http://www.pcworld.com/article/2825085/ ... nutes.htmlBreakthrough batteries last 20 years, charge 70 percent in two minutes
Over the years, consumer electronics have improved in almost every way, becoming thinner, lighter, and more pixel-packed, all while increasing exponentially in performance. But beating at the heart of many mobile devices and even electric cars is a technology that hasn’t kept up with the rapid pace of innovation: batteries. Specifically, lithium-ion batteries.
Battery tech is a limiting factor in the design of many of today’s technologies. Researchers at Nanyang Technology University say they’ve discovered a way to build a better battery, however—a battery that charges in mere minutes and lasts an amazing 20 years.
Breakthrough batteries
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3rdRock
Breakthrough batteries
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kenneal - lagger
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A Nissan leaf has a 24kwh battery. To charge to , say, 15 kWh in 5 minutes is 15 x 60 / 5 = 180 kW. I domestic supply is rated at about 30kw for short periods . a charging station with 6 ports would need a megawatt supply. The energy flowing through a large petrol station with twenty pumps operating simultaneously is a lot more, but of course the energy is chemical
When you say a domestic supply is 30kW what are you referring to?
I'm not holding my breath but this kind of performance would do very nicely indeed both for transport and grid balancing.
The vast majority of recharging would still need to be done much slower and overnight so as to not hammer the grid (and to take advantage of cheaper electricity) but having the ability to drop a hundred miles of range into an EV battery in, say, 15 minutes would be useful. I believe the Tesla Supercharger can do 100kW which would achieve this. You'd need some very beefy grid connections to enable this on a significant scale but it's not impossible but it really will be important to get as many people as possible recharging in the off peak.
A cycle life of 10,000 would mean a very long life after in a stationary application after it's done its stint in a car and you'd be able to provide full V2G services without any meaningful depreciation costs to the battery owner. It's worth remembering that the average car is parked for over 95% of the time so that's quite a useful availability for grid balancing / storage services.
I'm not holding my breath but this kind of performance would do very nicely indeed both for transport and grid balancing.
The vast majority of recharging would still need to be done much slower and overnight so as to not hammer the grid (and to take advantage of cheaper electricity) but having the ability to drop a hundred miles of range into an EV battery in, say, 15 minutes would be useful. I believe the Tesla Supercharger can do 100kW which would achieve this. You'd need some very beefy grid connections to enable this on a significant scale but it's not impossible but it really will be important to get as many people as possible recharging in the off peak.
A cycle life of 10,000 would mean a very long life after in a stationary application after it's done its stint in a car and you'd be able to provide full V2G services without any meaningful depreciation costs to the battery owner. It's worth remembering that the average car is parked for over 95% of the time so that's quite a useful availability for grid balancing / storage services.
I was hoping you weren't going to ask that. There are far better people to answer that than me on this forum.
Household ring sockets are rated for 13 amps of a little over 3KW. The kitchen ring main is usually rated for 30 amps or 7 1/2 KW. My electric shower has its own dedicated circuit and use 7KW on high power.
That is the maximum continuous power that the wiring can carry without overheating. For short periods the current may exceed this without harm.
My 30KW figure was plucked out of the air just by adding the number of circuits in my house, as a representative figure. Electric cars at home by default are charged from a 13 amp socket so limited to 3KW.
Normal electricity supply to an individual house is single phase. It can be upgraded to 3-phase with provides a 3-fold increase in available power, if you need that, at a cost. A 3-phase supply will charge an electric car 3 times faster, if the car supports that.
The wiring coming into your house comes from a local substation which supplies a number of houses - up to 100 ? . The substation relies on the demand from the houses averaging out since not everybody puts the kettle on at once, so the peak that the wires to your house can carry without overheating or tripping the substation into cutout is less than the sum of the maximum power each individual house can handle.
SO the answer is how long is a piece of string? Each charging station of any size will need its own substation and may need significant upgrading of the electric grid if it is in a remote location.
Domestic charging overnight does not have a major impact on the grid, as it is done when demand is low anyway, although the grid relies on lower consumption at night to allow cables to cool down after high demand in the day.
A daytime high power charging station would add to peak time demand, and if electric cars become widespread, would add to our electricity production problems, which are close to crisis already.
Household ring sockets are rated for 13 amps of a little over 3KW. The kitchen ring main is usually rated for 30 amps or 7 1/2 KW. My electric shower has its own dedicated circuit and use 7KW on high power.
That is the maximum continuous power that the wiring can carry without overheating. For short periods the current may exceed this without harm.
My 30KW figure was plucked out of the air just by adding the number of circuits in my house, as a representative figure. Electric cars at home by default are charged from a 13 amp socket so limited to 3KW.
Normal electricity supply to an individual house is single phase. It can be upgraded to 3-phase with provides a 3-fold increase in available power, if you need that, at a cost. A 3-phase supply will charge an electric car 3 times faster, if the car supports that.
The wiring coming into your house comes from a local substation which supplies a number of houses - up to 100 ? . The substation relies on the demand from the houses averaging out since not everybody puts the kettle on at once, so the peak that the wires to your house can carry without overheating or tripping the substation into cutout is less than the sum of the maximum power each individual house can handle.
SO the answer is how long is a piece of string? Each charging station of any size will need its own substation and may need significant upgrading of the electric grid if it is in a remote location.
Domestic charging overnight does not have a major impact on the grid, as it is done when demand is low anyway, although the grid relies on lower consumption at night to allow cables to cool down after high demand in the day.
A daytime high power charging station would add to peak time demand, and if electric cars become widespread, would add to our electricity production problems, which are close to crisis already.
I think your calculations make sense.
I believe that substations have on average about 150 homes connected to them but it depends on the location and can be anywhere between 1 and 500+.
The grid operators seem to be pretty sure that the lights are going to stay on so I don't think we're at crisis point quite yet. There's a fair bit of spare capacity during the day for fast charging of EVs and it's only in the evening when things get tight and I'm sure it'll be priced appropriately to push the vast majority of charging behaviour to the off peak though. It's only going to be a relatively small number of vehicles who will really need to charge in the evening peak. Everyone else will get more than they need for the day's driving the night.
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adam2
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A private house in the UK usually has a single phase supply of 60 amps or 80 amps or 100 amps. Some domestic services are only 40 amps, and a few are 125 amps, a very few are 3 phase.
100 amps is 23KW if one presumes 230 volts which is the declared voltage, or 24KW if one assumes 240 volts which is the average actually supplied.
A little more than this could be used short term.
Remember though that not all of this is available for battery charging.
Electricity companies allow about 5 amps per house if natural gas is available, or about 10 amps per house if gas is not available. Any individual household can use a lot more than that, up to the 60/80/100 amps noted above, but the AVERAGE over a district is surprisingly small.
100 amps is 23KW if one presumes 230 volts which is the declared voltage, or 24KW if one assumes 240 volts which is the average actually supplied.
A little more than this could be used short term.
Remember though that not all of this is available for battery charging.
Electricity companies allow about 5 amps per house if natural gas is available, or about 10 amps per house if gas is not available. Any individual household can use a lot more than that, up to the 60/80/100 amps noted above, but the AVERAGE over a district is surprisingly small.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
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emordnilap
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Aside:Pepperman wrote:The grid operators seem to be pretty sure that the lights are going to stay on so I don't think we're at crisis point quite yet.
The grid was down throughout our county town this lunch time. Cash only, cold sandwiches, very few hot drinks, scissor dry cuts only, the bank with a security foyer had to be opened manually, then shut its doors after letting customers out, pet shop owners worried about their heated tanks, no incessant music from shops etc, no heated air at shop entrances (!), no tbs or electronic displays, woohoo, work on weekly newspaper stopped, alarms going off everywhere, some automatic doors stuck in position. No panic, just a little anger and mega frustration.
Some shops simply closed, unable to operate - bookies for instance, some pubs, post office. Many premises very dark. Chaos around traffic (non-)lights. Very interesting indeed. Should be turned into a regular exercise?
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
The family car currently does about 12000 miles a year. If we bought a Leaf, we might do 10,000 in that and 2,000 in the old car on long trips.
Assuming it takes 24KWh to do 100 miles, that is 2,400KWh to do 10,000
miles. Or 6 KWh/day on average. Or an average load of 250 Watts.
It would slightly less than double our electricity bill. Or about £300 a year.
The remaining 2000 miles in our 70mpg car would cost about £168 at current price. That is a £500 a year saving on fuel.
Costs - apart from the purchase price - insurance, MOT, servicing, probably £500 or less.
The net running cost of an electric second car are less than zero.
Assuming it takes 24KWh to do 100 miles, that is 2,400KWh to do 10,000
miles. Or 6 KWh/day on average. Or an average load of 250 Watts.
It would slightly less than double our electricity bill. Or about £300 a year.
The remaining 2000 miles in our 70mpg car would cost about £168 at current price. That is a £500 a year saving on fuel.
Costs - apart from the purchase price - insurance, MOT, servicing, probably £500 or less.
The net running cost of an electric second car are less than zero.
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adam2
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And an average load of 250 watts might more reasonably be considered as an average of 600 watts during the off peak hours and a much smaller average during peak hours.
Most vehicles would probably charged in the off peak hours both to save money and because most private vehicles are not driven during those hours.
Supplying that much extra demand for a relatively small percentage of homes should be no trouble.
If every FF car was replaced with an electric vehicle then some electrical infrastructure upgrades might be required, but no way are electric cars going to suddenly replace FF ones.
Most vehicles would probably charged in the off peak hours both to save money and because most private vehicles are not driven during those hours.
Supplying that much extra demand for a relatively small percentage of homes should be no trouble.
If every FF car was replaced with an electric vehicle then some electrical infrastructure upgrades might be required, but no way are electric cars going to suddenly replace FF ones.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
If recharging can be pushed back to overnight then I think the current substation infrastructure should largely be able to cope. It's heat pumps (which will inevitably operate at peak times) which will put the biggest strain on the grid imo, especially if people use them like they use their boilers.
Have you factored car and battery costs? It is cheaper to use electricity because the gov chooses a high tax on petrol which it would transfer to other things if we use less fuel.PS_RalphW wrote:The family car currently does about 12000 miles a year. If we bought a Leaf, we might do 10,000 in that and 2,000 in the old car on long trips.
Assuming it takes 24KWh to do 100 miles, that is 2,400KWh to do 10,000
miles. Or 6 KWh/day on average. Or an average load of 250 Watts.
It would slightly less than double our electricity bill. Or about £300 a year.
The remaining 2000 miles in our 70mpg car would cost about £168 at current price. That is a £500 a year saving on fuel.
Costs - apart from the purchase price - insurance, MOT, servicing, probably £500 or less.
The net running cost of an electric second car are less than zero.
I did exclude the purchase price. The battery should be good for 500 full charges or 50,000 miles and still have 80 mile range. I suspect that if you do not use the full capacity and drain the battery, you will get better life than that. Without engine and gearbox and turbo and exhaust and catalyst and fuel pumps etc. you have far fewer moving parts to go wrong - my high tech diesel has not been very reliable and is getting expensive in engine and sensor repairs. Still plenty of electronic gadgets to go wrong, and tyre wear will be a bit more as they are heavy cars. Electricity is 12p /kWh and fuel is 13.5p/kwh of diesel after tax, or about 5p/kWh without tax. However, the electric car is 3-4 times more efficient, so it is still cheaper even if fuel wasn't taxed. From a co2 point of view, the electric wins if the electricity is not made by coal. Current uk power mix is about break even, and wind/solar supply wins hands down.
Leafs lose half their show room value in the first year at the moment, which makes a one y/o leaf about the same price as a new diesel. An absolute steal.
Leafs lose half their show room value in the first year at the moment, which makes a one y/o leaf about the same price as a new diesel. An absolute steal.
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kenneal - lagger
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mikepepler
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I went to a lecture by someone involved with electricity networks a few years ago, and they commented that if everybody started using electric cars and heat pumps, and they were all on at around the same time, some serious upgrading of local electricity networks would be needed, or we'd have substations failing...