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Japan Wants To Boost the Use of Electric Vehicles as a Power Source During Natural Disasters (qz.com)
Japan, a country which frequently suffers natural calamities such as tsunamis, typhoons, and earthquakes is looking to further harness the power of batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) during such disasters, local media reports. From a report: Nissan, which produces the Leaf, the world's best-selling EV model, plans to hold an event in March to let people stay overnight in their cars and try using the electricity stored in their car batteries to simulate the experience of being in an emergency, according to Japanese newswire Jiji. A fully charged electric vehicle can supply power to a standard home for up to four days, a Nissan official told the news outlet. The company last year came to an agreement with Tokyo's Nerima Ward and the city of Yokosuka to provide EVs for free in emergency situations. Nerima also last year (link in Japanese) implemented a system whereby owners of EVs would be able to loan their vehicles out for free to those in need during a disaster, and also started using EVs for its fleet of police patrol cars.
... implemented a system whereby owners of EVs would be able to loan their vehicles out for free ...
Mandatory or voluntary ?
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What do you think, Linda?
Not many people realize how much power EVs are capable of. I own a Chevy Volt which is a mixed battery / gas generator type vehicle and so I have a view of exactly what KWatt's I use when I drive around on my dashboard. Your average house rarely exceeds 10 KWatts at peak power use. Travelling on a straight highway uses about 21 Kwatts of power while slow speed urban driving can be as low as 7 Kwatts. Volt's peak battery output is around 107 Kwatts which could easily cover several houses all at once, it's amazing to think that's how much power is used when a car is accelerating. The Volt's gas engine / generator is about 80hp which is way above any of your camping portable generators which are probably a measly 1-4 hp. The issue is how to hook up the house power safely. Volt's primary power line off the battery is about 360v DC with enough amperage to more than put you in the grave. Unless the car maker safely designed a way to tap the system, it's difficult to do.
Back with the fukushima disaster in japan they were raiding the batteries from the cars in the company parking lot to keep the controls and monitor equipment running.
Also 4 days?! I know a EV holds a lot of juice but if it can really run a home with lights and HVAC for days it should already be being sold as a home backup option.
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Most Japanese do not live in single family residences with dedicated garage space. Most live in apartments with shared parking, where is no way to get electricity from "your" EV to "your" home. The buildings are simply not wired up that way. Maybe newer apartments can be wired so an EV charger in your assigned parking slot gets tied in to the meter (and wiring) of your apartment. But that seems like it'd be excessively complicated - I imagine most such chargers will simply tap into the building's main power line, and its dedicated meter is added up with the apartment unit's meter to calculate the monthly power bill.
Unfortunately, this 1:1 transference of electricity from your EV to your home is necessary if you want people to conserve the power to stretch it out through a multi-day power outage. If you turn the electricity into a shared resource, the tragedy of the commons kicks in. And people start using all the electricity they can giving little thought to conserving it. Japanese culture might help counter that (they place a high emphasis on responsibility to society). But one bad apple in the apartment drawing lots of wattage for an AC, water heater, and playing games on his high-end PC could put a significant dent in the available power across all EVs powering the building.
Can I borrow your car to charge my car? And my phone. It's an emergency!
The Prius battery is right at about 200V and most electronic things in your house (your TV, your computer and such) work on DC just fine. Those things that don't include electric motors or things that use old power transformer based power supplies instead of switching versions.
An ham radio operator published his experiences in using his daughter's Prius as a backup power source. He was able to power pretty much everything in his house that used a switching mode power supply without any issues directly from the battery. He expressed his delight in having a backup power supply that included the ability to recharge itself using the fossil fueled motor, far in excess of the capacity he could buy for the same price, yet use it to drive to work and back when he didn't need the emergency power.
Some things obviously don't work, most notably was all those wall warts, but his 12V DC generating switching power supply and some RV appliances and lighting pretty much filled any gaps.
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A Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh battery. A refrigerator uses about 2kWh per day. LED bulbs are about 0.015KWh (each) for every hour they are on. A TV is about 0.1kWh for every hours it's on. Central AC uses about 36kWh per day in the summer. So yes to a fridge, some lights, a little TV and keeping your phones/tablets/laptops charged; no to air conditioning (or electric heat, oven, clothes dryer, etc).
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Sounds like a stronger argument for hybrids than straight EVs. Especially disasters that'll take down the grid.
This idea is interesting, but worrisome to me. In a disaster there's a good chance you might need to get the heck out of dodge after a couple days. I'd hate to see what happens when 1000's of people need to travel away from the emergency but can't because their car's battery is drained from powering their house's appliances.
So, there is a disaster and therefore nearly ALL electric power to the area is down. Hmmm, I wonder how long those electric vehicles are going to be running without bringing in generators or a LOT of batteries????
This makes sense if you have a public education I suppose. I can't believe I wasted my time commenting on this shit. Thank the Lord I didn't waste m time reading it.
That's nice to think they can run houses for a few days on an EV charge but where will this electricity come from? During the not emergency times there must be some thing to charge the EVs. Japan is densely populated and not very large. Solar power and wind isn't going to work for power. If someone wants to claim that they can just use batteries to even out the sunny and windy peaks with the calm and dark valleys then why bother with the cars? Just distribute the batteries so the power never goes out.
But an island nation like Japan can't run on wind and solar. Not without destroying their economy. I know, people will claim solar plus batteries have been cheaper than coal and nuclear for decades now. If that were true then why is this still theoretical? Make it happen now or it's bullshit.
Japan will need nuclear power or the lights go out and their EVs run dead.
Do those electric vehicles come together and transform into some kind of giant robot? Is it like International Rescue, or Transformers, or Power Rangers, or Voltron? Can they battle Godzilla or Kaiju or Mothra? Will the historical documents be disseminated as manga for the benefit of future generations?
Good on the Japanese, they really know how to battle emergencies. With giant robots. That assemble out of cars.