BLINK: Electric-vehicle drivers and homeowners will by midyear be able to manage ECOtality's Blink EV Charging Station via Cisco's Home Energy Controller.
Image: COURTESY OF ECOTALITY
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
General Motors, Ford and other carmakers are increasingly trying to sell consumers on a future where fleets of battery-powered cars cruise along U.S. highways and byways. Turning such a vision into reality, however, requires far more than simply making electric cars available—drivers need to know how, when and where they will be able to recharge their batteries, not to mention how much it is going to cost.
The addition of an electric car to a home's electrical system is not just a new load, it's a big load—in some places doubling what a home currently consumes, says Paul Fulton, general manager of Cisco Systems's Prosumer Unit (which works on both consumer and professional networking technology).
If the hybrid automobile market of the past several years is any indication, electric vehicles will likely be adopted first by more affluent people living in older neighborhoods, Fulton says. The aging electricity transmission systems found in such areas mean that electricity consumption has to be managed efficiently so that drivers do not overload the system and create power outages, a situation that could sour early adopters on the practicality of owning an electric car.
One proposed approach to simplify potential headaches is to enable the monitoring and management of electric car charging through centralized home energy-management systems making their way to market from Cisco, OpenPeak, SilverPAC and others.
ECOtality, Inc., a San Francisco–based maker of home battery-charging stations, on Monday announced that electric-vehicle drivers and homeowners will by midyear be able to manage the company's Blink EV Charging Station via Cisco's Home Energy Controller (HEC). The HEC is a portable wireless gadget with an 18-centimeter touch screen used for centrally the monitoring and managing the amount of energy used by home appliances, including air conditioners, pool pumps and heaters.
ECOtality designed Blink to communicate directly with energy utilities to determine off-peak and low-cost charging times. "Hypothetically we can tell a utility when chargers in a certain neighborhood are programmed to go on, and the utility can put that information into their demand response–management systems," ECOtality vice president of corporate development Colin Read says.
The integration of electric-vehicle charging stations with home energy management systems is an important, albeit incremental, step forward for the adoption of electric cars, which face a crucial period in 2011. Chevy's Volt (which runs on a battery but also has a gas-burning engine to recharge the battery if it is depleted mid-trip) and Nissan's all-electric LEAFs are now hitting the road and will be followed later this year by Ford's all-electric Focus. If drivers cannot manage to keep their batteries charged, such vehicles are likely to go the way of the EV1, which GM abandoned more than a decade ago.
Plans are underway by ECOtality and competitors Coulomb Technologies and AeroVironment to build fast-charging stations that drivers can access at restaurants and retail locations, but the majority of charging is likely to take place at home overnight. "We're trying to provide the consumer easier and more streamlined ways to control and understand their home energy usage, including electric-vehicle consumption," Read says. "We want EVs to be economically viable, and as a result that means the energy going into the car has to be more affordable than the energy going into an internal combustion engine." Not an easy task given the combustion engine's more than century-long head start.
See what we're tweeting about
32 Comments
Add CommentIt may also be worth having a device like the HEC that uses the car battery as an energy source during peak times. Charge the battery when power is cheap in the middle of the night. Use the power in the afternoon in a heatwave to reduce the load on the grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow efficient are these batteries?
EV1 is a great example but not for this article. The owners had no problem charging the batteries. In fact, owners offered GM cash to buy all the remaining vehicles outright with no warranty. GM crushed them to avoid building more. That was the "old GM" which the economy has now crushed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe argument that EVs are not yet viable due to electricity rates is another erroneous venture. Current production electric vehicles have a fuel cost of $.02 per mile. The current fuel cost of the average gasoline powered passenger car is about $.15 per mile if gas is $3 per gallon. Thousands of EV drivers already enjoy this every day. That is why they are smiling so much as gas prices escalate.
Managing home energy use is a great idea for every household to better understand the cost of everyday activities and make informed decisions. An electric vehicle is only one of many devices that require power. The development and installation of these devices will help consumers control thier spending with the awareness of important details a monthly utility bill only masks.
So long as they do not simply try to shift the burden of generating the power to alternative energy it just could work for urban driving but the noisy fringe will be outraged if they are powered by nuclear generation. Utopian dreams will return to their bongs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear power stations work almost as efficiently at full power generation as at reduced power, so off peak really does become cheaper for these things plus many others such as desalination.
Speaking as an electric car owner, I think these concerns are overblown. You almost always charge the car overnight, when the load is minimal. Given the inevitably slow changeover to electric vehicles, the grid will be able to easily handle the load for the forseeable future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did some work for a professor who is designing a new battery using nanotechnology which will require a fraction of the energy with far greater output. She told me that the cars would be able to be plugged into the power grid while at work during the day and feed back into the system. It would be more a matter of the utility companies storing that energy for nighttime charging. The system is far more thought out than is covered in the media.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople dont want service stations period. Induction charging is the only way whether at work or home for the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can imagine a future at work with your parking spot with induction charging as standard and the same for all of us at premium car parks slots.
The problem is years of neglect by electricity companies who when privatised reduce backup and extra capacity to nothing. These same power companies that charge you more than when it was government owned.
There is only one viable solution thats government owned electrical grids and installations on tax payers money. At least then its done right every time and in plain view for all the public to see. If it is going to be done by privatised electrical companies you can forget it. Youll have more brown-outs, massively inflated electric prices when gasoline is finially removed. I mean massive bills, you thought oil was expensive, lol.
"M", there for awhile, I thought I was the only one who realized the private customer financial benefit of deprivatizing utilities. When utilities are privatized and greed gets involved, as it always does - quality rapidly decreases, the price always ends up on a roller-coaster ride and the private company says, "We have to raise your rates because of 'supply and demand', later they say, "We have to raise your rates because of 'the like of supply and demand'. When the government controls the utilities, there is no need to lower quality to increase profit and government workers, which would be you if you are hired, makes sure the utilities are at peak all the time because it makes life easier at home. The privitized worker can only do what the private owned utility tells them to do and that will always come down to a raise in rates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet the governments, which is paid by taxpayers' money and controlled by elections, take back over the utilities and the rates will drop, the quality of the utility will increase and the electric car will become just another appliance in the home like the electric cooking stove did and we will have no blackouts because we will then be able to supplement our home usage with affordable solar panels.
James - what planet do you live on? How could you possibly think that government run utilities will bring you cheaper power and more quality than privately run companies?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrivate companies look for ways to reduce cost because it has the potential to increase their profit. Governments have no such incentive.
Some of the best examples of high cost coupled with poor customer service are government enterprises. Think of the Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Cost is high and service poor because there are no incentives to improve and there is always some elected official placing constraints on them.
All these electric cars are great and I would love to have them. But rather than the technology, what concerns me is the logistics and security of charging outside our houses....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeaving electric cables connected to our cars on our drive ways or parking spots ? Are we serious ? I have visions of thugs going around cutting or vandalising these cables and the practice spreading around cities... Am I just cynical ?
The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt each use a 3.3 kW charger. That's about as much power as a hair dryer. An owner that drives less then 40 miles per day (as 3/4th of all Americans do), will need to charge for less than four hours each night.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis isn't going to burden the grid!
Power companies need to know about neighborhoods that have unusual clusters of EVs so that neighborhood transformers can be monitored and upgraded as needed. That's why we need to have (streamlined) permit processes for installing EV charging units in garages.
I've talked to lots of utilities. They are not worried about the gradual build up of EVs over the next 10 to 20 years. It seems like it's only uninformed journalists looking for a sensational story who think it's going to be a problem.
Yeah, the USPS costs way more than Fedex. Oh, wait ... they cost 1/10th what Fedex does. And you've obviously never lived in a town with a Public Utility District delivering power. Service is better and costs are less than private utilities. Somehow I think if DMV raised prices so they could hire more clerks, you'd be on the front lines of the protest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this#1 poster..paulwillfixit...totally agree...even take it one step further and when a tree or whatever cuts the power to your house...wala(sp) you still have power...be nice to get rid of those many short/micro outages that happen almost weekly too...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisName anything else the government has taken over that now costs less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBravo, Soccerdad. Electric co-ops work well too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeveral posts (dgeorge and paulwillfix it) mentioned lower rates at night. What happens to usage when 10,000 of your neighbors plug in at night. Bye, bye lower rates.
I an so disappointed to see American car companies rushing off a cliff with government-sponsored electric cars. It seems obvious that only wealthy people will be able to afford a car only for short trips. For the rest of us, taking the family electric car on that trip to Yellowstone is not possible if every 100 miles they need to stop, find a charging station and wait several hours to recharge the car's battery. I live 80 miles from the nearest city of any size, so electric cars won't cut it for me at all. I kind of resent my tax money subsidizing these uneconomic electric cars - Gordon White, Hardyville, VA
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to agree with the grumpyoleman's comment. The utilities are sitting back and "licking their chops", just waiting for all the tree huggers to run out and buy these EVs. Once they have paid the huge price tag for one of these things, BAM! All of a sudden, what was once "off peak" time, will become "the new" peak time. Charging will become much more expensive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for using the EV to supplement you home's electricity use when it's sitting in your garage fully charged, NO! There would not be enough power stored in the vehicles batteries to do anything more than run a couple of wall outlets for a minimal amount of time. Think about it. If it takes 4 hours of 120V charging, then that is what you will get back (provided there is no loss of energy in the process). Now, if you were to draw multiple 120V recepticals at the same time, then the cars batteries (provided they could handle the higher current) would deplete much faster.
The only way to make one of these EVs a viable sollution, would be to provide your own, off grid charging system, eg. a windmill in your back yard, solar panels, hydro generator (if you have a flowing river on your property), etc. A setup like this would also allow you to supplement your household power as well. The cost of a setup like this?... Significantly more than the cost of operating a petroleum powered vehicle for the same amount of time.
And I haven't even factored in the maintenance costs for all of this equipment.
A simple internet search will show anybody that there are several models of carports like structures that can trickle charge batteries using solar energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere the auto manufacturers seem to missing the boat (they are slow as the failure of the EV-1 shows), is that a swappable battery needs to be made available for all of these vehicles.
Solar powered wheelchair
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-powered-wheelchair/
With so many of our population “going senior” solar permitting should be done without any permit cost –if the equipment is necessary for everyday living.
Just because something failed, doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying. If we never tried, then we'd never learn anything - even in failure we can still find success.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI work for a publicly owned utility run by the local city. We charge about half what electric utilities that are privately owned do. If you check the average rates for city or state owned utilities you will find that ALL of the lowest prices in the USA are at publicly owned utilities. If you check the privately owned utilities you will find that ALL of the highest electric rates in the USA are at privately owned utilities. The stories about government inefficiencies tend to be exaggerated and usually are about federal ownership.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are talking about federal ownership. In the electrical utility arena the utilies owned by state and city or county governments are significantly cheaper and more reliable than privatized electrical utilities. The simple fact is that when the local government owns the utility and are rate payers themselves and have to explain increases to their neighbors, they keep costs low. Do some real research before whining.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee:
http://www.appanet.org/
http://www.nepower.org/power.asp
if you want actual facts.
National Defense, The USPS, Interstate Hiways, Interstate Criminal Investigation. I'm sure there are more things where the feds are cheaper but really, you only asked for 1.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor all of you idiots that don't want to fund research - get the hell off of the federal government created internet and crawl back under your rock.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"in some places doubling what a home currently consumes" is an understatement. In 2010 we drove, in our two automobiles, 10,527 miles using 488 gallons of gasoline. This converts to nearly 18,000 kWh of electricity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe live in an 1,800 sq ft all electric home. Heating is by far the major consumptive use, averaging 5.3 kWh per hour in January 2010 vs. 1.4 kWh per hour in August 2010. Yet 2010 home use was less than 22,000 kWh.
With heavy home electric useage and modest driving, vehicular energy use is nearly equal to home electric consumption. Do persons wanting an electric car really appreciate what the impact is going to be?
In response to 'allelectric'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would have been helpful if I knew your location in the U.S. but didn't see it in your post. My location is in the Southwestern part of Arizona near the CA border. I also live in an all electric home of about 1850 ft. sq. Winter heating is provided by a 3.5 ton [42,000 BTU] heat pump. This heat pump is 12 SEER and uses 3.51 kW per hour of operation or about $.43/hr including all taxes. In the winter is rarely ever runs more than 1 hour per day so winter heating costs about $12.00/month.
However since this is the desert, its the summer that kills me. My Heat Pump [Air Conditioner] can run anywhere between 7-11 hours per day. I have a thermostat that gives actual hours of run times. If I take an average of 9 hours X .43 it cost about $3.87/day or about $116.00/month to stay cool to 77 degrees when it's 100+ degrees outside. My actual kWh's used in 2010 were 11,953 for the entire year.
I was very surprised that your home used something less than 22,000 kWh which seems very high. Have you had your meter checked? Have you re-insulated your attic to R-40? Do you have dual pane Low E windows? Do you use CFL or LED lighting?
Tom G.
Tom, you are confirming my observation that popularization of electric vehicles will more than double residential electric consumption. Unless there is no option other than small, underpowered cars, electric vehicles are likely to cause more problems than they are intended to solve. However, I did put a 30 ampere 240 volt outlet in the garage; just in case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI could accept hybrids, with the IC engine maximized for efficiency. But this will still create a major battery replacement/disposal/recycling problem.
I live in Nebraska. The house is very well insulated with only eight, small, triple glazed windows. There are four HVAC zones with programable thermostats. Maximum 72 degrees in winter & minimum 76 degrees in summer. Even with zoning, all spaces remain fairly comfortable. The house is constructed so that the 720 sq ft garage has a winter temperature from the high 50's to maybe 65 degrees.
Most of the lighting is fluorescent tubes. I want the bathrooms warmer and used incadescent lights in them. The heat pump is air coupled, so it is not of much use in the winter. A ground coupled heat pump would be much more efficient, but I am concerned about the potential for ground water polution. The electric meter measures accurately.
What I find interesting is that, although we stay home much more than we travel, electric costs and gasoline costs are nearly identical at $1,500 per year. (We have a good municipal electric supplier and I use 91 octane gasoline.)
To allelectric:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow - looks like you are doing everything just about right. I agree trying to use an air source heat pump in your area would not be very practical. I was born and raised in Minnesota and know it can also get mighty cold in Nebraska! A ground source heat pump however might be a good investment and would reduce both winter and summer electric bills.
I have a cousin who lives in Minnesota who has a home much like yours. His winter heating costs are less than 1/2 of what his old bills were before he installed his ground source heat pump. It was not a big deal for him since he lived on a farm with lots of area for the ground source unit.
Cost however is a big factor when it comes to retro fitting. Lot size, local codes, water source or ground source, etc. are all question that need to be considered. I think your concerns about ground water contamination could be dispelled by selecting a certain type of heat pump system however I am not an expert in that field.
Have a great day and thank you for trying to live a lifestyle that values conservation.
Arizona does not have winters
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWisconsin has
come and remove my snow.
and ice
Thank you for sharing this information. I hope to see more in the future<a href="http://www.automotiveupdatesinfo.blogspot.com/">.</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for sharing this information. I hope to see more in the future<a href="http://www.automotiveupdatesinfo.blogspot.com/">.</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for sharing this information. I hope to see more in the future[url= "http://www.automotiveupdatesinfo.blogspot.com/"].[/url]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't be surprised if the IC engine is banned due to emissions of nano particles
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this