of the car)?
How fast do you wear out the batteries due to the increase of charge/discharge cycle?
Comparing the savings of time shifting usage with approx $120,000 cost of the cars, what could the same company do to reduce consumption using $120,000 to reduce energy consumption (therefore reduce amount of the evil CO2 created)?
How many mile will you loose if if the cars are used for commuting?
Would have posted on the original site, but my login cookie gets blocked.
Peak usage during the summer hits very late in the day, after 3PM or so and does not start to fall off until after 6PM. Off peak electricity rates therefore don't start until "evening" hits.
Assuming they tapped out your leaf between 3 and 5, then started charging it at 6, you would only be up to 80% charge by 6:30 PM using the "fast charge" option. Full charge would take over an hour to complete using a fast charger. So, your work day will likely end after 7 PM to make this work very well.
Sorry, I'm not working from 8AM to 7PM every day, nor am I going to let you discharge my car and strand me at work between 3 and 7 pm. Now if you want to supply the car.... We can talk, but I'm going to be starting work at 10 AM or something..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Once enough people start buying and storing electricity from off-peak times, the power companies will complain about not making enough money, and a price increase will result. Mark my words.
Same as water authorities, they yell at everyone to conserve water and then they raise prices because they no longer have enough income..
If 'peak' is defined by demand, then isn't the problem ultimately going to be shifted by moving when 'peak' occurs? In fact, that means that not only does the worker foot the bill for the battery, but also for the increase in energy costs.
test
Automotive grade lithium batteries are slowly falling in price but currently cost about $500 per kWh and can last perhaps 3000 charge-discharge cycles, so the cost to store and release one kWhr is about 16 cents, more than the total price of electricity in most of the US even at peak periods, but a good bit less than the retail price of electricity in Japan, about 32 cents. So in Japan it might actually make sense, depending of what the peak/off-peak differential is. But as suggested in the initial post, yes, is would make just as much sense to simply put some batteries in the basement and forget the cars. For that matter, you don't need lithium, lead batteries - cheaper but less durable - work out to about the same cost per kWh stored and released. But as lithium battery prices continue to fall, the day is not that far off when storing electricity from intermittent solar and wind sources in very large batteries will be economically feasible.
Take an autonomous-driving system with enough of the bugs worked out. Put it in a semi cab, pulling a trailer full of batteries. Build fleets of them.
Every morning, they filter into the city, tethering themselves to various load-transfer facilities. All through the day, they help to level out demand peaks.
At night, they filter out, and flock around whatever generating plants are hardest to throttle up and down -- hydro, nuke, whatever -- and refill themselves.
What battery price/performance levels would we have to hit to make this more attractive than building more peak capacity and power lines? Would it ever make sense to do it this way, instead of having static battery farms (and additional line capacity into the city)?
So, why do the power companies want to do this?
1. They are in the business of selling electricity. The higher the bill rate the better for them.
2. Why drive batteries around. Generation, charging, discharging is all very inefficient and they already have wires going to every building. Who needs batteries or trucks?
3. Do you have a clue as to the cost of batteries versus traditional power generation like diesel turbine, coal, natural gas? Batteries cost orders of magnitude more per kWh than any of these generation methods. And, the batteries don;t eliminate the need for generation.
4. Autonomous-driving trucks? Getting a little ahead of ourselves here, aren't we.
Your ideas sound like the fantasies of an inexperienced teen with no basis in reality. Give it a few moments thought next time.
In the case where this becomes popular or common place in an urban centre, wouldn't the process of discharging, and then immediately recharging after peak power times, cause the peak power times to shift due to the demand for recharging - eventually negating any benefit?
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
"How many Nissan Leafs does it take to power an office building? The answer, it turns out, is six.
If that was true, it would be a major breakthrough.
But it just turns out that the summary is just idiotically false.
The only story here is: You can save on your power bill by using batteries to store energy obtained at a less-expensive time of day to usage at a more-expensive time of day. Cars have absolutely nothing to do with it.
So 6 cars have a 2% reduction? Does that mean that I need 300 cars to fully power my office building?
Why does the title say that 6 cars can power an office building? By that logic, my cellphone battery can power my house!
If God gave us curiosity
Back in the 70's I worked for a company called Energy Development Associates. We were developing batteries both for electric cars and grid storage. We participated in a pilot grid "storage plant" where three different large storage battery technologies from different companies were tested. The batteries were also to be used to run "Star Wars" missiles around on a track periodically... The largest batteries we built at the time were, I think 50kW/hr, and about 2ftx2ftx4ft in size.
(They were ridiculously complicated batteries - zinc chloride - that used multiple pumps, and everything had to be stainless steel to contain the chlorine. Still, the car leaked on it's Today Show debut. "Oh, that? That's just harmless chlorine - just like in your swimming pool.")
This initiative seems to have gone, exactly... nowhere. Think it has a lot to do with the price of oil going back to affordable, after a brief fling in the stratosphere that was quickly forgotten. And a change of administration.
So, this is a bit of the same idea, just closer to point of use.
It's interesting that at the time, the few home solar installations all had batteries, (typically lead-acid) because programs to have the power company buy back the power had not yet been developed. Almost no home solar installations today have any storage capacity.
Because there are already better options for time-shifiting energy usage that most companies haven't done. For example, building ice at night with the A/C and melting the next day. All that requires is a tank of water and a bit of antifreeze in your chiller loop, which are much cheaper and have a much longer lifetime than batteries.
> Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?
Because that wouldn't be cool.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If the peak usage is reduced, that directly reduces the infrastructure the power company has to buy and maintain. For example, if peak usage is 2Gw, the power company needs four generators capable of 500 Mw each, even if average usage is only 1 Gw. By eliminating the high peak usage, the power company can have two or three generators instead of four. That means they could, in some cases, REDUCE rates overall while INCREASING profit margin, because it reduces costs.
It's capped to the speed of the pricing system. The power company decides the rates; if it's based solely upon instant demand of the "market" then it becomes a game of milliseconds like the financial casinos.
If the rate is too slow, then the power company creates more troubles for themselves as everybody adapts to the rates causing low rate times to become high usage spikes. In a more distributed solution, the rates are set by location ... and locations raise or lower their loads to match the grid. Oh! Doesn't that sound like a smart grid?
So this is the next step in the smart grid, with the minor money savings used as an incentive; but one should just think about regulating such things in because that isn't much of a money incentive to buy the electronics to allow such use (regulating it LATER after electric cars take over is quite likely in some countries.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Let's approach this from an electronics 101 perspective...
Corporate power costs aside, lets look at absolute power usage.
The AC/DC (charge car) and DC/AC (power building from car) conversion is inherently lossy which typically range from a baseline of 75% to an absolute best case scenario of up to 94%, so even with the best setup available (highly unlikely), a 6% loss in and 6% loss out would vastly overshadow a 2% gain. I'm skewing the numbers as far in thier favor as possible and still comes out to a 10% loss in power transfer alone.
Specific peak/offpeak pricing and length of time the office is powered, or the charge time of the cars is not shown, so calculation of the actual power (Kw/H) in and out is impossible due to a lack of information.
My take...yearly savings of $4800 (corporate power is about 1/10 residential power in my area, so $48000 to the average joe) doesn't jive with daily power cycling of six very expensive battery packs. Hope the warrantee covers it :)
The article doesn't specify the amount of time
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
I'm still trying to get a second sysadmin here because I have too much critical knowledge I can't adequately pass on. My job security is ridiculous, but the business is in a precarious position: if they lose me, major production revenue streams are in jeopardy immediately. I send out e-mails to managers and coworkers with reference instructions to keep things running and make them run again if they fail, so hopefully they can hold things up and redo it from scratch (they don't have the skill or expertise to do so, but they could hire someone who can apply their own knowledge to this stuff while correcting/improving/reimplementing) if I vanish.
I need another person here who can do my job if I'm not around.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
If you look at the average business building in a corporate park, the area of the building is small, while the area for parking around the building is large. I believe even Walmart has figured out that installing solar panels in the parking lots is a good idea.
It keeps the cars cooler in the summer because they block some of the sunshine, during the rain they act like roofing, and during those peak hours during the daytime, they offset the cost of electricity. And with the plummeting prices of panels these days, it would be more cost effective to go that way than to install a battery set-up in the basement.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The headline indicates that six Leaf cars can power the building. Later they say the scheme reduced peak power load by 2%. Doesn't that indicate it would take 6*50, or 300 Leaf cars to power the whole building.
This sort of fuzzy math makes me doubt most of the solar and wind claims.
Another post is heavily in favor of net-metering, where the utility pays you the same rate per KWH as they sell it to you. That's bad economics. That means you can buy power at peak periods and have them buy from you at off-peak. You're asking them to be your energy storage source at no cost. If everyone did that, the utility would go broke trying to keep generator plants available (at zero cost) for when the sun doesn't shine or there's a hot day with a large air conditioning load.
Person A drives to work with a full charge, having used cheap energy generated at night by the nuclear fission reactors of Japan (where this study was located) at off-peak hours.
The commute uses about half their total charge. They now have 50 percent charge.
During the work day, their workplace (under Keiratsu cradle to grave concepts) charges their car for them, since they will need a full battery in case they have to go visit grandma at the farm.
If the battery is at 50 percent, they charge it up to 100 percent BY END OF THE WORK DAY. However, during the day, the actual vehicle battery charge may fluctuate from 50 to 100 percent depending on energy needs of the business. The goal is to have a full 100 percent charge by business close, with at least 70 percent charge by lunch (might have to do errands).
However, since the building is partially powered by wind turbines and solar panels - since this is Japan - the actual power available and the cost of power purchased fluctuates. So they may trickle charge the battery more during sunny periods when there is wind (purchased power is cheap then due to local power surplus from wind and solar) and use the battery to sell energy back during periods with no sun and no wind. When the battery drops to 50 percent during the day, they stop using it (so you can still drive it in case the kids get head lice or the wife is injured during a high speed rail accident). But it's still cheaper to use the car battery power (which may already be at 90-100 percent charge by 10 am) than purchased power from off site (during periods of no sun/wind).
This is what happens.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Solar panels,windmills, battery bank. They do this already all over the USA. Offset the power use during peak hours (plus a 10% lighting dim and load shedding) and go to town off hours. The coolest system I saw was simply pumped water storage at the top of the building, using pumps to fill the 10,000 gallon tank at night, ten close valves and wait for power to get expensive and high demand, then open valves and let water flow backwards through the pumps causing power generation. more efficient than batteries as there are no losses when it is in storage mode. High rise building can really take advantage of this as they have more potential energy gains from altitude.
Heck the hospital here has enough solar panels to offset 30% of their energy use during the day and their system still offsets 25% during cloudy winter months. because the wind kicks way up and the windmills run non stop at near peak. Nature is funny like that, it's either sunny and calm or cloudy and windy.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They already are bitching about people with solar installations. Whiny babies claiming having to buy back the electricity at 50% under wholesale rates, I.E. chump change is too expensive, yet they sell MY electricity to others at full rate.
They actually want to not only not buy power I send back to them, but they want to have a "minimum billing" so that even if I generate 120% of my energy needs they can still charge me $50 a month as a minimum billing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes, the power company pays for capacity. For example, the copper wires need to be thick enough to handle the peak , amperage and the transformers have to be big enough for the peak amperage. Spreading the load out means the wiring, transformers, etc. don't have to be upgraded as soon.
The only two costs can think of that are NOT reduced are fuel and customer service. Everything else is sized based on the peak instantaneous load. If you take the heaviest 15 minutes and spread that out over 30 minutes, lower amperage parts can be used.
Of course bracketed costs tend to offset that. If a transformer is available sized for 2 megawatt or 3 megawatt, a 5% reduction isn't going to delay the need to upgrade for long - but it will delay that requirement.
this in my opinion is one of the big-time overlooked features you could add to a hybrid such as a prius, if you can charge it from home then it sure as heck in an emergency run your your house to a small extent.
The Architect.
As usual there is no consideration for the wear and tear on the system as well as the life of the batteries and the cost to replace them. ;(
Many companies don't engage in succession planning and they really should.
I know quite a few IT managers of even significant operations who don't have effective succession options even after them repeatedly bringing the risks to managements attention. I call this management style 'the ostrich'.
It's amazing how fired and bankrupt companies can get when the 'never happens' scenario ensues - somebody takes another job, gets hit by a care, has a heart attack, etc.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
hmm. Which is the reason why it can be only batteries in cars and not batteries alone.
This also shows how wasteful it is to drive, and a good reason to stop driving and take public transportation.
So let me guess, you're one of those "IT bridge trolls" who build and hide in indecipherable structures and hoard troves of secret passwords, holding their organization for ransom, and mumbling and grumbling to themselves.
While thinking they're pretty damn good at their job, they are actually a worst nightmare scenario waiting to happen.
Are you stupid? You replied to a post about leaving work for emergencies like a child being born, and call the person a troll. WTF?
Ok, so aren't you eating up your battery life cycle? And who is paying the bill for that? The workers?
Not to mention the well-known fact that batteries have a limited number of discharge/recharge cycles
That depends on the battery chemistry.
As I understand it, modern Lithium Ion chemistries are mainly affected by time since manufacture / first charge (due to ongoing electrode oxidation) and high temperatures, with extra cycling (if it doesn't result in overheating the battery) a minor issue.
(But I'm not expert on this so maybe somebody who is could comment?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Next up: Why not just do this using batteries--never mind the cars?
Because they were bound to be plugged in to recharge anyway. That way they're doubling as batteries for the building.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
I really don't get what this means to anyone except, maybe, during a crisis. What size of office building? Is it a factory that builds cars or an especially large outhouse?
They already are bitching about people with solar installations. Whiny babies claiming having to buy back the electricity at 50% under wholesale rates, I.E. chump change is too expensive, yet they sell MY electricity to others at full rate.
They actually want to not only not buy power I send back to them, but they want to have a "minimum billing" so that even if I generate 120% of my energy needs they can still charge me $50 a month as a minimum billing.
When you start maintaining all of the infrastructure that feeds power to your house and out to the grid then you can bitch about how they only pay your 50% of what they charge for it.
Minimum billing is a bit ridiculous though, I agree.
You see I am FORCED BY LAW to have an active electrical connection to the grid in order to have an "occupancy permit" to actually live in my home. Most cities have this forced at gunpoint law on the books. I can generate enough of my own power, but I am Forced at GUNPOINT to keep and maintain an electrical connection to the grid. Go ahead, research this on your own and you will see how this exists in your city as well as other at gunpoint laws they have against you.
So I guess I am also bitching about scumbags like you that take away my rights by voting for corrupt lawmakers that rule by Gun and fist.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is at least one German/European patent relating to powering and heating an isolated house from a 1.5 l auto engine, capturing heat from the exhaust and cooling system and a coupled generator, which in turn charges batteries. Convert that to biodiesel or methane recovered from cattle and you have yet another cheap source of power. And when all needs are met you can shut down the engine
Even though the advances in automotive battery technology is proving useful for many things, even powering homes, it still is NOT the answer to the energy crisis we may face due to a shortage of oil. And to those who constantly whine to petrolheads about the fact that "electric powered cars are friendlier to the environment," get your facts right. Electric power is mostly obtained through nuclear fusion or the burning of some other nonrenewable resource, which hurts the environment with the same intensity. We need to come up with a better answer. One of these methods is power through hydrogen gas. But, even this has many complexities that face it. Hydrogen gas is very difficult to make and will take a long time to become widespread enough to be able to fill in cars on every street corner. So, what should we do?