Definition of irony: Using your petrol generator to charge your car!

Hows this different to the free hour of power causing blackouts that happened in dunedin all the time some time back? They sell people a supply of a certain size, its up to them to make sure it can handle it.

If they want to get money for it should move to time of use unit pricing or maximum demand in peak times charging, but that gets people up in arms about how some people can't afford it.

tdgeek:

 

tweake:

 

 

 

On sort of that topic, warkworth area recently had power cuts two days in a row with this cold weather. that raises the question of power reliability and the impact on transport if the power goes out.

 

 

Power will never be 100% reliable. A general fault or a weather inflicted event will happen. Vehicle hits a transformer, etc. Its up to the car owner to mitigate that or use alternate transport that day

 

unfortunately i don't know what the exact faults have been. but to knock out quite a large area and most importantly on the coldest weather this year, does not look good. the aera has growing pains and network upgrades to keep up with the amount of development happening. adding in large loads like people charging ev's doesn't help.

mudguard:

 

tweake:

 

on sort of that topic, warkworth area recently had power cuts two days in a row with this cold weather. that raises the question of power reliability and the impact on transport if the power goes out.

 

 

On the other side of that equation. If we get to the point where you can easily send the car's power back into the house, I'm sure the base model Tesla could power our household for a couple of days. 

 

that only works if your ev is charged up enough. not much good if you can't get it charged up because power is out.

however, if battery tech improves then household battery's may be the solution. being able to store enough to run the house or charge the car. of course great with solar no wasting power sending it back to grid.

as house hold batteries don't have weight and size restraints, there is a much wider range of tech out there.

 

On the other side of that equation. If we get to the point where you can easily send the car's power back into the house, I'm sure the base model Tesla could power our household for a couple of days. 

 

 

that only works if your ev is charged up enough. not much good if you can't get it charged up because power is out.

 

however, if battery tech improves then household battery's may be the solution. being able to store enough to run the house or charge the car. of course great with solar no wasting power sending it back to grid.

 

as house hold batteries don't have weight and size restraints, there is a much wider range of tech out there.

 

Good point about different battery chemistries being applicable.  While my Leaf may have been used with VTH technology in Japan to use the battery for household purposes, the top priorities for a portable battery (energy density, light weight etc) are different than the priorities for a stationary one (price, longevity etc).  While we potentially have a large battery capacity sitting in our growing EV fleet that could help us with the evening winter peaks without needing to increase our generation - at present the best batteries for EVs aren't ultimately the best for a purpose-built house storage system.

Canuckabroad:

 

Good point about different battery chemistries being applicable.  While my Leaf may have been used with VTH technology in Japan to use the battery for household purposes, the top priorities for a portable battery (energy density, light weight etc) are different than the priorities for a stationary one (price, longevity etc).  While we potentially have a large battery capacity sitting in our growing EV fleet that could help us with the evening winter peaks without needing to increase our generation - at present the best batteries for EVs aren't ultimately the best for a purpose-built house storage system.

 

thats where i think the push should really come. so much potential for each house to generate their own but it requires good affordable storage. that way you have your own built in supply to fuel a car, which reduces strain on the grid.

one of the limitations to ev's is the local network. house connections to the grid are typically small and local grid is not big enough to support large amounts of ev usage. however if you have your own storage that gets around all those limitations.

tweake:

 

thats where i think the push should really come. so much potential for each house to generate their own but it requires good affordable storage. that way you have your own built in supply to fuel a car, which reduces strain on the grid.

 

one of the limitations to ev's is the local network. house connections to the grid are typically small and local grid is not big enough to support large amounts of ev usage. however if you have your own storage that gets around all those limitations.

 

 

 

How much power does an oven draw at 6pm? I think personal storage is as much about connecting it to the house and keeping it separate from the grid isn't it?

IE lines folk don't want lines they think are off, but are on because someone's solar system is hooked up incorrectly?

mudguard:

 

tweake:

 

thats where i think the push should really come. so much potential for each house to generate their own but it requires good affordable storage. that way you have your own built in supply to fuel a car, which reduces strain on the grid.

 

one of the limitations to ev's is the local network. house connections to the grid are typically small and local grid is not big enough to support large amounts of ev usage. however if you have your own storage that gets around all those limitations.

 

 

 

 

How much power does an oven draw at 6pm? I think personal storage is as much about connecting it to the house and keeping it separate from the grid isn't it?

 

IE lines folk don't want lines they think are off, but are on because someone's solar system is hooked up incorrectly?

 

keeping your solar generated power for yourself is the best way as feeding it back to grid earns you very little.

many households only have 60 amp connections. not hard to have the oven on, stove top elements on, heat pumps on, hot water kicking in, plus the usual fridges/freezers/tv's etc. then you want to use a 30-40 amp ev charger ?? very easy to max out a standard power connection and local lines get pushed hard if everyone is doing the same thing. but if you have home storage you can slowly charge that up during the day (solar etc or from the grid) and then charge up the ev from the home battery without putting a big load on your connection. ie change a peak demand to an average demand spread out over the day. 

Most people in the EV groups I've seen charge at night using cheaper power at lower demand.  The current worst-case scenario is a cold winter's night when everyone has their heating cranked above the usual lights on and cooking dinner - which has potential to edge past where our current generation can handle (particularly if it coincides with decreased capacity) - and potentially drive expensive generation upgrades only to ensure that scenario only seen a few times per year doesn't cause problems.

Lines folk will be concerned that either solar PV or power from an EV could liven lines when they believe them to be off - which is why they only accept systems that can be certified to not cause this risk.  

tweake:

 

keeping your solar generated power for yourself is the best way as feeding it back to grid earns you very little.

 

many households only have 60 amp connections. not hard to have the oven on, stove top elements on, heat pumps on, hot water kicking in, plus the usual fridges/freezers/tv's etc. then you want to use a 30-40 amp ev charger ?? very easy to max out a standard power connection and local lines get pushed hard if everyone is doing the same thing. but if you have home storage you can slowly charge that up during the day (solar etc or from the grid) and then charge up the ev from the home battery without putting a big load on your connection. ie change a peak demand to an average demand spread out over the day. 

 

A significantly cheaper option would be a smart charger that is able to delay charging until the evening peak is over, then dump 60lwh in between 11-6....

wellygary:

 

tweake:

 

keeping your solar generated power for yourself is the best way as feeding it back to grid earns you very little.

 

many households only have 60 amp connections. not hard to have the oven on, stove top elements on, heat pumps on, hot water kicking in, plus the usual fridges/freezers/tv's etc. then you want to use a 30-40 amp ev charger ?? very easy to max out a standard power connection and local lines get pushed hard if everyone is doing the same thing. but if you have home storage you can slowly charge that up during the day (solar etc or from the grid) and then charge up the ev from the home battery without putting a big load on your connection. ie change a peak demand to an average demand spread out over the day. 

 

 

A significantly cheaper option would be a smart charger that is able to delay charging until the evening peak is over, then dump 60lwh in between 11-6....

 

what happens when they all start doing that? may need to get into controlled charging like controlled hot water and power co will dictate when your car gets charged. 

tweake:

 

what happens when they all start doing that? may need to get into controlled charging like controlled hot water and power co will dictate when your car gets charged. 

 

That is what octopus are doing. But everytime someone talks about time of use pricing that gets people upset about it. If there is no pricing incentive to do it, I will load my supply up to the max whenever I feel like it.

I think there are a couple providers now who do some manner of time of use pricing - they often call them an EV or an EV and solar plan that has different pricing for peak/off peak/night rates.  A significant portion of EV owners in the owner groups appear to be using those plans to charge their EV's overnight during off-peak hours.  Some of those also have allocated rates for reimbursing solar sent up into the grid to accommodate solar and eV customers without the need to have a local battery.

tweake:

 

what happens when they all start doing that? may need to get into controlled charging like controlled hot water and power co will dictate when your car gets charged. 

 

It still solves the network problem of blowing evening peak load out of the water and overloading the lines networks. 

Currently 90%  of household have a pretty high evening peak ( esp in Winter) with heating, cooking and other loads throughout the evening. 

Even with 50% EV penetration that sees 40 amps of load per household between 11pm-6am, its not gonna cause network issues, 

IT WILL NEED more overall electricity generation and supply, but that's a separate issue, 

richms:

 

tweake:

 

what happens when they all start doing that? may need to get into controlled charging like controlled hot water and power co will dictate when your car gets charged. 

 

 

That is what octopus are doing. But everytime someone talks about time of use pricing that gets people upset about it. If there is no pricing incentive to do it, I will load my supply up to the max whenever I feel like it.

 

and this is where lines co start start discouraging ev charger installs.

this topic goes way back to early ev when they looked at charge supply and found the local network was the choke point.

if one of the many bulk storage battery techs comes to market and gets home battery costs right down, that could really start to be a game changer both for home use as well as ev's.